City Council - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat.

Hey. Hey. Hey.

I know that we have um a big big big big agenda today and I think it's appropriate that we start. Before we start, I just want to announce that our HVAC is down here at the chamber and so you can bring out the fans and you know and and cool off that way. But we are concerned about the streaming because of the uh heat generated from our computer systems and IT systems here. And so, um, Miss Clerk, did you want to add anything to that?

Yeah, I would just say that, um, we have brought down a bunch of fans in the hopes of keeping the audio equipment cool so that it will continue to function. Um, but we are concerned that, uh, if the system is not brought back up, which we do believe should be in the next two hours, that there may be some disruption to that.

Okay. And so, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Um but other than that, we have a really um uh in informative and packed schedule. We're going to start with the first item on on our agenda, item one, at the request of Council Member Dah and Council Member Schubert. Um time has been set aside uh to discuss the city of Tucson's commercial rainwater harvesting ordinance. And I just wanted to add on this item, Council Member Doll, um that we want to acknowledge the history of this conversation at at mayor and council level. I it was I and council member, if you all remember, Rodney Glassman,

my gosh.

Uh back in 2008, uh with the help of our council aids Diana Rhodess and from me on my end and uh Katie Bulier uh over at um council member Glassman's office brought the idea of commercial rainwater harvesting. And I just want to reflect on the conservation ethic that mayors and councils uh for the past 30 40 years have brought to the table about um uh water conservation and leading in the state on these types of issues. So, I wanted to thank you uh for for really staying on it, making sure that you know all of us have have had a little bit of say on this. Council member Cunningham, yourself, Council Member um Ulik, uh so many others uh that that have touched on the uh commercial rainwater ordinances and all of the conservation uh work that we've been doing over the years. And so it always makes me happy to remember the roots of uh issues that we've been leading on for many many years in the city of Tucson. So, um, with your help, we're strengthening, um, our commercial rainwater harvesting ordinances, and I'm really I'm really happy that we've, uh, brought this back and in the past recent years uh, strengthened the work that is being done with it. So, uh, with that, I just wanted it make me kind of smile and giggle, uh, of all of the work that has been done and that there's always, um, work that we can do to better ordinances and policies here at the mayor and

council level. So, with that, I'd like to um, throw the mic over to you, Council Member D.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to cross off my first two paragraphs of introduction because you covered it much better than I have it. And also thank you to um colleagues uh council member Miranda Schubert and also recognizing that Paul uh Cunningham as long as he's been on the council he picked up from Rodney Glassman um and we asked for the first art audit of the audience with Paul's help in 2018 and the person who did that audit is with us today and we'll give a short presentation Brad Lancaster my friend for many many years he's a teacher consultant designer of systems that enhance local resources. Um, he s has sat on a number of city commissions, including the one that initiated this ordinance. He's the author of the award-winning, best-selling book series, I like props.

This is one of them that for the do-it-yourselfer, you can do water harvesting with with those two books. He's taught throughout North America as well as in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. And at home, if you're a longtime resident like I am, where he lives um in Dumbar Springs, used to be a very hot, dry place, but over the years, Brad, his brother, and neighbors have transformed it into a verdant, um lots of native plants growing primarily on harvested rainwater. Um and in that context, that's what we're trying to do with every new commercial development. Um Brad came to us with some suggested uh tweaks. We've met with um both Tucson Water James McAdam and director um uh of planning and development Corin um and who has a presentation by the way that's in your materials. We're not going to present it to save time, but both of them are available if there's any questions. Without further ado, Brad Lancaster.

One question. Do I have a clicker for We have a clicker for the And can we put up the the PowerPoint and I thought that there were going to be copies of them. There's not. No. Okay. And do I audio visual people you putting up the PowerPoint? If I should go without it. Why don't you go without it? Okay. Yeah. With the air conditioning being out, who knows what's happening with electrical devices. Is it Friday the 13th? April 1. Yeah. Okay. We can also pass around Brad's laptop.

Okay. So, um thanks so much mayor and council for the opportunity to make this presentation. So, I wanted to um uh present six uh improvements to the commercial uh water harvesting ordinance um which is uh great but I think can be even greater. So um the first one is uh I want to recommend that all non-paved areas of a landscape be lower than any adjoining landscape. So currently that happens to some degree with the commercial water harvesting ordinance where there'll be sections that'll be lower than the parking lot or whatnot that can get that runoff, but there's still large swaths of commercial landscapes that are higher than the parking lot, the walkways, the road, and so they're wastefully draining that free rain water and storm water to the streets, to the parking lots, causing flooding and whatnot. So um rather than waste that free water, let's capture it all. So if all unpaved areas are lower than the paved areas, then all those areas become free flood control, become a free rehydration strategy for the landscape. So rainwater can be the sole water source of that landscape if designed right. And then we'll also create more verdant uh healthy shaded landscapes. And the other advantage of this is um if any of you have gone out after a storm, you'll see lots of dirt, gravel, um litter in the streets and that's flowed off the adjoining landscapes into the streets into the parking lots because all those landscapes are higher than the streets. So, if we flip that, now all our landscapes become free nets that hold on to all that leaf drop, the gravel, the sediment, the dirt, and it's going to dramatically reduce the um maintenance costs throughout the city. We won't have

so much stuff going to the streets and the storm drains. Um now the the second um recommendation I want to make is let's ensure that all site locations um including the public rights of ways uh be graded and planted to receive rainwater and storm water runoff. So currently um like you can go see the mark the apartment complex that's just off Broadway. So, um, new development that was done under the commercial water harvesting ordinance. Over 95% of the site is building. Okay. So, a huge amount of storm water coming off that vast roof surface and there's nowhere near enough landscape to take that. However, there's a 20 foot wide public ride ofway that surrounds that that is receiving none of that storm water. Instead, all that storm water is just shot right through that bare gravel public rideway to the street. So, if we require that the public rideway adjoining these commercial properties also be required to harvest the rainwater, we'll have much more non-paved area in which we can receive that water. And then instead of just having a solar oven gravel scape, we can have a linear forest of uh native shade trees that then creates a more walkable cooling environment. Um, so we have uh proved this concept for 30 years in the Dunar Spring neighborhood. We've got a pilot project where we've planted over 1,800 uh native shade trees, um, thousands of understory plants, and we harvest over a million and a quarter gallons of storm water per year. But we've shown how you can take once barren public rights of way and turn them into verdant linear forests. Um, that Hey, there's the talk. Okay, maybe you can see a All right. There it is. Okay. So, the upper left image shows you the before. The lower

right image shows you the after. So, in the upper left image, that's what things look like when we started. So, all the rain water from the private property was directed into the public rightway and then the public right ofway water was directed to the street dehydrating the community. So we flipped that and now we direct the water from adjoining private property and street side into public rideway to become the free irrigation source that also doubles as community flood control. And all of that verdant landscape you see is watered solely by rainwater and storm water. So there's no city culinary water. There's no city drinking water required um to sustain this and uh controlling flooding too. My third um recommendation it's let's in um let's prioritize let's prioritize the use of Tucson basin native plants. So the the Tucson basin I mean we have got the most one of the most diverse deserts in the world. There's over 400 native plants that are edible to people. This has resulted in the this Tucson being perhaps one of the oldest continuously inhabitated and farmed communities in the continental United States. So rather than ignore that which enabled this that enabled Tucson to be let's embrace it. So um if you go throughout Tucson uh you will it looks like an oasis to us but it does not look like an oasis to wildlife. So the dominant tree in the Tucson built environment is the non-native South American hybrid mosquite. So um it's shady, it's green, looks good, but it can it supports less than six species of native pollinators, whereas the native velvet mosquite supports well over 60.

Why does this matter? Well, do you like birds? If you like birds, you got to have native butterflies and moths and other insect species because 95% of the food that baby birds eat are caterpillars and grubs. Okay? But the native butterflies and moths cannot eat the non-native vegetation. They've not adapted to be able to get through the defenses of those non-native plants. Whereas they can eat the natives. So if you want the native birds, you got to have the native pollinators and butterflies and mos. And if you ga have them, you got to have the native plants. So, um, as we build out the community, let's ensure that as vegetation is removed from blading, when we replace and put in the landscape, let's put in a landscape that is unique to Tucson's essence that feeds this unique sense of place because the native plants um support the life and the ecosystems that support us. So, let's collaborate together. Um, and this is also for good economic sense. So $1.4 billion dollars a year comes into the Arizona economy for people wanting to check out the native wildlife. So why should they have to leave the city to check it out? But it goes further than that. This is a photograph taken in uh Tucson Park um by uh just near downtown here. And every year we see more and more non-native plant death throughout the city of Tucson. So in the foreground is a non-native tree in the park. Um, in the background are the very vibrant live native trees. So, why go to all the expense of planting these plants, these non-native plants that are not well adapted to our climate, soil, and wildlife, and then we have to replace them later on. Well, if we plant the natives, even if the irrigation system

goes out, they continue to live on. Um the next thing is uh let's incentivize and prioritize the planting of more native shade trees. So in many of our commercial landscapes, we've got abundant vegetation, but the bulk of it or much of it is just the low growing understory plants. We don't have more of the canopy trees. So let's um uh make sure that it's required to put in more of the trees. And why? That's not just for us. That's for all life. So in that lower left image you see under a palivvery tree out in the desert where nobody planted anything or takes care of it. Look at how many more young saros there are growing under that native tree. So they want to be there. We want to be there because there's more shade and shelter cooling it off in the hot extreme times. And in the winter and the cold nights it's actually warmer too. So it works in the extremes of both seasons. Um all right. And then the next Oops. Okay. And the fifth um recommendation is let's expand the commercial water harvesting ordinance to include what is currently excluded from the ordinance. So right now parking lots of cemeteries, schools, places of worship, golf courses, botanical gardens, and parks are not required to harvest any rainwater. So we continue to put in dysfunctional dehydrating um flood enhancing parking lots and so forth like in the upper image. So let's flip it to the bottom image by requiring them to also apply um do what is required in the ordinance. Um and other uh excluded aspects are peripheral landscapes to parks and golf courses where they could very easily be watered from runoff from the adjoining roads. Government properties and commercial properties being renovated for new businesses are also currently excluded from the

ordinance. So let's include those as well. Then my last recommendation, whoops, is let's apply the commercial water harvesting ordinance to residential development as well. So, uh, this is a proof of concept. The images on this slide are from the Magro co-ousing development. It's a 28 unit residential development here in Tucson that was built out in the early 2000s. Um, and so we designed that landscape so the entire landscape harvests rainwater. As you can see in the upper left image cap, that's all that harvested water but before we planted. The right hand image is then we came in and planted and then the bottom lower left image is the landscape 10 years after planting. It is watered solely by rainwater and household waste water. There is no virgin municipal drinking water used to irrigate this landscape. What's more, it's vastly superior for flood control. So this is an overview of the site. The rectangles with the numbers are the buildings. The blue areas are a whole series from the top to the bottom of water harvesting rain gardens throughout the landscape. We had a civil engineer add up the cumulative storage capacity of all those rain gardens in the landscape and it exceeded the storm water capacity of a conventional flood control system by 10 times. So, not only was this a vastly superior flood control system, it's also the foundation of a water sustainable landscape that requires no municipal virgin drinking water to irrigate it. Um, so it's helping recharge our aquifer. It's saving everyone money and maintenance um and adding to the value of this property in the community. So, thanks for your consideration. Um, and uh I don't know if I take any questions or

Thank you, Brad. Um, we're gonna maybe a few questions, but um I think council member if you want to start with your motion. I'll start with the motion and then we'll open it up for discussion after the motion. Thank you. And there might be questions come from that. Um I move that we amend the commercial water harvesting ordinance based on the feedback provided in the memo that you received with the exception of expanding to residential. That's on a separate track. Okay.

And return in six months with an update. Um, additionally, we know that the landscape advisory committee is working on a revised landscape list. I further move that we direct the landscape advisory committee to move forward focusing on a plant pallet native to the Tucson basin in parallel with the amended change. And I a quick comment, there's a new development that's um on Campbell and uh Fort LOL that's in compliance with our current native uh commercial water harvesting ordinance that is planting oleanders, which they're legally allowed to do because they don't use our plant list because they have right of zoning already. They use the states list

out of Phoenix and they're planting oleanders. It's crazy. But um motion's on the floor. So motion. Do I have a second? Second. There's a motion and a second. Now it's time for discussion. Any questions, observations? Council member Cunningham.

Kevin, thanks for bringing this back. Brad, great to see you. Uh you know, this has to be done every few years. We kind of get a kind of a a shot in the arm to this ordinance that's ever evolving. Um, I think uh we're definitely all the suggestions are north of outstanding, which is pretty much par for the course for you, Brad. For those of you at the table who don't understand, Brad's kind of like the godfather of all rainwater harvesting. Um, and he not only do we not only did we start that trend, um, Brad almost kind of invented it. And so it it's we're really lucky to have people advocate for these programs. Couple things. One is obviously it goes without saying that when we're speaking about uh doing the lower elevation on the landscaping we're going to consider drainage so that we don't have um unintentioned flooding. I mean obviously that's going to be built into that. So there has to be some drainage that's got to go into that but I don't want anybody to think that we didn't think about that. The other piece is I think we should probably look at some stakeholders to be involved in this process as it involves I think that's kind of important uh from both parts of uh the community both our our uh water advocates but also some of our builders who understand it. One of the things I was thinking about when you talked about the residential piece is that on a single build that can become that can have some challenges, but uh when we have a lot of sites that go up where the builder's building 10 or 15 different structures at a time and we could probably absolutely put a more robust program in place for those developments, especially when we start uh building some planned communities out east and uh some of We have a we have uh one word or two

coming up with 133 homes and that it totally makes sense. The last piece is I think it's really important we consider frontloading this a little bit and funding some type of training for architects and engineers locally. Um, I think it's really important that architects and engineers locally, what I don't want to do is have someone submit plans and then we say to them, well, you didn't meet any standards of our rainwater harvesting ordinance. Go back and do it again. So, we need to remind we need to do a training up front so that they know that they're doing those things in plants. But other than that, all these things are outstanding. My last piece today is as we keep evolving our rainwater program and starting with the storm water program, we should also take a look at storm water storage. Um we have different sites throughout the city that naturally exist uh like well natur sort of naturally exist. Um but we have different retention basins throughout the city. We have the quarry, we have the kerp, we have Italian trap canyon. And those are all opportunities long term for uh wet water storage and storm water capture at a m at a at a larger scale. And it wouldn't be to go directly into the system, but it would help uh replenish the system and control the system. So those are some things kind of outside the box that I hope in in marriage with our rainwater harvesting ordinance, we have a storm water harvesting effort that we collaborate with Puma County on. Thank you very much.

Thank you, council member. Any other questions? Council member Vakas.

Thank you, mayor. Well, thank you for that presentation. I'm really excited to see this move forward um from a strong policy implemented to real results ensuring that rainwater harvesting saves waters, cools our neighborhoods, especially in the neighborhoods like we see in Ward 5 that are really hot and promotes climate resilience in Tucson. Um when you were giving your presentation, I was reminded of uh this gentleman that I got to know in Los Angeles, Ron Finley, the gangster gardener. if you haven't heard of him, he transformed neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles and he was actually penalized for some of the work he did in those right away um you know in between the sidewalk and the public um and the and the homes and the fact that we're going to be working closely with both residential and commercial is um something I want to see more but I do I did have a question of how can we just ensure that this reaches and benefits uh the historically underserved communities and not just new developments. So, I do think the education, the maintenance is going to be key. And if there's any insight or anything we could um that you can share with us, I would love to hear it. Thank you.

Yeah, I don't know if there's um planning and development services. I know that we have representatives of storm two shade here as well which we created as a result of not seeing investment in historically underserved uh areas but I don't know if there's a response to that.

Sure. Honorable mayor, council member Brahath, um, council members, um, absolutely. I think that goes back to something council member Cunningham mentioned, which is training, and I think that is a great idea that as we're making any code changes, we try to really do a lot of education to the community. So, for example, we've been doing some trainings on middle housing recently. Um, and along those lines, one thing to mention is that as we are expanding these rainwater harvesting and landscaping requirements, that is going to affect all new residential developments. So, one of the requirements, for example, with the middle housing ordinance that mayor and council adopted last year was a new landscaping requirement for single family homes and infill development, which we never had before. Um, previously there was no landscape requirement for residential development. So, that is a new aspect that may council implemented and we are implementing now through middle housing which we are seeing across the community and a lot of different neighborhoods and I think is going to have a big impact um across Tucson. Thank you. Any others? Uh, Council Member Schubert.

Thank you so much. Um, thank you, um, to W three, Council Member Dah for the leadership and the partnership. Um, also really appreciate staff bringing forward these updates, which are both practical and forwardinking. and just really proud of this thoughtful and collaborative policy work that uplifts the expertise of um a rainwater harvesting um authority of the Southwest like Brad Lancaster. Um and really exciting to see the presentation and the before and after pictures. If we're going to make our communities more resilient, um this is this is the way to do it is to spread more of this um forward thinking um you know approach with long-term resilience and looking at our built environment. What really stands out to me is um the light touch nature of these changes because they're not about overregulation. They're really about um aligning our future development with the realities that we're facing. Um living in a desert environment from water use to um to our extreme heat future um and present day. I mean, it's already hot as we can feel literally in the chambers right now. Um so, you know, these are common sense updates to ensure that as Tucson grows, we do so in a way that is respectful to our unique landscape and supports a robust ecosystem. And coupling these changes with an updated plant list from the landscape advisory committee only enhances these updates and frankly unlocks new business potential. Um we have heard some concerns from people about the ability of um the needs of different projects being able to be met by um a more stringent requirement on local local um plants. But um it's an opportunity to support locallyowned plant nurseries like Spadefoot and Desert Survivors who specialize in native sonor and desert plant species and it could lead to growth in that part of our local business economy. So I'm supportive of this direction. Appreciate the careful

balance that this strikes between enabling development and being responsible stewards of our environment which Tucson is known for. And thank you for your leadership, Mayor Romero. Uh, thank you, Council Member Schubert. Uh, I'm really appreciative of Okay, first Brad having Brad Lancaster in Tucson and his knowledge and really his um really thinking about improving his neighborhood um by demonstrating how it's done. I remember Brad, I visited you back in 2008 when we were thinking of creating the rainwater harvesting ordinance and and by the way, we also created a graywater harvesting ordinance that we still have to do some work on. But um I really make me think at that time how valuable this work of capturing rainwater is to our community and um your neighborhood Dumbar Spring uh was a historically disinvested community, African-American community, Native community that uh needed a lot of tender loving And via your work of really reimagining how we use rainwater in our community, we were able to put uh the rainwater harvesting ordinance together back in 2008. But because of sustained um care by our council colleagues, we were able to improve the inspection practices in the field. So we were not just approving plans on paper but which happened the first few years to be honest with you. Um to verifying what

gets built and actually is um built as as it was intended to be. And then because of the deliberate um work that council member uh Dah and Council Member Cunningham and now Council Member Schubert uh we've increase staff capacity and improve coordination between departments. We're really taking this serious, but it it really all uh we are lucky to have you to make sure that you we continue to listen to your advice and feedback and I'm glad that we're moving in this direction. So, with that, all those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I.

I. Any against? Motion carries. Thank you all.

All righty. So, we move on to item two. Item two, time has been set aside for an update on the fiscal year's 26 budget and discussion of the fiscal year's 27 budget. I just wanted to uh introduce this item um because we are doing we have been doing a lot of work to come to this day uh for some time now, more than a year now. um all of the menu of options that have been provided to mayor and council by the city manager and the team. Um it really is a stark reality uh that we're facing budget deficits. Um mayor and council have to pass a balanced budget. We do not have the um uh you know the the uh opportunity as Congress does just to put it on to the next generation of of taxpayers. We have to come up with a balanced budget and uh that's our responsibility. uh we have made significant strides over the past five years in bringing our employees up to market rate and fixing classification issues uh so that there's more pay equity and I for one want to make sure that we do not sacrifice our employees um during these difficult um but budget years. So, I want to continue taking the steps necessary to uh keep our employees at market rate and continue fixing classification issues that we've had to fix because of the previous recession back in 2008. And it's taken us more

than eight years to fix these um historical imbalances, the Ducier era flat tax. And I know that you all have the memo. You see the um you see the the damage that the Ducy flat tax and how it's impacting our budget has been um constraining our budget and is creating a bigger deficit in our budgets. the federal government uh cuts to cities um are equally concerning. The um Trump tariffs, off and on tariffs and uh the anti-immigrant rhetoric is affecting visitors coming from Mexico into our city. We are seeing sales tax declines. Um, and we are connecting it to uh the numbers of Mexican visitors dropping in Tucson. Um, and so we have to be really creative and to and we need to meet uh the time that we're living in with tough choices. We do need to make laser focused reductions that cause the least harm possible to residents uh to services and to the important strides that we've been making in our budget with the collaboration and thoughtful approach that our city manager and our executive leadership team have uh have done. So, with that, I'm going to um I know that our city manager was feeling a little under the weather and is joining us uh via Teams.

Um but I wanted to throw it over to you, Miss Rosenberry, if you wanted to start the presentation. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council members. Um yes, I'm I'm going to be here at the table today, but we are making this presentation in combination with Tim. Tim, can you can you hear us? Is your uh chime in microphone working? I'm here if you can hear me.

Awesome. We can we can hear you. Thanks. So, um, mayor, thank you for the introduction and kind of setting the stage for the conversation this afternoon. This is the last study session that we have in front of you before we present the city manager's recommended budget, which we will be presenting to you on April 21st. So, um this is an important time um and an important conversation. Um as we've u provided information in the memo, we start off with talking about the work that we have continued to do to try to get this budget balanced. Um at uh the previous study session that we had in March, we reported to you um that we were trying to manage within the general fund a spending plan that still had a deficit of almost $30 million for fiscal 27. That's where the work had kind of gotten us. Um and as of writing this memo, we had been able to close the gap um down to about a $17 million deficit. and we continue to work on that situation because we do need to recommend to you a balanced budget. Um there we go. Our our memorandum talks about some of the good news that we um that we received. We have received estimated um state shared income tax uh amounts from the league for fiscal 27. That's the projection that we have in the green bar. Um second from the far left that says FY27 projection of $116 million. That was good news uh because we didn't know what that number was was going to look like. um we had had it in previous projections a a hold flat

number of that 107.9 million. Um so we were able to add that um that 116 as an update to our uh fiscal year 27 budget. What we did with this um with this chart though was to really try to do a better illustration for you as well as the community members about what the history of our state shared income tax amounts had been um prior to the flat tax being adopted. We've trended that for you on the red line taking our actual collections um in those prior years. Um in fiscal 24 of this memorandum, you see a blue bar that's very high. It's $144.8 million. That was the one year where the state was implementing the flat tax and they gave a one-time plus up of dollars to cities and towns. We had been sharing in 15% of revenues. Um they gave us an 18% share that year and it was a one-time um additional dollars to cities and towns knowing that they were implementing a flat tax that would where we would see future reductions. When you do the recalculation, if they hadn't done that plus up, Tucson would have actually received $122 million that year. So, we had this one-time additional dollars of around uh 23 million in fiscal 24, but ever since then, our actual collections and the projected amounts that were to receive from state shared income tax are well below what our trend um had been in income tax amounts from prior years. So, that's what we're we are showing with this graph. The other thing that we needed to show you was as the mayor

talked about um with the projections and the proposals at the state level to in implement conformity with the Trump tax cuts um we would see an additional loss of revenues. Um the Arizona League is estimating that will impact us as a loss of over $7 million in next year's budget. So um we've got difficulties this year in arriving at a balanced plan and this will contribute to the difficulties that we will have next year as well in balance.

And I I usually don't like to interrupt presentations but with the Ducy flat tax we received from the upyear that they realized that the Ducy flat tax would impact state shared revenues to cities and towns across Arizona. Right. So they shared uh additional funds from the regular state budget with uh with the cities. But then we see the 144 million and it drops

substantially to 116 million in fiscal year 25 and then it dropped again in fiscal year 26. Um, you're happy that we're receiving $116 million this coming year, but it should have been $150 million shared by the state because of our income tax. It's basically, we call it state shared revenue, but they're not giving us anything. This is city of Tucson residents paying their income taxes that should be coming back to Tucson. Correct.

Correct. And and mayor, you're right. We are positive at this point or, you know, it's good news when we receive a projection that is higher than our expectations, but really our expectations for state shared income tax um in fiscal 27 based on Tucson's trend would have been $152 million. So the $116 million that the state is or saying we will receive is well below what the trend had been for for Tucson to receive prior to the flat tax policy. And when you say uh that when you say that um the state legislature is wanting to I think you used I'm not sure if you used mirror

uh the uh Trump bill that he passed. Correct. Is that by law that they have to do that? I think you used another word. What is it? Well, I've I've always heard the the policy as to whether they will conform conformity the federal um income tax cuts. That's the policy. But is it is it the law? I do not I believe they have the authority to enact um whether or not they will conform. Okay. So, they have the choice to conform to the uh the bill that was passed by Trump and the Republicans in Congress, but they don't have to.

That is my understanding. And as a matter of fact, the governor has made recommendations um to only conform with parts of the bill. Okay. So that would continue uh hitting uh the amount of state shared funds that should be coming back to do something. Correct. That would have an impact on us.

Okay. Go ahead. Okay. At this point in the process um of uh study sessions regarding budget, we've tried to provide some basic information on how the recommended budget is shaping up outside of the general fund. So, we leave the general fund for just a minute and give you an update on um how budgets are developing within HERF uh park Tucson environmental services and Tucson water. And there's a write up in the memo on each of these items. Um, within the HEURF fund, we're expecting to receive $80.4 million for the coming fiscal year. That's slightly lower than our original estimates. We also receive those estimates from the league. Um, the memo describes what we'll be funding. In addition to um street maintenance and other items, we continue to fund amounts to try to address the copper wire theft that continues to occur within our within our system. Um within the environmental services fund, we talk about um how environmental services budget um is working around and based upon um the cost of service study that we've completed. We're expecting the utility fund within envir within environmental services to um spend approximately $80.3 million. And there is a small amount of grant money that will be expended in the coming fiscal year related to an EPA grant of um a a little over 200,000 within environmental services. Within the Tucson water utility, you can see that we are we plan to budget within the utility fund itself uh as well as the conservation fund and the green storm water infrastructure funds. Uh all three of those funds make up the activities and fund the activities for Tucson water. um Tucson

Waters budget uh based is based on their five-year financial plan um with $80 million of debt issuance anticipated um early in the fiscal year to help fund a portion of their capital budget about 40% of their capital budget. So again, that's a little bit of a preview in those funds and those items will be included in the recommended budget. I'd like to turn the presentation over now um to Angelo Zomalem, our business services director, who'll go over the capital improvement plan. Thank you, Anna. Go ahead and jump.

Okay. Uh the the this table reflects the capital improvement uh plan or program uh for years 27 to 28 fiscal years 27 to I mean to 31. Included in this table are funded both funded and unfunded uh capital improvement needs. Um and we we provided the unfunded numbers to give mayor and council a full picture of the infrastructure and fixed asset needs around the city. Um, our city manager's office is working with department directors to perform a broad assessment of capital projects and assets needs and to to compile a thorough list of of these items uh so we could present to mayor and council at a later date the full unfunded capital projects that would need to be addressed over uh over the next several years. Um included in these uh numbers are numbers for the FY27 budget. Uh we we're showing $733 million that I would um elaborate more on in our next slide. All right. And in our next slide, we're reflecting capital improvement plan projects just for fiscal 27. And we've provided mayor and council with that information across funds and departments. Uh uh mayor and council will note under the general fund we have $12.5 million projected um for capital improvement programs and that includes the original $4 million transfer from the general fund in this fiscal year 26 with an additional proposed that the city manager will be bringing up in his uh recommended budget. a proposed um 800 $8

million from the general fund into what we call the uh general capital uh projects fund for a total of 12 million. Um there is an additional 543 that would that um these projects are funded through framework and other uh restricted capital um general fund um resources. uh then we we provide you with HERF and that is of course under department of transportation and mobility and the other and the other special revenue funds. Some of the projects for fiscal 27 include the Valenc Valencia Road Cove to Hton uh of FY27 budget of $8.8 million. We have the 22nd Street I 10 to Tucson Boulevard. We also have the fire station 12 remodel and fire station 10 rebuild uh for budget request of 1.5 million in fiscal 27. So all of these programs and more projects and more um most of which are included in the memo uh make up that $733 million of um budget requests for the capital improvement program. I'll turn it over to Anna. The city manager is going to talk through the next slides regarding menu of options with within budget development.

Thank you Anna and Anel. So the next part of the presentation is really focused on how do we get to a balanced budget for FY27. And um we've presented uh what we're calling a menu of options. These are not necessarily recommendations. Those come uh later on the 21st when we present you with a recommended budget, but they're provided to give you context of what what the range of possibilities are and to get feedback from the mayor and council on on these these different ideas. I also want to clarify a couple of things. And mayor, you touched on some of this during your opening. When we're talking about the FY27 budget and we talk about a deficit, that is built upon continuing to provide services similar to what we've done in the past. And it's built upon a a few key uh objectives that the mayor and council have have outlined for us that we've taken as as assumptions as we've built been building this budget. One is the employee compensation being not an optional part of budget development but a core value of budget development. So when we talk about the FY27 budget and it having a deficit that is in part inclusive of including a significant uh step year two of investment in employees to address pay equity issues, market issues and and other needs in in employee pay. So that is not something that we've put on the table for um consideration per se. We've put it on the table as as a given in the budget. It is certainly a dial that can be turned. Um it includes our safe city initiative and part of our safe city initiative is our efforts to um increase

our number of sworn uh TPD officers. And so we've we've got a commitment to trying to increase that number by 50 um as soon as practicable that those investments are in in the budget. Um we are also uh not recommending at this point any um actions that are sort of short-term fiscal fixes that lead to long-term fiscal consequences. For example, in the past uh past uh budgets have included and this is more than 10 years ago uh reductions in contributions to the public safety pension that are legally able to be done but then in long-term create a long-term unfunded liability that we're actually wrestling with today trying to overcome and also uh a failure to invest in our capital needs of the city. Those those are not what we are proposing. we are including those in the in the in the budget uh as as as we are developing it. I also want to clear up when we get to some of the the potential adjustments to services um when we when we look at some of the things that might happen or are being considered in the fire department. There's there are two fire stations we'll mention that could potentially be um addressed. That is not to imply that there is a proposal or a consideration of laying off any firefighters. The way those savings would occur is is the firefighters who operate those apparatus would go onto uh the rest of our fleet and we would actually acrue savings through overtime reduction. This is not in any way uh a proposal or a consideration or even on the table to lay off firefighters. So those are some of the things that are circulating in social media and in some circles that are are just complete myths. Those are

not what are being even put on the table. So we are trying to fund the things we need to fund and we're trying to get from you the mayor and council what are those things. So as we work through these categories of opportunity I begin with category one which is potential new revenues with general fund impacts. And essentially there's almost $2 million in that category that are either in process or depending on your actions today with regard to park uh parks and recreation fees that that if you proceed down the path with things you've already signaled an intent or issued a notice of intent for inclusive of uh if you issue a notice of intent to look at parks and recreation fees. There's almost $2 million right there of new revenue uh that would go straight toward the bottom line of of offsetting uh the potential deficit and bringing us to a balanced budget. So that's that is good work that would would yield good results. Under category two, these are things that are not cuts to the budget, but they are things that were externally funded and those external funds have have gone away. So these are uh programs or projects that if we don't if we if we don't take action, they would cease or they would be reduced. And if we do decide to fund them for another year, then we add to the deficit. This does include the DV FTAP program, which is the the firearms uh of do domestic violence where we we we have a removal program for those firearms. Uh the mayor has already challenged myself and county administrator Jan Leer to try to find a way to fund that. So it is shown here, but it is uh something we already

acknowledge as a top priority. uh Star Village is listed as this is not uh any reduction to the current commitment to a full one-year pilot, but this is putting on the table that to fund Star Village past one year, which is approximately October, we would need to identify funding to carry that forward. Um there are two housing first navigators that um their grant funding is is running out. um we don't perceive that as a critical cut. This is something that we uh believe we can absorb within our current operation. Uh the PHA heart program is a program that the funding has ceased for. And then the mobile shower program is a program that we believe we could tr uh transfer, donate, or lend to a nonprofit to operate. So this is something that we'll need your feedback on as we look at uh which if any of these do we need to to consider as funded as funding in the new budget. Next slide. Then we come to category three which includes uh fundamental structural changes to our operations that would yield uh structural savings. Uh but they also as the as the mayor indicated these are the things that start to come with some pain associated with them. Um every department certainly has the opportunity to have a hiring freeze to generate savings. Those are all listed as to be determined because those are all things that um we would have to have a strategy around how do we manage. I'll pause for a moment to say we had a meeting last week with our executive leadership team which is all the department directors and our uh lab our six labor groups. We put them all in the same room and we had a robust discussion about this whole menu uh of all the categories. And and one of the things that came out of that

meeting is we do believe that as we get closer and closer to a balanced budget, we could we could most likely solve the remainder whatever whatever's left when we're done with the hard parts. we could probably solve uh some of the the budget at least for a one to twoyear period with how our directors manage their vacancies and not just the vacancy savings that occur as a natural course of business but we would actually uh and I use the the term hiring frost where you're not eliminating positions but you are very strategic about what you fill and how you fill it and how long you wait to fill a position to acrue savings to a specific specific target. This is new since the time of the memo and this is something that I think we can uh I'm confident that we can deliver you a budget on the 21st um with your direction from today plus uh using that knowledge base from the departments. Having said that, uh there are additional things on the list. There's uh we go down to fire. We see the fire publication fire public education programs and the TC3 program. Between those, that's approximately a million dollars. This is very useful and important work. It is also work that we know we have other resources within the city that provide that or similar in similar services. And our our recommendation is likely to be that we look at cost savings in these two areas that we do through um blending that work with other departments and how we can fund it uh to a lesser degree but still not lose those services. So it's it they're shown as full value cuts um as options but I think we can navigate to a reduction but still provide those services.

You do see the two fire stations, fire stations three and fire station 6. That would be the savings of of closing those two stations. There's reasons to consider closing those stations. There's also very compelling reasons to not. Um, and this is the case where closing those stations is not a layoff of firefighters. Those firefighters are redeployed into the swing pool which is they means that they all go to other apparatus and they they support our continuous staffing model but there would be impacts to uh service especially in the form of response times in certain parts of the community. Having said that, we have a fire chief and and a team around her that are looking at what are other ways that we could address that overtime spend in the fire service that could yield perhaps millions of dollars of savings without having to shutter uh any of the fire stations. So, we're we're going to lay that challenge in front of Chief Mcdana and her team. And we are also going to uh re reinvigorate some conversations we've have with community partners who we in our opinion should be funding some of these services that they're currently not funding. Specifically, fire station 3 is located proximal to the University of Arizona. There's anou we have with the U of A that indicates some responsibility for fire service on campus. We believe that could translate into perhaps them funding some of the operation of that station. Similarly to fire station 6 which is near the state prison and it serves the state prison uh with a significant number of its calls. So, we're these are presented as uh options, but also opportunities to either address new revenues or reduce spending without um necessarily having

to go all the way to to station closures, but they're they're certainly on the table. Um you see a couple of uh smaller things in HR. I'm going to come back to the TCC for a second. the two items in HR, we believe we can navigate through those cuts without uh significant impact to service. Uh the TCC fee wavers for nonprofits uh that right now the way the TCC works is they charge for a lot of things and they have a lot of costs and at the end of the year though the general fund transfers money to the TCC in order to make it balance. But as part of that, we also give a lot of things away at the TCC. And so this is a conversation with the council about how much of that giving things away do we want to do versus um not giving things away as much in order to to have some savings. That is something we'll lay out in a little bit more detail on the 21st as well. And then you come to the parks and recreation section which we this is the the proud tradition of you look at parks and recreation as an opportunity to uh identify savings and what we've done to date historically parks and wreck gets devastated. We have we are not looking at anything close to that, but we've done a lot of minor tweaks in parks and wreck that have major impact on certain user groups, but it's been kind of death by a thousand cuts. So, we um we shorten the hours at a certain center. We close it on an extra day of the week. What we asked Parks and Rec to do is look at two fundamentally different approaches to our offerings. One is in aquatics. Three different levels of reductions in aquatics and pool hours. Um with the most extreme being the pools are only open in the summer. The next one would

be we have pools open in the summer with some reduced extended season. And then we have uh maybe just the pools are closed in just the winter months. Those are all options that are on the table that would yield different savings if enacted. And then on the rec center side, we have the regional recreation centers and then we have the neighborhood recreation centers. And as I mentioned, we've reduced hours here and there across the board. This would be instead of doing that, what if we just ran one rec center per ward, a regional rec center per ward, but that rec center had robust programming. it was open 7 days a week so that there was every day of the week a an option within every ward with robust programming at all locations. That is a a fundamentally different way of looking at recreation services. I I I put it on the table as an opportunity to to save and structurally change how we approach it. I do recognize that comes with significant impact especially the you know the shuttering of the neighborhood rec centers is is a is a major change that could be considered. Um, next slide. Then that brings us to the things that we've talked about at this table before that we don't have as part of the options. They're just listed here. Um, we've had the ongoing conversations about uh transit fairs. There's nothing on the table for transit fairs one way or the other at today. it is teed up for a conversation at the next meeting on the 21st and we'll we'll look at what what the range of possibility is there and then the other two are the general fund funds some programs that I've brought up previously that the mayor and council have indicated are non-starters and that's the PIP program and the economic workforce development grants with that I uh next slide

Joseph I'd also like to just highlight for a moment we had an employee budget town hall and we asked them a series of pretty pointed questions about how they approach this this this work and we asked them about for them themselves what would be their recommended actions with regard to reducing employee costs. On this slide, we see a lot of folks interested in preserving the pay. Excuse me, Anna. I'm going to have to cough for a second. Okay. Could you take this next slide?

Sure. Um, so this information is preliminary. At the time that we provided it in the packets, we still had the employee survey out. Um, it was open, but we're giving you preliminary information about how employees um thought we should face the budget constraints. um out of given these four choices to reduce staffing levels to pause pay increases to um have furlows or other temporary reductions in pay across the organizations. The leading choice that employees were coming to um was this concept of reducing staffing levels to maintain better pay for remaining employees or that hiring freeze option. The second question that we asked during the town hall was to get a feel from employees about their top three areas of the general fund to secure, stabilize or fund. Um there were a number of different choices here and you can see how these various options were fairing out um in our preliminary results. That blue that tall blue bar with the most responses is police, fire, and emergency services. and we run the gamut of a lot of a lot of different service area choices within the general fund there. The third question we asked was based on what you hear from residents employees um where might the community be most willing to see service level impacts. This was asking employees about their perceptions about what the community um would support. Um you can see the different options there. employees were coming back with suggestions about fewer community events or reduced facility upgrades um as the top two. And the last question that we asked employees was if the city needed to reduce spending, where should we start? Um everybody had the option of selecting up to two of these items. This is how

the responses were looking. the the most popular response was um reducing spending for contracted contracts and external services. Um second most popular the red bar is uh freezing hiring or leaving vacancies unfilled.

Thank you Anna for jumping in there uh and apologize for having the coughing going. Um what I want to emphasize on that uh last set of information again that was preliminary from the employees and that survey remained open for a couple weeks after the town hall. So we we need to digest the full impact of it. But what I what I want to emphasize on it when we look at when times get tough and and choices need to be made, the employees seem to be in in lock step with the the the dual responsibilities of employee compensation being that and and I interpret it to be we'd rather have our our employees well well compensated and at market even if that means that for a period of time we have to have fewer employees. And I'm not saying through layoffs. I'm saying in this case through um through hiring freezes or frosts that that the that the feeling was let's let's buckle down and do what we can with what we have and continue to value our employees instead of devaluing our employees and and trying to just fill numbers um and vacancies just because they exist. So what that leads me to believe is that if we end up in a budget balancing activity toward the end of the into toward the end of the process where we have to rely on the directors to uh not just have uh a program vacancy savings but a vacancy management target above that a savings that they have to achieve during a fiscal year that our employees seem to align with trying to make that achieve. So, I think that that's a reasonable and likely outcome that that could could actually uh result in a in a balanced budget for us. So, with that, I I turn it back to you, Anna, for the last couple slides, and then we'll be ready for questions.

Thanks, Tim. These last two slides in the memorandum, we have made no changes to these dates, but I just wanted to um make sure that everyone was aware. Um, we do have the four community information sessions slated to occur right after the recommended budget study session with mayor and council. Um, there are two virtual options as well as three in-person options to hear us present to the community what the recommended budget looks like. Um and all of those um information sessions are scheduled to occur before that May 5th public hearing on the recommended budget so members of the community can participate in both. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you so much. I am going to just hand it over to my colleagues on the council uh for questions, comments. Um I I'll start with ward six since I usually start on this end. So, do you have any questions, comments, council member?

No. Um, thank you, Mayor Romero. Um, and we did the W six office did send questions to staff and so I just wanted to express appreciation um at receiving those answers. I know that they were sent to my colleagues on the mayor and council. Um, but this being my first budget season, I'm really coming into this first session with an attitude of wanting to listen and to learn. And I just want to offer kind of my 30,000 ft bird's eye view of what I'm coming into this thinking about. Um, and we have hard decisions to make. There's no doubt about it. Um, and that mirrors the hard reality that our residents are facing. Families are facing rising costs across the board. Um, you know, fuel, housing, groceries, extreme heat. And in that environment, services like universally accessible transit, cooling centers, um parks, and housing support are not just negot aren't negotiable, they're actually essential. So, you know, we're facing a summer that's looking hotter, more expensive, and uncertain. So, um I feel hopeful hearing city manager express that we are looking beyond just what we're going to gain today by any cuts, but looking at those long-term impacts as well. Um, when I look at programs like TC3, um, 311, Star Village, and Pchip, um, these are programs that might shift around a few numbers in the short term to close the gap, but I would be concerned about what it would cost us in the long term. So, I'm I'm just thankful that um, it seems that we're all aligned on wanting to be really careful about how we proceed. Um, we've made real progress reducing the deficit thanks to the hard work of staff. um from nearly 29 million down to about 16 million even less than that for the cash on hand that's needed. Um so as we move forward my questions

will continue to be you know as we look at co at cuts um whether we're fully accounting for the downstream costs. Um I am also curious to know if we have exhausted alternative funding or reallocations especially in our largest spend areas. Um, also, what other temporary cuts or suspensions can we consider to close the gap and even build in a buffer should economic activity slow down even more than we've already seen? You know, I just heard on Marketplace this morning that the inflation outlook for the summer is 3.5 to 4%, which is far off the ideal of 2% that the Federal Reserve hopes for. So just just thinking, you know, as we're moving forward, um I really trust the expertise and ingenuity of our finance staff to get creative and finding more stones to turn over to find savings so that we aren't balancing the budget on the backs of working families who are already struggling so much um even to make ends meet. and um there's been such in innovative programming and and um initiatives and efforts on the part of this mayor and council and um I'm just anxious to be collaborative and ensure that we're doing what we can to be creative and innovative and shore up support for those things as we head into tough times. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Barakas.

Well, thank you both and well, thank you um for that presentation. hope you get better. Well, you know, I'm I too, you knew and um just taking time to really listen and and research and ask questions and um hear from from you all and and just from the different departments. Um so, in reviewing the menu of options, some of these will be felt more readily by our residents versus others. The programs where city government touches our residents lives most are those that also help maintain public trust. So for me, you know, making sure that our recreation centers are important hubs for our community as gathering spaces, but also for civic engagement. Uh, I just wanted to share that and to just continue to um listen. I really appreciated the employee budget town halls and the feedback that that we received and I look forward to the community in-person and virtual meetings to hear what our our um community members have to say and the breakdown of this. It's really helpful and just yeah, we must continue to work together to ensure that these investments are equitable, sustainable, and responsive um to our community needs, especially those that have historically been underinvested. So, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Bares, Councilman Lee.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to the team. This is amazing. I just want to before I get into my comments, acknowledge all of the work that you all have done and the executive leadership team, Labor, everybody who has been a part of these conversations. Um, with respect to the flat tax conversation, you know, this went into effect in 2023. Unfortunately, I know we've talked about this before, but it would take a two-thirds vote of the legislature in order to undo what's been done. And that is never going to happen in this world. So I, you know, we're just at the point where we have no choice but to adapt and do the things that need to be done to um start to live within that that deficit that we're going to be experiencing. Um couple things. I think this is my third mention of requesting that the impact of these cuts be made visible. U I think this is really important because I'm just assuming that all of these things that we have cut, we wouldn't be doing if we didn't have to. Um, and if we have, then that's a whole other issue that we have. So, I would just like to request when we when we have the adopted budget or between now and adoption, we have a clear understanding of what impact the the residents and businesses are going to feel as a result of these cuts, including a hiring freeze. I mean, I know that sounds like an easy thing, but that probably means that we're not going to backfill positions. our employees are going to be doing more work and I would like to understand what that's going to look like and also identify the risks that exist within that situation so that we can have a better sense of how we manage the risk of burnout and other things because I know that's already happening now especially within our our public safety areas and that is before these hiring freezes are going to go into effect although I know that won't be applicable to some of the departments um I was an athlete in school I never got into track and field But I was always obsessed with watching people do the hurdles. And one thing that's really interesting about the hurdles is before the person even lands, once they're midair, they're already looking at the next hurdle. And that's how I feel about this situation right now. We are midair right now getting ready to cross what is the lowest hurdle that we're going to

have in the foreseeable future. I've got the 5-year forecast pulled up and that's where I'm already looking. I'm looking at all the decisions that we have, the menu of options that we have in front of us. We're going to be having the same conversation next year, only we're going to be in a whole different situation where we're going to have to be doing even more of those things that are on there. And I know I've said this every single budget year, but the things that we say yes to now means we're going to be saying no to something else. So, if we say we're not going to cut anything for parks and we're not going to look at that $4 million of savings, that means we're going to have to cut $4 million somewhere else. That's just the nature of this work. Uh, I agree, mayor. I do not want to risk at all um contributing to the the employee compensation plan and the plan that we've promised our employees and making sure we're taking care of them because they are the ones that are delivering the core services that our community relies on in every day. Um closing fire stations, I appreciate that we would not be laying off any of of our hardworking firefighters, but again, I also want to understand and acknowledge that there will be people impacted by that. There are people at the UVA that call 911 and need fire service. there are people in the prisons that call 911 and need uh assistance. And so I I am very concerned about having that on the table. I understand the strategy to try to get funding from the prison, funding from the UVA to help fund um since so many calls for service are for those areas. Um but that is obviously something that is concerning to me. Um, of all the things on the list, this will probably come as no surprise, but my biggest desire is to see a recommendation of reinstating fairs. That's $8.5 million um after operating costs that would be coming in and it will take a long time to implement that. So, my idea is that when we sit here a year from now, we would have implemented things and we would be in a position to realize some of that revenue before we start closing fire stations. And I'll just be very honest. Um, I'm not going to vote for a budget that involves cutting fire

stations and closing fire stations, but not reinstating bus fairs. So, um, again, we have a huge general fund subsidy for the transit system, and we need to get that into a much more balanced area. And we also need to get positioned to move back to historical general fund levels where I know when I stepped into this position, we were had about 500 million or 500 Yeah. $500 million for our general fund and now we're $280 million above that and we've got to get back into where we were at in terms of a a sustainable general fund. So those are just some of my comments, Mayor. So thank you for the time. Councilwoman, Council Member Dah.

Thank you, Mayor. Like my colleagues have said before, I had very good work from Tim and the team and um especially a great presentation when you're lying sick in your bed. Um, thank you, Council Member Schubert, for filling that role of asking questions ahead of time. I'm kind of feeling a Mark um Mark

Mark Kerr flashback and that's that was always helpful to me. Um, and also your concern for people. I I I sh I share that that um we're talking about impacts to people who are the most vulnerable and I think of that in the areas of parks. Um as parks get hot and pools especially um uh parks and wreck are are a core service of the city of Tucson. It's not really an opportunity for cost savings in my mind. It's a quality of life for our neighborhoods. doesn't mean we shouldn't be strategic, but but closing whole things concerns me and pools not available for large periods of times um concerns me too. And as an aside, I want to make sure that people know that parks Tucson is not parks and wreck. There's no enterprise fund for parks and wreck. And I sure wish there was a foundation and that we um there's a little bit of endowment, I understand, from a past parks foundation. It would be great if there was regular money, but almost all of the parks operations exempt uh has to come out of general funds. Um but back to parks and pools, uh I'm going to be hard on pools. I think we need to maintain the service and hours that we have um currently uh this fiscal year and into the next fiscal year. And so this is a little unusual, but I hope my colleagues will agree with me. Let's just take that the pools off the table and we can look at other parts of parks and all the rest um as we go forward. So I move that we take off the table any cutting of services or hours from city pools based on last year's operations. And I ran the the uh wording past Tim. Um so I I think it will work.

Have a second. There's a motion and a second on basically taking pools and the hours off the table. No, no cuts to current operations. One of the advant one of the reasons for that is the operations of pools in the summer. The family swim open times goes across two fiscal uh years. And for the better planning of pools, we kind of need to know what's going to happen next fiscal year now as we're training and hiring lifeguards, etc. So, um, by the way, this didn't come from the parks department. It came from W three, but it, um, I think pools are very important. Thank you. Any discussion? Council member Vakas and then council member Cunningham.

Well, for me, my concern is the rec centers, not just keeping the regional centers open. So, um, if there's a way we could remove the rec centers from that as well for the pools. Um, I mean, there's only really one pool in W five. Council member, um I am concerned about starting to remove one at a time options. Uh we have very little options uh to move forward. I would I would say that we allow some flexibility um to how we move uh from now until we arrive at a at a budget. I would highly suggest that we just leave if we really feel passionately about providing the pools to our community and our children. We're getting ready to start the pools, you know, the swim season and so um I can understand that. But if we start removing things from the possibility of uh of taking a look at and being flexible, then I I would be very very concerned right now. I think we all have programs and services that we feel passionately about, but um I would suggest that we wait until we um we hear more in terms of what are the possibilities. I I do tend to agree with you, Council Member Dah, that um we've worked so hard to provide pool uh and swim activity for our community uh in Tucson in Sonoran Desert. It should be uh a no-brainer,

right, to offer this service. And so I'm going to support your motion. Um, but I'd like to leave it the motion as is. Uh, Council Member Cunningham.

So, I'd like some caveats on this motion to leave it a little more open-ended, and I'm going to explain why. Um, number one, in W two, we're closing one, we're we're very likely closing our main one of our main pools, and it could be for good if we don't if the if we can't figure out where that water leak is at Fort LOL. But the other piece is is that on other occasions in the past, we've opened pools in Word two that had been shuttered for a long time through a third party. Uh the YMCA actually operated Jesse Owens Park for two or three summers. So there's some there's some creative ways to go about this. So I'm all about keeping the pools open as best we can and I like the spirit of the motion there and that's why I seconded it. But I want staff to have some latitude on how they do that. I I think there's creative opportunities to do that and I think I remember one year when we were really struggling. We did bring back the splash which was a public campaign and we're able to raise some private funds and I'm going to personally uh start that campaign this year and uh I'll probably have some announcements on some donations at the next council meeting. So, I'm bringing a caveat back that I want that to be in marriage with some of the efforts we're doing to offset some costs.

I I I hear you, Paul. I don't think we need to um word smith the motion, though. Uh we have a similar pool that we're working to find some funding for. Um this is just budget and if something happens and the pool closes, the pool closes. So, so I think we can go ahead with the budget and staff has and has heard uh your concerns. Noted. Um, any other questions, comments on this motion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I.

Any against? Motion carries. Uh, council member Dollar, did you have any more questions or comments? Council member, did you have any more questions or comments?

Okay. Council member Cunningham. So, let me start with why these cuts are actually worse than you think they are. And that is that we're already struggling to meet our service delivery. If anything, we need to add at least, in my opinion, I want to be at 23 rescue trucks. I want to be at 23 rescue. I want to be at one per station picking up low volume calls. I think that's absolutely necessary to do that. We probably need to add 22 firefighters. So to me, we're already inadequate in just staying the course. The idea that we're taking fire we're the idea that we have an idea, the idea that we have to propose taking two fire stations offline after we picked up 105,000 calls last year, which was the most ever uh is very unfathomable to me. We're not going to meet our service delivery. Our fire department leads the country in uh of the percentage of people who survive heart attacks. We achieve that for a reason. We achieve that with excellence. We're not going to be go if you're excellent. You don't say, "Okay, now let's be mediocre." So again, we need to take take a look at that. On the police side, we probably need at least 56 more commissioned, if not more, for a city our size. And that's like a minimum. Um, we can't be in a situation where the afternoon shift is signing on with 37 calls holding. We're never going to get caught up. We're like in quicksand over and over. And that's just the public safety part. On the other side, um the number of um issues that we're having at parks with uh leagues, league use, tournament use, conditions of the fields, infrastructure, and capital improvements is ballooned and that's because we've deferred costs in trying to control them

when really what we need is further investment. So for me, yes, we can balance the budget with with a shoestring situation and struggle again next year and we won't have adjusted anything. At the end of the day, we have 51,000 boardings give or take per day uh on our transit system at about 3.5 total birdings per day per p per user. It's 14,000 users. That's out of a million people, that's 1.4% of the population. and we're spending $100 million on that. We've got to figure out how to experience some cost avoidance and some revenue uh some revenue capture and transit. We just do. I don't and I and we I don't think we need to wait. I think we should probably have that discussion as soon as we can. But right now, our service delivery in some of those core departments, the last thing I'll say is that we probably need to bridge some some CIP funding. We have this weird thing where we have the RTA coming in and we're going to re we might re recontin recontinue. We might continue 411 or renew 411 in a few years. But here's a good example. So there's a stretch of road on Camino from Camino Seiko to Hton on Speedway. It's four it's eight it's four lanes wide. If we spend money this year and get a microsurface done, it'll cost us about a half million dollars. If we wait two more seasons, two more to three more years, it becomes a $3.8 million project because we'll have to mill and fill and we can't get away with a microsurface. So, we have this weird thing on our CIP budget and there's not that's a word too example, but I know each one of you has a stretch of road where we can probably save some money if we frontload some of that CIP. And we should each of you should get with DTM find a stretch of of you know uh uh about eight or 10 lane miles and

see what we can do where we can micro scurus in in le of milfill just to do some preventive maintenance and maybe save some cost down the road in two years at least in one time money. So those are some things that I'd suggest we start thinking about right now with what's going on. And we also have a fee discussion in parks which is part of this discussion later. I can't wrap my head around the idea to go to our citizens and say we're going to raise your park fees but we're going to cut the services that they're delivering. So we've got to be really careful when we have these discussions. And I don't it's about it is a statement of priorities. And for me um those are some of the pieces. The last part I'll say is as far as service delivery is that while we have been I think at the forefront in our social service engagement and street outreach engagement and we've done some pretty amazing things, we've got to get to a seven a 7h hour excuse me a 7day 11 hour 7-day a week 11-hour a day um staffing model for the social services. We need to be able to offer detox every day. We need to be able to go to iPad court every day. it to we can we can actualize some savings in jailborn if we do it right. So, I I'm I've brought this to the table multiple times. And again, I think we've got we've got so many people working for us whose heart is in the right place. And we've got everybody sitting out here today who have worked on their their budgets, who've gone to their this their team and said, "These are the cuts we can make, but these are the things we need." And you guys are doing a great job. And it sucks when we're in a recession, and it sucks when we have bud budget cuts. Um, but at the end of the day, the only way we can get through this is if we make some harder decisions. And as far as the transit piece goes, um, I actually think that free transit makes a lot of sense.

If more than 20% of our commuters use the bus or the every day, it would totally make sense. But right now, it's not that many. It's not even 5% or you could argue it's 5%, but it's not 20. So, I think there's some discussion we can have there, but I'd like to see us really talk about the transit fairs in in so far as look, anybody who needs a free pass should be able to get one and they can get one that's not they don't have to renew more than, you know, two or three four months at a time, even 6 months. I'm all about stuff like that. But at the same time, we can't leverage our community partners like the university or Puma Community College into some some revenue sharing options unless we have that fair system in place. We also have an issue right now uh in and around bus stops on heavy bus routes where um we've got some safety issues for our our drivers. And even though they're not technically city employees, I consider them just as much city employees and part of our family as I do our firefighters, our police officers, and our parks workers and our our Tucson water um uh folks are and our our 911 folks. I mean, they're just as much part of our family as everyone else. So, we've got to make sure that their safeties uh uh considered. And and I'll I'll cap it off with this. And when I say um we want to consider what our service delivery and the quality we have, if we can be a city where most of our departments are 7-Eleven, where they're where they're open 11 hours a day, 7 days a week, from the landfill to anything else, then I think our citizens will respond really well because they know that we're all working for a living. We're doing our best. So that's kind of my vision for how this budget shapes and how our service delivery shapes. But um I can tell you that if we don't get really serious about some of these things, not only our already suffering, service delivery is going to take even more of a hit with the cuts.

And so I'm just it's hard to to navigate this, we've done this before, but we've got to be ready. And um you know, that's that that's the bottom line. So that's it. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, mayor. Um, I want to start by recognizing our staff leadership who've done um all the hard work to close gaps and move this budget forward while continuing to invest in in our employees and maintaining strong healthcare benefits and competitive compensation. Um, that work is really important and we see it. So, thank you for um for that. Um, I had a couple of questions and so the the memo shows we've moved from a 28.9 million deficit to a 16.8 8 million. Um, city manager, um, could you walk us through what's already been decided to close that gap and what remains on the table for your recommendations on April 21st?

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Um, one of the biggest moves in the last month or so was that positive news on state shared revenue um that uh ACM Rosenberry talked about earlier. that was an un previous projections on revenues or projections on revenues were based on a lower number for FY27. Uh by no means does this bring us anywhere close to what pre um flat tax levels would have been but it certainly was a higher amount of uh money on revenue. So it it wasn't a magic thing that we did. Um we we it's sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. Uh the other things that have moved the number meaningfully are we've uh been adjusting our um employee compens not not the compensation uh new compensation but the um actual levels of employees projected to be in the next FY27 budget and refining those numbers that's yielded some um savings just by actually updating um those projections uh through on gel's team There is um also what will be uh nothing decided yet, but what would be presented to you is um a uh scrubbing of the um framework dollars that this is the going into the last year of the framework which is born out of ARPA and then became general fund framework dollars that we we took a hard look at what remains in that um bucket of money and what is in compliance with your goals and objectives. of a council and how could we um leverage other revenues to uh supplement that and create some savings in the general fund. So, that'll all be laid laid out in the memo of the 21st. Um but there haven't been any um structural cuts or anything

of that nature that we have not um shared with you or put on the table in front of you. What we what we have done is brought the the the the deficit down to a point where what what what exists in the memo, what exists on that menu of options all still um is applicable, but the the the challenge has has been reduced to the point where we think we can uh work with you all to get to a to a good outcome. I I will ask Anna if there was anything I missed in that. What's moved us from 28.9 down to 16? I I think you got it, Tim. Um my recollection was um a a bit of work with that framework money in particular. We talked about that in the memo regarding Cushing Skate Park um as well as some work that we did to recommend um conservation fund um funding for some infrastructure within parks for a 2-year period. That's um that has positively impacted our projection. Um, and that'll that'll be wrapped up into the recommended budget at this point. And if I if I may, Vice Mayor, I had one additional comment, not yet in the memo, but certainly for you and your colleagues to consider, and I've talked about this in individual briefings, but we haven't put it in the form of a memo yet, is that there are some of the things that are either cliffs that we want to fund moving forward or cuts that we want to avoid that um as we roll from this fiscal year into the next. Traditionally, we've had unused capacity or budget capacity within the wards and the mayor's office be reprogrammed by the wards and the mayor into um paying for certain things in the next fiscal year. My ask would be that we look at thoughtfully at that dollars that could occur from 26 going into 27 from those budgets to um avoid the the the cuts

that we we don't want to have to make. So, that's a a conversation we can have um as the fiscal year starts to wind down, but it's another one-time source of money that can help us uh extend some programs for another year and maybe we get to the point where where they can be sustained in the long term. Thank you, Vice Mayor.

All right. Thank you. Um and then given these decisions uh from the state and the federal government and a reduction of revenues um to our our general fund um and with the uncertainty of costs um continuing to go up um what's our exposure if federal funding conditions worsen further and um how is that being built into our planning?

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Um the there's there's a couple steps to that. One is we we've already adjusted to the reductions in federal grant opportunities that exist to us. Now, we benefited greatly under the Biden administration from a number of grant programs that gave us opportunity to compete for funds. Um, and that came with also a cost at the local level in the form of the local match. However, we always won because if we if we get the grant, we get 75% of it funded by the federal government or whatnot. We've already looked at the fact that those grant opportunities are lesser. Therefore, we don't program spending in those areas because we know the funding is not available to us. that has an impact because it's missed opportunity, but it's not a structural impact because in in almost all cases, we were seeking something for a one-time expenditure. Now, to the case that those onetime expenditures can offset something we were going to fund locally, it was always a win. Uh but we've already sort of made the internal adjustment that we we know that's not as robust an opportunity, but um so we shouldn't be counting on that. What I'll add to that is I think there's a conversation we can have with with some of our local partners including the RTA about we have secured some federal grants and that local match maybe be maybe it can come from a variety of sources beyond just the general fund of the city of Tucson. So that's some potential savings there. Um, we also were very cautious about any of that federal funding being something that we tried very hard not to build programs off us. We off of we tried to really target capital investments so

that we didn't create there are some cliffs out there which we even see some on this list but we tried not to create um structural cliffs that we knew we had to backfill a bunch of revenue with it. Um, so that that that's how we're addressing that that federal risk. Now, there's one layer additional protection that the city has that we have not emphasized at this table, but I know that you and your teams are all aware of it. We we have not yet put on the table taking any type of step of dipping into the the the policy reserve. Last year, we made a uh with in your concert with you, we made a policy change there that allowed us to have that policy reserve stay at a fixed amount for the foreseeable future, which means we have a assured level of protection there. Um, in in a worst case scenario where there's an economic downturn beyond where we're at or there's a fundamental loss of revenue um from some short-term impact, we do have our policy reserve that's there to to help us weather that storm. Um my my other question um city manager is um I know you you gave us a menu of options. Is there a reason why across the board the city wouldn't just do a percentage cut and let each department kind of figure out um how how to adjust their budgets.

Thank you vice mayor. That's a great question and we we allude to that in the form of you know of hire in most of these departments in the general fund. What they have to cut is personnel. There's very it's not zero but there's very little capital investment. There's very um relatively little contracts and and things uh that can be cut without really talking about the vast majority of it being personnel. So it becomes a a a form of vacancy management. Now why we wouldn't just say hey everybody cut 5%. That is something that um would would have impact but we wouldn't be able to quantify or clarify for you what that impact is. So it kind of runs counter to being able to describe to you hey if we do this action here's what residents would see or not see. Having said that, so that's why it doesn't it isn't my first line of let's just do a 5% across the board and we're done. It also doesn't fix anything long-term. It really is a very short term. So those those are the two reasons. But in that discussion with the ELT and labor of last week, I think we could derive some of that. It would be different for each department because they all have different opportunities to generate savings, but we would be able to come up with a savings number that we could budget to, have accountability with the department director on reaching that target, and we'd be able to describe to the mayor and council and the community exactly what the impacts are. So, I think we have a a way to get to what you're asking about. Um but I think it's much more transparent um to be able to be able to describe to you what the target is and what the director is able to achieve.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um for the category two, it shows programs ending due to these funding clips. So we have the housing navigators, the mobile shower, PHA, the heart support, and these are all um services that our residents with the fewest options uh really depend on. So, I just want to make sure that as we're um whatever kind of uh planning we're we're doing that we're um we're thinking about how we backfill this capacity or how we um partner with our our nonprofits like you mentioned um to kind of take on some of that that work. So, I just want to make sure we're being um intentional about that. Um uh similar to what some of my colleagues have said um around parks, I feel like we've invested millions in park renovations through Prop 407 and other sources. and then um wanting to to cut um staff operation, you know, through staff operation um of these investments. I don't think it makes fiscal sense to to build and then cut, you know, the the staffing and and the programming support um that these need to to operate and function. And I just think about what happened during the recession when we shut pools um and cut a lot of staffing in parks. um that really one made our pools not functional. Um that's we had to spend a lot more money to get them operable again. And then um just I I feel like our parks department has never um recovered um since then. And so I just again want to not balance our budget on the backs of our our parks and and recreation. Um and so I you know look forward to continuing that conversation. Um and then um I just wanted to for the record um city manager can you confirm so we've been having these discussions around uh fair revenue for a number of years now and um we were tasked with coming up with the 8.5 million to cover um the portion that we would have

received through fairs and so could you walk us through how we've met that goal and let um the public know that that's what we we're doing and then now trying to backtrack on that.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. So, that is correct. We've had on the table that if we returned to fairs collection, similar to the fair structure that was in place be before the pandemic, including a robust uh fair free low-inccome program, the net uh revenues are in the approximately $8.5 million um range. That's an estimate. Of course, the mayor and council last year embarked on a process of looking at uh this time last year looking at budgets. Uh we had um the challenge of identifying new revenues um to both make the budget work which the budget included a fair free status. So with that target of 8.5 in mind, the things that have occurred over the last year include the following. one, the ongoing relationship with Visit Tucson results in now $2 million a year of those tourism dollars coming back to the city of Tucson with with with the uh dedication to the transit system. Um, specifically the Sunlink car. So there there's $2 million that comes as a revenue to the city or at least a revenue back to the city toward that transit bucket. the um RTA next with its passage not only maintained prior transit funding which would have created a cliff of a different kind. It included a rein a reinstatement of funding toward the Sunlink Street car that was not in the most recent years of RTA Next and that is $2 million a year for the 20-year duration. So there's another $2 million a year of new revenue coming in to fund transit. And then the mayor and council enacted a few changes to revenues, but the most substantial one

was the um change the halfsent change to the public utility tax. And through that half cent change to the public utility tax, an additional approximate $5 million of new revenues to the general fund um toward this transit conversation was enacted by the merit council. So between those three actions, there's $9 million of revenue that um is more than equivalent to the 8.5 of of fairs.

All right. So the fair portion is no longer a burden on the general fund. it whether it's a burden on the general fund is the general fund is still expending money toward uh the toward the operations of transit. Fair collection is still an option that the city of Tucson has to increase revenues. Um but the mayor and council direction at the time was not was to stay fair free and to try to um identify those additional revenues which you've done.

Okay. Thank you. Um I have a couple of questions. um that I know we're going to be getting more into transit um discussion at the next meeting and so I would like for that to um also um include we did a safety plan that was adopted and funded um if staff can um come back with the implementation timeline and the metrics that we're using to track our progress um so that we that stayed in front of mayor and council and then also um we know that our wrership rebounded a lot faster than um many pure cities and if staff can continue to give us a writership numbers um and what that trend tells us about how Tucson residents are using the system. And um finally, I just wanted to speak to something that um council member Cunningham mentioned about the the percentage of the population using public transit that that could that could be that case could be made um with all our public services. Not everybody uses our libraries. Not everybody um uses public safety. Not everybody uses our parks, but we see it as um an important public good that everybody should have access to at any time. Um so that we are um making comparisons that um aren't a a stretch of um what what how they function, you know, in our community. So with that, mayor, those are all my questions for today. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I really appreciate it. Um, I too want to reflect uh the same sentiment that my council colleagues uh have reflected in in appreciation to our team, Mr. uh Tamir and and the entire executive leadership team. Uh when I was first elected as a council member in November of 2007, I walked into a great recession and um you know it was very very difficult. We were seeing 40 $50 million budget deficits yearly at that time in 2008 2009. Um, and many of the decisions that were made at that time, I insisted and other colleagues on the council at that time insisted that we include the community and our labor groups and with the help of our labor groups, we made very painful decisions, but it was something that we all did together. And so I really appreciate um Mr. Tamir and and the executive leadership team, including the voices of labor at the table and um also the the employees, the employees really took a beating, but they were part of that decision. And up until today, we um really struggled to get back on track on pay. When I became mayor in November of 2019, we faced a similar global pandemic that we were panicked about and how it affected our budgets.

It didn't prove to be such a hard hit on our economy. It hit um so many other things, right? But uh we were able to sustain and maintain and move forward with the compensation of um our employees. Now we're in a place where we're competitive. Um and we can offer an incredible benefits package. We can offer and continue investing in our pension systems that many employers do not um offer. And so I don't want to take steps back. So I want to continue seeing labor as part of that conversation as we prepare um this and the following year's budgets. Uh my foundational principles uh and guiding principles as mayor is to uh provide a good quality of life to our residents. And um we've got to in the past years we've had to uh really push hard towards investing in ourselves. And um for me, being able to make investments in our budget, in public safety, especially now that we've pushed um and kicked off our safe city initiative, um you know, provide that safety in public spaces that everyone is entitled to. make sure that we're um investing in our infrastructure and our roads in our parks. All of those provide a good quality of life to our residents. I'm working hard uh to reimagine our

economic development strategies and our workforce development strategies. Um, and that's something that we're working on and I'm really thinking innovatively how we partner with Puma County on both workforce development and economic development that our community wants to see job creation and um a good quality of life. We've been successful since I first got elected. Uh even though we've had to confront so many um incredible uh circumstances, we've been able to bring down poverty levels in the city of Tucson. When I first got elected to the city council back in November of 2007, our poverty level was 24%. One out of every five children or four children were living in poverty. Um, that's a huge piece of the puzzle that we need to continue confronting and the investments that we've been making the past six years in um uh uh the prosperity initiative and trying to create long-term highwage jobs and paying our employees well uh and investing in parks, investing in roads. those those are things that matter. Um so I do not want to see backward momentum. We have taken huge hits by our own state and federal governments. Our state government has been hellbent

on removing investments from cities and towns across Arizona. And I hear you, Councilwoman Lee, that the Doug Ducey flat tax is going to be very hard to change. Uh, but the state legislature continues to attack the possibilities of even cities trying to recover some of that income loss. Right? This year, the state legislature is trying to go around the governor's veto and putting items on the uh November ballot that will continue to hurt us. HCR 2016 is a perfect example. They're trying to put a moratorum on fees and utility taxes and even our own utilities of us being able to go out and saying we're going to recover the cost for our water utilities for 5 years. And we wouldn't be able to charge any new fees or charges unless we take it out to the voters and have a 60% voter approval. that is tying the hands of local governments while at the same time um really putting a lot of pressure all to give millionaires and corporations tax cuts. So the daytoday people here in Tucson, we brought 18%. Poverty levels in Tucson are 18%. We've lowered them because of the services and programs that we have created, but yet we're still

uh struggling to fight our state legislature and now our federal government that continues to cut and put more burden on working families and bluecollar workers like here in Tucson. So, I understand that it will be very hard to go back to what it was because of the Doug Ducy flat tax and because of the actions taken by both Congress and the president and the state government. But it has to be said because these decisions that we are making at the table are a consequence of their lack of investment in our communities of working families like the people in Tucson that are paying their fair share and more than their fair share um and still they can't make it to pay for their children's college education. So look it up, HCR 2016 and and and the consequences that that could be for our local government. Saying that the this group right here are seven with the help of our employees, our labor groups and our executive leadership team. These are the decisions that we have to make. And so tonins need to understand that there's a history to the decisions that we are making. Um I want to ask about fire station 3 and six. Mr. Manager, you say that most of the savings and 3.6 for fire station 3 and $2.5 million in savings. Um it's not the it wouldn't be laying uh firefighters off, but it would be moving

them to nearby stations so that they can cover the the area. Are the state prison system and the University of Arizona um adding any funds or are they contributing financially to the services that the city of Tucson is providing with those stations? Honorable mayor, members of the council, not in any way that's sufficient to cover the costs.

All righty. So, you and I have had a conversation about this. I would like to send uh letters to the state uh prison system andor the governor and President Garamel at the University of Arizona uh to um ask for the University of Arizona and the state prison systems to contributing to contributing contribute to operating those stations. Um, for me on my end, I want to make sure besides the state prison and the University of Arizona, what is the coverage to or how would it affect uh residents in wired five and six for station 3 and wired four and five for station six? what would be the coverage for any residents surrounding that area uh before we make the call um to close any fire stations. And I don't know if you have that information or data right now, but I think that before we make any decisions on that, we need to understand how it would affect the residents in those area. Um, I think that that in terms of TC3, TC3 really was the pilot and the proof of concept for our 311 system. Uh, you have those on both 311 and TC3 on the menu. Uh, in terms of eliminating, I would much rather see instead of elimination, I would much rather see those two programs merge and see if there's any cost savings there uh to make sure that the service that we've

currently provided with the 311 services um is not dismantled. And um you know as we continue the conversations uh for both the community the town halls I appreciate you including the town halls on um onformational. I think it's very important that we include the community and um I also want to make sure that we can continue um investing in the programs that are proving to work right. I know that uh the investments that we're making in housing first and in um our safe city uh deployments in partnership with TPD are important for the community. They're seeing tangible benefits and results. It is no time to go back uh in terms of those services that we're providing the community. Um, I I want to also make sure that we keep the funding for um, Council Member Cunningham said we need 50 more um, commissioned officers. That's our goal. That's something that we applied with a Department of Justice for funding for, but that's one of those programs where we have we the city of Tucson have to provide matching funds. There's no um thought in terms of eliminating those matching funds for 50 new police officers. Is there Mr. Manager?

Honorable mayor, members of the council, that the the matching funds for the additional uh officers is in the the recommended budget as it stands right now.

All righty. Um, can you explain the history of the investments that we've been doing in PSPRS system and why mayor and council made the decision to invest um in making that system solvent over time? I know that we were adding besides our usual yearly investments that we did, we were adding additional funds in that. Can you explain a little bit more on that? Honorable mayor, members of the council, with this last year's budget, the year we the year we're in, we set off on a new um program to fully fund PSPRS with an intention to do an additional amount that we call pay ahead. Um, this was a targeted uh, $15 million of additional funding that we would add every year, at least for the first five years, in order to um, not just get closer to full funding of the program uh, before the regulatory deadline, but also to give us some flexibility there. We were not able to make that first year's payment of 15 million. um in order to make the first the first half of it we pulled from the budget in order to get to a balanced budget and then the second half was part of the FY26 spend plan to try to reduce um uh the spend in the fiscal year in the current FY27 budget. We are also not including the pay ahead amount. And when you next see the 5-year um forecast, we're actually going to be creating a new a new section to that that planning tool which shows the things that we want and should be doing that we're not. Um so we're we're giving you a balanced budget, but it doesn't meet all of our needs. And so that that is one of them. But I do want to emphasize that the appropriate amount and the required

amount of PSPs contribution is in the balance budget. What we are not adding yet is an additional amount above that. That additional amount that we were adding to our yearly payment uh to make sure that we made it much more solvent um for the future of our public safety retirees.

That's correct, mayor. That that would not be included um in this year's budget. But I do want to emphasize it's not a return to the old days where we were shorting the pension. That that that's not on the table. you know, when I uh became a council member, uh we had years uh as a as a council as a mayor and council uh not going out to the voters for bonds or for um uh investments outside of our traditional investments. Uh we started that trend um when I became a council member to try and invest in the resources that we have, right? Both our roads, our park investments, um investments in capital uh for the infrastructure and assets that we had. uh we have to continue to have a forward momentum and have conversations with the community about continuing to invest in ourselves. That's why I really um was happy that Proposition 418 and 419 passed um because we are going to continue seeing infrastructure investment for um not just our streets and roads and road repair, but the $2 million in addition that's coming in to the management and operation of the street car, the $2 million in addition that's coming in for uh transit safety and security, additional funds that are coming into our transit system, our roads, and our

investments. I would say that now more than ever via conversations with our community. And that's why I value the um engagement opportunities that we're giving our community to have a voice about our budget. And how is it that we dream together when we have a hostile state legislature and a hostile federal government uh to continue uh doing the least harm uh to both our residents and our employees that are so important to offer the valuable services that tonins deserve. So we're going to continue having this discussion. I appreciate all the work and help and I'm looking forward to some answers to uh the questions posed here at the table. Um appreciate you all. Thank you so much. Uh Mr. Manager, we do have item three. We took much more time on this item that than we were planning for. We have the compensation plan and then we also have after that executive sessions. Um, I just wanted to ask both the clerk and the city manager if if we should go into the compensation plan and then run into the executive sessions or run into the executive sessions and then finish compensation and the rest of the agenda after that.

Madame Mayor, I think it's probably prudent to go into the executive sessions at this point. Okay. the comp plan. Um, we can we can certainly handle when we come back out and we should be able to be pretty time efficient with that. Okay. Um, Mr. Attorney, if I may, Madame Mayor, we also have a an outside counsel available for the executive session that that has there's time there's some time limits. Okay. Uh, thank you all to the department directors that are here. Thank you so much for your work and thank you for working with us um on the budget. If we'd like to adjurnn into executive session, I'm happy happy to read it into the record. Okay. Yes. Can we go?

Um, yes. Executive session whether to authorize the city attorney to raise City of Tucson claims and ongoing antitrust lawsuits related to fire apparatus pricing and executive session settlement conference in re Valiant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. Securities litigation, United States District Court, District of New Jersey, case number 315, CV07658. We can I have a motion to go into executive session. There's a motion and a second. Um, all those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries. Thank you all so much. Appreciate you.

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study session. I do need a motion to return to study session, please. There's a motion. Second. A motion and a second. All those in favor of returning to. Study session signify by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries. All righty. What is the council's pleasure on item five? Your honor, appropriate miss motion would be to move that the mayor and council authorize and direct the city attorney and the city manager to proceed as discussed in executive session to take any actions necessary or desirable to raise Tucson claims in current antitrust litigation related to fire apparatus and or any such future litig litigation. So moved.

Second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries. What is the council's pleasure on item seven? Your honor, an appropriate motion would be that the mayor and council authorize and direct the city attorney through outside council to proceed as discussed in an exe executive session to settle the remaining claims in the inray valant of international incorporated uh securities litigation case number 315-CV-07653 or 658, excuse me. So moved. There is a motion and a second.

I'm sorry. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries. All righty. So, we go back to item three. Time has been set aside to allow the human resources director to submit the recommended fiscal year 2027 compensation plan as required by city charter and code. Um, Miss uh, Miss Train, would you like to start or Anna, I don't know if you wanted to jump in.

Well, that's where I was trying to look and see the city manager. We usually use a little eye contact here. So, um, we, um, we have a presentation for all of you regarding the compensation plan that we've been working hard to prepare for you, mayor and council, as well as all of the employees uh, that are impacted by the city's compensation schedules. So, um, human resources director Train is here. She will kick off the conversation and I know the city manager will have comments towards the end. Honorable mayor and members of the council, let me open by saying uh we have unlimited gratitude for the involvement of our entire workforce over the last 10 months. And as we go through these few slides this afternoon, this has not been only the human resources department working on collecting information, doing the research, talking with each other, collaborating. This is truly a team effort to be able to come to you today and bring this information. We also thank very much uh city manager's office, our ACMS because the guidance is mandatory and then also our labor unions, labor leaders in conversation on behalf of all our employee groups. So as we look at our first slide today, this is the capturing of the essence of the information. Our second slide will go into a little more detail. We do what's called pay progression. We began that the last year and you'll notice that it is the estimate there is 1.5%. So for our workforce the recommendation is that the cost would be about 5,300,000 to do that and that pay progression will describe how that is applied to the workforce. The other things that we've been

involved in and this is where it truly is a team effort are the market adjustments, pay range placement, etc. We're going to talk a little bit about a 4,900 project that we've been involved in. But anytime you're doing market adjustments, you're gathering loads and loads of research data to see how we compare. And then we are making determinations on changes. Maybe it's titles, classification groups, maybe it's creating promotional pathways within each of our departments or divisions. So again, this takes everyone's considered involvement. We also did have a vendor at one point that was helping us, but we've completed 19 market studies in order to bring the information to you. And then our commission TPD and TFD, I think you'll recall that we're in year two of a three-year opportunity uh to again be competitive in everything that we're doing financially. So the total recommendation for fiscal year 27 does sit at the 18100 18,100,000 in order to go ahead and implement all of these areas. On the second slide we have got for you the breakdown on that. And when you're looking at to the far right side the er just a quick reminder is pension and FICA for non-commissioned and it's Medicare portion of FICA for police and fire and that dates to 1935 to the act uh at the federal level uh that requires employer contributions to social security and Medicare. So that's that analogy or that uh brief term that you see there but that gives you a clearer breakdown I think on that. Now

on our base pay progression what we are doing with this uh and we of course introduced this in fiscal year 26 but for this particular piece uh we are now tying this and you'll see the effective date of June 28. This would be our goal for the 1.5 base pay progression. And for those earning up to 5% over the maximum of their pay range, remember we have many many longerving employees uh in the city. And so for some of them, they are on that far right side of a pay range. This is why the language is situated as you see it up there. uh if there is someone earning more than 5% over that maximum then the base pay progression is that 75%. Again, we've looked at this from every possible direction so that we still have equity and we have things that make sense when employees are looking at where their capacity is. Uh at this point in time, what will happen and we'll go to the next slide quickly on this on market studies. I mentioned the 19 studies that have been completed. We actually have a three-year plan as to exactly how much of that study opportunity we will undertake. If you can imagine and in 19 studies we actually were involved in looking at 266 individual titles. And so again we thank everyone for their energy and time. individual department directors, deputy directors, employee groups were giving feedback and information. They're living uh the lives of those job titles. And so all of that feedback is very very

important uh as we're going forward. Now again, uh the market studies for the three-year plan, we've got year two. We would be taking a look beginning in July, August for that next series for the second year of those particular market studies. I want to talk a little bit about the 4,900 project. We labeled it that because we knew we had roughly 4,900 employees. Uh the count that I've seen as of yesterday was 4,953 employees. So I think the title was probably appropriate and what that has involved as you see it on the slide there. If you can imagine we actually began a year ago this time and we began teaching the tool which is called base pay calculator. That is how we use the information work experience direct and indirect Tucson experience and education college degrees etc. And we take that and that goes into a formula. And in order to do the 4,900 project, first our employees had to commit to going into our workday module and entering all their information. Now, as you can imagine, a module like that isn't familiar to everybody. And so we were teaching the module, teaching the access points for that, teaching base pay calculator and everyone stepped up in a marvelous way and took training sessions. It was really pretty astounding. uh we had a total of 1,537 employees complete the base pay calculator training virtually and we had 4,410

employees registered for the actual again data entry 4900 module. So this was truly a joint effort to allow us to really see where our workforce is in terms of their compensation levels. This I don't know of any other location any other uh jurisdiction in the United States that has ever done this to this extreme. So that's why you see listed here on the slide. Then we had to analyze everything that was entered. That was roughly 27,000 rows of employee data. And so that's what we have now as an authentic database to help us going forward understand what would be equitable payment in the marketplace for the talent and the services that our employees are delivering. we would see where they align in terms of not only job title, the scope of work that they're doing and then what they are bringing to us every day in terms of talent. So again, that's how we end up at range placement for employees and our team in HR. I can't say enough positive about the effort of our entire uh group of 75 people working to do the analysis and go forward on our public safety compensation. Just a reminder here again, we're in year two of the three-year plan for compensation amounts. And again, we have fire non-command. they will receive the compensation adjustments uh according to a plan. We've worked in partnership uh with Tucson Firefighters Association on that. So, we're partnering and then also market adjustment percentages uh adjusting in 2728 to reflect current

market alignment. So this is a huge huge project outcome that we're bringing to you, but it also has set the tone or set the guidelines for everything that we need to have in place going forward. And so again, going back uh on your very first slide that you've got, you know, that gives you the total to implement uh what we are recommending. Now, eligibility requirements. Just a reminder on again base pay calculator etc. We've also introduced a performance evaluation system. It's part of our workday platform and um very integrated and very much a part of ongoing feedback for employees to understand how their performance is not only reviewed but how they can gain with personal career goals and all of that. That's a part of that system. What does have to happen? You have to be meeting expectations or exceeding expectations uh in their performance eval. The eval are underway. They do need to be completed no later than May 29th this year. And then uh again skill-based and some appointed non-perms are not eligible for the inrange placements because we are addressing those compensation items in a different fashion. Now, I've gone through that pretty rapidly for you. Uh, what can I either answer or I will turn it back to our ACM Rosenberry and of course Mr. Tomir as city manager at this point.

Thank Thank you, Terry. What I'll what I'll add at the end is everything that's been presented to you today in the form of the HR man uh director's recommendation. It's what we uh forecast last year for year 2 and then some. So there are um in in in any case where we deviated from what we showed last year to this year, it's been in the employee favor. I'll highlight a few. One is that in r uh the base pay progression we moved the cut off between the full amount and the 50% amount to be 105% of the range as opposed to 100% of the range. That will bring that full 1.5% to more employees than than we would have otherwise. The work we've done with the unions over the past year is to asssure um a few things. One is with TPOA, we're assuring that the community service officers were addressed this year. Um, we're finalizing a plan for the hazardous device technicians. Uh, with TFA, as Director Train mentioned, we've actually updated that pay scale from what we had shown for FY27 uh to be a a bolder uh pay scale for for fire ranks. We've worked with Tucson Police Command and Tucson Fire Command associations to make sure that as we make those uh compensation changes in the uh command in the non-command staff that we're not creating um a disconnect with when uh people look to promote into um the higher ranks in police and fire. worked closely with ASME on the on the trades positions and and there's some significant movement for many uh employees in the trades and with CWA on basically the civilians across the board and some of the more significant movement is in things like our 911 call call takers and things of that nature. So there's a tremendous amount of

employee investment. It um dwarfs what we've done in recent years. It's it's on the scale of if not larger than last year and it really does correct the vast majority of the problems we've had with pay equity, pay placement and trying to get back closer to market. So um we and it is in in full in the um budget recommendation that'll be coming to you on the 21st. With that, we're happy to take any questions or feedback.

Thank you, Mr. Manager. Thank you so much, Miss Dra and Miss Rosenberry. Um, based on the work that we've been doing, I would say the last six years, um, this particular compensation plan represents the next step in one of the largest investments that we've ever done in the employees of the city of Tucson. And um I am deeply committed to continuing the work that we've started to make sure that our employees are uh compensated equitably and I really appreciate all of the amazing work done by our team Mr. Manager Anna uh Miss Train you and your team uh to keep moving forward in this trajectory. So I really appreciate it. It really is for the benefit of um everyone, right? The our employees, but also the community uh because we really do have excellent um public service uh workers in our city. So, uh can you describe to us what it means, how much it cost us this year? also talk about it the previous year because I know that there have been some uh commentary about our concern about having growing our general fund budget too much.

We've contended that that growth is uh directly related to compensation of our city employees. So can you talk about how much it cost us this year, how much how much it cost us last fiscal year? Thank thank you uh mayor and council members. So the the cost of year one of the plan which was last year was a total of $15.2 million um that include compensation for all of these three elements base pay progression and market adjustments and our first round of inrange or equity type placement $15.2 million. Of that 10.7 was in the general fund. Um, again, in this proposal for fiscal 27, it is a total of $18.1 million that we're estimating the cost of this plan, new dollars within the general fund. Um, and of that $18.1, 12.8 million of those new dollars are within the general fund. All righty. Any questions, comments? Councilwoman Lee. Thank you, Mayor. I'm just curious on the performance evaluations piece. May 29th. Where are people at in that process? And um yeah, where are people at in that process?

It does vary by department. And each week at the end of the week now, we are checking in to see how people are doing. But what we've encouraged since we introduced it uh last year is that this is not necessarily once a year. Especially for established employees, they can go in and be entering goals, accomplishments, and then that goes on to their immediate reporting manager or administrator. So, it isn't that everything has to be done right now at the end of the spring. So, we've had many of our departments, they're gradually doing it. They really started February, early March, and then they're doing it in an incremental fashion. So, so far we're getting feedback that it's moving uh rapidly as it should.

Okay. The reason I ask, and I know this might be a separate conversation, but since it came up is most of the places I've worked in the past, they have a cascading goals kind of structure. So, as mayor and council, we would say this is what's important to us this year. And those would cascade down to the departments and to the teams, and it might align with the city managers dashboard so that we're all rowing in the same direction, and we're all mapping our work back to our shared goals that we've established. And I know last year we ramped everything up and we kind of hurried up and got everybody in there for the first time. But I really think that moving forward we need to take a very intentional approach to the goals that we have as at this table and how that trickles down into the individual work that people are doing. Um like for example I know it is going to go through a process of categorizing data and again we're going to need all hands on deck and if we make that someone's goal then they might be more likely to participate and then show that we are rowing in the same direction. So, I just wanted to put that kind of on the table for all of us to think about moving forward.

That's a great point, Vice Mayor.

I just Thank you, Mayor. Um, I just wanted to um Terry, thank you and your team for um for this work. I know that there over the since we've been in office and I know Council Member Lee and I have talked about HR a lot and our frustrations um and it's also like the invisible uh framework that keeps the city, you know, uh moving. Um it's taking care of our our employees, our workers, and we've made um big strides when it comes to not only um compensating them um at market rate, but also increasing our paid parental leave, you know, having more of these structured evaluations um and having a clear compensation system that um uh improves, you know, the day-to-day lives of of our workforce. And so I just want to make sure that um we keep that in front of us and that any opportunity um where we can uh stay up tod date on um how other entities are maintaining and taking care of their workers that I want to continue um to see that. And I'm going to make my pitch again, city manager, that when I started working here, you know, for the city 20 plus years ago, the Y the YMCA was one of our um uh where you can get a reduced membership and it no longer is. Um it is, I think, for TPD, but no other city employees. So, I know that we have um a group of um like fitness places that we get discounts, but I want to make sure that uh our city workers also have access to that downtown.

Thanks, Vice Mayor. What I'll add to that is if you recall last year, we did also add that city employees can get a free membership at the um local rec centers. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Any other questions, comments? Okay. Well, I did want to end the conversation by saying I think what did you call it? Cascading goals is the wonderful way to put it in terms of creating goals that mayor and council believe in and creating those guiding principles. and we really truly are lucky that our city manager and our department directors and executive leadership team um really follow uh the lead of our vision and the goals of the mayor and council. For me, I've been very clear with the city manager and I've always been here, right? um that uh being able to include um our labor unions representing the employees of the city of Tucson is important uh for the work that we're doing when we're putting both the compensation plan together and the budget together. And so, um, I just want to, uh, really congratulate the city manager for helping us disseminate that that goal to, um, our HR director and and the executive leadership team and that that that should be common place, right? that we value our employees and just like we've given them 12 years of parental leave, paid parental leave, that it is a normal thing uh for is it 12 weeks? Did I how much did I Oh gosh, I wish that that would be

that is next, right? 12 weeks. Sorry about that. 12 weeks. I'm thinking about something else. Yeah. Uh but that that uh that working with labor and um appreciating the work that they do to represent our employees is something that we should all believe in. So um I appreciate the work. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Thank you, Miss Train and uh Miss Rosenberry. Uh I saw Council Member Baraka's hand up. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Terry, so much for that presentation. I appreciate the efforts towards making market adjustments and adjustments to compensate employees in different departments with similar roles at the same compensation level. It seems we are moving in a direction that I hope employees will see as fair while also um I also highly encourage our employees to engage in this process. And speaking of that, we just we council member Lee and I saw something that we would like to bring to the attention for the education point value, the high school diploma GED. I we did see it as zero. Um making the recommendation to at least have that as a one point and we're noting that.

Thank you, honorable mayor and council members. That has been a point of our conversation when the BPC was first being designed and it was actually before I arrived in my current role. Some of the early conversations were underway and that has been a point of conversation where we have gone back and forth. We will continue to study that base pay calculator. Uh and that's part of again annually staying up to date with everything that's happening in the market and really understanding impact influence and how that formula uh either does advantage or disadvantage someone. So uh that is on our radar. So yeah, thank you.

Thank you council member Vakas. Any others? All righty. Thank you so much Miss Dra. Really appreciate it. And there is a mayor's um public hearing, right, that we are going to

and honorable mayor and council members, just as a followup, uh the notification to our workforce will go out at the end of today talking about by our code language, the mayor's uh meeting for any kind of conversation, concern, or dispute. uh that's actually scheduled for April 16th and it begins at 4 pm in the chambers and it will run until 5:30 and so those notices will go out and it's we've automated this year so it's an electronic registration so we're hoping that will be easier for everyone and so we are prepared to do that as we need to by code so

thank you so much I appreciate all the work thank you

all righty so we are moving On to the next item, which is item eight. Time has been set aside for mayor and council to discuss proposed service rates and fees for parks and recreation. Miss, Miss Assistant Manager, mayor and council, we have the director of parks and recreation here to discuss this item. Good afternoon, mayor and council. Thank you for taking time to talk about parks and wreck. All right. So, um we did touch base with you in December with our intent to come with some recommendations around fees. And since that time, we have done some adjustments based on uh feedback that we've gotten from our briefings with you. And so, I kind of wanted to level set and say that our goal today is where feasible and practical to improve cost recovery for services provided. But we've looked at and updated what our recommendation would be for a discount program for low-income families in response to the city of Tucson goals for the prosperity initiative. And I'll explain a little bit more about that in a few minutes. Phase in increases that would allow us to increase revenue but not hurt families. And continue to the spirit intent of what we love, which is providing access to resources and activities that our residents enjoy and rely on. in the same vein of being safe, fun, and enriching for our population and also hopefully identifying means to expand opportunities to use our facilities. So, the next couple slides, I know there the text is a little small and I'll talk us through them, but these are the boards that we have prepared for when we go out to the community, provided we successfully go tonight and have our uh notice of intent. Um, Kidco, which is our biggest area of serving the youth,

um, we are going to look at doing a four-year progression. Year one would take families from $50, uh, for summer camp, $50 a week for summer camp, sorry, 31.25 a week for summer camp to $50 per week for summer camp and then progress that over the next three years. And this would be discount fee eligible. And I'll talk through what that looks like on the next slide because the benefits to our low-income families are quite sign significant. We have our inbetweener summer camp which is your 13 14 year olds. We kept that pretty um low. Right now they pay $8 a week. We would recommend that to go to 12275 per week. Our afterchool program we're currently at 19 school locations. families um pay $50 a a week a month but would go to 67.50 per month and then up in um preceding years. And our schools out camp, this is the camp spring break, winter break. What we recognize through the process is we should just marry those week costs to what you pay in the summer. Have some consistency. Um so they would pay $50 a week uh moving forward. So Oh. Oh, this doesn't look like the right one, but it's okay. I can pivot. So, the discount program, uh, right now, um, up to 175% of the federal poverty level, they will get 50% off. So, they're paying $25 when it comes to um, a week of summer camp. where this is going to be helping our families is that with the discount applied um they would pay if they meet um 100% federal poverty levels they would get an 80% discount and now pay $10. Um so for the families that really need that help to bring

their kids into our summer camp program they would have it be a lot more affordable. uh for the afterchool program um it would be 1350 at that 100% federal poverty level um and then escalate up um I know it's a lot of numbers on here but it is a lot of data that we looked at and tried to translate over um I will call out that learn to swim is uh the only aquatic program that we have that is discount fee eligible and that's because it's part of drowning prevention safety measures uh right Now, families are paying $15 uh for eight 30 minute sessions. We're recommending that to go up to 25, but if they are discount um eligible, they could pay instead $5 or 10, 15, or 20. So, just trying to really make sure that we maintain accessibility when it comes to our programs. I'm going to zoom back to where I need to be. Bear with me. Okay, cool. All right. So, our next um category would be in the sports fee realm. Um we've worked and looked at what would a recommendation be for all of our sports youth teams that utilize our fields. Presently, we are recommending that to be $100 per team per season. Um, this we're hoping is going to allow them to be a little more accurate in their reporting to us, but start doing some cost recovery that then we can have conversations about how do we improve the maintenance of our fields. Adult field rentals, we've been using a daytime nighttime charging model doesn't really seem to make sense. We should just have a flat regular field use or game field use. We don't have a lot of game fields, but aligning the use of those fields that get a higher level of maintenance. Tournaments, um, we have

a profit and nonprofit rate. We are looking at adjusting that. So, a profit entity that wants to do a tournament currently pays 155. They would go to 180. And then what we decided to adopt is a 50% discount for any nonprofit. So, whatever the profit entity would pay, a nonprofit would pay 50% of that. Field linings. Um, we do the initial lining at the beginning of the season. Um, but we don't really have a lot of staff capacity to do additional linings. So, the cost that you see here, um, is really reflective of the staff time that it would take for us to reline those fields an additional time. And we'll make sure that we're communicating that that is feasible to request um, and how you request that. Pickle ball courts. Um, over at UD Doll, we have 12 courts there. They're very actively used, which means that longterm we're going to have to do some maintenance there. Our recommendation is as we go to resolicit our current tennis agreement for Ruffkin, Himml, and Fort LOL that we include this location as a way of doing some fee recovery um there. Um that agreement allows us to take some of the revenue and put it into a capital account for then future investment at those facilities. So, it's kind of building towards that anticipated cost. In our aquatics realm, I already mentioned the learn to swim um adjustment. Um we've had some inquiries around doing private learn to swim lessons, but we don't have a fee. So, we want to try it out, see if we actually get folks that want this onetoone um ratio for lessons and see how it works. Um, based on this actual staff time, it would cost us $160 to do those eight 30 minute classes. We currently have aquatic based fitness classes that have never really been adjusted through the years. The demand is there, but the cost

uh for us to provide is something that we want to recover. So, we're recommending that to mimic our leisure classes at 100% cost recovery. Lap swim and therapy pool pass. This is an idea that supports um year- round pool use as well as the therapy pool that um is open six days a week and we get a lot of demand for that. So, we would be looking at um $30 per month or $324 annually. We did get a recommendation to consider um a a sixmonth pass for our visitors to the area. So, we'll definitely explore that exclusive pool use. From time to time, we do get entities that would like to use the pool for whether it's swim team training or deep water training. Puma Swiftwater is one of our uh customers for that. And so the cost for us to provide that exclusive use is about $100 an hour. That's based on staff time. And that's what our recommendation would be. And you'll see in the blue where we recommend um progressing the the fee to charge shared use lap lanes. This is where sometimes we have smaller groups that could use two to three lanes at the same time that the public is lap swimming. So having a fee that pretty much allows them to help split that cost of us providing public access but them also having the benefit of doing a training and swim meets and special event use that has a higher demand on our staff. You're talking about people on the deck and people on the water. So, we want to appropriately increase the cost for that because we would add more staff. So, $150 per hour including into that rental a 30 minute prep and 30 minute breakdown time. And finally, leisure classes. If you've done pottery or movers or shakers or gymnastics class, we know the the community values these, but they come at

a cost. So, we want to make sure that they're self- sustaining. So we would be adjusting the fee to be 100% cost recovery. Our open open studio time that's for your photo lab, your pottery studio or lapardary studio. We would also then appropriately adjust what an hour or a pass to utilize those facilities um would be our holiday arts and crafts fair 40 years um running very popular but we've never really adjusted that uh cost. So, we did check what the markets of all the other fairs and festivals charge, and we're recommending that to go to $150 for the weekend. And then graduating it up because we know our staff time associated with putting on that event will also go up. And then finally, a golf course capital fee. This came to us from the greens committee and their recommendation is a sir charge on top of every round of golf to then be dedicated to a capital fund so that long-term when we have things that are identified that need investment in golf courses they're not coming from the general fund but actually from this capital account. My final point um that I haven't made yet is just that currently in the code we um are able to charge non- city residents 25% more than a resident fee. As part of our recommendation for a new uh fee package would be to come back as well with a code amendment to change that to 50%. Um next steps. So if mayor and council are supportive Oh, thank you Anna. Okay. So, next steps. Um, if you're supportive, then tonight on the regular agenda is the official NOI. Tomorrow morning, then the website will be updated. Press release will go out and then we will join the other departments that are currently involved in fee

meetings. Um, starting on Thursday, we also know that we have a very specific stakeholder group um attached to a lot of these fees. So, we'll be doing various levels of engagement. Um, current and past users who've registered with us through ActiveNet. On April 15th, we plan to have a sports user group and general fee information meeting at Randolph Recreation Center. Um, we have already scheduled summer Kidco engagement meetings to educate uh parents on what to expect this coming summer. We will insert our fee uh proposal into that meeting. And then April 22nd and 23rd, we will do um an in-person aquatic um education meeting at the therapy pool and then a virtual aquatic meeting in the evening time on Thursday the 23rd. We know we have um certain entities out there that we partner with that are going to be impacted. So we'll be doing specific engagement with them from TUSD, Davis, Mothan, Tucson Synchro. Um, and then we'll also be working with the Greens Committee on doing golfer engagement on the proposed fee. Um, so all of that will be ongoing through April and into May. The idea would be to return to you on June 9th for adoption and then the fees go into effect July 1st. Happy to answer your questions.

Thank you, Laura. Any questions, comments? Uh, Council Member Cunningham. So, what's the you what's the participation level right now on the lowinccome program for KidCo? So, right now for uh our three-year trend for summer camp is 13% and our afterchool is 9%. And on the after school at 9%. Go give bring that slide back up. I don't have a copy in front.

Sure, no problem. Um, so we're going to it at 100% all the way up to 200%. So did we consider that under 165% can already receive dees? So we're not a and we're not a dees location. Currently we're at 175% which means anybody under 175% is getting the 50% discount or it's available to them.

Right. And and this is what why I bring this up. So, to get the discount um at 175% uh you save $25 a week. And for some people, the uh going through that process is like, well, it's 25 bucks. And it doesn't seem like a lot, but it it it's more than it seems, but a lot of people don't see it as it seems like a lot. At this point, we're going to have up to, if I'm reading this right, 150%. What would the cost be at 50 at the new price? What would the savings be? We're talking about after school, correct? Yeah.

Okay. So, if you don't if you're not eligible, you'll be paying 67.50 a month. If you're elig if you're eligible at 100%, you're going to get an 80% discount, which is 1350 a month. then 27 then 4050 and then 54. So you you get a $27 discount off of the 67 and you go from paying 50 to 40. And this is where it gets a little interesting. Did anyone check? And we have 19 Kidco sites after school currently. How many are in TOSD? 17 of them.

17. It's almost almost 90%. So this is where we get into the issue. Did anybody check how many students live under 175% with TUSD? I don't have that number today.

80%. It's 77%. So, we're going to have a lot more families take advantage of this program. So, unfortunately, while I allowed the work that went into this, we're actually probably going to lose revenue. And so, I can't I'm not going to vote for this. I can't in good conscience even think about this. So, uh, I think we need to go back to the drawing board for the PE the Kidco piece. All the other stuff seems all right to me. There's some, uh, there's some, uh, some stakeholder meetings with with some of the tournaments that I saw. I think with our tournaments, we need to take a look at our scale. If someone's going to use more than, you know, 30 or 40 50 facilities a weekend, we probably need to have a much wider discussion. I mean, TIG has gone from generating 12,000 room nights per week per per year to 4,000 room nights a year. And that's and and a lot of it they're kind they're kind of pretty frustrated that we had a hand in that. So, we probably got to take a look at kind of all these things holistically. Um, but I do agree. I appreciate you guys going out and and charging by the team. I think there's some good changes here. But on the Kidco stuff, the by having this multi-tiered um program that duplicates uh what dees accomplishes on a lot of levels, I'm really worried this might backfire on us and we'll actually lose revenue in the in the in the sense of gaining revenue. I also really have some questions on how much staff time and resources it's going to take to put all the people through these different questions. Um, I also wanted to talk really quick about the city limits thing. I'm all about the city limits thing. Let are how do we check that? Do we use an electric bill, a water bill? How do we check that?

Mayor, council member Cunningham. So through Activenet, somebody will register and then within 48 hours, we have staff that verify their address, which then confirms if they're in city limits or not. And then when it comes to the discount program, how do they verify that? So they're they're using a mapping system to confirm their address is within city limits or not city limits. So the person just has to can in can enter any address in uh mayor and council council member Cunningham. Um they would be providing us proof of their bill. Uh typically city residents will also we can verify against the water bill as well. Um so we have

we do that or yeah we have staff that are assigned in class registration to do the verification. And does their name have to match the name of the registration when they pres present their water bill? Um, mayor, council member Cunningham, yes, they have to prove residency at that address. So, we have that res residency. Then, how do we right now? How do we do the lowinccome program? Um, mayor, council member Cunningham. So they we mimic um what Tucson Water does in terms of the documentation that can be provided to verify um and there's a list of different things that they can upload. They can choose what they upload but they have to meet that criteria

like they upload their payubs, they upload their tax returns. Is that correct? That type of thing. And they have to get renewed every year.

Yes. So, I I guess part of that for me is is that I'm all about having some low-inccome programs is, you know, my history goes back. It's a core value. What I don't know is I want to be sure that our criteria kind of lines up across department. We don't need a person applying through a low-inccome program through water and then applying through another low-inccome program when they when we used to have low-inccome for bus fairs then applying for another low-inccome program through parks. They can they can apply for all of them or not. So I think that um Miss Hamway wants to respond to that.

Thank you, mayor. Um I did want to point that out because it just popped in my head. I remember Donnie confirming for me in the past if they've already qualified for one of our other programs then they qualify for our program. So if they've gone through the process for Tucson Water Discounts they they qualify. They all they have to do is say I qualify for this or do is there a um verification system that they qualify? Madame Mayor I don't know the specific details but I know that I've been told in the past that we are consistent on that level. I

I I'd like to verify all those processes. I think this is look I it's a good effort and it has a bunch of stuff but I don't think we thought of all the other things. And again when we talked about the colllocating pilot we're kind of leaving state money on the table sometimes when we don't have when you have two options. So I want to be really careful. I think we're going to have a lot more takers on the discount program with this rate. And so all of a sudden our g right now with 9%. Our aggregate is um 90% of the people are paying full price and 9% are paying half. In this new system, what I think is going to happen is we're going to see a shift in that and we'll actually we might not make the same revenue. I don't think I I I don't think it's intended. I think it's really easy to assume that only 9% will take advantage, but maybe the first year we won't see the delta, but wait till we get into year five when we're up to what what's the full Sorry, Meline.

Um, so when we get to 2029, um, regular rate would be 120. Uh, 80% off would be 24, 60% off would be 48, 40% off would be 72, and 20% off would be 96. What's the full price? 120. So, we'll be at 120. And do we know what the going rate on a lensure program is right now? Give or take? It's way more than 120. Um I I don't know.

Generally, after school care and um preschool or or daycare are $1,200 a month. They're they're usually running around um at least $80 to $120 a week. That's how I understand it. And so, but this is a monthly rate. I

I got you. I'm on I'm on board with that. So, I think we're that we're already providing an incredible discount to a comparable service. I know we're a recreational service and whatnot, but we're already we're already giving a 75% discount. And so to have that structure in there, I really want this to be as universal as possible and be the lowest price possible for anyone. Um, and in the sites we're doing, we're already we're already in a we're already going to schools that have 80 and 90% free lunch percentages anyway.

So, I'd rather not I'd rather avoid the rigomearoo and see if we can come up with a lower price universally. So, that's kind of what where my thoughts are. I I appreciate the effort and it's really well intended and a lot of work went into it and I don't want to poop on it but at the same time from the kidco part I just think there's some there's some variables that we haven't

I hear you council member Cunningham but I really we're done with the time allotted to this item and I do want to give my colleagues some time um but I think that this is goes back to the conversation you and I had Laura which is we shouldn't be waiting 5 10 years to evaluate the effectiveness or the cost of our programs.

And so I would I would highly recommend even if we move ahead with your suggestions tonight that we evaluate it, right? Is it true that more people are taking advantage? Are we losing more money, you know, with the new system compared to how we were doing it? Those are the the constant evaluations and the constant um improvements that we have to be doing uh with the programs that we're offering and how much we're recovering from those programs. So, I know that the vice mayor has her hand up and wanted to jump in and then council member Barakas. Okay. I think Council Member Cunningham got me more turned around um as the conversation went on, but I um my my understanding, Laura, is that we're trying to align with how Tucson Water does their discount scale. Is that correct,

Mayor, Vice Mayor? That's correct. Um, we looked at how their low-inccome program is structured and the discounts that they provide and how they align under the federal poverty guidelines and that's exactly what we embraced.

Okay. I think for me that makes that makes sense. I think I hear the um the concerns about losing money, but then that might be something we need to really look at um over over time as we collect more um information about who um is is using um these uh these discounts on our KitKo program. Um, I do appreciate that you came back with something that is spread out or increases over four years so that we have less of a sticker shock in our community by jumping to um just, you know, a a pretty big rate. Um, and I think that just like the mayor said, it's important that we're not like for all of our services that we're not going 101 15 years between rate increases. um that we should be making small adjustments every couple of years so that we don't hit people all at once with um with a big uh rate. So I my my last question is if um we approve the um this at the regular meeting and as you're getting feedback from community, is there still room to make adjustments to the recommendations? Mayor, vice mayor. I'm gonna ask Roy.

Vice Mayor. So, uh the what happens tonight is the notice of intent to raise fees. Um those fees are based on the uh work that's already been done in terms of the um studies and those sorts of things. Um we're required to post that 60 days before we implement a fee. Um if that doesn't change, if that rationale doesn't change, I think we're okay to go forward even with some minor changes. But if that rationale changes, then then we would want to notify the public and give them an opportunity to again, you know, have that 60-day um uh notice period. Okay. All right. Thank you. Sure. Council member Vakas.

Yeah. All these comments also got me thinking and reminiscing on my active net days when I used to work for city of Englewood in 2016. I was part of the training and and um execution of that online portal and it was really difficult for a lot of residents to a to access. So, I I want to share a little bit of um you know, I know the fees listed here sound reasonable and I would like to track usage data as well as resident information and review that information in the first year so we can really understand if there are equity and geographic impacts of these fee increases that aren't being captured by those applying for and qualifying for the discount programs. You know, I understand the need for sustainable funding and maintenance, but it must be balanced with equity and access, especially for our youth, families, and elders. So, I had some follow-up questions while reminiscing um because I know I was the one staff member to sign people in to register in because a lot of the elders didn't have access to computers or were, you know, didn't um speak English or or they just had difficulty. They didn't have emails. you know, it was it was a an eye openening experience for that community. Um, are there opportunities right now for in-person um for for our residents to go and register for active net with our parks and rec staff because I do feel like I could speak for W five. I feel like there's a big gap of our community that isn't aware of all of our programs, all of our after school, our our leisure classes. I mean, as a mom that of two daughters that have, you know, I'm always there trying to get on the on the list for some of these courses like the pottery class and and whatnot. Currently, is there something in place for that for residents to go at our community centers?

So, mayor, commissioner, um, so there's multiple ways you can register. You certainly can go online and register. You can call, uh, we have staff that are dedicated at class registration. Many of them walk um uh residents through reser reserving a romata or signing up for a class or process pro processing refunds. And um currently you can come in person to administration and get that same assistance. Uh we have two front desk ladies that are amazing and will walk people through what they need and class registration as well as open and available. Um, so I hear what you're saying and I definitely think there's ways for us to explore how we can widen that access.

Yeah, I would like to make that recommendation across all the ward offices. And then are there opportunities to increase more additional classes across specifically in W 5?

Sure. Um, mayor uh council member Barahas um we're certainly open to exploring that. I will say the city manager's office has to approve for me to fill an instructor position. But why I like the model of leisure classes is then we can justify that we want to try a program out. We're going to do 100% cost recovery on what that costs. So then that allows us to explore additional locations for those leisure classes. A lot of that syncs up with us finding instructors that um which I think would be great to find folks from the community themselves to then be hired by us and then provide that service and we'd love to do that.

Awesome. Yeah, maybe when we do roll out, you know, seeing how tonight goes, I would like to add that an opportunity for staff to enroll families into the active net. Thank you, Councilwoman Lee. Super quick. I can tell someone spent a lot of time in these slides and they're wonderful. They're not in our materials. They're online. So, if we could get a copy of that, I think that would be awesome because that those are beautiful slides and I wouldn't want that to go to waste. Mayor, Council Member Lee, I definitely we'll do that.

I'm sorry. What happened? the slides are in the materials and they're beautiful slides. So, I just wanted to see really really good and that was going to be my commentary that we I know that you mentioned that you were going to prepare this to be able to share with the public at the time when we go out. I know that the city has been having umformational session for other fees. So, um these are well constructed graphics that we should um be able to share. uh when we even individually, you know, mayor and council offices with the community through our social media um channels and being able to share.

Thank you, honorable mayor. My communications team will love your feedback.

Um but part of the reason why I wanted to show what the community was going to see so that we would have some consistency. Um but we'll be happy to share them out to you all as well. Part of my comments uh was also going to say um you know uh um parks and recreation services are intended to provide a service to the community and um KIDCO is a program that I've been a fan of and a defender of uh since my days as a council member when I first got elected in you know 2007. 7 2008 we protected it from it being completely dismantled back in the recession days which were some of the suggestions right that we just get rid of kiddco kido is a value to our working families in in the city of Tucson and some families that live outside the city of Tucson they just pay more for the service but um it's something that we need to make sure that We continue adjusting and being flexible on if we pass the your suggested changes for all of the fees and services that we provide as a parks and recreation department. Um I think that we have to make sure that we're monitoring the success or lack of the changes that we've done this year. And so I it, you know, it should be flexible in terms of what we charge our community because even though we do want to recuperate the investment that we put into our programs, we also don't want to charge so much that the service is not used. And so it's ultimately about

sustainability of the programs, but also making sure that our parks programs can be easily accessible to our community and are not pricing out people. So, I would say that we need to make sure that we monitor this the these changes as we move forward, whether it's a one-year update or or or two-year update. Also, I noticed that in the previous handouts that you had given us that it says in year 2, three, and four that there's no change.

I don't think we should use that language. I think we should use language of you know um 100% direct cost recovery or another type of language because we don't want to go another four years without evaluating and it might not be no change it might be some change in there so that's what I would recommend that we present to the community uh that those those thoughts that we will be monitoring and making sure that we're not um pricing out people that need these services.

Thank you for the feedback, mayor. Um and I just I want to show that's why on the boards we we removed that language after our the feedback that you gave. Um, and we already are standing up a mechanism for us to be able to track in real time through a dashboard how these programs and our other programs are doing and also starting to learn a lot more about our audiences that we serve so that we could better inform you all. So, thank you for that feedback. Thank you so much. Any other questions, comments? Thank you so much for the presentation. Appreciate your work. And what do you call yourself? The funnest department. The department of fun.

The department of fun. I love it. Um, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. All righty. So, we move on to the next item. Item nine. Time has been set aside for mayor and council to continue the discussion on the energy collaboration and franchise agreements with Tucson Electric Power. Um, there's been a lot of work that we've been doing on this item. Um Roy the city manager Fatima and I were just talking about it's been it hasn't actually been 18 months. It's been more like five years that we've been working on. That's correct. Right. Is that correct?

Yeah. Well, I know I've been working on it for about five years now.

Uh and so uh where we are now is an important place. Um the energy collaboration agreement and the franchise agreement are, you know, mutually exclusive. Uh if one of them um is in effect, the other one um depending on where the voters go, uh could be put in effect. If one is not in effect, then the other doesn't go. And so I just want to give the opportunity for uh the city manager Roy and Fatima Luna to talk about what we have in front of us and then what we're expected to do at the regular meeting. Um Mr. Manager, did you want to kick us off?

Yes. Thank you, Mayor, and thanks, Mayor and Council. Um this is uh a next step along a rather long journey. Uh but it's an important step because we have reached uh a point in a community dialogue where before you this evening are two documents that we'll talk about during today's study session. One is an energy collaboration agreement that's been negotiated with Tucson Electric Power. And I I can't overstate how unique and important such an agreement would be. It would be the first of its kind in Arizona. And it actually takes um revenue from TE shareholders, not rateayers. Takes revenue from shareholders and provides it to the city of Tucson for climate work. It also then enables um the putting before the voters a franchise agreement and the franchise agreement itself which would be needed to be would need to be approved by voters but it extends the relationship between the city and TE in a collaborative manner. It enables the ECA to actually take effect and those dollars to be flowing to the city for investment. So it's it truly is a collaboration. Uh there it's been a long negotiation and ultimately the voters of Tucson get to decide whether or not these the franchise agreement is is enacted and the ECA um goes into full effect um should you tonight um take action to adopt the ECAL on one item and to call the election for November um of 2026 in the in the other item tonight. So without further ado, I would I would invite uh our chief resilience officer, Fata Maluna, to talk about the journey to this point and our um pretty pretty

thorough dialogue with the community.

Thank you, manager, honorable mayor, members of the council. Um, as the manager indicated, this item is a continued discussion on the energy collaboration agreement between the city of Tucson and Tucson Electric Power as well as the franchise agreement and Roy and I will tag team. So, I'll focus on the ECA and he'll discuss the franchise. Um, so over the past year and with your direction, mayor and council, the city has engaged Tucson residents to really co-develop the energy collaboration agreement over um um over uh town halls and community meetings um across many months. And so, um, I just want to say that overall the community has expressed, uh, strong support for the ECA and particularly as the manager indicated, uh, for directing shareholder funds towards climate resilience and affordability efforts in Tucson. And so, it is the first of its kind in Arizona and many residents um, applauded uh, or share appreciation for seeing their input directly reflected in the ECA. So following the most recent round of engagements, uh the city and the mayor uh gathered final feedback uh which included uh three key areas uh f uh funding levels, implementation clarity and city control as well as community oversight. So in response, the mayor and city leadership um work with TP to address these community priorities and I'm very happy to uh share with you all that the funding structure has been improved. So the escalator was adjusted from 2% every other year to uh 2% every year and that in itself increases the total investments from 56 million to about 64 million over the course of the

agreement um the 25 term 25-y year term. Second, uh now the agreement commits the city and the city manager u to develop an implementation strategy uh which um ensures a transpar transparent and accountable approach. Um also allows for flexibility for evolving technologies, funding priorities and community needs. Um and as just as important there's the language that required previously require uh the city in TP to mutually agree on projects uh was eliminated. So now the city has full control over the implementation piece. And third the agreement um formally designates the commission on climate energy and sustainability to be the advisory body to the mayor and council on the implementation of the ECA. uh further straightening that community oversight. So overall, all of these um updates directly respond to the community's final feedback that we received and it strengthens the agreement. Um, and I also want to mention that you all know this, but um, these investments will allow the city to directly invest in communities and people's homes uh, not only through retrofits, weatherization, solar power, um, assistance program. So, it really goes uh, directly into um, our community's needs and priorities. Um, and again, this is a first of its kind in Arizona and mayor and council will have the opportunity to vote on it later on in the regular session. And with that, I'll turn it over to Roy to talk about the franchise.

Uh, thanks, Fatima. Uh, I get the boring part. So, um, I I I will I do want to thank, uh, just out of the gate, the the community and the mayor and council for their leadership on on this this process. Uh, and as I mentioned before, I have been working on it for now 5 years. Um, along with my predecessor and I I I it just occurred to me I I think we need to thank the community for it failing in 23, right? Because we wouldn't be here without without them. um because what happened in 23 is and you know there's any number of reasons why the the proposition 412 uh failed. But uh getting from 23 to here has been a process again with the leadership of the mayor and council uh and with Fatima and our other colleagues um to to really push our our relationship with TE uh beyond what it had formerly been um to allow us to now uh where uh we had a sort of franchise that sort of attempted to do some things related to climate change and and climate action and and those sorts of things in 23. Now we have a fully developed agreement uh which Fatima eloquently um described along with a franchise agreement that is goes handinhand with that that energy collaboration agreement. So uh the main changes uh that I will tell for mayor and council and for the for the public for the franchise agreement is really just that tying of the franchise agreement to the uh energy collaboration agreement. Now as as unique as the energy collaboration agreement is uh it's unique in the state and even unique uh relatively in the state in the nation um I think the flexibility that that the energy collaboration agreement being tied to the franchise agreement allows uh is unique in my experience in working on these agreements. Um it basically what we're uh we're doing is we're saying that these two agreements go hand in hand. If we're not going to be in bo both we're not going to be in either. And that's that's for both

parties to say. So at any point if we believe that the energy climberation agreement or the franchise agreement are not effective for the city and for the residents of Tucson, then those those things can be renegotiated andor terminated. So I I I I would say that that is one of the biggest changes that happened from 23 to to now is that uh we are really looking at an agreement that we control with the energy collaboration agreement and a franchise that is effective and flexible for us uh going forward. Um the other changes are are relatively minor as it relates to the the franchise. um really it just really is a plain sort of vanilla uh other than the section 2A which deals with the energy collaboration agreement. It's really sort of a plain vanilla kind of franchise agreement which deals with what it should which is the how do we relate to the T as a utility working within our rightway. Um the only other issues that that sort of changed were relating to um uh use of um EV charging equipment which we hadn't addressed obviously in the 2001 uh uh uh franchise because it really didn't exist at that point. But also uh we sort of set the level set for that. And then also uh we talk a little bit about what we call ghost poles, which is um trying to make sure that the the beautiful rideway that we have in the city of Tucson is protected so that we can uh remove any poles that don't need to be there and and make it look a little bit better for us. So with that, I'll take any questions.

All righty. Any questions on this item both for the ECA and the franchise agreement that we have in our um questions at all? That's later tonight. All righty. Question. We can do both. Council member, go ahead. Do say what you need to say.

Now I've forgotten what I want to say. No. No. Um, I think we've come so far from where we started so long ago and um, people are emailing that it's all benefits T, not the city of Tucson. I see it benefiting the city of Tucson a lot. However, I recognize TE is the brunt of a lot of people's anger right now. Rising costs everywhere, asking for 14%. So there's a separate matter and we can be friends and work together on solar stuff, things that we agree about and we'll challenge you when you're raising your rates and we'll work together to make sure the most vulnerable and people who can't pay their bills get some help to pay their bills. I do that my office. I know you guys have a program. I know the city has a program. Other people have programs to do that. Um but this is the cat's meow. I I'm I really think this will um propel us into the mix of energy sources that we want to see happening in our community. And I thank TE for being great negotiators, not perfect negotiators. It took us too long, but we got to a place where I'm pretty happy and I thank you for that. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member. Council member Vargas and then Council Member Cunningham. Thank you. I have a quick question. What is the revenue of this that the city of Tucson gets from the current franchise agreement with TP and what is the impact of this revenue? Uh thanks council member Brahas. So the I think the current estimate for the franchise fee which is just the 2.25% that's about $14 million per year and then that's general fund uh eligible along with some direction from the manager and and your the mayor and council as well. Council member Cunningham.

All right. Um I have a few things. Um I'll say that uh from the standpoint that this allows for VPP and allows probably a variation of the trade proposal we're bringing in two weeks that this is the best we're going to do. um this is a pretty unprecedented rake on like an environmental on a sustainability uh number and I think that the other groups are going to be looking at it. So I I I think that's pretty important. Um my thoughts are uh that we need to protect our rateayers above anything and uh that's kind of the idea is having these alternatives. But if we can somehow work through with this through this agreement and in conjunction with a a virtual power plant program that is not necessarily city financed but like city facilitated especially if we're helping with with the loan part in a municipal incentive district or something. I think there's some pretty amazing things we can do. Also, from what I understand, if we do have multiple VPPs in a single neighborhood, it makes it a lot easier for the grid to be managed. And so, I think that that's important. Everyone knows I've been hyper critical of TE. We hosted a town hall today with the attorney general about the rate increase. So, everybody knows I've been hyper critical and very sensitive to what what our community's push back been has been when it comes to Tucson Electric Power,

but in this case, it's good. In this case, the ECA meets our needs for the community. Um, and so for me, I'm going to support uh its implementation uh at this time. Any other comments, Councilman Lee?

I'll just throw a little cherry on top. Um, I just want to acknowledge your work, Mayor, and the whole team, TE team, for for coming up with this agreement and being willing to negotiate up until the last minute. Um, I think it's critical when I was talking about hurdles earlier, thinking about what the city's going to look like 25 years from now and how critical it is that we have a dedicated funding source to keep moving our Tucson Resilient Together plan forward. So, um I I just want to congratulate everybody for a job well done for getting here today. And if the franchise agreement is approved by voters, then this will go into effect and I think a lot of great things can be done with these funds. That's right, Roy.

Madam Mayor, I just wanted to read it in the record. Um there there's a slight typo in the in the memorandum for this session which refers to a franchise fee of 2.6%. That's from the prior iteration. It's it's 2.25%. All righty. Thank you so much. Uh, council member Barakas. So, I did want to just uh emphasize and support the additional role for the city's commission on climate, energy, and sustainability to provide transparency and accountability to the public on use of the ECA funds. I know we shared that earlier, but thank you.

All righty. And I just wanted to um going down memory lane. Uh we started uh well you started negotiating a franchise agreement 5 years ago and um we got involved with um uh in 2023 with the start of a letter of intent that both TP and the city of Tucson signed. And basically the letter of intent um was specifically to agree to work together uh on several related initiatives besides the franchise agreement which would include an energy collaboration agreement aligned with the Tucson Resilient Together goals, a battery energy storage system at Donald Leans recreation center which is moving forward and a green tariff subscription agreement. I mean, I know that tariff is now a dirty word. Uh, but this is basically TP um providing uh green energy to the services uh and the energy use that the city of Tucson uses. Now, all of the work and I have to especially thank Fatima Maluna and um uh Michael Kazaro and Eddie Garcia at my office, my entire team really uh because there were town halls that were put together to listen to the community after uh what was it? Pop proposition 412 did not pass. We committed ourselves to sitting down with the community and saying, "Okay, what is it that we need to do that will have a different

outcome?" And um they're the ones that really suggested, let's do the e ECA uh separate from the franchise agreement. At that time um there were only I think four or five uh energy collaboration agreements around the country. There's still there still are right. It hasn't expanded uh in a big way. And so all of the input uh was um received by um by our team and put into action in the ECA. Uh in terms of investment and what we've heard in the last round of town halls, we have um increased investment as Fatima said from a 2% escalator every other year for it to now occur annually. um adding approximately $8 million uh increasing that investment from $56 million to $64 million. Uh we've added explicit community oversight. Uh the city's commission on climate, energy, and sustainability will play an advisory role to help guide investments and ensure transparency. Uh this is city-led implementation. We cleared up language and made sure that the city will have full authority to design and implement projects based on the priorities of Tucson resilient together. TP provides the funding and the city with input from the uh commission on climate energy and sustainability will help direct the funds use. So $2 million per year to invest directly into our community. These funds will support home energy

upgrades, reduce energy use, lower utility bills, and expand access to clean energy with a focus on those who need it the most. All priorities in Tucson Resilient together, our climate action plan. Um, and we are going to make sure that we put um significant community input in our implementation plan. The core strategy of the ECA funding leverages $64 million to fill the gaps uh utilities are not fully addressing. So one protects people by um providing cooling resilience hubs and backup power. It lower costs by weatherization efficiency and rooftop solar. It reduces emissions with municipal solar plus demand reduction. and it builds capacity with staff plus long-term intim implementation pip pipelines. Um, this is how we maximize impact, right? We prioritize households uh and neighborhoods first, pair capital projects with direct relief, use funds to unlock additional federal and private dollars, and we focus on projects that deliver multiple benefits all at once. This is what success looks like. Uh, thousands of Tucson households will lower bills and be safer homes. Um, it will create a citywide network of cooling and resilience sites, and there's measurable reductions in energy use and emissions, a scalable model for future climate investment. The bottom line is that $64 million doesn't need to solve everything. it needs to solve the

right things. Well, so um I am obviously um um really uh invested in the ECA. It is as I've talked to community, met one-on-one, have made calls one-on-one with people, uh have had uh community and stakeholder meetings. Um, as council member Dah stated, there is a place in real life where we can come to a good agreement through the energy collaboration agreement and still disagree with our partners, right? Um, we disagree with our spouses and our siblings and our co-workers. Um but we also try and work together for the betterment of the community. That's why I see the ECA being and uh we also, you know, fight sometimes. Uh the city of Tucson um uh did add ourselves to uh take a position against the 14% rate increase that T requested. Um, and I know that there are people out there that are living paycheck to paycheck that um, disagree with that request. Um, and we're in the process of going through that. Uh, but this particular agreement should be separated from that fight uh, that we have on our hands. It is a good investment. we can leverage those funds. And I think for me one of the most important pieces of our working with TP to come to this place was that we all

have an opportunity to exit. um if we are not fulfilling uh the needs and every year we have an opportunity to update mayor and council with the uh input of our climate resilience officer um and our commission on climate and energy to be flexible to move around to be able to invest in a quickly changing technology And so, um, I know that we're going to have more discussion at the regular session, but I am in support of this and and I and I see this investment as continuing as an opportunity to continue the work on our um Tucson Resilient Together climate action uh plan, especially right now that we do not see any state investment and any federal investment and the work that I know Tucson residents want to see us do. Uh, council member Barahas and then we go to the next item.

I would just like to add some whipped cream to that cherry that council member Lee said. No, I just want to um make it clear, you know, that this is cityled and the first in the state and I do feel like we have to really um share that across all wards and I'm really excited that the city of Tucson is leading that effort. So, thank you mayor and everyone here at the table. Thank you, Fatima. All righty. Thank you so much. I know that we're going to have this in front of us at regular session. Thank you for the work. Really appreciate you all. Alrighty. So, we move on, I believe, to item 10. Let me move things around here. Item 10. All

righty. I know I'm just moving my stuff. That's okay. All righty. Time has been set aside at my request to provide an update on the Safe City initiative. I know that this is the first time we do an update on the Safe City initiative, which I'm really happy to uh have in front of us. Thank you, Mr. Manager and Assistant City Manager Morales for all of the incredible work that you're all doing. Uh without further delaying us, um I pass it over to you, Miss Morales.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council. I'm happy to be here today to give um a safe city initiative update. As we know, safe city uh is the umbrella of all the efforts that we're doing to really address the challenges we have around um unsheltered, the u the fentinel public health crisis, and um the the violent crimes and things that are happening in our city. We've seen significant progress around this alignment and coordination. Um today we're going to talk about three topics um that are part of our safe city efforts. First we will be hearing um from Chief Monica Pto around our public drug use enforcement and pathways to treatment. Um then we will hear from deputy director Andy Beis on traffic safety and security update. And then we will be ending with director ancheka uh talking about site condition policy uh for the housing and homelessness emergency. So I will hand it off to chief prito.

Good afternoon honorable mayor, members of council. Um I just want to start with with ensuring that that we all know that the county attorney collaboration is essential and key to strengthening our efforts and holding arrestes accountable. Um to that end, we have continued our monthly meetings with their executive leadership team to discuss and identify opportunities for process improvements. Um this has this has included um opportunities on how we could better inform prosecutors when it comes to initial appearance. Um, and under the the guidance from our county attorney in in January, we we did put out some guidance to our folks um for better information for those prosecutors with an emphasis on the on the behavior of the individual and their and their known history. Um, in regards to to repeat offenders, there are some individuals that have been arrested repeatedly for the same type of nuisance and drugrelated offenses over very short periods of time. Um, often they are in the same places as well that they are arrested. Um, I want to give you an example of an adult, 36-year-old adult male who has had 21 misdemeanor arrests within the last 12 months. Um, his last being this this March, March 26th. Um, and they're all quality of life criminal offenses and he is not he is not in custody. Um, why this is important? It's important to identify those top repeat offenders who whose behaviors are not changing. Um, and utilizing focused deterrent strategies to ensure there is accountability. Um, this includes our partnerships with our prosecuting authorities, both the county attorney and city court. Um, also the courts and then our service providers to ensure that that accountability so that we can ensure that they are engaging in in services and treatment. Um, so as mentioned, it's not just about enforcement, it's about deflection, it's about service-based interventions. Um,

but I do want to share some of our arrest numbers. Um, at this point in the year, this first quarter, we have made a total of, let's see here, over 700 arrests. Um, we are we are at with felony and misdemeanor drug drug arrests, and this does not include paraphernalia, we're at 806. Um this time over the last three years, it is an increase of 67% of arrests that we're making. Um but in addition to enforcement, we continue working with other city departments, with our community service providers and county agencies to address the public drug use um through deflection and other service-based interventions like our clear path deployments. We've done three this year, last being uh March, March 25th. Um that was the assistance with our core unit and Justin Hamilton. Um we've made about 149 deflections this year year to date and when 53 safer referrals have been made from our from our core unit. We are working with um community bridges. Community community community bridges is making efforts to improve their data collection um so that we can better track the source of the referral and the outcome of of our of those post intake essentially and that is that in a nutshell. Mayor would you like us to continue the presentations and then questions at the end?

Yes, I think I think so. Okay. So, deputy director.

Okay. Thank you, honorable mayor. Members of council, um I'll be giving an update on the transit safety and security action plan. So since uh approval by this body back in December, um we've prop we've brought together the transit safety and security working group. Um we've been meeting on a bi-weekly basis to um get into the implementation of the recommendations in the plan. As a reminder, that working group includes staff from DTM, um from Tucson Police, from Community Safety, Health and Wellness, um and Suntran. Um, as you'll recall, the plan was grouped into three areas. Uh, immediate actions that didn't take, you know, additional resources, but things we could process improvements we could do now. Um, near-term actions with a one-time ask of $500,000. And then long range, um, actions recommended if additional revenues like RTA Next were to come to fruition. So, I'll briefly talk about each of those areas. There were 31 uh, recommended actions in the immediate um, recommendations. 17 of those are complete. 12 are in progress and two are planned. Some uh of the meaningful examples in completed have been formalizing regular coordination meetings with TPD, Suntran and contracted security to develop shared data reporting standards. So we have a better understanding of what incidents are happening where uh on the system and developing a dashboard to better track and report on that. So um we look forward to sharing that um those dashboards at a future uh meeting. Those are in development. um and conducting a comprehensive operator safety um plan. Um and then promoting and adopting the use of the transit app as a trip planning and writer feedback tool. So those those are all um either complete or in progress. Of the near-term actions, there were two. So of the 350,000 of the $500,000 ask was intended to um for TPD special duty deployments. Those have started on March 9th. So there are two groups of two officers working Monday, Wednesday, Friday from noon to 6 pm on five priority corridors.

Um and with the intention of using those dashboard boards we're setting up to, you know, move or and and tweak those deployments um based on evolving conditions over time. Um so up through March 30th, um there were 228 officer hours deployed um on the special duty assignments, 69 arrests, 139 warnings, and nine referrals for services. Um the other component was $150,000 for environmental improvements at bus stops um to try and discourage some of the problematic behaviors we've been having there. Um eight locations have seen investment so far in terms of adding lighting or landscaping rocks or removing obstructions and we're working through the list of priority stops um right now to continue those those improvements. And then finally um there were eight long r long-term actions recommended in the in the plan. Those included expanding SEARC real-time monitoring capabilities on transit vehicles and at transit centers. Um, continuing the TPD special duty deployments or police presence on the transit system, increasing the quantity of contracted security guards and and roving security guards on the system. Scaling those environmental improvements at bus stops um throughout the system and then implementing recommendations from the operator safety improvement plan. So, as we all know, uh, props 418 and 419 have passed. There is a $51 million over 20 years included in that plan for transit safety and security improvements. So that's about $2.5 million a year. A large sum of which which is expected to come to the city of Tucson for improvements on the Sunran system. And we look forward to working together with you um with the RTA and with our transit um advisory committee to detail, you know, how we might expend those dollars on those items moving forward. That's the end of my comments for now. Thank you.

Thank you. And last uh is an uh de uh sorry, director Anne Chaneka.

Good afternoon, honorable mayor and council. I just realized I am not Brad Lancaster tall. Um as I'm sure you recall a couple months back, mayor and council declared a housing and homelessness emergency. And as part of that, you directed staff to develop a process for planning and development services to issue temporary use permits for safe outdoor or safe parking sites. And so I'm here today to provide an update on that. Housing and Community Development work closely with the city attorney's office, the manager's office, PDSD, and community safety, health and wellness to create a policy document that outlines site guidelines and operating requirements. I sent a draft of that to you all a few weeks back. We've also um sent a draft to nonprofits and presented to the Safe City Task Force. So, the version that is in your materials today is an updated version based on the feedback we've been getting over the past month or so. Based on time, I'm not going to go through all of the the requirements, but did want to point out a few things. The document starts by defining what we mean by a safe outdoor space or a safe parking site. So, for a safe outdoor space, you're all familiar with Star Village. So that is the model for a safe outdoor space where tents or enclosures are used to connect the unhoused to services and provide a level of safety. Safe parking sites are similar. However, they are for unhoused who have vehicles whether that's a car or a small recreational vehicle. And so also connecting them to connecting unhoused families to services. Based on feedback, we provided

some information on allowable locations as well as uh neighborhood notification. And so that is included in the site policy document. In addition, there are 14 sections that lay out some of the other requirements. And so some of that includes site capacity and layout, monitoring and safety, site rules and resident expectations, case management and supportive services, and additional requirements. There is a process to request a waiver. So, for instance, if an a small nonprofit or a faith-based group feels that they can provide a level of safety and security, but they can't meet one of the requirements or some of the requirements, there is a process to request a waiver for those. And so, overall with the site requirements, we're really trying to balance different needs here. We want to ensure the um clients who are unhoused have a level of safety. We want to also make sure that these sites are good neighbors and we also want to try to make it make the u non make it easier for nonprofits and faith-based organizations to create these spaces as well. So really trying to balance those different needs and so um we really feel like this is a solid draft but really open to your feedback and happy to answer questions or hear what you have to say. Mayor, just to close out um the staff report, I just wanted to say one thank you to our safe city task force. All three topics have been vetted and received significant and very good feedback and and questions from our task force. So, I just want to acknowledge and thank them for their work. also um

start as of last night and we have three more community uh outreach meetings around our uh draft action plan. Um our first night brought uh many people giving us great input and and and and we have three more one uh tomorrow evening, Friday morning, and then a virtual option on Monday the 13th. So um that concludes our presentation. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Um um Assistant City Manager Morales, really appreciate all the presentations. Uh first and and foremost, thank you so much for aligning all of this work. Uh Miss Morales, really you, the city manager, have driven our safe city initiative forward and I highly highly appreciate it. just uh since October and the work that we're doing together um I have received from small businesses to neighborhoods to individuals how much they appreciate the tangible differences that they are seeing with the safe city initiative and so I I want to um give uh a lot of appreciation to you but also our chief prito and your team. Amazing work that our core team and um you know all of our officers are doing on the ground and informing neighborhoods uh and working with our housing first navigators, with nonprofit organizations, with our community court, the video alternative to jail is I've seen it all working. I' I've seen the action. Uh, I was lucky enough to be able to um um go to one of the Safe City deployments and see the work firsthand by our police officers. I was lucky enough to um do a ride along with Officer Bonitez. Uh we had incredibly informative discussions in that ride along and the care in which our officers

work with individuals that really are in need. And since the beginning of the safe city initiative, I've been very clear that incarceration is not the goal. that treatment is and connecting people to uh the treatments uh and resources that they need. And that's what I saw firsthand um in um bringing in individuals uh putting them through the video alternative to jail court. Seeing the nonprofit organizations and our care coordinators from uh community safety, health and wellness and our housing first navigators really want to offer those resources. And then of course, right, arresting those that were committing crimes in our community. Um, and I hear also from our officers and our own employees that it seems as though the safe city initiative and the safe city deployments and the creation of the safe city task force and all of the work that we're doing, the pivot that we took, the pivot that we took uh with the safe city initiative have really result giving us tangible results and benefits. Um it felt like we were spinning our wheels uh and and taking some you know different approaches moving from what was not working and into um a new attitude new ideas and new ways of doing things have really um been responsive to the needs of the community. So thank you all for your incredible work in this. Um, I guess for me, I'm really happy that Proposition 418 and 419 passed because of this

additional two almost two and a half million dollars a year to provide safety and security. Mayor and council have given direction in terms of how to use those funds. And at that time, um I was wishing, okay, we need more money uh to make sure that we also add um the uh Santran safety ambassador program. It was a piloted program by Primava. I think that we should pick up that work to make sure that we have our officers there, but also our Santran safety ambassadors in the routes where we're having issues and in the transit centers where we're having issues so that we can, you know, have them at the ready when when we need uh to provide resources uh to community residents. Um, also as we said before, we cannot solve these issues alone. So, I want to make sure that we continue our work with the Puma County Attorney's Office so that we can respond to that. Chief PTO, the uh frequent users of the system that misdemeanors are obviously not helping. Our community court is obviously not helping. So, I just wanted to ask further uh Mr. or less h what is the work um that we're doing with the county attorney's office and what are the incentives uh and the deflection programs that we can use that is that are not working in the city of Tucson with misdemeanors but that need um the county attorney to respond with felonies so that we can uh further incentivize the use of treatment.

Yeah, thanks manager. And I do want to sort of touch on on what Chief Prito brought out about this high utilizers uh idea because I think it's important and I think TPD has been essential in in this this concept of putting the right work in the right hands and uh I think that also involves the Puma County Attorney's Office and we've had good conversations with them about um how we can do better to get more uh folks into places like the Safer Center, get more folks into into things like STEPS uh which are I I think are underutilized because we just can't get enough folks in that direction. And and I think focusing on as TPD is doing a great job of of of really focusing on those those high utilizers. And it's not just and I don't want people to think that what we're talking about is high utilizers of just the criminal justice system because it's it's high utilizers of of of the system as a whole, right? We have a a a very good system here in the city of Tucson uh related to substance use disorder, related to mental health uh uh issues related to criminal justice as well. But all of those sort of interact and I think and our public health system is is good too. So, I think all of those interact and and a lot of the folks that I think Chief Prito is is talking about are are folks that use all of those systems and we're spending a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of effort to to get those folks to make sort of uh some progress in making good decisions and and also helping them to sort of deal with the issues that that they have. Um, and I will just quibble just a tiny bit, mayor, because I think the community court does do a good job with what it has, right? But but the the incentives are different uh at that level than at the felony level. And I think it's it's incumb it's imperative that we work with our county partners as well to ensure that the the incentives for those high utilizers are appropriate. Um so they they can consider getting the help that they need in a different way. Um because obviously if you're facing in a you're in a misdemeanor situation versus a felony

situation, it's a much different calculus for folks and I think they can get a lot more resources at the at the compass court and and uh steps and and the safer center when you're dealing with uh folks at that level and and if we can focus on those and and I think we'll make a huge impact if we can really get those those challenges solved. And compass cords and uh program is a Puma County. justice system program.

The compass court is a is a program we we work with uh the county attorney's office with and then um steps is a felony program. And part of the work that I've been working on with Puma County um and the Pima County Attorney's Office is one of the gaps as described by the Pima County Attorney was that we our officers were not reporting the high utilizers, right? And there's a new way of reporting that. Chief Prito, can you can you give us an update and and and tell us about how our reporting is going and if you have seen any um any differences and the results? Honorable mayor, mayor and council, that's a great question. We haven't changed the way what form we use, but we've we've better um we've we've provided our folks guidance on how to to better inform those attorneys. So, utilizing that same form, we want to make sure we're we're training our folks to to document those behaviors that they and also the arrest history. That way, they're better informed on on moving forward where they, you know, how they need to go through the system. Um, but it's also, for example, on these deployments that we're doing as well, um, we're adding that information on those interim forms to to show with in in engaging with the county attorney, they know that when they see a deployment, um, they are going to, you know, to to follow through the case and issue those charges and and ensure there's that accountabil accountability piece um, to that. And so it's just better better information flow um to to ensure they have all the information they need um on the importance of the of the matter on the arresty.

Did you want to add anything to that, Rick? I'll just add quickly that I I think uh we're we're ready and willing to work with Chief Prito and the county attorney to provide what information we have. Uh obviously a lot of the folks that we see on the misdemeanor level are the same folks that TPD is dealing with, that PCO is dealing with. And so we're always happy to provide that information uh as we need to uh and and help with any process improvements as well.

I think that it's going to be really important that we in one way, shape, or form analyze the data of our officers, adding additional information, which is something that our county attorney requested we do. Um and if it compares to any differences in prosecution especially of the high utilizers again with the uh goal of treatment and taking advantage of the steps program and compass court. Uh so I think that's going to be very important as we continue working with a county attorney in terms of their prosecution and then how we um you know what are the percentages or what are the numbers look like based on the additional information our officers provide because I mean this case that you talked about at the beginning chief um what happens to something like that right our officers are doing their work our community safety, health and wellness, our safe city deployments. We're doing our work. Our community court has incredible um incentives to find treatment for individuals. Um but sometimes that doesn't work. I mean, in our safe city deployment that I attended to, um there's a couple they refused services. They don't want services. And it was an arrest and release. we did not incarcerate. Um but then what happens when 21 additional times that couple is arrested for the same things? Um that's when we need the um support of the county attorney's office and the justice system at Pima County. So uh I appreciate the incredible work that's

being done. I appreciate that our safe city um town halls are happening. I invite my colleagues on the council to add their voices in the safe city action plan. I know, Council Member Barakas that you attended uh the town hall uh last night at El Po Neighborhood Center and um as I see it, the Safe City Action Plan is a living document that we add and subtract to because we're an innovative learning organization. We pivot when we need to. And so I would uh invite my colleagues on the council to add uh to safe city and and you know to attend these town halls. I'm scheduled to attend tomorrow. And um again, I also want to give uh my appreciation to the Safe City Task Force that's made up of incredibly diverse people that have different backgrounds and experiences and they have been absolutely engaged with the Safe City Action Plan with uh the the homeless and housing emergency uh work that they're doing. Um, I have, you know, an individual in my office that, uh, Jackie Ortiz that is going to all of those meetings and we're highly highly engaged. So, uh, appreciate it and looking forward to additional work. I want to make sure that I give you all an opportunity to either ask questions or make your comments. Council member Cunningham and then Vice Mayor Sant. So I I think our biggest challenge right now is that disconnect that we're having on our high users. And as someone who used to work at a school, you'd have

like 10% of the kids responsible for 95% of the referrals. And that that goes true kind of on on what's going on with this population. We're getting into that tipping point. The real question is the tipping point and immediate response after engagement. So we have engagement uh at the at the uh police level or at the social work and police level or at the team level when we do uh a group effort, but it's really do we have it every day and do we have a response after? And that's kind of where I'm I'm into this seven days a week thing. It's because the only seven days a week thing we have right now is jail. And we've kind of gone through our progressions and decided that we don't really have a lot of good outcomes, good or bad. Um they're just blah. It it costs us part of the shift for the officer. It's a tedious process. We've we've improved it a little bit, but still. And then we really get no um closure. The person gets released six to 12 hours later um or picks up a warrant maybe another time, is arrested again, maybe 21 more times in this case. But it's actually pretty common that we're engaging folks with pending warrants, misdemeanor that have multiple multiple multiple arrests over certain amount of times. And we've got to figure out as a group in real time what the tipping point is. And that's where we we want to be. So my my push, and I've said it at this table before, is as we develop our program, one, I really think we should have some type of iPad court, I I know the trips call it iPad court, virtual court, whatever we want to call it, where we transport to an office or to a city facility nearby and we do some

type of hearing or arraignment where they do see a judge. And we can do that 11 hours a day, seven days a week if we coordinate it right. And at the same time, we can have someone who can respond for their belongings. And that's a big piece to it because a lot of a lot of some of the folks that we're engaging have an incredible amount of belongings in a shopping cart that that doesn't belong to them. And we can't really categorize the stuff that they have. Some of the stuff is unsanitary, very dangerous. So, we have that piece. And then our last piece is the decision on what happens to them after they go to their hearing. And they don't have to I don't want to violate anybody. We're not going to force anybody. But once you have to go pick your stuff back up and once you've seen the magistrate and once you've asked that the judge has said, "By the way, after this hearing, please go to transition or please go and see safer or please at least complete an intake." and you do and you don't or you refuse, we can document that and go to the next piece. But we've got to figure out how that tipping point happens, how we do it in real time and how some of the social services I don't think we're going to be able to get all social services available 24/7, but if they're available 7 days a week most of the days, I think we'll be we'll have something unique. We'll have something that other cities haven't done and we'll have something where we've already done the right stuff. We've already said we'll give we'll give detox to anyone who wants it. But for anybody who doesn't want it and they want to just continue their behavior and go on their way, we'll say, "Well, we're going to push back a little bit and say, why don't you try something else, but it's not going to be here." So, that's kind of the the overall strategy I'm looking for. I think all the pieces are in place to do that. I think there are some resources needed on our end to get you where you want to go. And I think again to have real-time response on some of

this, and this is kind of what I've said at the beginning, we've got to we've got to make sure that we have enough patrol, especially during the day, so that we can engage and have discussion and have social uh social workers respond where we have time to do that. It's very hard to ask officers to make these engagements if they've got 20, 30, and 40 calls holding, right? So, we've got to figure out how to give you guys the resources you have so you can make these stops and engagements. And and I I don't mind doing that. Um, but if we get a call about someone panhandling, which is not very high priority arrest, but it happens to be someone that has is already pending three or four matters in court or in city court and has some some criminal activity and we're going to and we engage them, then it becomes a big discussion and and just saying get off the median isn't going to isn't

improving the quality of life for that person nor the quality of life for the people who called the person in nor the it just it isn't we're make we're not moving the needle. And so those are my thoughts. I think everybody has collaborated. We put so many resources into this and the team is there. I mean, I think we're like, as as they say in the NBA, we're one player away. So, let's let's try to get you guys there. And that's but I appreciate all the great work we're doing. Um, and it sounds like with with that's some significant numbers in the rest of the first quarter, Chief. So, uh, hopefully we'll we'll make a dent and see if some of the behaviors that were were obser that that are being observed, especially by people on social media sending them in, have have, uh, we we get to see a noticeable reduction.

Thank you, Council Member, Vice Mayor, and then Councilman Lee.

All right. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Liz, and and team for the presentations. Um I had the opportunity to visit the safer center with uh supervisor Kano a couple weeks ago and as we were there asking um plenty of questions, one of the things that stood out to me was that a number of people that um are taken there for deflection um are confused about what the services are that they're receiving and they think they're getting shelter, not detox. And so then they end up leaving. And so are these deflections um uh like trying to figure out what I'm trying to say. What happens when they change their mind, you know, and refuse treatment? Um is there a followup with them or do they end up, you know, getting um arrested? I guess just can you walk us through that?

Yeah, I I certainly thank you for that question. I certainly think there is a gap when it comes to data and us being provided the data because we aren't informed of when someone leaves. So we can leave them there, but we don't get information as to whether they've remained there for treatment or they walked away. So there are things that we are we are going to be improving on in terms of um as you know it was a CBI center prior to um so they're still doing CBI work, but then addition to the the safer center. So I think a lot of folks that have been to CBI before um they think, well, why are you taking me here? you know, but we're we're we're letting them know that it is in fact the safer center for for the detox and the treatment there. Um, but it it it really is um working with the safer center to ensure that we have that plan. So, we are doing a better job with with collaborating with them um to make sure that there's that piece. I should I should note though that not all deflections go to the safer center. They could go to to CBI as well. So, it just depends on what the person wants and chooses. Okay. And I'm not sure if it's like a HIPPA violation them informing. So I was just curious how we're handling that.

And Mayor and Vice Mayor Santa Cruz, I would just add that one of the things with the Puma County Health Department, they have um list of required outcomes and reporting. One of the things Community Bridges and in a meeting that I was in, they were committed to helping us track people through the system as much as possible. I don't know that we don't have that information today. We're still pretty early in the pilot, but my hope is that we can come back and be able to answer some of those questions about what happens when people leave and what are some of those um results. So, um that is part of the work of this pilot is trying to understand that better.

Okay. Thank you. Um I know that a lot of the concerns we get around transit safety is a lot of, for lack of better word, like loitering at the bus shelters. It's not people necessarily getting on transit, but they're um taking refuge there, sitting, sleeping, um and along with, you know, the their the things that they're carrying. Is there um any possibility, especially during um these next couple of months that we're dealing with extreme heat, to have one of our teams um try to direct folks to one of the cooling centers and just as an opportunity to try to engage with them and connect them to services uh Mayor, Vice Mayor, Santa Cruz, I think that's a great idea. Um as we look at how we connect people to cooling centers, I think is really um not just transit, but overall I I'm hearing that from our mutual aid groups, how are we going to get the message out? And I think our transit system and if we're able to use um ambassadors for that, I think that's a great way. and even our our officers that are interacting with people

and and mayor, now that we have, you know, a dedicated funding source for um for transit around safety. I know you brought up the ambassadors, but I'd be curious if like we could add that to our team, our work. So, that's part of the care coordination. Also, I know that um our our housing team has had really great results because they come from a lived experience and know how to connect and talk to folks. So, I'd be curious about exploring that possibility. Vice Mayor, I I've actually asked the city manager that we the city of Tucson run that uh Sunran safety ambassador program

uh with our team because of the lived experience because they've already se received the training um and that's exactly what we would be able to use the Sunran safety ambassadors for to be able to offer the resources. um at bus stops, at the transit centers, and hopefully with work with Sentran and the operators, they could also do the same thing in the buses, right in the um the transit lines that have the most concerns or complaints.

Yeah, I think it's important that it's folks who can build relationships over time. Um the the final thing um and thank you Ann for your presentation as well um and for getting us to this place. I'm just curious if we're um uh having any conversations with our nonprofits and our faith-based groups um to encourage not only to encourage them to take on some of this work but also what might still be some of the challenges and how we can partner um to uh kind of help us carry this out.

Yeah, thank you vice mayor. So we are having conversations that was part of sharing the draft with them to make sure particularly the ones that have expressed interest in setting these up. And so once we finalize this, my goal is to reach back out to nonprofits. I plan on presenting to Tucson Puma Collaboration to End Homelessness and make sure folks are aware of the new process and really try to figure out what are the restrictions, what is difficult for folks in implementing these.

Council Lee, thank you, mayor. Um, thank you team for the update. um when I brought the pro public drug use ordinance concept to the table in September of last year um and we made a a pivot to try to strengthening the existing tools and put the ordinance on the back burner. Uh there were some folks that were very relieved, but there were equal parts people that were really concerned that we were abandoning the work. So I'm really grateful to hear this update today. And before I get into my comments on that piece, I just wanted to go to the chief real quick. You said there was a 67% increase in drugrelated arrests. Um could you talk a little bit more about that and what that number tells you as chief?

Yes, certainly. So in the and that is the first quarter when you compare it to years 2024 and 2025 67% increase and that does not include paraphernalia arrests. So it's it's drug offenses. Um, it just tells us that, you know, the the opioid crisis is, you know, is continues to to be an issue and we continue to try to to use our data and go out to those areas and make those those contacts and engage with the engage with the the folks that we think are, you know, engaged in in criminal activity um and and making those arrests and getting them into um the court systems. But I think as as we discussed earlier there there are opportunities to identify gaps in the in the data from court data um and also service provider data on on on the the full story right after after the engagement after the arrest. I kind of read it as our our officers are out there doing a lot of work and they've been very responsive to what the community has been concerned about and what we've talked about at the table because that's also what I I saw with that amount of an increase.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And as you see our staffing numbers, it's not like we've, you know, we've increased those. They're actually doing more work with with the same amount of people.

Okay. Thank you for for talking about that a little bit. Uh when we when I made the motion uh the last time we had this specific topic, it included the um request to continue to work with the county attorney and figure out what training our folks needed because that was continuing to be a a point like an open loop that what what training do our folks need and how do we get that training? And so we have the memo from the county attorney from January 13th that basically has four bullet points to our officers um in terms of direction for the interim felony complaint felony interim complaint forms. Anything you know firsthand about this arresty that you think is important you your team's history with this person any aggressive assault or threatening behavior or FT and arrest history. So that's the direction that we've gotten right. include this information in the felony interim form and hopefully that will yield the result of more of our officers work actually moving forward through the system. Um, so we have that. You know, I guess the the thing that's important to me is that if we're going to pivot to something, we have to be able to measure if it's actually moving the needle or not. And I I worked with the chief's team, the data team to kind of try to understand what percentage of cases we're sending over and what percentage of cases are actually moving through the system. And I've worked closely and really grateful for the OD team, Captain Brady and Lieutenant Mesa for helping identify just as a draft maybe some some data points or metrics that we in my opinion need to start tracking so that we can understand if what we're doing and the extra work that we're putting on our team is actually having an impact. Some of the ideas were capturing the date of arrest, the issuing date, is the case accepted or not, the grand jury date, the plea and final disposition so that we can see this go through the system and identify if this is actually making a difference or not and where along that journey are we losing traction so to speak just for

accountability for the community. And in digging a few levels deeper on that, it sounds like we have again some data challenges. We have an initial dump of data. I believe it's into the data lake where we've got TPD data. We've got data from the county attorney and there's automation set up to be able to make a lot of the stuff visible. But from what it sounds like, we only have like eight or ninemonth old data for you guys to even be able to say mayor and council, this is the percentage of our work that's moving forward and this is the percentage of our work that's not. Is that what you're seeing still, Chief?

That is correct. Yes. Okay. So, I'm going to ask Roy because I'm not sure if it needs to be a Roy question or a mayor question, but we we need to be able to get updated data to smash against TPD's numbers and understand what we're doing here and is this work actually making a difference or not. So, I guess my request would be how can we ask the county attorney to make sure that the data is updated. I understand that it should happen automatically every 24 hours, but if their system is not being updated, it's not going to update in the shared system. Do you have any thoughts on that, Roy?

Sure. Thanks, Council Member uh Lee. And again, I want to acknowledge your your leadership in this space around uh the public use ordinance and those sorts of things and and how we've been uh successful in sort of pivoting um as it relates to and and this is I'll defer to my my court colleagues who are in the back of the room, but um This is a challenge not only for our court but for superior court and justice court in the sense that for a couple reasons. Uh one is the reason why it's only eight or nine months old is because the data lake hasn't existed for for a long time. And then also the data has to be has to come from the county. So this isn't our data. The TPD data is is fine and we're and we're good with that. The problem is we have to get the data from the county. So that's a larger conversation that I know that we've been having at the safe city task force as well as as the justice metro group as well. We've set up sort of uh stakeholders related to that data to make sure that we're sort of coalesing and this is a larger conversation not just involving criminal justice data, right? It's also public health data and those sorts of things. But the real the real real challenge is that uh related to uh that last piece that you talked about the disposition data that can be a real challenge for for courts in the sense that dispositions don't always look the same right so it's a maybe a case gets dismissed uh there's a whole bunch of different exit points and we can probably do a better uh job of communicating that to the maring council about there are a whole bunch of different exit points when you have a case right so there's there's the initial appearance right where a case could just sort of just dismissed right there because we don't have that information that maybe the Pum County Attorney wants or or can wants to be able to provide to the court. Um there's also the sort of deflection and and different steps programs and things like that that they're going going down those roads. Um so then that's a different disposition and that disposition could happen months and maybe even a year later, right? So uh and then also there's the the declined felony, right?

If there's an issuing appointment and the and the uh the Pum County Attorney's Office decides we don't think we're going to take that felony, then that gets declined and then it's up to TBD has to do a little bit more work of do do they present it to our office as a as a misdemeanor in the case of like a par paraphernalia or something like that or another misdemeanor charge. Um so there's just all these different exit points. Um, I do think that we could do a better job of having that conversation with the county though about making sure that that disposition data we can get and we can provide it and make those connections because that's really the major piece of what we really want to do, right? Is is getting that disposition piece is the most important thing I think we can do because then we're saying TBD, you've done your work. Pum County, what what happens next, right? And I think that's kind of where you're going, council member. Um, so I I'm definitely willing to have that conversation and to try and work work through those methods with the various groups that we have already working on it like the justice metro group and the safe city task force and I think we can kind of work on that piece.

Okay. Cuz that that's my concern is I brought this forward because what we were doing was not working. We were spinning our wheels and I'm afraid if we don't get our arms around how we're going to track the impact of the changes that we're asking our officers to make, we're going to keep spinning our wheels and the community is going to say you're not doing anything about it. in and we have to know where our baseline is which I think we have. Roy, my understanding is that the data was put in once eight or nine months ago and it has not been updated ever since which is why we don't have any updated numbers. So things may have gotten drastically better but we don't know. So, we have got to get our arms around what data needs to be tracked. And that's I don't have a formal motion, so I'm going to kind of spitball it, but but that's going to have to be part of what we do over the next 60 days to figure out what data points we need to track, how we're going to to understand what data we need to make that metric make sense and and start to track it over time. Um, I do have one kind of random question on the initial appearance pilot expansion. And I don't know if this is a Tim question. Um, but we've talked about that. Council member Cunningham has talked about video court often. And originally we talked about the idea of expanding that out because it's only available for two hours a day, Monday through Friday, and our officers don't often know when it's available. So, is there has there been any progress on expanding those hours?

Mayor, uh, Councilwoman Lee, um, Judge Cloat, um, we can provide that information. There has been some additional times provided. Um, and wondering if you want to respond now or Yes, it's nice to have Judge Clo audience. He's in the room. I want to I want to thank Judge Clothes and Judge Blue that are doing this work. They actually were present at our uh hope festival uh that our housing first um team put together. they they do amazing work and so thank you um judge for for being here and and being such a good partner.

Thank you. Thank you mayor uh members of the council. So um the ATJ pilot program uh is expanding. What I'm trying to do is for now find out u how much we can handle with our current resources. So uh we started with just doing the deployments. Uh, so they're like once a month. I think the mayor was there for for one of those where it's planned and I'm the judge and we see as many people as we can at these looped appointments. And over that time, I've seen a tremendous change in how effective those programs are. TPD is getting better. Uh, the people who are providing the services and the connections on site are getting better. So we started off uh where we we'd cite people uh into into court into community court that same week and the appearance rate was low close to zero. Uh, two months ago we did one where I saw I think we I saw maybe 11 people which was a lot for that time and we had eight people. I think I I didn't prepare. I didn't bring my actual numbers but I think it was like eight people showed up and we were floored because that that's incredible. That's those are higher numbers than we would normally see in in regular court. Uh this last one we did in in March. Uh we saw 20 people. We were we were we were cooking that whole morning. Saw a lot of people and I think somewhere it was either 13 or 15 people showed up in community court uh that next Friday and it was I mean those numbers are off the charts for what you would normally see. So um you're right, we we started with that and then then we wanted to see if we could work this into our normal court sessions without having to add resources. And so that's why we gave TPD

certain two-hour blocks and said you can you let's try this. Let's go ahead and try to use community court, I'm sorry, uh VATJ during the day. Um that didn't work out. Um I think it was too hard for the officers to to find that slot and and and um and hook up with the court. So just started this week on Monday. We changed it now so that um we are now offering Monday through Thursday all morning from 8:30 to 11. Uh so there their standard blocks. TPD told us that the morning activity is really the best time for them to to access this. So we're trying that now. Um, again, using our using our our current resources during court sessions because these these are public hearings. Even though they're they're simple and they're video, uh, they're public hearings. So, we if we do them in court, they are public hearings. People can come in and watch if they wanted to. And that's part of the idea. It's very transparent. So, uh, we are hoping that as TPD gets more officers trained, and that's that's a big component of this because there's a lot a lot more officers than judges. So, the more officers that learn how to use this tool, it's really we have it designed so it's pretty simple uh that we're going to see our numbers increase uh for for video ATJ. So the way we're trying to grow it is is within our our current framework of resources uh during court sessions and uh if we start filling up those sessions and it starts to get to be too much then we have to look at either expanding the times or expanding the resources in terms of uh judge you know court staff etc.

So responsiveness to to that feedback that we heard from the team and opening up those additional hours that's really really awesome. So, thank you, judge. I guess mayor, I have a not super formal motion, but just after talking, um, I'll go ahead and put one on the floor. May I be excused or you want me to say I'm sorry. Do I get to excuse the judge? Thank you. I'm so sorry. I'm used to that. No, you are dismissed, judge. I can excuse myself. Thank you. I'm not a court.

Oh my goodness. That's never happened before. Um, so I just want to ask uh by way of a motion that the team and I'm not sure who from the team needs to do this, but over the next 60 days define the metrics and key data points that we need to track and identify any barriers that are preventing us from tracking that information. Guess that's the motion. There's a motion. I'm going second it.

There's a motion and a second. I don't think we need a motion to give direction to be honest with you. Uh, but it's okay. I mean, I don't mind you doing a motion. I think that this is something that we've been um working on and uh we've been very clear that we want to see this data. But if you want to keep the motion, that's fine. I'm fine with whatever. I can withdraw it. That's fine. I just want to make sure that in Can you read the direction? Because I think that's more important than the motion. the direction that we want uh just so that we get the appropriate information is most important because I I think I'm uh completely aligned with what you're requesting. Are you going to make me repeat that? Mayor, I don't remember. Yes, ma'am.

Did you just say it off the off the top of my head? If I could try. Please, Roy. Council member Lee, I I think I think what you're really looking for is for us to to work with the P County Attorney and Puma County in in as well as Puma County courts uh to get better disposition data on the uh various deployments that we're doing to ensure that we're we're focusing on getting the result that we're we're working towards if that makes sense. Whatever steps along the way, because my understanding is, as you pointed out, there are several different offramps. Mhm. So at what point are we dropping off and how do we not drop off I guess is the question.

Yeah. However we can map that out and then again understand who has the data and what's preventing us from accessing it so that we can understand where we're at. Absolutely. I think we can focus on getting that data. All righty. So what do you have Marisa? So we have a motion that's officially withdrawn and is the second to concur with the withdraw? Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you. All righty. So, but we know what the direction that we want. Yeah. Council member Barakas and then we're going to have to move okay from this item. All

right. Thank you, mayor. So, we all know, you know, safety is a concern for our community and we witnessed that importance uh the importance of the discussion firsthand last night at the Al PBLO center with the Safe City Connect meeting. There was a room full of community members. I kept watching the staff had to get more and more chairs because the room kept just filling up with some of our W five neighborhood leaders, business owners, nonprofit partners, youth, families, elders, and some who are critical of our services um engaged together. So, I want to thank uh the mayor's office, city manager's office, as well as city staff that presented last night because I do feel like that was a really insightful um round table amongst everyone. And I too had a community roundt a couple weeks ago with seniors at Sunnyside High School and it was really insightful to have a long conversation with them around the community. Um I asked them what concerns do they have and their top concerns was around gun violence and feeling safe in our public spaces like our parks and our bus shelters and our buses, public transit and just any public spaces going home. So, last night I was really pleased to see our freshman uh class president of Desert View High School, Alejandro, alongside his mom and his younger brother attend the meeting and give input. So, I would like to give the direction of um adding a youth representative to the safe city task force. Uh if that's something that we can um include because as we're seeing right now, our violence is getting younger and younger and that is something that is really concerning um specifically for you know our young men in the community. And lastly, I encourage folks to get engaged and weigh in on this work. It reflects the concerns we have been hearing from

across the community. So, thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that that um adding a youth component to the safe city action plan as well is something that you've been talking about and I absolutely agree. We have to I've been very concerned and I had this conversation with Chief Prito about the young men especially that are uh getting involved in crime and the easy access to guns and them committing uh violent crime with guns. And so I think that we absolutely should include a piece in of that in it and maybe a couple of um youth um safe city task force members so that that we can count their right their their voice in in that discussion.

Mayor and Council Member Bahas, I think that's a great suggestion and happy to move that along. Thank you. All righty. Any others? Thank you so much. I I I really want to make sure that we also give direction on um moving forward with a Suntran uh safety ambassadors program and now that we will have access to additional funds. I know that we had a huge plan for um for that $2 million right from the RTA. Can we make sure that we revisit the conversations with Sunran, with TPD, and um with the rest of the um safe city task force so that we can start moving in the direction that um is most appropriate there. All righty. Thank you all so much. Really appreciate it. I um we have about 2 and a half hours worth of conversations and it's already 3:30 40

350. So, uh, just want to make all of us aware and we knew from the very beginning that this meeting was going to be a bear, but I think that we just have to move quickly um, if we want to be able to have the time to get all of the updates that we still have in front of us that I think are very important updates. So, thank you chief, thank you Mr. Beimis. Uh thank you Aneneeka for all of the incredible work and thank you Liz Morales uh to uh for the incredible work that you're doing. So item 11 uh time has been set aside to provide mayor and council with an update on the 29th Street Thrive Zones. Um Miss Morales.

Thank you mayor. I'm happy to have director Ancheka come give us uh a brief update on the great work that's happening on the 29th Street Thrive Zone and more importantly um to get your uh action and direction on the call for projects that was recently done um for some exciting projects. So I will turn it over to Director Chaneka.

Thank you Liz. And hello again honorable mayor and council. I'm excited about this agenda item. I know you have a really long meeting, but I think this agenda item will bring some positivity. So, we're here to provide an update on the 29th Street Thrive Zone. I'm going to kick off the item providing just a little bit of background. I know we want to get through this quickly. And then I'm going to turn it over to Ben Olsen. Ben is our planning administrator at housing and community development, which means one of the areas he oversees is our Thrive Zone effort. Before I kick it off, I do also want to point out Laura McAnnanders Lopez is here from housing and community development. Laura has been boots on the ground for the past several years engaging the 29th Street residents, um, businesses, stakeholders, and so she's been working tirelessly in the 29th Street Thrive Zone. We also have Denise Ortega Lurena who is also doing work in our Thrive Zones, and so super grateful for the HCD staff. So, just a smidgen of background. In 2021, when city of Tucson was allocated the American Rescue Plan monies and mayor and council created a framework for spending, you allocated funding building off of the successes of the Thrive and the '05 to expand our Thrive Zone efforts. And so HCD did some data analysis looking at crime data, looking at poverty rates and also really importantly looking at community assets and building blocks in terms of a reinvestment area. So with that all eventually mayor and council selected the 29th Street Thrive Zone and so this map shows what the boundaries are. It is Alveron to the west, craycraftoft to the

east, 22nd Street to the north, and Golf Links to the south. And you can see by this map, there are several parks, there's a recreation center, there's a library, there's several schools. It's really a lot of great community amenities in this area. And so I talk a lot about thrive zones and I do sometimes get asked what do you mean when you say thrive zone? And so at HC we really look at six elements of a thrive zone. One and very important extensive community visioning and engagement. We really are looking at building trust in these communities and making sure the residents who are the expert of their neighborhoods are included throughout the whole process. Similarly, we look at a joint leadership model to guide the process. For example, we have paid ambassadors or promises who do engagement with their neighbors. They are residents of the Thrive Zone and they get paid to do this work and help guide the effort. Also important is a comprehensive focus on neighborhood. We're not just looking at housing or just looking at transportation or just looking at workforce development. It's all the different pieces put together which requires cross cross sector collaborations. So we know there's incredible groups in this community, nonprofits, government agencies, businesses doing work. And so we never want to duplicate their efforts. We really want to harness their efforts. And then really important when we're talking about today's activity in which we will be asking for action as we're trying to move forward with some of our action activities, a key component of our Thrive Zones is having funding for communitydriven action activities. So,

um, as we are doing long range planning, we know residents can get burnt out. And so, for us, it was really important to include funding to have projects and show progress along the way. And so, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ben to talk about what we've been up to, what we're asking for today, and where we're going.

All right. Thank you, Mayor, and honorable members of the council. Um so we initially started with um variety of community touch points led by HCD staff and this was uh engaging residents sorry engaging residents uh in everything from uh social events, movie nights and then more and more asking questions really engaging them in understanding what do they really care about in their community? What are they most invested in and what would they like to see changed? what type of investments um would they like to see over time both in the short term through action activities and in the long term through large-scale neighborhood investments. Um so you can see some of the the community touch points up here. U these events really engaged community members from across uh really across the neighborhood as well as a variety of community organizations. Um as we moved forward we engaged more and more community leaders through Promator as well as um other community organizations in leading many of these events. Um so Ann covered a bit of this history as already with the uh selection of the Thrive Zone uh in 2022 and uh bringing on a Thrive coordinator. Um we also went for a choice uh neighborhoods planning grant u modeled off our original approach in Thrive in '05. Uh this is a HUD funding stream I'll touch on in a second to help us really with a long range planning. Um, and then we also did a lot of um, investment in local leaders um, and kind of helping engage the community in shaping what they wanted to see. Um, as we're moving forward, kind of looking towards phase two of this, we're both moving towards implementing more action activities, which that's what we're kind of looking for approval here today. Uh, as well as, um, kind of sharing some next steps around drafting the transformation plan and then securing funding for those longerterm investments. Uh this is yeah an overview of the choice neighborhoods grant. This was awarded in 2023. Um half a million dollars um that really again helps us engage around um planning around

housing. Uh so really looking at u affordable housing in the neighborhood um and the kind of the state of housing generally doing a whole series of housing assessments. Um looking at neighborhood planning. too. Um, this has gotten input into, uh, investments where where does the community want to see investments in roads, in parks. Um, we've, I would say, engaged heavily at Freedom Park Center and Freedom Park, really um, turning that into kind of a space of connectivity. Um, and then the people side of the plan, really engaging with residents around what what services do they want to see and what type of uh, civic engagement opportunities do they want to see in their neighborhood. Um, in terms of the scope of this resident engagement, um, we've had, uh, over 76, um, community events, again, some led by HCD, many led by community partner organizations, and more and more now being led by local leaders in the community. And I think that's really the idea is how do we really get the ball rolling, build the connections and kind of civic engagement and social capital that really leads to residents um, leading their own events. And um this both helps promote health, promote connectedness, education outcomes um as well as improving public safety long term. Um so lots of engagement. We also engaged residents um and community organizations in working groups uh helping um originally with a selection of action activities that we'll touch on today. Uh and now we're doing extensive engagement working groups around a people plan, a housing plan, a neighborhood plan, as well as um not required by choice neighborhoods, but um a health plan that's really aligned with the prosperity initiative. Um so these were the original uh action activities uh selected uh for funding by residents um by initial working groups. Um they went through an extensive kind of engagement, ideation, and voting process to get to these. Um some of these are already being implemented. We had the the ground making groundbreaking event for the community garden at Freedom Park um just a few weeks ago. Um

and then um a number of like the resource fairs. We just ran a a job fair. We've done housing fairs. Um so a lot of this is ongoing with the V selected action activities. Uh three of these action activities we've actually done a um a call for projects uh to community organizations uh to really get um further engagement for large scale um action activities. And uh these ones that were identified um legal assistance for tenants, uh localized refugee services and uh garden education kits. We did receive um a number of applications for these from diverse organizations and had kind of a panel review process um to help select these finalists uh that we're recommending for you today. Um for the legal aid project, uh we've selected um the law office of Paul Gaton and the Tucson Tenants Union. uh they've put forward a proposal uh to provide one-on-one legal services to represent tenants in court in limited cases uh to do education workshops and to pilot an um AI based kind of tenants rights tool uh to provide services for folks who might not otherwise have um representation and their their goal is to serve uh 2500 households uh through this project and to be implemented over two years. Uh the second of these localized refugee services um we're recommending um international rescue committee which they've been a close partner throughout this project. Um they're going to be providing or proposing to provide tutoring and English lang language learning workshops uh education and case management around housing. Um as well as information sessions on federal immigration policies which we know is really critical for the refugee community right now. Um and then they're also doing uh food distribution with the community food bank. Um and that's um generally most of those are being uh provided through uh Freedom Park Center. And then um the last the garden in a box uh community gardens of Tucson was selected for this. Um they would like to offer uh gardening workshops uh for desert climates, raised beds and container and small space gardens. Uh they would also provide

language support and interpretation recognizing we have um a wide variety of languages spoken in this in the zone. And then um they're hoping to provide between 200 and 300 garden a box garden in a box kits um to help people start um start gardens there. And in terms of what's coming next uh so I think implementation of these action activities is uh like I said already underway and for those that aren't started again seeking approval and um if this is approved we would then move forward with establishing with the organizations um to get again deploy these services. Uh we are already moving forward with developing the community transformation plan and again this is stemming from the choice neighborhoods planning grant around housing, neighborhood and people plan and then um we are working on the Rosemont Avenue beautifification and greening. Uh this is kind of roadway improvement, walkability as well as road safety and um this is partially funded by the choice neighborhoods grant and is kind of the grant funded action activity but also does have some framework funds committed to it. Um that's match funding for the grant. And then uh lastly um we are hoping to pursue a choice neighborhoods implementation grant. There is a lot of open questions around federal funding as everyone knows. Um so um we're also exploring other funding sources to help with support investments uh in the 29th Street Thrive Zone. And I believe that is uh the end of the presentation.

Thank you. Really appreciate the presentation. I remember um back in 2021 sitting I think it was a virtual meeting that we were having Liz and myself and talking about the expansion of the Thrive Zones. Um and we didn't know what we were going to call it, right? Um we just came up with Thrive Zones, right? a replica of the Thrive in D05 and being able to advocate to mayor and council to create another one and uh and then looking at the data of many different areas in the city and then finally mayor and council selected 29th uh 29th Street. So I'm glad that we've come to this place. I'm happy to be here and we do need a motion to accept the recommendations as provided.

I'll move that forward. Mayor, there is a motion and a second. Any further discussion on this direction? Counciloman, just super quick. Just want to thank the team for all of your work that you do. There's something going on all the time and these investments are incredibly meaningful to move uh to move the work forward. So, great job. Any others? Council member Schubert.

I'll be super quick. I'm just excited because this is shared between ws four and six. Um and I went to the groundbreaking for the garden at um Freedom Park. And so I'm just wanting to express my um deep appreciation for all the work of the 29th Street Thrive Zone and um the visionary, you know, uh work of the Marin Council and uplifting this kind of approach. Um it's really powerful. Um just a few words. um the legal assistance. So excited about that and partnering with um with Tucson Tenants Union um and Sky Island AI hugely important as affordable housing and predatory landlords remain an issue here in Tucson um especially lower income and English as a second language communities. Um noticeably participants seeking support, this is the part that I really love about this is that there's no technology barriers and so um participants don't need to download an app or have a smartphone or register. they can simply text or call in order to receive the support that they need. Um so I think that's wonderful. And then um just about the refugee community support. Um extremely important given the current environment of federal funding and the actions of federal law enforcement like ICE on the physical and mental well-being of refugee and immigration immigrant communities. Um, for those who may not be aware, the one big beautiful bill now prevents refugees, asileles, and other humanitarian migrants from obtaining SNAP benefits, otherwise known as food stamps. Um, additionally, due to language barriers or difficulty in providing work or education history, it's also now more difficult for refugees to find sustainable employment. Um, we learned a lot when we met with IRC a few months ago. Um, so there's a lot of fear right now and providing support for this beloved community through programs like the 29th Street Thrive Zone. um shows the city of Tucson's uh values in action. So, thank you so much. Enthusiastic support for this endeavor.

Any other comments or questions on this? So, um I too want to thank um an your team uh Thrive Supervisor Laura Lopez. I know that she's here. Thank you so much all of the people uh organizations, neighbors that work in this. Um it's clear that the community is helping shape what's actually getting funded here. So appreciate all of the work and you know um one of the things that I have worked on for decades is neighborhood reinvestment. I started my professional career in Pima County uh working with uh Pima County neighborhood reinvestment and transforming communities who have faced historic decades of historic disinvestment is something that is near and dear to my heart and the work that you're all doing um with these communities is pretty amazing. So, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to continued work with the organizations that were selected for this by the community. So, um really absolutely needed work that we are funding. And you know, I made a face uh when you talked about choice neighborhood grant funding. I don't know if that exists anymore under the Trump administration, but I think we should look as, you know, as much as we possibly can to continue that investment. That's the work that we did with the Thrive in the05. We received the choice neighborhood grant. Only eight cities across the country received it and Tucson was the only one um west of the Mississippi. So, we did incredible work and now we're seeing firsthand uh what the choice neighborhood grant is

doing in the Thrive in the '05 and adding um what 1,200 uh h affordable housing units in our city. So, good work. Let's continue this this uh work together and uh especially with the community that is most impacted on this. With that, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying I.

I. Any against? Motion carries. Thank you all so much. We are going to, let's see, move on to I I was thinking because of the lack of time, if it's okay with the team of continuing the prosperity initiative update. I know that our team has been preparing for this for some time. Um, but I think that uh just because of the lack of time. If that's okay, then I need a motion to continue item 12. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor of continuing item 12, please signify by saying I.

I. Any against? Motion carries. All righty. So, our next item is item 13. Time has been set aside to provide mayor and council with an update to a proposed amendment to the unified development code regarding largecale data centers. Uh, Miss Morales. Thank you, Mayor. And we have director Korin Manning who will be providing uh a a brief presentation.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council. I want to give an update on the process um that's underway to establish regulations for large scale data centers in Tucson. So I'll briefly touch on the public engagement process so far um through the technical advisory committee and the public outreach that we've recently done um and really want to share with mayor and council the feedback that we've heard from the community um along with the code proposal as it stands today and some options for moving forward based on the public feedback that we received. Um so just a quick overview of the process so far. Mayor and council gave direction to planning and development services in August 2025 to establish standards for large scale data centers which we currently don't have in our code. Um, a key point I want to mention, sorry not on this uh timeline here, but in September of last year, our zoning administrator issued a determination that data centers are not established in our code and therefore are not permitted as a right in any zones in the city and could only be developed through a planned area development or planned community development. Um, so that gave us some time to develop the appropriate regulations for data centers in Tucson. Uh last year we convened a technical advisory committee to provide input on appropriate regulations for large scale data centers um and worked with that technical advisory committee over several months to get input and uh discussion. We held a series of community meetings in February and March of this year um to share the proposed regulations and get feedback and I'll get more into the feedback that we heard. So today we really want to report back on that community feedback and get direction from mayor and council before we proceed with the next steps which would be planning commission review and then back to mayor and council for formal consideration of a proposed um ordinance and set of regulations. So I just want to compare sort of how data centers are currently regulated the current

standards um with what we are proposing. So currently large scale data centers are not defined in the unified development code as a use carry.

They may be requested per the zoning administrator determination. They may be requested through a pad or PCD as a utility generation use. That's the use that we determined was the closest to a data center in terms of the impact. However, there's again there's no definition of the use and so there's also no clear development standards in our code for this type of land use. So what we're proposing is to establish a clear definition for a large scale data center and establish where and how they would be allowed. So where they would be allowed um and what the standards are that would apply. So the current proposal that we shared with the community was that a data center could be established through a planned area development or planned community development or requested as a mayor and council special exception in the I2 heavy industrial zone. Um, so in either case, this would only be allowed through mayor and council approval. Uh we also proposed a set of development standards including demonstrating access to energy um disclosing the proposed energy use and energy mix demonstrating access to adequate water supply prohibiting the use of portable water for cooling if the use is not subject to the large water user ordinance requiring setbacks uh from residential and other non-industrial uses. um requiring an independent noise study and establishing noise limitations, requiring sound walls or screening, requiring high efficiency generators and battery backup, prohibiting running generators um instead of connecting to the grid and requiring enhanced landscaping and rightsiz parking. So that is the proposal that was presented to the community. That proposal comes from robust discussion with a technical advisory committee um that included 13 members representing a wide variety of perspectives from environmental and water advocates to folks with experience

in data center development and um operators of data centers. They recommend they discussed a number of topics and recommended the standards that I just discussed. Um and they have held um four meetings to date. Again, as I mentioned before, we held a series of public meetings to share this proposal with the community and get feedback. We held two virtual meetings and two in-person meetings in February and March with over 200 members of the community attending. The key themes that we heard in that outreach were a lot of what I think mayor and council has heard throughout the past few months. The I would say kind of the hot topic and major topic that we heard as the most frequently raised concern is water use. um and concern about whether Tucson has adequate water to support large scale data centers. Also concerns about energy and the impact on our overall grid um as more data centers are developed. Um just some oppos definitely opposition to the use itself um and how data centers are being used um and just the growth in this um this type of land use that we're seeing. And then um definitely a desire to see data centers really set back from residential areas. That was one of the main concerns is how is this going to impact neighborhoods? Um so a desire for greater setbacks to really um space these this land use away from residential areas. Some of the other feedback was around the definition and size thresholds. So what was proposed is that large scale data centers um be defined as a center of 50,000 square feet or more. Um and there was um many comments about changing that threshold, perhaps increasing that or lowering that threshold. Um and including other factors such as energy consumption in the definition of large scale data center. Um also concerned about noise

and generator use um interest in a more robust public review process um than a typical resoning when data centers are involved. So a larger public notification process or public notification area, concerns about enforcement of the proposed regulations and then just overall questions about the climate and environmental compatibility with data centers. So after these public meetings, we took this public feedback back to the technical advisory committee for additional discussion. um they reconvened and some of the key discussion points among the technical advisory committee was kind of the importance of clearly communicating the role of zoning and land use regulations in regulating data centers. Um and these regulations are meant to work in parallel with the city's new large water user ordinance. So that um set of regulations will regulate water use whereas these excuse me UDC regulations will regulate land use and zoning. Um so again just trying to reinforce that this amendment is intended to establish the land use review process and land use regulations. Um a number of areas that TAC members were supportive of the public feedback and recommend modifications to the proposal are expanding the public notice area beyond the original proposal. um looking at energy consumption as an aspect of the definition of large-scale data center and considering water quality protections, cooling technology and environmental monitoring in the standards. So just to kind of go over where the proposal is in terms of the proposed development standards, these are some of the areas with um I would say higher levels of consensus where the proposal has not been modified significantly since the public review or um based on recommendation from the technical advisory committee. Um some of that is the water supply. So um the technical advisory committee um agreed that the

city's large quantity water user ordinance will provide um appropriate regulations for the water use of um large quantity water users. And in addition, the proposed data center land use regulations would prohibit the use of portable water for data center cooling if that data center is not subject to the large water user ordinance. Um, another area of uh more consensus on the technical advisory committee was um for noise limits at the property line, sound limit sound walls or roof screening. Um, generator use, so requiring battery backup during any power disruptions and prohibiting load shifting, meaning running generators instead of using grid power. Um, also a lot of support for the energy disclosure requirement for applicants. Um, and enhanced landscape border, lower parking requirements, and heat mitigation measures that would include increased vegetation and more open space on site um to uh mitigate some of the urban heat island effect that we're seeing with data centers. So, more tree canopy and vegetation. some of the areas where we see potential for revision to the current proposal based on the tech the public feedback and technical advisory committee um that um we want to propose to mayor and council are one the definition. So what was proposed initially was to include facilities greater than 50,000 square feet of gross floor area. Um what a potential revision would be to include in addition to the size a power consumption threshold. Um so what we see is kind of a a differentiator between um that really draws a line between the hypers scale data centers is 75 megawatts of energy use. So that could be an additional component of the definition for data centers. In terms of the zoning the original proposal that we took to the community was to limit data centers large scale data centers to I2 industrial zones

through a special exception process or to allow them through a pad or PCD. A potential revision would be to only allow large-scale data centers through a pad or PCD, not in any specific zone across the city. Um, just to kind of uh really look for very sightby-sight consideration of any proposed development. Um, as additional conditions and very sight specific conditions can be established through a pad or PCD. Um, another area to consider is the review process and notice. Um so proposing to expand the notice area to property owners within a half mile and neighborhood association uh neighborhood associations within two miles of the development um to encompass areas that might be affected by a large scale data center. Um and then in terms of separation from residential and non-industrial uses, this was another aspect. Um, we heard a lot of feedback on the initial proposal was a separation of 400 feet from res residential zoning districts and 200 feet from commercial and office zones. A potential revision would be to increase this separation distance to a quarter mile from residential zones and 600 feet from commercial and office zones to really um expand how far data centers must be set back from residential neighborhoods and other non-industrial uses. So, those are some of the areas we're looking at looking at for further revision based on the community feedback. Um, next steps would be to take any feedback and direction from mayor and council today, integrate that into the proposal, and then um develop that code amendment into a proposal for planning commission to go to study session and a public hearing. And then finally, it would come back to mayor and council for formal consideration and a public hearing at a later date.

Thank you so much for the presentation. I uh agree with all of the revisions as suggested by the community and reviewed by the technical advisory committee. Um I I think that it's really that we have to make it absolutely clear to the community that the mayor and council are not creating a pathway uh to hypers scale data center construction in Tucson. We're actually doing the opposite. We are creating guard rails that um prepare ourselves to be able to institute the highest threshold that any type of development uh can do in the city of Tucson, which is basically coming back to mayor and council and receiving uh the yay or nay. And that's after work with the community and input uh from the community itself. I did not hear a couple of things that I wanted to see if there's a possibility of adding

uh to the work. I would like to add energy transparency information. So um those that want to build hypers scale data centers, they must disclose energy demand and the energy mix. So, where are they getting their energy? Renewables versus fossils. Um, and then of course, uh, I believe that we did includes, uh, include noise and generator controls.

Um, I think that, uh, we also included enhanced public process, correct? Okay, good.

I really appreciate the work that you've all been doing. Um I think we're all taking lessons from what is happening not just in Arizona uh but what is happening throughout the country in terms of hypers scale uh data center development. Um and I I'm happy that we're trying to build the framework that actually reflects Tucson values and our realities as a desert city. Uh we need to make sure that we are working with the community um on bringing the um the correct job creation and investments in the city of Tucson, especially if they um tend to use the resources that we have available. Um, I've been discovering through our work through the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative and many conversations with community members over the past month. um that we have to be clear that when we say the work that we're doing on this is not anti-development um but that and that we are not anti- jobs, we are anti-extractive development and hyperscale data centers are extractive and so we need to align the economic opportunities that are being created in the city with what our residents want to see happen. Uh we can be clear that it is our intention to protect our residents and our resources. Setting predictable regulations that make it crystal clear that Tucson does not want to attract hypers scale data centers that do not or will not go

through our rigorous standards, zoning process, public engagement, and marry and council vote. Uh we know that many parts of our city that have industrial zoning. So I'm glad that to see that industrial zoning removed from um the areas where uh these hypers scale data centers could be built because it is industrial zoning. And if you take a look at that map, the industrial zoning are usually in areas that have been traditionally resided by black, brown, and indigenous communities. And there are so many issues of environmental justice or injustices done there already. So we do not want to um direct this type of development in industrial zoning. I think it it should be case by case uh because of that reason. So um I think those are the those are that's the input. I'm glad that we're connecting this to the uh large water users ordinance that we're trying to build as well and uh appreciate all of the um really input from our community. Are there any other examples of cities where local governments have su successfully required or incentivized higher renewable energy standards for these this type of hypers scale data center development? Uh mayor, that's a great question. I don't know about requirements for renewable, but the energy disclosure that you spoke about is something we're seeing and I think that is something we have in the proposal and I think we can refine to make sure that we have the right language that you just suggested. So, I think that's where we're trying to get at that community awareness so that it can be part of the discussion with the community and with mayor and council um about where the energy is going to be sourced from. But we can definitely

research whether there's requirements or we have the ability to require renewables. And I know that Atlanta has prohibited data centers and particular types of zoning. Can you explain how Tucson can do this, if we can do this at all? Mayor, you mean to prohibit throughout the city beyond what's being proposed? So, uh, my understanding, and Roy can chime in here, is that prohibitions like that are legally risky in Arizona, um, and are subject to have a very high bar in terms of the legal defensibility, but I'll defer to Roy to chime in.

Thanks, Corin. So, um, under ARS9-463.06, 06 uh the mayor and council can impose a moratorum for a specific reason for a specific time. Okay.

Uh but that requires a sort of making addition uh two sets of findings. One is whether or not it's related to resource issues. And when I say resources, I mean we don't have the resources for the uh the thing that we're trying to do. Um and also uh we have to then if we're if we don't meet that category then we have to have additional findings uh related to um things like do we have a plan to overcome the moratorium. Moratorium can only be imposed for about 120 days.

Okay. Um, so we would have to go through the ACC or the state legislature or I mean what what is No, it's it's a it's a it would be a local process. So there's a public hearing required. There's findings to be required. There's um as I mentioned before uh in addition uh there would have to be those findings would include things like you know again the the work plan of how to get past the mortorium

moratorum. Um and then uh you also have demonstrate a compelling need for the moratorum and in what I think the court looks at or court this all leads to a court at some point. I'm sorry but um uh because if we don't follow those rules uh a a constituent can or or resident can sue within 30 days of us not imposing the moratorium. Okay. All righty. Um, I'm gonna open it up for my colleagues on the council, vice mayor, and then we'll just go down the road. Uh, city attorney. So, to understand what you're saying, we could only impose a moratorum of 120 days. Correct. Under the current statute. Yeah.

And then could we just continue it every 120 days? If you do the same things over and over again, maybe. I That's a I'm sorry. It's a lawyer answer, but it's sort of the way it works. So, uh, I I don't know that that's been tested. I I do know that the sort of the bar is pretty high. And again, at any point during that time, if we don't follow those those rules, then somebody could sue on. So, it's a state legislation that prohibits us from maybe putting like a 5-year moratorum. Correct. Right. Under state statute. Yes.

Okay. Um I think mayor for me um from like listening or the conversations that we've had you know with the community and and leaders and experts um that they're having a hard time seeing the benefit of any hyperscale data center in our community um because they although they might bring short-term construction jobs um it's very few permanent positions and going to be a major strain on our water and energy infrastructure and in the desert city that's just a trade-off especially in this time that we can afford. Um, and I think our residents are really informed and have been clear about that. So, I'm just curious. Um, if we did nothing then at the moratorum we have limit 120 days. If we did nothing, what does that look like?

Uh, you mean nothing as proceeding with the the process? Um, I think it would it would matter um less well let me let me back up a second. I I think the issue would be if a property owner wanted to engage and do this kind of development then they could at that time say I want to do this and they would come to the city and then the city would have to respond in some way. Um, and then they could from that point on if if we didn't do anything, they would have the opportunity to then go into court at that time. They could sue us. Yes. So, so a property owner could sue us. Yes. I don't know if that would happen, but

I guess I'm just kind of curious, how do we get to the place of what we've heard the community, you know, um, saying like is what's is there an opportunity to get there? Again, I think it depends on so and I totally understand that the community has said they do not want this kind of development. The challenge is is that if there was a property owner that wanted the development within the city uh and we didn't make any um there's two challenges there. One is the 946036306, but then there's also a prop 2011 claim where we're talking about, you know, we have diminished the value of that specific property. Um and then you know that's a whole another court process as well. I guess in in my view it's best if we um provide the highest threshold go with the input from what we've heard with our technical advisory committee and then have that right and at the end of the day the mayor and council will have the ability to say no.

That's what the process creates. um and that any uh hypers scale data center developer that wants to come into the city of Tucson, they need to meet all the thresholds and come to Mayor and council. Um we can say no based on input from our community. Council member Cunningham,

couple things. Look, right now the guardrails we're putting on, it will be pretty unlikely anybody's going to come, but never say never. Um, and the guardrails are pretty responsible. There are a couple of places where I see opportunity. I do not I'm not going to dismiss um a a data center as data centers evolve and the technology involved. So the water use and cooling requirements change. Um so I think that's a big piece to it. The other piece is if they are activating empty space that has already been built. I can probably I can probably live with some of that. So it it I want to make it the most unlikely scenario possible. I'd like to throw some things in there. uh regarding some of you know push the threshold as far as our fees and as far as how we cost I think everyone's done a pretty decent job in putting a significant number of guard rails up that I'm not anticipating a lot of data center data center users knocking on the door anytime soon but that's our goal so I I I'm not I I hope that that I hope that that's the ordinance we have and it it make that it makes sense and that that there is a universe that exists where one of these can actually be a benefit to the community both uh economically and socially and all that stuff. I'm sure there is. I mean there it exists somewhere. I don't see it yet, but uh the scenario could exist and so we have to at least acknowledge that we'll have a process to do that.

Council member D.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your great work in this area and um the community is very involved in this. Um and I appreciate the vice mayor asking the question, can we do what the community really seems to be wanting to? And it's clear that um we put ourselves in a dangerous position of being overturned without having any guard rails if we just ban it. So I agree with the mayor. Let's make the highest possible guard rails. And towards that, um I've been thinking about the size. One of the things the community says is is can we make the size lower? I know that you probably had some rationale for this size and I I don't think we need to discuss it now, but maybe before the planning commission clearly talk about the size. Off hand, I'd say let's have it uh and make it 25,000 square feet. Why not? Um, I can't easily imagine 50,000 square feet until someone told me it's the size of a large supermarket like this, like the Safeway, the big Safeway at Broadway and Campbell. Takes me a long time to shop when I shop there because I go down every aisle. So, that seems pretty big. Um, and you mentioned that we don't um regulate energy in zoning, but in a sense we do. Um some of the measures that we're proposing uh are about energy. So um I like the idea of an energy threshold being another criteria for whether it throws the proposal into this hyperscale um process. And I'm not sure what that that amount is. Again, maybe the folks at the planning uh commission can can examine that. I don't understand tiers. I think they're just both. It's, you know, if it's above this in in in size, if it's above this in energy use, um boy, the diesel generators were really bother me. That's the worst way to um to create electricity. And we know that bad actor ones have been running them a lot more. I like the idea of outlawing load

shift. The question is, how do we know? How do we enforce it? Maybe we don't have generators. Why don't we require on-site solar with battery backup? it's a sunny day, the solar should be able to run the system. If it's not a sunny day, they have batteries for three or four days. Um, I would like that. And I've been thinking about notice, too. I I like all the extensions of notice. Um, farther, but um there are groups like the no data data center organization and others that have been doing a lot of research on this and we would want them as people who are commenting if we get a proposal. Is there a possibility of creating a standing notification list that people can apply to and then you have have it so that people who are very interested would get a notice. Um and I know that we would notice the ward office. Um let's let's notify all mayor councils is going to come to us that that would be helpful. Um the the extensions that you've put on there um with the vegetation more open space that's so logical to to mitigate the impacts that other communities are seeing with these data centers. Again, thank you for going through this process. I think we're on the right track.

Councilman Lee,

thank you, Mayor. Thank you to the team and for everyone who has been involved in this. I agree that the definition is really, really important. Um, I'm also thinking the the power utilization is more important than size, right? Because there are data centers already in town that are just storing people's photos, which is a whole different ballgame than hypers scale. So, I think it's really important that we have clarity around the definition more so than the size, arguably. Um the other piece you addressed the moratorum and the options with that. Um I just want to reaffirm the current protections that are in place so the community is aware while we go through this process. I know we have the large water users but Roy can you also talk about and I know the city manager worked with I think the zoning administrator to make sure that there is some protection in place while we go through this process. So I don't know who's the best to answer that but I just wanted to make sure that was out there.

Ver Corin because she was more involved in the work. Um she she wouldn't know better than me.

That's fine. Um yeah, thank you, Councilwoman Lee Mayor. Um there is a zoning administrator determination in place that basically says this use is not defined in our code. So the most similar use is basically a energy um generating use in terms of the impact and that can only be developed through a pad or PCD. So that's currently what's in place and in the zoning administrator determination it specifically said we would be developing standards for this use and creating a definition over the next few months. So that is a stop gap measure as you said that right now they wouldn't be allowed except through a patter that would have to go to mayor and council. What this does if mayor and council choose to go the route of only allowing them through a patter. The difference is that then there would be standards in place. Right now, we don't have any standards in the code that suggest these are the things we're looking for. Setbacks from residential, noise, energy, water use, all of those components that we've heard from the community then could be established in the code. Um, and still uh proposed data center would only go through a pattern conditions and standards could be established based on the specific site and specific proposal as well.

Corin, if if you don't mind, if I could add just a bit to that. I I also think it's important to recognize that we have existing pads and PCDs in the city and it's imperative that we get through the process of defining a code around this use so that we're we're belt and suspenders not just on forwardlooking pads and PCDs but also existing pads and PCDs. Excellent. Council member Vas.

Thank you, mayor. I want to thank vice mayor for bringing up the topic of our own mortoriiums because that is something that I want to um dig deeper and figure out what other cities what other jurisdictions may and councils did around that. I believe city of Tulsa possibly is one of the cities but just to ask questions and then also the cities too that have the the large scale data centers. I would love to hear and gather more um research around those impacts and how we could share that with with the community because I think in the beginning we heard a lot of the environmental impacts but we didn't hear enough of the environmental impacts this could bring to the community and then yeah just my concern is you know when I look at this map um ward five we face a lot of this heat and environmental burdens and I want to make sure that our community doesn't experience more. Well, thank you,

Council Member Schubert.

Thank you. Um, I'll keep it brief because everybody else already said all the things I wanted to say. Um, so just adding my voice to um the interest in exploring what other cities have done because in W 6, we've also heard quite a bit from folks who are saying, "Didn't you hear us before? We don't want these here. Can't you do a ban or a moratorum?" So, I do think it's important to do our due diligence there. Um, in the meantime, I support the um suggested changes and I agree with the approach of enforcing the highest possible threshold. Um, I was at a lunch last week with a super businessy type who said, you know, this is going to make it impossible. So, I don't know if that makes anybody feel better, but you know, they're saying, "Wow, these are really stringent guidelines. This is going to make it impossible for data centers." And I was thinking to myself, I think that's okay. Um, so just appreciate everybody who's taken part in the public sessions and um, for anybody who's tuning into this. Um, I want to underline these recommendations um, are likely going to be considered next by the planning commission and it's not too late for constituents to let us know on the council how you feel. Um, and to just keep an eye out for upcoming agendas and public hearing opportunities to share your feedback. But um, thank you so much Corin and PDSD staff. Uh, thank you so much everyone. Thank you for the incredible process. I just want one additional thing that I heard some of my colleagues on the council mention. Are we considering uh instead instead of the square footage perhaps the definition of a large uh load data centers that are 20 megawws or more? I know that you had 75 in there somewhere.

Yes, mayor. That is something that we are considering adding to the proposal is a megawatt threshold as well. And that's something we would continue to refine and do a little more research on what is the appropriate threshold for energy consumption.

I've heard in my conversations um with other cities and other mayors is that they define it with uh 20 megawws or more versus square footage. or you can use the both. Um, thank you for that feedback, mayor. That's I just wanted to make sure that I that I mentioned that. All righty. So, this we're not voting on this yet. There's still more process to be had. Thank you so much for the presentation. I really appreciate it and thank you for waiting. Uh, we are going to move on um to item 14. Time has been set aside to provide mayor and council with an opportunity to discuss action on renaming the Cesar Chavez on the Lores Werta holiday and establishing a process for decommissioning and or removing city assets with Cesad Chavez's name or image. This is an item that I requested because I wanted to make sure that I received your input. we uh had to act, meaning I and you know the city manager and uh department directors had to act quickly um with in light of the information that we recently discovered uh about Cesad Chavez and um we wanted to make sure that we acted quickly, but I believe deeply in the uh possibility of having community input, especially on the renaming piece. Um, I think that decommissioning um or removing city assets with Cesar Chavez's name or image is something that we can move forward on as a city, but the renaming is something that I would highly appreciate. We have some sort of input from community.

Um, I'm one of the co-founders of the Cesar Chavez Holiday Coalition. Recently, the coalition added their name, uh, Dolores Werta's name to the coalition and requested that we add it to the holiday. This was about two years ago. The coalition has been doing work for more than 20 years now and they've put together marches and rallies and car shows and demonstrations and they're still very much active. Um what I have seen recently is that they are very inclusive of young voices. this this year and last year they uh brought in to the coalition um young people within schools uh young Meta clubs within PBLO High School, Puma College, Tucson High, Ringcon University and other young people uh in Sunnyside School District that have been participating. I think that is important that we include the next generation in this conversation uh to be able to find a way to not erase the movement the farmworking movement and the cho movement from um from the name. So, if it is possible, and I'm going to open it up for all of you, but if it is possible to um consider as council colleagues to send this conversation of finding a name uh and a date uh that we want to continue celebrating in the city, city of Tucson to uh to the coalition. I'm going to open it up if anyone wants

to add their thoughts. Vice Mayor, uh, Mayor, thank you um for bringing this up and that's actually how you and I met 20 plus years ago as part of the coalition um putting on the youth conference and the march and the rally. So, I know it's been a hard um couple of weeks. A lot of um a lot has come up that has happened in our community and still the work that we have to do. Um do you need um a motion to do what you're suggesting we do? I would appreciate it. Okay. Well, I'll I'll make the motion that um we uh send this conversation over to the coalition to come up with recommendations for mayor and council to approve

and then we include youth voices and as part of the conversation. Yes, youth voices to come up with both the name and also the date. Second. There's a motion in a second. Any further discussion on this? Mayor, can I ask for a quick clarification on it?

Sure. That's nice. I I would also like to know that you're the mayor and council are um as part of this endorsing the fact that we took action to remove certain items and we would need to uh a next step would be the DSA session of the public art parts of that. I just want to make sure that we don't go any further administratively without the mayor and council's blessing that the actions we've taken so far and future actions are are in alignment with the mayor and council's policy. Yes, we'll include that, Tim. Thank you. All righty. So, um, thank you for the uh clarification. Any others want to add their voices? Council member Dell,

we spoke and I agree with your leadership and and the motion that the vice mayor. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. Any others?

Thank you, ma'am. I was just going to um, you know, reflecting a lot on this and seeing what other cities are doing across the nation and just move so fast. So, I think this allows us some time to pause and really think about the process of renaming public spaces. I know, you know, cities like Los Angeles, they did more of a collective recognition and did it farm workers day to honor the broader movement. But I just think overall with with the renaming of public spaces, it's going to allow us some time to really think of that process. And um one one area of a public space that I know it's it it's in the city of Tucson is the sister's chap uh bridge across South six. So I do want to see if somebody can follow up because we have been receiving some calls from just different neighbors um to see what is what's going to be the process for that. And I believe it's a AOT site but if we can um provide some communication with the public on that. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Manager, I think that that's uh something that we're going to have to request to the Arizona Department of Transportation, ADOT, uh, that they um, you know, work on that with our partnership. I would say uh, that bridge was, uh, requested by the community. Um and so I think that it would be appropriate to ask ADOT to move on changing it uh with the input from the community as well.

Yes, mayor. Uh understood. Thank you. You know, I know that we have several murals. I'm thinking El Rio um and other murals around town with the image of Casad Chavez. it would be appropriate for us to be able to um go to the appropriate muralist um and include them in the in the process of changing their mural that that was commissioned by the city of Tucson for them to do. Mr. or less

if I may, your honor, I think what uh the the city manager was referring to is there's a there is a process to do that under our ads uh which involves that exactly that thing. So so I think the motion should be appropriate. Okay, perfect. So the motion stays perfect. All righty. Uh there's a motion on uh the table. There's a second. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I

I. Any against? Motion carries. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Thank you, everyone. We move on to item 15. Time has been set aside for discussion and direction relating to matters pending in front of the Puma County Board of Supervisors and other regional jurisdictions. See Miss Dent uh coming to the table. Miss Morales. Thank you, Mayor. I will turn it over to uh Laura Dent and also Stephanie Eamore is here to help and assist as needed.

Thank you so much Liz and honorable mayor, members of the council. Today we are passing out hand or excuse me hard copies of our reports today. On top you'll find the regional report followed by the state report and then the federal report. So if you all would be so kind as to take one and pass it down. Um, and given that you're just um, receiving these hard copies now, I will summarize a bit of the regional report very briefly. Um, and these would include recent actions and discussions at Puma County, Tano Morirana, Tano Sawita, as well as Rio. So, um, Pima County Board of Supervisors recently directed staff to evaluate renaming the Cesar Chavez holiday as well as identify county assets bearing his name and image. Uh, additionally, the board outlined the hiring process for a new county administrator and that job posting will be available publicly on April 15th. They um separately related to issues um from the sheriff's office. They directed outside council to prepare and request a formal report from the sheriff. Um some of those details again are included in the printed report. The board approved as well um an allocation of approximately $20 million in project blue landfill proceeds that will be going towards capital economic development and workforce initiatives from Rionovo. The board reported stable finances and approved support for several downtown projects including the Tucson Inn and Marketplace and moving forward with a GLET for Hotel Arizona. And then regionally, Morirana received public comment on a proposed federal immigration detention facility which has been formally opposed by Pimac County. Morirana also updated ADU regulations and Oral Valley reported it is nearing residential buildout and deferring some capital projects. And with this honorable mayor, that concludes the regional report. Thank you.

All righty. Go ahead, Laura.

Uh thank you, mayor, members of the council. Um good afternoon. At the state level, which we'll get started there first, the legislature um returned today from a short break. Uh lawmakers are moving into a new phase of the legislative session. So, all of the standing committee meetings have now come to a close and lawmakers are moving um into kind of more of a voting season um and uh ramping up budget negotiations. So, uh, we should expect, uh, Republicans to potentially share a budget proposal soon, um, to counter the proposal that Governor Hobbs submitted earlier in the year. U, we're going to continue tracking bills that the city's taken a position on, including revenue, public safety, and land use bills that continue moving through their respective chambers. And lastly, you heard a little bit about tax conformity today as part of the budget conversations. I'll be planning to share an offag agenda memo with you um soon with some added context around that. This is really going to have longer term um implications, potentially uplift some other issues that could have implications for revenue in the future. Just so as you're having these conversations, you're um really looking to the horizon around what we might uh see moving forward. So, I'll um submit that soon. Uh on the federal front, Congress is currently in recess and returning next week. Um obviously while Congress has been away, we've been seeing a lot of uh rhetoric on the foreign policy front which we're seeing appears to be cooling down now. Um at the same time the president submitted his fiscal year 27 budget proposal. Uh that was submitted on Friday and as last year it includes major cuts to domestic programs that are really critical to the city. uh include into that the elimination of CDBG and home funds, proposing major changes to the continuum of care program. Uh it's at $ 1.5 trillion for defense spending which is up 42% from last fiscal year and non-defense spending and domestic

programming is down 10% and 73 billion. So definitely yeah a big shift. Um but that is a starting place and Congress will ultimately decide those funding levels. Um, and that will conclude my report for today. I'll be able to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, Miss Dent. Okay, first and foremost, I want to thank Attorney General Maize uh for coming to Tucson doing a town hall in the W to office today to talk about the challenges um of her challenge of the proposed 14% rate hike for residential utility bills by TP. Um, as you all know, I requested my council colleagues take action immediately to join AGMAS in intervening in the rate case. Um, and so the case uh is now before the ACC. Um, again, I want to bring attention to HCR 2016, which is something that is proceeding. Correct, Laura? Is moving forward.

Uh, yes, Madam Mayor, that that is right. We've not seen the momentum that we have in past weeks on it. I think much of that is due to organizing that communities have been doing, but it still remains a threat and a concern. This is the um referral that would freeze um city's abilities and counties abilities to raise revenues, fees or rates um through 2030.

I just want to reiterate how devastating that bill could be. Well, not bill, but referral to a possible ballot um measure. Um and uh this week, Congress is currently in recess, but I'm really concerned about the president's 2027 budget proposal. Uh that includes eliminating CDBG and home funding. And I just want to make sure that the city of Tucson prepares itself. What does that mean for the most vulnerable residents, right? Um those using CDBG and the programs that we fund with CDBG funds and home. What does that mean for the continuum of care uh program that we have in partnership with um TPCH? We're also seeing proposed reductions in transit funding. So there could be additional cuts into federal funds for transit um and the elimination of programs like build which is a competitive transportation funding source for cities and governments across the country. So again, I don't think it's done in terms of the damages that both the state legislature and Congress and the president are doing to cities across America. And at the end of the day, it is hurting uh people and the most vulnerable people are the ones that are hit first and worst. So staying tuned to what happens. I am, you know, anxiously awaiting uh what continues to happen at the state ledge and in Congress. Thank you for your

report. I really appreciate it. Any further? Uh Council Member Do. Thank you, Mayor. It's just been reported on all the national media that Trump has um signed on to a peace agreement for a two-week ceasefire that Pakistan has brokered. He called it a double-sided ceasefire. Um so I'm feeling a little less frightened uh at this final hour before he was going to bomb the civilization out of existence. Just wanted to mention that.

Thank you. Any other comments, questions, observations? All righty. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your report. Um, so we did both item 15 and 16, right? Okay. So, we uh are done with item 16. We're moving on to item 17. Does anyone have any items to remove from the consent agenda for today's regular meeting? Hearing none, we move on to item 18. Does anyone have any items for future agendas?

All righty. Hearing none, we are adjourned. And let me just look at the time. I'm going to give us 40 minutes. So, we're going to start at 5:40 if that's okay, just so we can stretch and then come back uh renewed for the regular meeting. Thank you all so much. We'll see you in a bit.

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feel that. Hey, hey, hey. The board of commissioners of the city of Tucson public housing authority will now stand in session. Uh can we go to roll call, please?

Commissioner Hawkins I am here. Commissioner Schubert here. Commissioner Barahas here. Commissioner Lee here. Commissioner D here. Commissioner Cunningham here. Commissioner Santa Cruz here. Chair Romero here. Item two.

Item two, public hearing, city of Tucson, Puma County PHA plan updates. All righty. I think I have a different script. I have um city manager's PHA communication number four dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. Miss Clerk, you are requested to read resolution PHA 2026-51 by number and title only. Resolution number PHA 2026-51 relating to public housing board of commissioners adoption of the city of Tucson public housing authority updated public housing authority annual plan admissions and continued occupancy policy ACOP capital fund 5-year plan and housing choice voucher administrative plan and declaring an emergency. What is the board's pleasure?

Mayor, I move to pass and adopt PHA 2026-51. There is a motion. I have a second. Second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Um, yes. Anka, did you have a presentation for this item? No, I just want to make sure there will be a public hearing. Okay. For this item that is a requirement per So, just want to make sure that All righty. I don't have the public hearing language, but m

let's see. Public hearing city of Tucson Pima County PHA plan updates resolution PHA 2026-51 relating to public housing board of commissioners adoption of the city of Tucson public housing authority updated public housing authority annual plan admissions and continued occupancy policy capital fund 5-year plan and housing choice voucher administrative plan and declaring an emergency. Um, Miss Clerk, would you like to uh, your honor, we do not help us through the public hearing? Um, your honor, we do not have any people who are um requesting to be part of the public hearing at this time.

There are no speakers. No, no, not for this public hearing. Okay. So, may I have a a colleague please close the public hearing? I move we close the public hearing. There is a motion and a second to close the public hearing. Um, all those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I.

I. Any against? Motion carries. All right. Now, I think we need we can approve uh PHA 2026-51. And we had had a previous motion and a second to approve PHA 2026-51. Um, we do have to go to a roll call to approve this. Okay. Commissioner Hawkins. Hi. Commissioner Schubert. Hi. Commissioner Barahas. I. Commissioner Lee. Hi. Commissioner Dah. I. Commissioner Cunningham.

I. Commissioner Santa Cruz. I. Chair Romero.

I. The motion to approve resolution PHA 2026-51 passes by a vote of 80. Item three, Crayoft Towers and Lee Street duplex rehabilitation update and approval to submit the application for rental assistance demonstration disposition to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. City manager PHA communication number five dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. Miss Clerk, you are requested to read resolution PHA 2026-50 by number and title only. Resolution number PHA 202650 relf affordable housing and community development authorizing the repres the reposition of certain public housing units located at 1635 North Craven Road Tucson Arizona 85712 and declaring an emergency. What is the board's pleasure?

I motion to pass and adopt resolution PHA 202650. Second. There is a motion and a second. Any further discussion on this item? Hearing none, let's go to roll call. Commissioner Hawkins. Commissioner Schubert. I. Commissioner Barahas. I. Commissioner Lee. Hi. Commissioner D. I. Commissioner Cunningham. Hi. Commissioner Santa Cruz. I. Chair Romero. I. The motion to approve resolution PHA 2026-50 passes by a vote of 80. Item four, approval of minutes.

City manager's PHA communication uh number six dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of the February 18th, 2026 meeting? I move to approve the minutes from the February 18th, 2026 meeting as presented. Second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion on this motion? Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any against? The motion to approve the minutes of the February 18th, 2026 meeting passes by a vote of 8 Z. Item five, adjournment.

The meeting of the board of commissioners is adjourned. The mayor and council will now convene our regular meeting. Thank you. The meeting of the mayor and council will now stand in session. Uh, let's go to roll call.

Council member Cunningham here. Council member D here. Councilwoman Lee here. Council member Brahas here. Council member here. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz here. Mayor Romero here. Before we go to item two, the city attorney will go over the rules of decorum for the mayor and council meetings. Mr. Attorney.

Honorable mayor, Arizona's open meeting laws provide that members of the public may attend and listen to the proceedings during tonight's public meeting of the mayor and council. Arizona law also allows the mayor and council to enforce rules and procedures for public attendance of the meeting to ensure orderly behavior and to prevent unnecessary interference with the public meeting. Here are the rules that apply. The rules require decorum and orderly conduct by the members of the audience. No person attending the meeting shall engage in conduct that disrupts or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting, including any statements or conduct that interrupts the persons who might be addressing the mayor and council or that disrupts the discussions of the mayor and council. The mayor has the authority to ensure compliance with the rules of orderly conduct. If disorderly or disruptive conduct continues after a warning, and this is that first warning, the mayor may direct the removal of persons from the chambers and/or recess the meeting itself. If disruptive behavior makes it necessary to clear the chambers, the persons who have disrupted the meeting will not be allowed to return to the chambers for the remainder of tonight's meeting. As a final note, please be aware that interfering with or preventing this lawful public meeting from being carried out in an orderly manner, not only violates the rules of participation, but also violates Title 13 of the Arizona Revised Statutes.

Thank you, Mr. Attorney. Item two, invocation, pledge of allegiance, and appointments to boards, committees, and commissions. The ca the invocation today will be given by Pastor Philip uh Cruz, Rinkon Mountain Presbyterian Church. After the invocation, I ask that you remain standing for the pledge of allegiance. Let's pray. Almighty God, as we come before you this Tuesday evening, we come just a couple of days after many in this city have gathered in houses of faith to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And we in that vein give you great praise for life, for giving life. You are the Lord and giver of life. You give life, you sustain life. And so we recognize your sovereignty and your rule in all things. We are thankful, oh God, for this city, the city of Tucson, and the many wonderful things we enjoy in this city. We thank you for the recent uh successes of the Arizona Wildcats men's basketball team. We thank you for the fun that they gave us in a wonderful season. We thank you for the many things that we've seen going on around this city as far as life being given in parks and places of recreation. Lord, continue to extend your grace to this city. We thank you for the leaders of this city that you have appointed to these places. And we would ask, oh God, that you would give them confidence,

that you'd give them patience, particularly when they differ with one another, that you'd give them understanding of the various roles that they have and the many important decisions that they need to make. Will you undergard them with your strength and may they know that what they do now will have an impact on the city and so would you grant them wisdom and would you guide their thinking and their steps. We know that no decisions made here made here tonight fall outside of your knowledge and that you rule in perfection. And so may that be reflected here. And may you grant grace for the differences that we bear. Lord, we uh thank you for the many in this city who serve in our military. We ask for those who are far from home now are who are deployed uh that you'd return them safely. We pray oh God that you would watch over our men and women as they serve particularly as uh there are many many hot spots around the globe that uh this nation is involved in. We pray oh God for peace. We pray for peace to come and we ask that you would work in a way that would bring that about. Lord, again, thank you for our leaders. Bless them tonight as they meet. Give them uh a good meeting. May they be able to go home and sleep well tonight knowing that they've worked well for the city of Tucson. And we ask all this in the wonderful name of Jesus. Amen. To the stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Pastor C. Chris, uh, for gracing us with your presence and your lovely words. Thank you. Uh we move on to item 2C1 presentations. And then item 2C2. Uh item 2C2 is a presentation that was requested by Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. Uh I'd like to welcome the Puma Community College 2026 women's basketball team and celebrate their national championship victory tonight. And item 2C1 um is going to be proclaiming April 2026 to be fair housing month. And as I usually do, of course, vice mayor is going to come with me and present uh the championship basketball team uh with a recognition and a proclamation. But I'd like to invite all my colleagues if you'd like to join us um to present to uh our champions and then of course the proclamation on fair housing month. Did she tell you about this before?

Holy moly.

Okay. And I do wonder. Oh my god. Look at this. Wow, this is amazing. I do see Chancellor Nassie as well. So, Chancellor, come join us, please. Vice Mayor, take it away. All right, Buenosardes. Uh, good afternoon, mayor. thank you for the opportunity to recognize our student athletes um here in on the west side, but they represent the entire city and we're super proud of them. And so we have today here um and I'm sorry if I butcher your last names um Rain W Jolie Nelson Navia Orenda Joy Hunt Lucy Fiser Tagan Martin, Kalia Gonzalez, Adia Chi, Casey Kage,

Kylie Sour, Miller, Melissa Nelson, Lucy Land, Gabriella Sanchez, Sylvia Garcia, our head coach, Todd Holtis, Holas, and our assistant coaches, Jim Rosenborg, Peter Pardo, Felicia Greenhouse, and Leon Stalworth. We we also want to acknowledge because it takes an entire village um to train these players. So we have the strength and conditioning coach Vanessa Campio, team managers Camila Basil Ilvaso, Jorge Franco, and our athletic trainers April, Jesse, Kylie Haggarstrand, Bethany, um I IO maybe.

All right. Okay. No, thank you so much. I also want to recognize um council member uh Paul Cunningham for always putting the importance of our student athletes in front of mayor and council and making sure that they get recognized. So thank you for for your work in doing that. All right, so we'll start with the whereasses and they're there plenty. All right. So, whereas the Puma Community College Aztecs defeated the Kirkwood Community College Eagles 64 to 58 in the National Junior College Athletic Association Women's Basketball Division 2 Finals in Hickory, North Carolina on March 21st, 2026, making the 2025 2026 Aztec women the first national champions in PCC history. Whereas the members of the 2026 and NJCAA national champions are Rain W, Jolene Nelson, Navia Orenda, Joy Hunt, Lucy Fischer, Tegan Martin, Kalia Gonzalez, Adia Chi, Casey Kulage, Kylie Sers, Viller, Mal Melissa Nelson, Lucy Lan, Gabriella Sanchez, and Sylvia Garcia. Whereas the 2026 NCJCAA national champions were coached by head coach Todd Holtz, assistant coaches Jim Roseboro, Peter Pardo, Felicia Greenhouse, Leon Stalworth, strength and conditioning coach Vanessa Campio, team managers Camila Vasa de Paso Jorge Franco, athletic trainers April Jesse, Kylie Hagerstrand and Bethany Eigoro, and athletic director Kent Hak Hakome. Whereas before becoming national champions, the Aztecs made PCC history with their first 30 win season going 30-4 and ending on an 18game winning streak. They also earned the Arizona Community College athletic conference division 2

regular season championship and the region 1 division 2 championship. Whereas the women's basketball program has now won 20 games or more for 10 straight seasons. excluding whereas head coach Todd Holtus has also named the NJ NJCAA Division 2 coach of the tournament. He earned his 400th career win with Puma Women's Basketball November 4, 2025 with 19 years as a head coach. Whereas the National Junior College Athletic Association is the national governing organization of community college, state college, and junior college athletics throughout the United States. Whereas the Puma Community College athletics program serves to reinforce the attitudes, values, and overall mission of the college, which promotes lifelong learning, integrity, leadership, good citizenship, diversity, and academic excellence in concert with developing student athletes physical skills and abilities. Whereas I, Lane Santa Cruz, um, a subbing here for Mayor Raa Romero of the city of Tucson, Arizona, do hereby proclaim this recognition of the distinguished record and accomplishment of Puma Community College 2025 2026 Aztecs National Junior College Athletic Association Division 2 National Champions and witness whereof I have here on to set my hand and cause the seal of city of Tucson to be affixed this 7th day of April, 2020. 26.

Coach, I wanted to see if you wanted to share a couple of words about the team and if any of our student athletes also want to share a couple words.

I knew how that was going to go. I'll just take a few minutes because um it's a monumental achievement obviously, but I think that the thing that I'm proudest of is that we've been doing this for years and to win a national championship, things have to fall in line a certain way. And it's not because we did anything different than we did in the past. It just was our time. And so these girls up here, these ladies represent not just this year's team, but all the previous teams that have gone through Puma Community College. And they also represent Puma Community College. I know that I've been here since 1997 and I've worked at Puma for the last 19 years and I take a great deal of pride in representing Puma, Tucson, uh, Southern Arizona anywhere we go. And any of you that follow sports know that it's not just women's basketball that's great at Puma. There's a lot of great sports at Puma. And so I always take a lot of pride in what we do at Puma. And Dr. Jeffrey Nassie is our new chancellor who's been here and he's been a great supporter for us. and we couldn't do that without the city's support, without our governing board support, and you know, the great coaches that we have. So, we're always taking a great deal of pride. Thank you so much for this recognition. Thank you. And, uh, hopefully we can do it again next year, but we're going to relish in the fact that we did it this year and not worry about next year yet. Thank you all.

And coach, I also wanted and yay, Puma is amazing. I'm as an alumni of Puma Community College, I I love my Aztecs and Puma's incredible. Uh so I just also wanted to make sure that we gave you a recognition on behalf of the mayor and it's a copper plaque. Uh here you go. And uh Mr. Chancellor, Dr. Dancy, if you'd like to come and grab yours. We also have a recognition on behalf of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. We are so proud of the accomplishments of our women's team uh but of Puma Community College period. So, on behalf of the of um the city of Tucson, Mayor Raa Romero, Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz, and the entire city of Tucson Council, we proudly recognize and honor the accomplishments of the 2026 Puma Community College women's basketball team on their first NJCAA championship. Your victory in the NJCAA Championship reflects extraordinary hard work, dedication, unity, and sportsmanship. Your success is a source of joy, honor, and pride to the entire Tucson community. Congratulations. And if we can, uh, Dr. Nassie, did you want to add some words? And then I want to ask the team just to get close over here so that we could take a nice picture. Dr. Nass.

Thank you, mayor, and members of the council. It's an honor to represent this great college, this tremendous community, and these these student athletes, students first athletes, uh represent what's so great about our community's college. So, thank you. It's an honor. Okay. Half and half. There we go.

Go on. Scoot out front. There you go. Go take that out front. There you go. I think you should hold it. Oh yeah, you should hold it. Yes.

Which one? Which one? Congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the incredible achievement. Uh last but certainly not least, we are going to celebrate fair housing month. And let me invite our guests that are here that are so important to making sure that we provide uh not just fair housing, but affordable housing that is fair to our community. and that treats people with dignity. and all of the people that I'm going to call. Let me see. Our guests are housing community development director Anne Chaneka and deputy director Jason Thorp, planning and development services director Corin Manning, Jay Young, director of Southwest Fair Housing Council, Maggie Amadotez, director of the Pimac County Community Land Trust, Sandra uh representing Poder Casas Moilez, Tom Litwiki, CEO at O PBLO Community Services, Charlie Buchanan, CEO at Habitat for Humanity. Cheryl Scott, some some could be over here if you want. We don't bite over here. Cheryl Scott, homeowner through Habitat for Humanity. Uh Zion Aldr, City of Tucson resident. Christopher Ortega, affordable housing developer at GHK

Properties. And then we have TOEFL Dent Construction. Jim Toe, Brian Welker, and Dave uh Maggurt. Uh we're all here. All righty. So, it is an honor um and a privilege for me to work with you all and the work that you've done so beautifully. My colleagues and I on the council are true believers of um creating affordable housing opportunities uh to every single resident no matter of their income and no matter of their status. So with that, in behalf of the city of Tucson and the office of the mayor, uh, I'd like to present this proclamation. Whereas President B Lyndon B. John, Actually, does someone want to hold this, Jake? There you go. Whereas President Lyndon B. Johnson signed on April 11th, 1968 the landmark Civil Rights Act, which title 8 included the Fair Housing Act. And whereas the Fair Housing Act stated that as a nation, citizens and government would set the values of equality, equity, and dignity in our public housing policies and practices. And whereas the Fair Housing Act targeted inequities in housing and aimed to eliminate racial segregation and guarantee that all people in America have the right to secure safe and decent housing free from discrimination. And whereas Tucson recognizing recognizes that housing is interrelated with other critical issues including climate resiliency, community safety, and social equity. Whereas the Tucson mayor and council made housing a top priority and

adopted the housing affordability strategy strategy for Tucson in 2021 and adopted the source of income ordinance to curb discriminatory denial for people with housing choice vouchers. And whereas Tucson recognizes that past practices of lending and sale of homes, including racist covenants, conditions, and restrictions, created inequities and segregated housing patterns. Whereas Tucson communities of color and marginalized families and homeless individuals continue to face discrimination and obstacles to safe and healthy housing. And whereas Tucson remains committed to removing existing barriers to housing and to strive that all residents have access to housing, we urge the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to preserve rules that protect people from housing and lending discrimination. Now therefore, I, Raa Romero, mayor of the city of Tucson, Arizona, do hereby proclaim April 2026 to be fair housing month in this community, encourage all of our residents to reflect on the importance of housing for all, and to work towards the goals so that individuals and families and children can live securely and safely. and witness whereof I have here unto set my hand and cause the seal of the city of Tucson, Arizona to be affixed this 7th day of April 2026. Congratulations and thank you so much for all you do. And I also would like to invite um our speakers today. I believe Ancheka or Jason have some comments she'd like to add.

I just want to thank you mayor and council members. You have been unwavering in your commitment to equity and ensuring we follow not just the federal fair housing but creating even stronger protections for our families. So, thank you so much,

Jay. Uh good evening everyone. Uh thank you so much for this proclamation. Uh my name is Jay Young. I'm the executive director of the Southwest Fair Housing Council. Uh we take over 2,000 calls every year from people who are experiencing some sort of housing issue uh that's threatening their housing. Um we're available to anybody in Tucson and to uh residents throughout Arizona to help them uh enforce their fair housing rights. Um, and make make no mistake, civil rights in this country are under attack. Um, we had to lay off uh half of our staff this year because uh HUD did not uh get funding out the door that Congress appropriated. Uh, and it took a a lawsuit to get that funding uh unfrozen and and back into our communities. So, uh, it is so important to have this local support for fair housing. It has literally kept our doors open this year. Um, and so I just again want to thank mayor and council for uh your continued support of fair housing and not only support but going the extra mile with source of income protection and and just uh you know paying attention to this this important issue. So uh again thank you for the proclamation and happy fair housing month.

Do we have Zion Aldrete? Zion Aldrete with us today. Canon. Um, can we will be speaking on the source of income and uh housing protection and the housing first experience.

Thank you, Mayor. The city of Tucson changed everything for me. I found my voice through sharing my experiences and helping the community. Individuals that were previously in shelter, like myself and many others that were eligible, found stability with many resources, including the housing choice voucher that opened doors to real homes, not just programs like the shelter I was previously in, such as the Amazon Mo motel, but places where we can truly belong within the community without fear of judgment or discrimination. Uh, Tucson landlords gave me a chance and source of income protections means those of us that are starting over weren't judged based off based on how rent was paid. Today, I have space for my three amazing fur children, a beautiful little garden to take care of, and a life that finally feels like mine. Because of the city of Tucson, I'm not just getting by, I'm thriving. I'm so grateful for Tucson because Tucson has become my home and the community has been the my support system throughout my journey and uh Zion became a housing first uh navigator with the city of Tucson's housing first program and so he also has a job with the city of Tucson and we're so lucky to have Thank you.

And Cheryl Scott, also recent homeowner through Habitat for Humanity.

Thank you everybody. Um, first I want to thank God for giving me this opportunity to be able to cross paths with Habitat for Humanity. Um, they're providing housing for my two grandchildren and myself. Uh, I took custody and have had them ever since. I believe the door opened once I was in acceptance that this was a long-term commitment of raising these grandchildren that my daughter did not return to pick them up. So, I applied. Um, I was accepted. I've worked long hard uh sweat equity hours which is requested along with other things, but I am truly grateful to such a housing program. uh my granddaughter, she is now eight and she calls it her forever home. And so they are so excited and I just want to thank Habitat and other programs such as Habitat and everything else that the council and Tucson provides for us um grandparents, parents, middle class, whatever it may be. uh that housing is affordable, housing is possible for us to own our own home and now we have a future and stability where my grandchildren will grow up and know that there is something for them. Thank you.

Does the baby have anything to include? Yes. Uh, thank you so much everyone. Really appreciate the incredible work that you all do and we give the babies like this one. Look at how cute she is. We give her a safe, affordable home uh with equity uh to be able to afford it. So, much gracias. Thank you so much. And can we take a picture all of us? We're gonna have to get together. If you get a chance, talk to Charlie and get out and build some homes with habitat.

Yes, that's right. One of the coolest things you can do.

Thank you. Thank you, Felicia. So item 2D, appointments to boards, committees, and commissions.

City managers, communication number 92 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. There are no appointments to be made at this time, but are there any personal appointments to be made at this time? Seeing none, um I'm going to ask um my colleagues on the council to pro um provide me a point of personal privilege in moving items 9 and 10 before um all of the other items. I have a council colleague that um has very important work to be done with a child that is being recognized and participating at an event. So, if we may, um,

there's no objection.

There's no objection, then we're going to move on to item nine. Item nine, resoning, ordinance adoption, TP NT0323-00008, TP Veil substation, South Rita Road, RH to I1, Ward 4. City manager communication number 97 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. This is a request by Tucson Electric Power Company on behalf of the property owner, Unisource Energy Corporation, to reszone 125 acres of a 219 acre parcel uh from RH Rural Homestead Residential to I1 Light Industrial for the expansion of the existing Tucson Electric Power Veil 345 kilowatt 138 kilo um kilo volt uh substations with the construction of one, a new 200 megawatt battery energy storage system and switchyard, and two, a new 230 kilo volt transmission substation, a switchyard in a transmission power line, and three, a second 200 megawatt um battery battery energy storage and switchyard. and for an expansion of an existing 138 kilovolt substation. The city manager and zoning examiner recommend approval of the resoning request. Is the applicant or representative of the applicant present?

Good evening, mayor and council. For the record, Stephen Eddie on behalf of Tucson Electric Power. Are you agreeable to the proposed requirements? We are. All righty. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Madame clerk, you are requested to read ordinance 12238 by number and title only. Ordinance number 12238 relating to zoning amending zoning district boundaries in the area located approximately 8.7 mi south of the intersection of Interstate 10 and Rita Road in case TP ent 0323- 000018 TEP Veil substation Rita Road RHI1 and setting an effective date. Council Lee. Mayor, I move to pass and adopt ordinance 1238. There is a motion.

Second. There's a second to the motion. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying Oh, discussion. Yes, absolutely. Roll call. Councilwoman Lee. I. Council member Cunningham. Hi. Council member Dah. I. Council member Barahus. I. Council member Schubert. I. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz I, Mayor Romero, I. Ordinance 12238 passes by a vote of 70. Item 10. Item 10, approval of sight specific sales tax development agreement with Costco wholesale.

City manager communication number 99 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. Madame clerk, you are requested to read resolution 24101 by number and title only. Resolution number 24101 relating to economic development incentives authorizing approving a sight specific sales tax development agreement between the city of Tucson and the Costco wholesale for development of a retail facility located at 9748 East Old Road, Tucson, Arizona. Councilman Lee Mayor, thank you for moving these up and I move to pass and adopt resolution 4101. Second. Second. There is a motion in a sec second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, let's go to roll call. Councilwoman Lee I. Council member Cunningham. Hi. Council member Schubert.

I. Council member Barahas. I. Council member Dah. Hi. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. I. Mayor Romero. I. Resolution 24101 passes by a vote of 70. Thank you for granting me that privilege. Really appreciate it. Um, all righty. Now we go back to item three. Mayor and Council report summary of current events.

City manager communication number 94 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. This time has been scheduled to allow members of the mayor and council to report on current events. These are to be current events of activities within the community and opposition statements on policy issues. Does any council member have anything to report at this time? All righty. Council member Cunningham. I'm going to take this time to acknowledge uh the accomplishments of the 202526 Arizona men's basketball team. They went to the final four for the first time in 25 years. It's uh something that's a pretty substantial part of our community and it goes back to 1988 when I was a kid. Uh, my dad actually was working at the university at the time when we hired Coach Olsen and I even named my my youngest son after him. Um, I was a ball boy on those two teams. Um, I will say that uh we've done a lot of basketball stuff in the last month considering Palibberty High School and the Puma women's team today. But a lot of that has to has to do with the fact that here in Tucson we've created a really good atmosphere uh for youth uh as they pursue academics, arts, athletics, and activities. And if we have our youth uh pursuing those things, there's nothing that our community can't accomplish. It beats the heck out of way too much Fortnite, which also my 9-year-old son named Loot probably plays too much of. But the bottom line is I want to congratulate our student athletes, but I also want to congratulate all of our kids who participate in outside activities,

whether it's sports or music or dance, drama. uh or even the things like uh FBLA or some of the academic clubs. That's all stuff that really augments kids lives as far as their socialization, uh recreation, entertainment. So, congratulations to the Cats. Let's hope we go back to the Final Four next year. Absolutely. Oh, and bear down. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz.

Uh thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of um updates. Um March 24th through the 26th, I had the opportunity to travel to Washington DC for the National Bike Summit where I joined a panel highlighting Tucson's work with Fuga and Artugo bike share programs centering community engagement and accessibility. Um while on Capitol Hill, I also had the opportunity to meet with our congressional de delegation to advocate for safer streets and to raise concerns about potential cuts to transit and safety infrastructure. Uh currently Tucson ranks as the third most dangerous city in the country for people walking and biking. So making this work a lot more um urgent and personal here. Uh this experience reinforce the importance of ensuring our communities are represented in these conversations and continuing to advocate for equitable life-saving investments in mobility. And I'm really interested in seeing how we can get more of our community and young people to to go to DC and lobby for these issues. Um on Saturday, March 28th, um our community came together at John F. Kennedy Park to celebrate a major milestone with the completion of uh park improvements. These upgrades uh reflect the our reflection of community vision and investment in creating a space where families, youth, and neighbors can gather to play and connect. From the new fields to the inclusive playground and public art, and also a dog park. Um it's belongs to the people that it was built for. It had been more than 30 years since any kind of investment had happened at Kennedy Park. So, we got to celebrate alongside Tucson Mountain Little League um with a lot of children, a lot of families that made this moment even more special. So, it was great to spend that morning with you, Mayor. On March 31st, um I had the honor of attending Dr. Maria Tesos's 10-year anniversary remembrance. Um that was an important but also a hard um uh gathering um at the University of

Arizona celebrating and honoring her life and legacy for many students like myself who were able to go to graduate school um because of how she advocated um for uh first generation students um to seek a graduate degree. um I got to spend a lot of time with her and um I was unable to attend her services when she passed away 10 years ago because it's also the same time that I lost my older brother. So um on this Saturday, April 11th will be 10 years since I lost my older brother George to an accidental pentel overdose. So I'm holding um both both of them um in in my heart during this time. Um I wanted to take a moment to just give a big shout out um to Fuga. So today's Arizona Gives Day. So, if you haven't already given, don't forget to give to one your favorite nonprofit. Um, FUGA set out a goal to um raise $14,000 and in less than six days, we reached our goal um with over 200 donors with the average donation of $70. So, this is the first time that FUGA's fundraised, even though we've been around for eight years. So, it's really exciting to have that kind of community support. Um this coming Sunday, April 12th, um join us for a W one fuga monthly bike ride. We're going to be riding from the W one office to uh Clovia. Um so hope to see our community out there as well. And then on Saturday, April 18th, um we're having the Louis Louis market community procession ride. We're going to meet up at 5:30 and take off at 6 p.m. We're going to meet up at 4 4107 South 12th Avenue. Join Fuga for a special community procession ride celebrating the opening of Louis Market. This evening ride brings us together to move through the southside and community and celebration. We'll ride approximately seven miles before heading to uh Louis uh big grand opening. Um there there'll be um opportunities for guided tours and a lot of that work is a culmination of

Reason's work trying to do um community land trusts on South 12th Avenue. And then finally, Saturday, April 18th from 3:00 to 6:00, um there's an Earth Day garden party honoring sacred tobacco at Bario Kroger Lane Community Garden, 938 South Berdugo Avenue. Joint Plant Cruiser, um Alans Fontteras for a special Earth Garden party honoring sacred tobacco and indigenous traditions. This gathering invites our community to come together in reflection, learning, and connection to land and culture. The event will u take place at the garden. Um, and we'll have a prayer with our ATM elder Rupert Encas, teachings from Hershel Clark on keeping tobacco sacred and hands-on activities for all ages, um, making tobacco seed balls, um, and for adults tobacco oil. Um, thank you, mayor. That's all.

Thank you. Any others? Council member D.

Thank you, Mayor. I I too wanted to commemorate the basketball that's been going on. Not only Puma community's great success, but the closeness of the men's team and the great season of the women's team at the UOVA. I've had this ball for a while. It's slightly deflated as am I, but it's still a pretty good ball and we had a good time this season. We're going to have a great season next time. One more two more sports items. I've been meaning to join the city staff to do a softball tournament and I used to play softball. So, I put my name out as a uh free agent and I got picked up by a team lawn disorder. It's the city. Little did I know that we would have a hat and a team shirt and it is my color. And you know, I think of picking up trash can be a good sport. And Tucson Clean and Beautiful and Sonorin Institute and some other sponsors are sponsoring a 5K trash pickup relay race. It's going to be along the Santa Cruz. It's going to start in Ward three going down into Ward One. Come, you'll be um fed back. If you don't want to or if you're not able to do the physical work, you can volunteer at one of the stations where the trash will be dropped off. You can earn a t-shirt. I don't think it'll be that color. And it's called Oh, I lost it here. Um the Rio Rio 5K relay and you can get more information from either Tucson Clean and Beautiful and uh or Sorian Institute. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, council members. Any others? Councilman Lee and then Council Member Vakas. Just a quick one since Council Member D mentioned the employee softball tournament. I want to give a shout out to my staff member Martha Canrell. I know you're listening Martha. She came up with the concept of having the softball tournament about four years ago and we've been able to work to help coordinate that. And this is the first year I will not be able to be in attendance, but I wish everyone great success. It's always highly competitive and I love the trash talking. So, I'm really sad that I'm missing it. But good luck to everybody. Don't injure yourself. stretch before you go out on the field and have a good time on Saturday. And good luck, Kevin. Thank you, Councilwoman. Council member Barakas and then Council Member Schubert.

Yes. Well, from basketball to boxing to wrestling and from youth programs to the college level, Tucson's local athletes are making a powerful impact on the national stage. March was an exciting and eventful month for our community, especially in the world of sports here in W 5 and beyond. As a proud alum of both the University of Arizona and the University of California, California, Los Angeles, March Madness was truly a roller coaster. I would like to congratulate these ath these athletes and these athletic lead uh leaders. Again, congrats to the Puma Community College 2026 women's basketball on their national championship. The University of Arizona men's basketball team for an incredible run to the final four. So, congrats to the players, coaches, families, and you all the fans. To UVA athletic director, Desiree Reed Francois for her leadership. To the wheelchair basketball talent from across the nation who Tucson hosted at Male at the NWBA National Championship. To Bario Centro, boxing legend and dedicated community leader Neta Agreedo, owner of Alan Boxing Gym, for earning a spot in a professional boxing league. to Sunnyside High School grad Serio Vega, a wrestler at Oklahoma State, for finishing an incredible undefeated season in winning an NCAA National Championship. I don't know if Detective Pña's here in the room. If uh he is, I want you all to give him a round of applause because his 14-year-old Patrick Bea III, yes, captured his 14-year-old son captured a national title at the USA Wrestling 16U championships. Congrats to you and your family. And this young man will be attending Sunnyside High School next year. So, I'll probably be reading congrats in a

year. And as a UCLA grad, I also wanted to recognize Gabriella Hawkins, UCLA guard from Kamiro, Cal, California, who made history as the first Mexican-American women woman to win an NCAA basketball championship. So, congrats to you, Bruins. I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to the Sunnyside High School educator, Dr. Shannon Fuljek, who recently brought a group of high school seniors to our W 5 office a few weeks ago for a roundt discussion centered on their research on underdisussed current issues. I look forward to your final presentation. On Thursday, our W five team and neighbors of all ages were proud to attend the world premiere of Anita running now until the 19th at the Leo Rich Theater. Special recognition goes to Julian Eduardo, a longtime W 5 leader, for his incredible performance. Our W five neighborhood association leaders, residents, small business owners, families, and students attended last night's Safe City Connect meeting at Al PBLO Center. I encourage our Tucson community to attend one of the upcoming Safe City Connect meetings coming up Wednesday and Friday in person and also virtually online. These forums are important dialogues helping to shape a safer, safer, healthier city for all. Some upcoming events I'd like to share. You can now support local vendors at the Westro Tiangis neighborhood swap meet held every weekend from 8:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. at the Flowers and Bullets Farm. This Saturday, join Ward Five. Sorry. This Sunday, April 12th, join Ward Five in partnership with Sunnyside Foundation, Bio Restoration, Tucson Clean and Beautiful, Bario Spirit Yoga in the Las Vistas Neighborhood Association for Community Cleanup. The cleanup will take place 9 to 11 at 3200 South Forges Avenue followed by a

community party. Ganyada will be provided. Stay tuned for a town hall on extreme heat and climate accountability on April 22nd, which is Earth Day, with us here at W 5 um at Al Pedlo Center hosted by Veterans Power America and other community organizers. I did attend both your panel mayor and vice mayor and our congresswoman and climate leader Vanessa Ggo last week. It was an awesome turnout and I look forward to more conversations. And lastly, sometime this summer, I don't want to say the date because I don't want you all to get too excited, but hold the date for this summer soon, we will have a grand reopening celebration for Santaorita Park. More details to come. Thank you all.

Council member Schubert.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, I will open my current event report with an update about traffic violence that has occurred since our last council meeting. Um, at least four people have been killed by traffic violence since we last met. Um, these are folks who had families, friends, and communities. Um, it includes a 62-year-old who died on April 1st, a 37year-old pedestrian who was hit on April 4th, as well as two women who were killed in a crosswalk with a hawk beacon on March 19th, a 71-year-old and a 60-year-old who were beloved and known for their compassion and tireless devotion to their community. um and we hold their memory in our hearts. Um fatalities year to date, this time last year we only had 17 fatalities. Um we are currently at 26 um fatalities so far for the year 2026. Um past current events that we took part in is the W six office. Uh we attended the public safety communications department awards ceremony as well as the Tucson Fire Department's annual awards dinner. Um, we also attended the Silver Spike Jubilee um at the historic train depot downtown to honor the 146th anniversary of the arrival of the first train in Tucson. Um, if you have not been to the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum, um, admission is free of charge to community members and there's a lot of cool stuff to look at. We also attended the No Kings Rally. um the the NACTO which stands for the National Association of City Transportation Officials um they hosted a roundt along with the city of Tucson about um bike share programs um and shared micromobility. So that was really cool. Um I also attended my first ever Passover seder at Kolami Synagogue um and want to thank uh Rabbi Malcolm Cohen for welcoming us. And uh I also attended the screening of the mobile homes, the last affordable housing documentary at

the historic Y. Um it's a four-part documentary collaboration between Arizona Public Media and Arizona Luminaria about the hidden crisis inside Southern Arizona's mobile home parks. It is available to watch online if you missed it. I think it's a mustsee for housing advocates. Um, I also want to shout out the climate town hall um that I attended uh that Mayor Romero, uh, Vice Mayor Santa Cruz, and Congresswoman Adelita Grahala spoke at. And I want to acknowledge Kasakardo. I attended a celebration dinner at Southside Presbyterian Church last month. Kasakardo paid off their mortgage. It is a residential program for women and their children seeking asylum for a period of two years. So this gives them an opportunity um to get the support that they need to establish themselves in the US and to heal from the trauma related to migration. So congratulations to Kasa Cardo. And then upcoming current events, um there will be an in-person rates and fees public meeting on Saturday, April 18th at the Clemens Center. That's in W 6. There's also a safe city action plan session for WS 3 and six happening tomorrow at the Donna Lian Center. Um I'll be there. I heard the mayor's going to be there. Kevin might be there, too, because it's word three. We'll see. Um, these sessions are to provide information, share action items, and offer space for community questions about Mayor Romero's safe city initiative. You you can find a draft of the action plan on the website. So, we encourage you to take a look at that before you come to the session so that we can use our time um for more questions and and real discussion. Um, April 22nd is the last day to provide comments about your experiences with electricity bills for the attorney general's TE rate case. There's a telephoneon only option on April 8th and on Wednesday, April 22nd at 10 a.m. you can make your comments really quick before the hearing starts. Um, also Puma County residents are in interest who are

interested in serving the region are encouraged to apply for the RTA's citizens accountability for regional transportation, also known as the cart committee. Uh, preferred professional expertise includes backgrounds in audit, finance, and multi-project capital planning, project management, engineering, construction, land use, and more. So bottom line, if you're interested in serving um as the citizens accountability um body um for the RTA next plan, um apply by April 30th and details will be continued to be shared in the W 6 newsletter. And then finally um hope to see you at Clovia next Sunday. Um W 6 will be um at Catalina Park and we're going to have a bikes decorating station um and I heard that the firefighters are going to be there to spray people with their hose. So, um, hope to see you at Clovia. Um, should be a great time. And that's all I have. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Um, April is sexual assault awareness month. And this past third Thursday, I joined the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault on the University of Arizona campus to proclaim April as sexual assault awareness month. This April marks the 25th anniversary of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, being recognized nationally and here in Tucson. Um during the event, we stood in solidarity with survivors and honored the advocates who work every day to support healing, strengthening systems, and creating cultural change. This year's theme was 25 years stronger, looking back and moving forward. And it reminds us that while meaningful progress has been made, there is still so much work to do to protect people from sexual assault. Sexual violence impacts people of all backgrounds. It is a human human rights issue that requires all of us to be part of the solution. I am grateful to Sakasa for their decades of lifesaving support, education, and unwavering advocacy for survivors in our community. And as a past um board member of Sakasa, I truly appreciate firsthand uh the work that uh Sakasa has been doing for decades here in Tucson. And there is a way that you can support Sakasa. On April 15th, you can support them by just dining out. Uh April 15 is Dine Out for Safety, an annual fundraiser where community members can give back by simply sitting down and having dinner at participating local restaurants. As a board member, I know that there's going to be SACASA employees and board members trying to

sell you raffle tickets. Please do purchase raffle tickets from them. Um, you can find more information on dine out for safety and actions taking place this month by visiting Sakasa's website. And of course, you all mentioned Safe City Connect. I think it's really important that the community participate um by um adding their voice to the safe city action plan. Um, as the council member mentioned with Wednesday, April 8th from 5 to 8, uh, we will have a, um, meeting at Donna Leens. And then the third forum for WS 2 and 4 will be Friday, April 10th, from 9 a.m. to 12:00 noon at the Morris Kud Doll Center. Next week, Monday, April uh, 13th, we will host a virtual forum on Zoom from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. You can register online through the city of Tucson's safe city initiative website. We're so grateful for our community's engagement throughout our safe city initiative. You all truly care about your neighbors and fellow residents, and we appreciate you all making sure that Tucson remains a safe, thriving, and resilient Tucson. With that, we move on to item four, city manager report, summary of current events. City manager's communication number 96 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. This time has been scheduled to allow the city manager to report on current events. Mr. Manager,

thank you, Mayor. Uh, one major thing for tonight. Uh just letting folks know that the city of Tucson's Tree Resource Education and Ecology Center, also known as the Tree Center, recently received the Arizona Forward Environmental Excellence Award in the municipal sustainability and action category. Uh this was based on the innovative approach to urban forestry, sustainability, and community engagement. As a key component of Mayor Romero's Tucson million trees initiative, uh the tree center has produced thousands of shade and fruit trees, advanced circular resource use, and created meaningful workforce and youth development opportunities. This recognition highlights Tucson's leadership in building a cooler, greener, and more resilient future through collaborative high impact solutions. Congratulations to the team and especially our urban forestry program manager, Nicole Gillette. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Appreciate it. All righty. Item five,

liquor license applications. City manager communication number 98 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. Madame clerk, please read the liquor license agenda. Your honor, on the evening's agenda, we have one application for remote tasting room and four applications for special events. All applications are in compliance with city requirements. An appropriate motion would be to forward items 5B1 and 5C 1-4 to the state liquor board with a recommendation of approval. We have a motion, please. So move, mayor. Second.

There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion on this? If none, all those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries. Item six. Call the audience. Uh, madame clerk, do you have any any announcements?

At this time, any member of the public is allowed to address the mayor and city council on any issue except for items scheduled for a public hearing at the meeting. Call to the audience will last for 30 minutes and speakers are limited to three-minute presentations. The green light will turn on when you're called to speak. It will turn yellow when you have 30 seconds remaining and it will turn red and beep when your time is up. After that time, please conclude your comments. So, we are have a really big big chunk of uh people wanting to speak. So, I'm going to try and move us quickly through the call to the audience. Uh if you do hear someone before you say the same thing that you wanted to say, uh please save a little bit of time and then give it to the next person. Uh, but you do have three minutes to say whatever you need to say to the mayor and council as long as it's not explicitive. Okay. The first um the first speaker is Tom McKini.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Tom McKini. I'm the CEO of Interfaith Community Services. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today in support of the proposed energy collaboration agreement between the city of Tucson and TEP. Every day at ICS, we see how extreme heat, rising utility costs, and housing instability affect families, seniors, and people living on fixed incomes. When power is interrupted or bills spike, our neighbors face real health and safety risks. That's why a long-term transparent partnership focused on clean energy partnership transparent partnership focused on clean energy, climate resilience and affordability is really important. Investment into this agreement will translate into practical on the ground solutions, energy affordability programs that keep people in their homes, resilience hubs, backup power at trusted community sites, and workforce development opportunities, giving tonins really good jobs. This the agreement's flexibility is also important. It allows us to make changes as the best programs are built and change over time. This agreement provides stable, predictable funding for community organizations such as ICS um to allow us to organize organized, plan, build capacity. T beyond the power grid, TE shows residents in shows up for residents in practical ways that stabilize households and strengthen long-term opportunities just as what they do with other organizations with ICS. They help families avoid displacement. They help parents, single mothers in particular, get their degrees and complete training. They participate in cross- sector work as the prosperity initiative. They provide hands-on service at most of our

food distribution sites as they're there giving out food and they're a visible support throughout the community at every event. Their track matter, their track record matters. It shows that PP understands that resilience is not just infrastructure, it's people. I believe in the collaboration agreement that gives the K city a clear structure to align priorities and measure impact. I hope that you will support this agreement. I thank you for all your leadership and service to the community and for considering this agreement. I appreciate your time and I certainly appreciate TE. Thank you. Thank you, Robert Royce.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. This is my city council number 377. At least 10 and some of them were promoting automatic government for our city. And never was I more sure that I have been right this whole 25 years I've been back in this city than watching the Pimac County government and the city of Tucson government sitting down together uh collective Puma County administrator government and a collective city council uh I mean city board of directors city manager government the great collect effective. Um, now we've got two major problems. I 15,000 signatures. I could ask the voters to inaugurate a um mayor council government. But that still leaves us with one party government. 13 of 14 elected officials belonging to one party. If you're automatically going to be elected just by filing, why should you care about anything? The city needs a new party. Uh, I know how to collect signatures. I can probably get the issue on the ballot. The business of building a new party is something I've never done before. Um, but look at the situation we're in. We literally have no choice. Uh, now 14,000 signatures, 15,000 signatures to get a a basically an almatic government. And I still got to get past the oligarchy that's been squeezing the life out of this city. And that still leaves us with one party government. Now we can put a new party on the ballot for 2,000

signatures. 2,000 signatures and we will have a road to a better future for our city. We can run four financial responsibility, environmental responsibility candidates in next year's election. end one party rule. We can have a pathway to a friendly election to ask the voters to change to an alderman government. We could have a pathway to our much needed county sales tax to replace the city sales tax and basically we have a better future for our city. And um in any case, I will be talking to the elections department in filing the paperwork that the state requires to begin collecting signatures. We'll have until November by my guesstimation to file 2,000 signatures. I don't see any problem. Uh we can just almost assume that we will have a new party on the ballot for Thank you, Mr. Royce.

Next year's election. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Your three minutes are up. Thank you. Good evening everybody. ation um called Amistades. Um at Amistades, we're a community based organization because everything that we do is led and informed by the community. We're health equity organization, meaning the community's needs are ever changing and if nobody's there to listen, then we cannot collaborate in coming up with solutions. Strategic planning requires collaboration and partnership. And I'm here to support um the ECA and our friends at TE because they've opened their doors to organizations like Amisalas to say, "How can we help you? What can we do to help the community?" Because what we know to be true is that we can't just enter communities and assume that they're going to trust us. And we know that to be true for years and years. Um the community has not trusted um infrastructure. But we have something special here in Tucson. We have government who cares for our community. We have elected officials who have proven for many many years to show up for the community. And we have um organizations um the private sectors that care. And um I can speak to it personally because what we know to be true is nothing is perfect. No solution is going to be um ideal right off the bat. But we cannot get to the end goal if we don't come together and at least have conversations around how things can look better and how we can collaborate and partner with people in positions of power, people who have access to

resources and that are willing to say, how can we make this community better? And it won't be pretty and it won't be easy, but we're going to show up. We're going to show up and have those conversations. So, uh, the ECA is, um, um, a proposition, a plan forward, uh, for our city. Um, and I'm happy to be a partner and a collaborator, uh, with TE. Um, because even though we might not get it right the first time, I think the second time we'll get closer and the third time we'll get even closer and eventually we'll get there. But it requires the collaboration and the partnership and the intentional gathering of people who care for our community. And it requires us to show up humbly and say, "We might not have all the answers today, but we have people like Stephen. We have people like Wendy. We have people like Shaylin who say, "Hey, Amistades, come in here and help us figure this out because we don't know what we don't know, and we only know if we show up to listen." So, thank you um to our our our mayor and council for allowing me to come up here and speak on behalf of Amistades and in support of T.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Uh, median robotto. Hello. Uh, so I did email you guys this plot and I hope that someday you open your email and see it because I know you get too many emails. Uh basically uh what this is is the historical data of weather in Tucson for uh more than a hundred years. As you all know in March of 2026, for the first time ever, we hit 100 degrees in our city. And I went back and I pulled all the data and we never had 100 degrees in March before. So, um just a a little bit of uh h some highlights from this data. Um this is not just a couple outliers. Um I pulled this by the way from weather.gov. Okay, we can see a clear upward trend on the data. Um if we look at uh like a 100 years ago and we count how many 100 degree days we had a 100 years ago the median was 50 days per year. Um if we go up to like after the year 2000 and we look at the median for that period of time um from 2000 to two to 2020 the median is 68 days but from 2020 to 2025 the median is 83.5 days of 100 degree days weather. So what I'm trying to say here is climate change is here. Okay, we cannot take shortcuts. We cannot afford greenwashing agreements from TEP. We cannot put our futures in the hands of a company that is bragging about their

profits to the rest of the world. I am urging you to please delay the agreement with T. Press them to deliver better solutions. Shorten their agreement. I know we don't have $4 billion to buy them out. I understand that. Um, but I also want to bring some some additional data. TAP is actively working to bring large-scale data centers to the Tucson area. Recent studies show data centers create heat islands, warming up the land up to 16°. Can you imagine extra 16°? Because when I imagine I am worried about my daughter's futures, but what TP is doing, they're just they're just imagining our electric bills and they're just imagining the dollar signs, you know. So again, um I think it's shameful that TP is trying to worsen our climate emergency and profit from that. Please, I understand we want to bring investment to Tucson, but please bring the right investments, not data centers. Please. Thank you.

Thank you, Vanessa. Vanessa Ggo. Vanessa Ggo. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um, I am Vanessa Ggo. On behalf of the Sierra Club Grand Canyon chapter and Nogales Group and our thousands of members and supporters in Tucson, we want to express our support for the city of Tucson energy collaboration agreement with Tucson Electric Power. We are grateful for the work mayor Romero and the city council along with the city staff Fatima Maluna, Eric Garcia, Ro Lusk and other city staff for their work with their advocacy to implement the city of Tucson climate action ada adaptation and accomplish the policy goals shared by Sierra Club. We express deep dissatisfaction with the distrust of TE based on their continued efforts to promote climate changecausing fossil fuel such as gas fueled power plants and for putting data centers profiteeers over affordable life for southern Arizonans. With that said, we agree that this ECA stewardred by Mayor Romero and city leaders offer important accountability that may begin to restore trust between TE and the communities it serves and at the minimum maintain accountability tools. We also appreciate that this agreement means that for the first time TE shareholders will be investing in Tucson climate resiliency as well as the fact that there is a way for Tucson to opt out of TE if T fails to uphold their

agreement. Sierra Club Npales Group is grateful to have been included in the process of public input and will continue to support Tucson leadership efforts to implement the ECA and push for more accountabil climatefriendly energy future for Tucson in this crucial time for communities and our health. Gracias.

Thank you, Miss Ggo. Reyes Suarez. Good evening, mayor and city council. I'm here on the 30th day of the illegal war in Iran. Uh just today, our president threatened to wipe out a civilization by the end of the day. Um anyway, my name is Reyes and I'm a Tucson native and I'm representing myself. On March 18, TBD put up a page on the website about its use of technology and I want to talk about this and their lies of omission have speaks and outright lies. They talk about ethical use that they don't just ask can we instead should we but who are they asking not the public who they don't get permission to surveil. They talk about accountability and transparency with proper guidelines which sounds again like the police investigating themselves. The city of Austin had some of the strongest guidelines when it came to use of their tech such as ALPRs. Yet, they had some of the worst violations, searches without proper cause and victim vindictive policing without any disciplinary actions. They at least had a public transparency portal that log search reasons for public viewing, which TP hasn't hasn't offered. Uh they said they don't use facial recognition software in real-time public surveillance. That's just another way of saying they do use facial recognization in veto review. And surveillance creeps means the existence of facial recognition during review will eventually lead to it being used in life. Um that's just the way it works. The justification one thing existing right now leads to the next thing. We started with red light cameras, traffic cameras, then we moved over to ALPRs. Now we got drones. It's it's sickening. Where just where's the line? When does it stop? Um they said they don't use facial recognition to establish probable cause. Osensibly like APL PRs, it

doesn't determine targets. targets are selected previously and then tracked. And again, if DHS gets a hold of said footage data, they aren't allowing it following any due process. They're just picking people up and there's no court to see what their due cause was. Um, so probable or probable cause is worthless in that sense. We don't use technology to monitor people private lives or social media without legal authority. Legal authority here does not mean judicial warrants. It could literally be an administrative warrant from ICE and the FBI that doesn't carry any proper moment to justify this type of surveillance. Need to I remind you of the NP7 memo that labels anyone domestic terrorist if they don't hold traditional values on capitalism, religion, immigration, gender, race, and Americanism. The barrier for legal authority couldn't be lower. We don't share personal identify information with outside vendors for commercial purposes. Again, they're using thirdparty software with an AI blackbox. Meaning that the way this data is handled is only visible in the manufacturer, not TBD. This isn't served on TPD servers. It's being kept on AWS servers that's in the cloud. They couldn't delete if they wanted to. So, unless you physically control the data and are able to remove its content, there's no guarantee. As IM goes, once it's on the internet, it's there forever. Thank you.

Thank you. Yousef Yousef Farai, I believe it is. Yousef Farai.

Thank you, council members and mayor for allowing me to speak. My name is Yousef Faraj. I'm a graduate from the University of Arizona. Studied archaeology, museum studies, and environmental research. I've heard a lot of comments about people's concern about the temperature of Tucson along with the rest of the world, water resources. Um, I have an organization, it's in the its infancy right now called Omega Terraform, and I would, if it's permitted, it's my first time being at a council meeting. I'd like to leave um some information with my organization that can actually help Tucson um gain anywhere between a hundred to even several trillions of gallons of water back into our water reservoirs. Um I'm not profiting off of this. This is just a program that I've developed uh building harvesting centers around Tucson that actually act as free museum outdoor visitor centers that educate the public where they can actually go back to their homes and see where there might be overusing water themselves in some shape or form along with adding more water to the city plant um and our natural aquafers. Um, also I have other projects. I don't want to nerd out and give you all of them that has to do with reducing the temperature here in Tucson that I think you'd be interested in implementing. Again, I'm not interested in profiting off these programs. Um, this is just an organization that I started that benefits the community. Um, and I have other stuff I'd like to leave um, related to an event I did up at Mount Lemon where I had a open public water um, harvesting conservation program. Um, try to not make it boring and dry. Had a lot of engaging public events related to my studies um, in museum studies at the UVA. Um, and I've left a few of the surveys here, um, for you guys to read that has to do with some of the comments that some of the other members here in the community have

mentioned along with other members outside of Tucson community, uh, that would be interested in this project. Um, so, uh, you know, historically Tucson and this whole state of Arizona, um, between 2017 and 2025, we've we've used somewhere between 1.7 to 2.28 to a trillion gallons of water. I really believe that this project could actually possibly reach in the billions if not into several trillions. It's going after the 10 almost 10 trillion gallons of water that we lose to evaporation due to the modernization. It's basically building something to work in concert with modernization so that we can have those larger water resources by and also educating the public using museum study exhibits. Um, can I leave these papers?

Yes, please leave it with one of our clerks. We'll we'll make sure that we she takes it from you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Farage.

Kate Hutton. Kate Hutton. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Uh, I am Kate H. Hot. Hotton. I am the co-executive director of the Coalition for Sonor and Desert Protection. It is nice to see you this evening. I am here to express our support for the energy collaboration agreement with Tucson Electric Power. I will admit this was not our first position. We wanted more from the agreement. Uh, but this is not permanent. It's a first iteration that we can refine and strengthen over time. and you've already strengthened it based on the feedback that you have heard from the public. In the meantime, it lets us at least try to advance our climate goals here in Tucson. We've heard a lot about that this evening. The Citizens Oversight Commission is a critical part of our support for this agreement. We're hopeful it will provide transparency, accountability, and the opportunity to improve yearover-year or the opportunity to pull out of this agreement if need be. So we believe this is a practical step in the right direction and we encourage your support this evening. Thank you very much.

Thank you Miss Hutton Hillary van Osberg. Oh, that's never going to work. Hello, Mayor and Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm also here to speak on behalf of the ECA and uh TE. Uh I'm here as the director of the Children's Museum Tucson and really I just want to have the opportunity to share the impact that TE has had on the Children's Museum. We're celebrating our 40th anniversary this year and TE has been our longest standing supporter uh year after year. They help us with our field trip programs, our STEM um uh projects. They help us with exhibits. They are truly a great community partner. I can speak on behalf of our nonprofit, but I know that they are great supporters of nonprofits throughout the community. And when they say that this investment will go back into the community, I know that to be true. Um, part of the thing that is important to the Children's Museum and the support that they have recently um been a part of has been uh we're putting in a solar installation uh in our new building. Um, we've recently invested $5 million in a new building right in downtown. And part of that, uh, investment is going to include a solar shading structure. And that's the kind of investment that I think is very important to see in in this kind of a collaboration in coming together. um

TE's support as a trusted community partner uh for this kind of nonprofit uh solar project and through similar work with other nonprofits is well known and I'm very comfortable saying that we we think that this is a project that will be good for our community and we're happy to speak on behalf of it. Thank you ma'am. Uh, Olive and Amelia.

Okay. Our names are Olive and Amelia and we live here in Tucson and we are here representing the youth.

Okay. Humans are very protective of their things and it's illegal to steal. And yet every day we steal from our home, the very place that keeps us alive. We have come here because we are angry, but also because we believe things can change. We know you have thought about climate change a little in your work, but we're asking you to think about it more and and in a different way. The question is not what should we do to protect ourselves from climate change. It's how can we act to stop climate change?

We need you to do every possible thing you can because the climate is changing from our species's way of life and our and only our species can change it back and there's not much time left. Last year, the global carbon budget would have allowed at least an 83% chance of staying under 2.7 Fahrenheit, and that was used up. There's still a plan for a 50% chance of staying under 2.7 Fahrenheit, but that's just a flip of a coin. We don't want the whole world's future up to a flip of a coin. We need the emissions to go down faster than our current plan. We're not asking you to spread awareness. We've been doing that for years. We're asking you to spread action because we all need to change our selfish ways and you can make sure we can do that.

We could reduce the number of cars in our city if you leaders put more effort into public transportation. You should add more street cars, trains, and electric buses to our city so that people don't need or want to drive their cars. You should do that sooner or later because prices just keep going up and up and so does the warming of our planet. Then when policies change and only then the car pollution in our city would go down. We um also don't understand why Tucson doesn't require more sustainable energy sources built into buildings and other parts of the city. But not just that, we also think that people's total energy use should significantly go down so that even with more sustainable energy, we only use it when we absolutely need it. Our city our city should not support or buy from any factories or power plants that burn fossil fuels or harm the environment. Then to make your action count on a national or global scale, we need you to spread the action you take to other places and tell them to spread the action to more places. Because we are in the midst of Matt's extinction and we need you to do everything you can to protect our home, the plants, the animals, and the futures of your children. We need you to unite people. We need you to work together. Because in situations like this, there is no left or right. There is only life or death.

A do you want to you want to finish your thought? Okay. Um this is a message from the children. We need you to do everything you can to save the future of our world.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ben Riley. Ben Riley. My name is Ben Riley. I am a local retail worker and I am here today to speak to the mayor and council about the about public power. TP has been consistently price gouging the people and I believe we like our sister city Phoenix need to choose public power. We already have a great public utility system in our Tucson water system. So why are we beholden to TE? The reason is simple. Corporate greed. As a city, we are chained to TEP, a corporation that isn't even Americanowned. Why are we giving giving a foreign company control over our energy systems, especially one that abuses the cost of energy during the extreme heat of the summer months. The fact that the city is currently trying to put through a 25-year franchise agreement is unacceptable. The city owes the people the right to determine their future and must at minimum shorten the term length on this extension. I believe public power is the best way to give the people freedom of choice over their energy. With that freedom, we the people could choose how we collect our power and move away from wasteful energy and towards solar and other sustainable energy sources and make this city more affordable for all. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Frank Grihalva. Frank Grihalva.

Good evening, Mayor, vice mayor, and council. Uh, my name is Frank Lehalva. I'm a lifelong resident of Tucson. I have seen this city grow into what it is today. I walked home from elementary school on what used to be two-lane streets without sidewalks. Now they are five-lane roads, most with sidewalks. I grew up in a home with a swamp cooler. Now that home has air conditioning and an electric tankless hot water system and other electric appliances. This story repeats itself over and over again and requires continued upgrades to the electric facilities in Tucson. Schools, hospitals, fire stations, and police departments require safe and reliable power. As tech technological improvements are made to those facilities, the need for services to be reliable and efficient is even more evident. As a 41-year member of the IBW, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, I know firsthand what it takes to build an electric system, and I know what it takes to design one. I am here to support the proposed energy cal um collaboration agreement ECA which is tied directly to approval of the franchises establishes a long-term framework for cooperation between the city and TE on shared priorities such as reliability, affordability, clean energy, extreme heat resilience, workforce development, and transparency. As I understand it, over its 25-year term, TE would provide at least $2 million annually to support I'm sorry, uh to support these community priorities, creating a dedicated, predictable funding source and is not recovered through customer rates. As a community volunteer, I see other benefits to the community not not stated in the ACA ECA that would continue from such stability that has included monetary and kind

contributions as well as thousands of volunteer hours from employees and their families at TE. Importantly, the energy collaboration agreement also provides certainty around the community's energy structure. The agreement includes a provision that suspends city funding if the city were to pursue a path other than collaboration as a chosen path forward. I would also like to make a statement because I keep hearing about this public utility in the Phoenix area and there is not a public utility in Phoenix. There is SRP which is an agriculture company because of the the water rights but their public their utilities on the electric side are actually run by a board not by the government or a municipality. They are run by a board and none of the employees are government employees or municipal employees. So I just wanted to make that clear because I keep hearing that and it's not true. Thank you again for your time. I hope you support the AECA. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Griva. Ma short. Ma short.

All righty. Bruce plank. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. My name is Bruce Plank. I'm a resident of War 2. Um, I sent an email to each of the council offices earlier last night uh discussing a number of issues regarding the energy collaboration agreement and the franchise agreement and wanted just to highlight a couple of of aspects. I think the bottom line on the energy collaboration agreement is this. The city's broke and T is making a lot of profit. I think that there's a convergence uh that's been worked out and I think that that's a good thing and I support that. I think it's good that the GE shareholders are paying some money. It could be more, but they're paying some money to support the city's climate action plan. And I hope that they see the light and will put more money from the shareholders into the climate action plan. I appreciate the work that the mayor and others uh Fatima and Roy and others did very recently to make sure that the city was in charge of determining which climate action projects would be done, not requiring TE to sign off on that. Might be a small correction in the agreement, but I think it's important. So, I think the energy collaboration agreement overall is a good thing and that I urge the council to support it. Turning to the franchise agreement, however, I'm I'm urging you not to to vote in favor of the proposal that's before you tonight because of a number of things that I think are important flaws and I hope that that can be corrected. The the short version of that is that the franchise agreement

that was attached to the the agenda today is clearly marked as a draft except in the motion. It appears that it's a final document. It's not clear that there could be changes in the franchise agreement between now and the time of the election. And I think it's very important to let the public know that possible that it is possible to make, excuse me, to make those changes and to let the public know how and when they might do that because I think the old franchise agreement that the new one is based on has a number of problems and a number of people have pointed them out and um I hope to to add some of those. Um, but I think it's it's important to get this right and have the documents be as close to perfect as possible. And the third thing I want to mention is that um, a few of you were aware of and perhaps were listening to Attorney General Mays at her second town hall today discussing the rate case. The the point of it is and several of you council members pointed out that one of the things the council needs to do is protect rateayers. So on the one hand, I think it's good to collaborate with TE where there's crossover and there's commonality of interest. The rate case is not one. I think it's very important that the city strongly support um Attorney General Maize in her actions in the rate case to decrease the amount that TE might get in the hearings before the ACC. And one last little point is that I hope you're going to put out an election booklet for the uh for the franchise.

Thank you, Mr. Plank. I just wanted to clarify for you. The city of Tucson has intervened against the 14% uh rate increase. No, I appreciate that, Mayor. There's some other issues that I hope the city support. Thank you. Um unfortunately, I'm going to have to um call our last speaker, Richard Mayors. Richard Mayors, I we had a long list of people wanting to speak today, but pretty much I've tried to um give voices to the different issues on hand. Hi. Hi, Richard.

I want to talk about what a tremendous public benefit that that free fairs have been in the last several years. Um, it's an amazing equitable thing that's happening because there's no barriers to transit to anybody in this city. And there are many people who live in the city of Tucson who do not have cars or do not have the ability to drive cars. And as someone who has used transit a lot and as someone who just who who several years ago lost significant vision in one eye and really is not I don't drive a car very much anymore and I it's not a good idea for me to do it. Um I used the I used the bus and it changed my life. because I had the power to go back and forth between my shop and be safe. The bus is safe. I I know that there are people who think the bus is not safe for various reasons. There are things that happen outside the bus that aren't safe, but buses themselves are statistically very very safe. I'd rather be in a bus than be in a car. And I certainly don't like being walking along Stone Avenue, which is where my shop is, as the sun sets, which blinds me tremendously, and dealing with the cars that are right next to me. Um, so again, the bus has been a tremendous boon to me. It's allowed me to survive in my life. It's allowed me to gain confidence to be able to walk with the visual loss that I have. It's pretty scary when it first happens because you just your whole world goes upside down. you don't nothing makes sense. I don't I can't recognize people's faces anymore. Um, but there are I don't want to go on for too long, but the bus is tremendously equitable and I think and it scales in a way that nothing else does. I really appreciate El PBLO housing and the work

the city's doing with community um housing and affordable housing. That department is amazing. But it happens slowly and incrementally. Whereas when the bus became free, it happened all at once and I'm going to be very sad if that goes away and it's going to change things for a lot of people's lives. I hope you can think about that as this decision comes up. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That was the last speaker for call to the audience. We move on to item seven. Thank you everyone so much for coming to express your opinion to us. Item seven. No, Mr. No, Mr. Salvater, we No, I am so sorry. We're done. You I'm sorry, sir. We've already you We've already closed the call to the audience. Item seven, consent agenda. Reports from the city manager on the consent agenda received into and made part of the record. Madame clerk, you are requested to read the consent agenda.

Item 7 A, approval of minutes. Item 7B, authority to acquire right ofway for the Highway Safety Improvement Program Hawk Package One Project. Item 7 C, authority to acquire rightway for the Highway Safety Improvement Project Hawk Package 2 project. Item 7D, authority to acquire right ofway for the Billy Road modernization project, 12th Avenue to Country Club Road. Item 7E, amendment to the intergovernmental agreement for transportation funding between the city of Tucson and the regional transportation authority of Puma County for the 22nd Street I 10 to Tucson Boulevard phase 2 project. Item 7F, amendment to intergovernmental agreement for transportation funding with the city of Tucson and regional transportation authority of Pima County for the Valencia Road I19 to Alvaron project. Item 7G, intergovernmental agreement with Puma County and the city of Tucson for improvements to South Country Club Road, East Michigan Street to East Milbur Street. Item 7H, sale of city property on Congress Street near I 10 frontage road res 2022 1110 RP number 2663. Item 7 I, Greenwood storm water infrastructure authorization of construction expenditures for storm to shade projects. Item 7J, amendment to ordinance number 12120 related to perimeter wall at 5259 East Fort L Street Road. Item 7K, authorization approval of amended intergovernmental agreement with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to provide basic training for peace officer recruits at the Southern Arizona Law Enforcement Training Center. Item 7L, authorization for the Arizona Heritage Fund grant application to Arizona State Parks and completion of phase one of a historic survey for parks and recreation facilities in the city of Tucson.

May I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? But I I believe Madam Mayor, I have a correction if you if I may. Okay, go ahead. Uh on item 7G, the uh intergovernmental agreement between Pim County and the city of Tucson for improvements to South Country Road, East Michigan Street to East Milbur Street. Uh we need to correct the actual agreement, the agreement on 1.4. The second and third sentences should read as follows. On July 1st, 2025, county and city entered into a services agreement for design of this project and county and city now w wish to proceed with the construction for the project. No further corrections.

All righty. So, may I have a motion to accept the consent agenda and pass it with the stated uh changes? There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion on the consent agenda items? hearing. None. Uh we do need to go to a roll call. Council member Cunningham. Hi. Council member Dah. Hi. Uh Council Member Barahas. I. Council member Schubert. Hi. Vice Santa Cruz. I mayor

I. The items on the consent agenda are approved by a vote of 70. at 6 with Councilwoman Lee's absence.

Oh yes, 6. Sorry. 6. Item eight, public hearing, reallocation of remaining Proposition 101 local or residential street improvement funds for use on major streets identified by the independent oversight and accountability commission. City manager communication number 95 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. This is the time and place legally advertised for a public hearing. um to reallocate the remaining Proposition 101 local or residential street improvement funds for the use of major streets identified by the independent oversight and accountability commission. Um that is required by the truth in taxation policy related to the use of proposition 11 funding pu pursuant to resolution 22704. This public hearing is scheduled to last for no more than an hour. Speakers are limited to five minute presentation each. Do we have any speakers?

Uh, no, your honor. We have no speakers at this time. Okay. So, we have no speakers. Um, then we don't need to do we need to close the public hearing to close the public hearing. There's a motion and a second. Um if there's no further discussion, all those in favor of closing public hearing, please signify by saying I.

I. Any against? Motion carries. This public hearing is closed. Madame clerk, you are requested to read resolution 2410 0 by number and title only. Resolution number 21. 2410 related to transportation and Park Tucson, authorizing and approving the reallocation of the remaining local or residential street improvement funds for use on major streets identified by the independent oversight and accountability commission and declaring an emergency. What is the council's pleasure? Your honor, uh I'd like to move the item.

All righty. So, there is a motion to uh pass and adopt resolution 2410 and make I second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Let's go to roll call. Council member Cunningham. I. Council member Brahas. I. Council member D. I. Council member Schubert. I. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. I. Mayor Romero.

I. Resolution 2410 passes by a vote of 6. Item nine we did do earlier today. Item 10 was the same situation. Item 11, consideration for adoption of the energy collaboration agreement between the city of Tucson and Tucson Electric Power. All righty. City manager communication number 100 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. Madame clerk, you are requested to read resolution 24103 by number and title only.

Resolution number 24103 relating to city manager's office. is authorizing approving the energy collaboration agreement between the city of Tucson and Tucson Electric Power, formalizing the working relationship and declaring an emergency. What is the council's pleasure? Madame Mayor, uh, council member D. I move to adopt proposition 24103. Uh, there's a motion to pass and adopt resolution. Is there a second? Second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion on this item, Council Member Cunningham?

Uh, I actually I actually wrote it down. It's no secret that I have concerns regarding our arrangement with Tucson Electric Power. I believe that the model for providing such an essential public service, particularly when that service is ultimately controlled by a foreign holding company, is not the most effective or accountable arrangement for the citizens of of our city. That said, the energy cooperation agreement does provide meaningful value. While I continue to have reservations about the broader structure of how power is provided in our community, I believe the ECA is a reasonable and pragmatic document and I am prepared to support moving it forward. That really hurts, man. But it's true. This is a good this is a good thing. Um, in T, you've got a few wins. You I'm want to I want to throw it out here. You got a few more wins to win me over and we've got to have some more discussion, but this is pleasantly surprising that you've uh unified a lot of members of the community to get this going. Obviously, the mayor's leadership has had a hand in that. And so, for me, I'm going to support this motion.

Ready, Vice Mayor?

Uh, thank you, mayor. I wanted to save my remarks from the conversation earlier. Right now, I just want to show appreciation for the work of you, Mayor Rometo, our city manager, city attorney, and our fearless climate leader, Fatima Luna, for negotiating and continuing to push TP for more investment in climate resilience with the ECA. If the voters approve the franchise agreement, we will have a dedicated funding source for our Tucson Resilient Together plan. The Tucson community has become distrustful of TP based on their continued efforts to promote fossil fuels such as gas fired power plants and the recent request for a 14% rate hike. That said, the ECA offers some important accountability that may begin to restore some trust with the first for the first time TP shareholders will be sharing in the investment in Tucson's clean energy. I'm glad to see uh the exit clause built into this agreement that offers a way out for Tucson. If TP fails to uphold their end of the agreement, we could choose to save 5 years or 10 years bringing in annual investments to build up our local infrastructure, continue to learn and expand with projects on solar, micro grids, and the battery en energy storage system at Donna Lian Center. uh TP is paying to stay at the table which buys us time to look at public power options and plan over time on the best way to expand our energy indep um energy independence with public input. So with that, mayor, thank you so much. Thank you, Vice Mayor, Council Member Vahas.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank you all, everyone who has helped lead us to this point today. Thank you, mayor, for your leadership, your staff, the team, to everyone that has attended uh town halls over the years, all the community partners. I want to remind our community that the ECA is is city-led and the first in the state, and I'm uh looking forward to moving this forward. Thank you. Thank Thank you, council members. Others, council member Doll.

Thank you, Mayor. I too want to acknowledge that the anger and distress with much of the community with TE from the data center from the project blue finagle to the 14% increase and we dis up here we disagree with T on that as well. I I understand that sentiment having said that this is the first time in any franchise agreement in Arizona that a city is getting anything of value from what was once considered a routine utility agreement. We have these sort of agreements with other utilities and all all the cities do. Tucson is leading the way and I really hope that this will be an example to other municipalities in Arizona and elsewhere much like we took the example after being suggested to us from the community of what has happened in in San Diego. I understand that many of my friends and allies view the franchise and ECA as not enough. I understand that perspective. I kind of hold it as well. But we negotiated hard and there's two sides to a negotiation. We can't we don't regulate T. We don't have a huge amount of leverage. We've decided to work together for the public good. Um and this is as far as we could get and I think it we got pretty far from where we started a couple of years ago. We got what we wanted with a lot of input from the community. Um, so I think it will help us work towards the climate change, clean energy things we need to do that the the young girls were telling us about and which affected me and reminded me of my roots. Um, but I also ask that we not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Defeating this doesn't get us closer to public power. It doesn't get us closer to um energy uh community choice energy. It doesn't get us closer for the city of Tucson working on its climate goals. And in fact, we

will have to pivot and look for other money to support our climate action. Um I support moving forward with the election of this issue in the fall. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, uh Council Member Schubert.

Thank you. Um, first I want to acknowledge the significant work by city leadership and staff to negotiate these agreements under a tight timeline. Uh, there's been a real effort to bring forward something thoughtful and workable for our community. I also want to recognize the volume of public feedback that we have received from constituents who are concerned about the ECA and franchise agreement, including more than 33 emails and calls that we've received at W 6 in the past 24 hours. residents are paying attention and many have raised real concerns about rates accountability, about the length of the franchise agreement, and also long-term impacts. Those concerns have not gone away. Although we've heard many requests to delay this vote, I'm honestly not sure that more time will yield anything different. At the end of the day, there are still misgivings from rateayers, and it will be up to Tucson Electric Power to restore trust with this community over time. We all need to stay engaged on rate cases, on accountability, and ensuring stronger balance at the state level, including the role of the corporation commission. I also think that we're going to be keeping a close eye on the CCEES and building up community oversight and those processes. Um, and I hope that we can also fill those vacancies. The ECA is one tool in the toolbox. It's a way to ensure that some of the value generated here is returned to the community from which so much is derived. But it's not the only tool and it's not the final word. The voters at the end of the day are going to have the final word. Thank you.

Uh thank you council member Schubert. um you know as we worked throughout the years really it it hasn't been the last month or so it has been years uh in putting together in partnership with the community um an energy collaboration agreement. It was actually the community that suggested we do do this. Um, and the community has been coming along uh through town halls uh with us. And so it was their idea as as council member Dah um mentioned that we put an ECA together. And I absolutely uh believe in our responsibility as mayor and council to make decisions that move Tucson forward to a better place, especially when it comes to affordability, safety, climate action, and long-term resilience of our community. The proposed franchise agreement and energy collaboration agreement represent a significant step in that direction. Through this process, we have worked to ensure that Tucson secures dedicated, reliable funding that can be reinvested directly into our climate projects, our climate action plans, and implementation community and things like energy efficiency, reducing utility costs for residents, expanding access to renewable energy, and building out the kind of resilient infrastructure we know our future requires. This has not been a simple process for anyone involved. It has taken extensive negotiations, careful consideration, and clear focus on outcomes. Where we are today rep represents meaningful progress from where discussions began and it reflects the city's commitment to advocating for the

best possible outcome for our residents. At the same time, I want to be clear. This is not the end of the conversation. It is the beginning of a new phase. Moving this to the ballot gives the voters of Tucson the opportunity to weigh in on an agreement that provides real tangible benefits to our community. And if approved, our role does not stop there. We will continue to closely monitor implementation, ensure accountability, and evaluate outcomes over time. This agreement also provides us with something we have not had before, a consistent dedicated funding stream that we can leverage to accelerate local priorities. This creates an opportunity to scale the work we know is needed, especially as we continue to face rising temperatures and increasing energy demand. I want to be very clear on what I am about to say. We also have to be honest about the broader landscape we are operating in. utility regulation, state policy, and market conditions all shape what is possible at the local level. Within that context, this agreement represents a practical and strategic step forward, one that allows us to secure resources now while continuing to evaluate future options and opportunities as conditions evolve. And importantly, this agreement preserves flexibility. It allows the city to continue assessing new technologies, new policies, and new pathways over time. As we learn more, as markets shift, as opportunities expand, we retain the ability to make decisions that reflect the best interests of tonins in the years ahead. I also want

to acknowledge something that my colleague uh my colleagues uh mentioned earlier in the study session that we can work in partnership and come together for an agreement while still holding high expectations and acknowledging that we don't necessarily agree with everything TE does. We can collaborate collaborate with Tucson Electric Power on certain solutions that benefit our community while continuing to advocate for affordability, sustainability, and transparency. We look for that balance between collaboration and accountability. Ultimately, this is about being pragmatic and forwardlooking. It is about making sure that Tucson is not leaving opportunities on the table, especially when it comes to resources that can directly benefit our residents. And it is about ensuring that we continue to build on the work that we have already started on climate, on resilience, and on creating a more sustainable and equitable future for our city and for our residents. I just want to repeat the most recent draft of negotiations included based on the latest rounds of town halls that um the 2% escalator will now occur annually instead of every other year adding approximately $8 million and increasing the total investment from 56 million to 64 million if the city of Tucson and TP uh decide to stay the 25 years uh in the ECA and in the franchise. The city's CL uh commission on climate energy and sustainability will play an advisory role to help guide investments and ensure transparency and civic participation and the city will have full authority to design and implement projects. T

provides the funding and the city with input from our commission on climate, energy, and sustainability directs how those funds are used. At the end of the day, mayor and council will make the final call in terms of how we invest those funds, not T. Um, so with that, and if there's no other um input, I believe we need to go to roll call. Correct? Okay. So, let's go to

I think Kevin did. Council member D. I. Council member Barahas I. Council member Schubert. I. Council member Cunningham. Your honor, I have the next I have the uh ballot motion and I suggest we do that one next before we do the park fees. With that I Okay. Vice Mayor Santa Chris I. Mayor Romero I. Resolution 24103 passes by a vote of 6. All righty. Um item 12 is that the park fees?

Uh yes. Item 12.

So then let's call the election. So let's move on to item 13 first if we can. Item 13, calling a special election on November 3rd, 2026 to ask voters to approve or disapprove a new franchise agreement with Tucson Electric Power Company for electric transmission and distribution services. City managers communication number 104 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. Madame Clerk, you are requested to read ordinance 12239 by number and title only. Ordinance number 12239 relating to franchises pursuant to chapter 17 of the Tucson charter calling a franchise election on November 3rd, 2026 for the purpose of submitting to the qualified electors of the city of Tucson a ballot measure to approve a non-exclusive franchise to Tucson Electric Power Company for electric transmission and distribution services, calling the franchise election as a vote by mail election and declaring an emergency. Mr. Attorney, do you have any changes to make? Madame Mayor, I don't have any changes for this item. Okay.

Um I just to clarify based on a comment that I heard earlier, uh the substantive language is available for revisal up to 30 days before the election. Okay. All righty. So, what is the council's pleasure on this item? Madame Mayor, I move we pass and adopt ordinance number 12239. There's a motion. Second. There's a motion in a second. Any further discussion? Council member Cunningham, I think it's really important to acknowledge that whether you support uh the franchise agreement or not as it comes out that the voters should have a choice on whether or not it gets passed. I'll be supporting this.

All righty. Uh any further discussion on this item hearing? None. Let's go to roll call member D. Council Council Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. Hi, Council Member Schubert. I, Council Member Barahus, I, Council Member Cunningham. Mayor Romero,

I, ordinance 12239 passes by a vote of 6. Thank you. We go back to item 12. Item 12, notice of intent, initiation of proposed new, increased, and modified fees and updated discount program for Tucson Parks and Recreation. City manager's communication number 102 dated April 7th is received into and made part of the record. Madame clerk, you are requested to read resolution 24102 by number and title only. Resolution number 24102 relating to parks and recreation approving and directing publication of a notice of intent to establish new fees, increase existing fees, and modify certain parks and recreation fees, and to adopt an updated discount program, setting the date for mayor and council consideration, approval of the proposed fees, and declaring an emergency. What is the council's pleasure?

Mayor, I move that we pass and adopt resolution 24102. There's a motion. I second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion on this? Council member Cunningham, I can't support this motion. I don't like the way we're structuring the Kidco fees. I think we're passing up an opportunity to add sites. We're passing up an opportunity to have colllocated sites later. Um I I I I don't I don't really think this is going to turn out well. I think this is actually going to cost us co kid sites in the long term. So, I'm a no. Okay. Any other discussion points? Hearing none. Uh, we do need to go to roll call.

Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. Hi. Council member Barahas. I. Council member Cunningham. No. Council member Dah. I. Council member Schubert. I. Mayor Romero.

I. Resolution 24102 passes by a vote of 51. Item 14. Proposed November 2026 ballot question relating to the extending extending the 0.1% transaction privilege tax for an additional 20 years to fund capital projects at Reed Park Zoo. City manager communication number 105 dated April 7th is received into and part of the record. Madame clerk, you are requested to read ordinance 12240 by number and title only. Ordinance number 12240 relating to finance, parks, and elections pursuant to chapter 4, section 120, chapter 16, section 6, chapter 20, section two, and chapter 16, section one of the Tucson charter calling a special election to be held in the city of Tucson, Arizona on November 3rd, 2026 for the purpose of submitting to the city's qualified electors for approval or rejection of proposed amendment to Tucson Charter Chapter 4, Section 5 that will reauthorize for an additional 20 years after December 30th. 2027 the imposition of a onetenth of 1% city sales tax for the purpose of funding capital improvements infrastructure repair and replacement exhibit expansion and related improvements operations and maintenance at Reed Park Zoo specifying the ballot language for the measure to be voted on and declaring an emergency.

Um thank you Miss Clerk. I just wanted to invite the city manager to uh present the a little bit of the detail of what you have Mr. Tamir in terms of this item and um um if you want to add anything.

Thank you, mayor. I think the key points on this item are that uh the Reed Park Zoological Society has done a a tremendous job of shephering the public monies uh to date under the pre previously voter authorized um uh tenth of a cent tax. This extension would bring um the question before the voters of whether they would like to continue that level of investment. It would bring certainty to the not only the continued operations of the the city's uh Reed Park Zoo, but also the ability to continue expand and and improve habitat and and um the overall feature. It would include also some many developments uh in the vicinity of the zoo that benefit um the surroundings of the zoo including specifically re park and and and potentially high corp field in immediate proximity. It would also um extend the um current tax to allow u much of the operations to be funded through the tax which keeps um admission costs uh relatively low and affordable and and helps support the the numerous uh low or um reduced or free admissions that uh many Tucson benefit from. So it is um an extension of what has been perceived to be a successful program. uh but putting it before the voters so that they can ultimately decide um the the future of that of the zoo and uh this funding source. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Tamir. I wanted to uh thank uh the zoological society and its board. Nancy is here and I thank you so much for uh bravely um staying through the entire process of our um council meeting. Appreciate all the incredible work. Um, I too appreciate the revenue sharing with the city of Tucson and the entire campus of uh Reed Park, not only the zoo, but the entire park campus. Um, I think that is uh an incredible investment in in the campus of of Reed Park Zoo that we want to make sure that we continue um investing in the zoo and in the campus uh including on different um uh strategies to to uh enhance the experience for people to use that campus. So, thank you so much. Uh just to reiterate, this is a tenth of a cent. Um and we're asking to put this on refer this to the ballot uh for an extension and it's a 20year referral. So with that, any uh discussion pieces uh or anything from the council colleagues hearing? None. Let's go to roll call.

You can't go to roll call. Nobody's made a motion yet. We didn't have a motion. No, you can make a motion. Well, I was about to do it. Council council member as a guy who actually goes to the zoo with his kid all the time. I thought I'd make the motion if that's all right. First of all, Nancy, you've done a great job. it uh

it uh people don't know this, but my brother-in-law uh recently moved here from LA and um we're we're lucky to have him and he uh he's joined the UOVA uh staff as a physician as I think one of the one of the few microvascular surgeons in Arizona and we've had trouble attracting talent here and he has three children, my nieces and my nephew who are eight, seven, and two and they would not have gotten their dad to move here except they liked the zoo so much that they said we have to move to Tucson because the zoo is so excellent. I mean that that's true story. So with that I move this item second.

And there is a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none let's go to roll call. Council member Cunningham. Was that me? Yes. Am I saying it badly? Uh, you you're The microphone's going in and out. My apologies. So, that was a yes. Okay. Council member Dah. I. Council member Braas. I. Council member Schubert. I. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. I. Mayor Romero. I. Ordinance 12240 passes by a vote of 6. Item 15,

adjournment. Council will stand adjourn. The next regularly scheduled meeting will be on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026 at or after 5:30 p.m. Thank you all so much. Have a wonderful rest of your week.