Buckeye Council Splits 4-3 on Monteverde Rezoning Amid Traffic, Infrastructure Concerns, While Approving Water Policy and Code Reforms

GSMG. Thank you. The C Thank you. Thank you. The City Council will be a part of this important public process. Tonight, you will have the opportunity to address City Council on both agenda and non-agenda items. To get the process started, you must fill out a speaker request form in order to address the city council. Speaker request forms are located in the back of the council chambers. Please fill it out and deliver your completed form to the city clerk located to the right of the dais.

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Thank you. Okay Okay we call this meeting to order This is the City of Buckeye Council meeting for Tuesday October 6 2026 We begin with the invocation led by Pastor David Short from Worship and Word Church followed by the pledge led by Vice Mayor Goodman Would you please stand Lord, we come before you tonight. We ask you to anoint this time. Bless each of our council members, our mayor. Bless the city and its avenues of working for the city government.

We pray, God, tonight that you would anoint and bless every decision that is made, every comment that is given. We ask you, O Lord, to bless it and anoint it. We know that wisdom comes from you, and tonight we ask you to give us wisdom, whether in our comments or in our response. God, we thank you for everything that you have given to our city, and we ask that you continue to be a part of our city. To bless it. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, thank you both. Can we have the roll call please? Councilmember Yonker? Here. Councilmember Berry? Here. Councilmember Hagestad, Councilmember Beard, Councilmember Hustis, Vice Mayor Goodman, Mayor Orsborn. Present. Thank you very much. Item number two is comments from the public.

Members of the audience may comment on any non-agenda item of interest. And I have four speaker request cards. The first is Mike Oxlong. I don't know if that's yours. How's it going council? Mic check you guys hear me? Everyone's good? Okay. Last time I made you like.

It's been a couple months I feel like things weren't heard but anyway according to tract.com, Buckeye approved developer TRACT to build a massive data center in 2024, spanning over 2,000 acres, known as the Buckeye Technology Park or part of the Buckeye Tech Corridor. The $20 billion project is projected to feature up to 40 individual data centers with 20 million square feet of space. TRACT received its startup funds from ICOS. Now this is capital. This is critical.

ICOS Capital, excuse me, and is critical. In 2024, Alison Kompf was appointed CEO of Tract, who also founded Artemis, which is funded by Peter Thiel of Palantir and his venture capital firm Founders Fund. ICOs Capital has direct investment ties to Israel for early stage and scale-up tech companies. The firm regularly sources and partners with Israeli startups, collaborating with broader international corporate networks to integrate Israeli innovation into international markets.

Joe Lonsdale is a key partner at ICOS Capital and a co-founder of Palantir Technologies alongside Alex Karp and Peter Thiel, and has promoted the opinions of the lectures of Peter Thiel about the Antichrist. Since I first appeared here a few months ago, I made it abundantly clear that Flock, Axon, Motorola, Skydio drones, Xtend drones, Carbine 911, etc. are all funded by, run by, Israeli military intelligence, Epstein class people.

And then I open up my monthly newsletter right here and on the first page after your guys' faces is talking about gaslighting me that Flock is good and it's good for our safety. So it's very strange to me that I came up here and I explained exactly what the ties were. And at that point, you guys were able to claim ignorance. I handed over a packet of stuff that's all public information for everyone to look up.

So my question to everyone in the room, if a homeless looking half retard like myself can find their shit on the internet, what is so hard about looking into the investments that Buckeye is making? And we're talking like exorbitant investments. We're talking millions and millions of dollars that we're spending on all this surveillance.

So either we ignorant incompetent fully retarded or actively conspiring against the American people and the residents of Buckeye So all of you should ask yourselves in the mirror when you go home tonight seriously what going on I don know if people are lining their pockets or if there nefarious intent which I don believe that at all It's just we don't know what's going on. But when someone comes up here and is repeatedly explaining to you guys what's going on and the complications of...

Thank you Mike. Appreciate your time. Tim Holloway. Just so you guys know, it's literally treason. Tim Holloway, please. Good evening. I've lived in Buckeye since 2005. I'm here to give credit to JT and the folks that run The Sundance Park. They do a great job in maintaining it. I'd like to suggest that we have opportunity to maybe donate benches in the name of residents, have our names put on the bench.

There's plenty of areas for benches to be placed there so that people can enjoy the benches, the scenery. They do a great job. We should be very proud of Sundance Park. One of my concerns is the parking lot can be very dark. A lot of kids, small kids running across the parking lot coming and going to the playground. It'd be nice if we could get some lights out there. Also, there's too many motorized cycles with no lights zooming around the park.

Now I would like to congratulate whoever came up with the idea to put a three-way stop sign at Van Buren and Sundance. That was pure genius. Now, can we get one at Sundance? where it comes off of Watson Road into Sundance Parkway. Oftentimes there can be cars back all the way up to Watson waiting to turn at that Sundance intersection there. Next, I'd like to... My big concern is with the pop-up food tents.

On any given night, there can be anywhere from 8 to 12 pop-up food tents up and down Watson Road. Being a nurse for 35 years, I've experienced food poisoning myself. But here's my biggest concern. A lot of these folks, I have nothing against these people making money. I'm a vendor myself. In fact, last weekend I was set up over there at the Goodyear Square from the library, selling my novel that I wrote and a little craft I do with kids.

But these folks, they don't, very few of them pay taxes, they don't pay rent, and the standard of quality of food is questioned. I drive up and down Watson Road and there's a lot of empty restaurants who do pay rent, who pay taxes, utilities, overhead. They pay employees, they pay employee taxes. I had the privilege to talk to a young lady over at Staples a week ago who was making a menu, and I asked her, I said, well, how do you determine where you set up?

Well, sometimes we get permission, sometimes we don't, but we just have to move around when we can. And I'd like for you guys to somehow regulate or stop these pop-up food vendors who use burner stoves and whatnot. I mean, how do they wash their hands or go to the bathroom? A lot of safety concerns with that. I think my time's up. Thank you. Thank you. There were a couple items on there that Probably need attention. Maybe Kelby, can you connect with Mr. Holloway on benches and dark parking lot?

Ashley McKeever. Ashley. Michael Nussis. Good evening. My name is Michael Nussis. I'm standing here because our leadership has spent years of sleep at the wheel while neighboring cities outpaced, outplanned, and out-negotiated us. Mayor Orsborn, you've been in Buckeye's local government for 16 years.

16 years is more than enough time to set a high standard yet for over a decade we watched other West Valley cities aggressively curate their growth while Buckeye took whatever fell into its lap Look at Goodyear They have a smaller geographic footprint and less population than we do yet their leadership had the foresight to build GSQ and the Goodyear Civic Square They didn just build a strip mall they curated a true downtown destination with highly coveted upscale options like Trader Joe Postino Flower Child J Crew and Nordstrom Rack Meanwhile, what was Buckeye's strategy during your 16 years of influence?

We leaned on blanket passive tax incentive programs that automatically handed out breaks to massive industrial hubs, data centers, and millions of square feet of concrete warehouses. These projects bring semi-track traffic to our commutes and strain our water grids, but they do not bring the quality of life we deserve. I know the city is finally trying to course correct.

We only truly began embedding performance metrics into major contracts around 2023 with the Verado Marketplace Agreement, and we didn't officially write it into a citywide strategic plan until 2025. But my question to you, Mayor, is why did it take 16 years to finally react? Why do we have to lose out on top-tier retail, watch our infrastructure hugely fail into a deficit, and witness Goodyear build a vibrant downtown core before this leadership realized that passive handouts don't work?

Because of this inability to react sooner, developments like the Verado Marketplace feel like a standard suburban layout with the exact same corporate chain restaurants found all over the Valley. rather than a curate destination like GSQ. We gave up our leverage early on and now we're playing catch up. Mayor Orsborn, Buckeye residents shouldn't have to drive to Goodyear just to buy groceries at Trader Joe's, Orange Area Quality non-chain debtor.

Moving toward performance-based incentives is a start, but it shouldn't have taken an infrastructure crisis and a decade of missed opportunities to get us here. We need leadership that anticipates the future, not a government that only shifts strategy when it's already left behind. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to item number three awards presentations and proclamations. We do not have any tonight.

Item number four is consent agenda items and new business approval of items on the consent agenda. All items with an asterisk are considered to be routine matters and will be enacted by one motion and vote of the city council. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a council member requests. This section may include the approval of minutes from previous meetings. Council on the consent agenda. What is your pleasure? Mr.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve consent agenda items 4A as in Adam through 4K as in King. Second. I have a motion for approval of the consent agenda and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. And opposed? And the consent agenda passes unanimous. On to item number five, public hearings, non-consent and new business.

5A, council to hold a public hearing and take action on ordinance number 27-26, approving a major amendment to the Monteverde Community Master Plan as described in case number PLZZ24-0013 related to approximately 156 acres within the CMP, modifying the CMP land use. Plan to expand opportunities for commercial multifamily residential and single family residential development in the amendment area and providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and severability. Mr Ken Glicca.

Ken Glicca Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. Good to be before you again this evening. As the Mayor mentioned, this is a major CMP amendment proposal to the Monteverde Master Plan. I'll tell you a little bit more about that. The applicant this evening is Jeff Bliley of Gilbert Bliley PLLC on behalf of the owner Sunbelt Land Holdings LP.

Sunbelt is, many of you probably aware, the developers of Buckeye Commons East and West, which is the development south of I-10 at Verado Way on both the east and west sides with the Costco and Home Depot and various other businesses. Tonight's request again, major amendment to that Monteverde CMP. Location of this, which will be shown on the map on the next page, is Miller Road, just on the west side of it, stretching from Lower Buckeye on the north down to Warner Street on the south.

It's approximately 156 acres highlighted on these three maps. Just walking you around the aerial photograph, you can see the subject property itself is used currently for agricultural purposes for farming. Surrounding properties include Northwood Park Estates, which is a rural residential community to the south of Warner Street. West Park, residential to the west, single family also.

North of Lower Buckeye are the two large distribution centers on the Miller Corridor, the Five Below and Funko distribution centers. And then east of Miller Road, primarily currently used for agricultural purposes, there are some scattered developments It's in that area, including McCain Elementary, as well as a Christ's Church of the Valley that's currently under construction out there.

The remainder of it is zoned for Mass Depline Community primarily for residential uses, but nothing has occurred on that to date. Directing your attention to the two other maps, the zoning map and the general plan map, the zoning map shows that this property and the property to the east are that brown color. That's the Monteverde CMP. The West Park CMP is the blue color to the west.

The surrounding property to the north is General Commerce, which is an industrial type of district, and to the south, rural residential. Most of the area, well, it's a relative even mix of Master Plan community and the General Plan as well as neighborhood and business commerce. So basically all of the uses typical for kind of a freeway interchange proximity, proximate area, The Monteverde CMP stretches all the way to Watson Road, just to give you an idea how big it is.

It's several thousand acres, but this particular CMPA is applicable only to this 156 acres that I just showed you on the previous screen. The primary purpose of this amendment is to modify the land use plan. On the right side of the screen is the current approval from 2010 land use plan. And then on the bottom is the proposed. I will walk you around this, but in concept, you can kind of see it's very similar in terms of a layout anyway to what was already approved.

The existing CMPEA has a commercial corner right at Lower Buckeye and Miller and different residential densities clustered around it around a centralized open space. The proposal maintains commercial at the corner, though it does increase the size from just a portion of this quarter of the property to the entire thing. And then maintains residential uses on the remainder of the property.

It does increase density from what is currently allowed from about two and a half or 2.7 units per acre up to 5.5. And that includes various types of single family here, here, and here. And then a parcel designated for multifamily, which could be, you know, three-story apartments maximum on this brown portion that doesn't have any direct borders with any of the existing single-family residential.

The unit total there that I mentioned, 862 maximum units, there's certainly no guarantee that they're going to achieve that. But if they did, that would be the maximum and that does include the density of any multifamily within that calculation. The commercial area I mentioned does increase almost more than three times from 15 to 51 acres. And then I mentioned the multifamily. Specifically talking about the commercial corner, The CMPA has a very specific set of permitted uses.

It doesn't tie directly to a zoning district and say all C2 uses or all BP uses are permitted. So we work with the applicant, Mr. Blyly, to come up with a list of uses that we thought were appropriate for this area. Primarily, those are retail, restaurant, service, office, entertainment, and institutional uses. The same types of uses that Mr. Blyly's client has developed In the Buckeye Commons project, shopping center type of things.

There are limited business park uses proposed to be permitted within this project. As long as they're 400 feet from Miller Road, so they wouldn't occupy the Miller Road front ends, that would be preserved for the retail type of uses. And the buildings would be limited to 50,000 square feet, which is in the…if you talk about Business Park, to give you an idea, the city's landing building is 200,000 square feet.

So this would limit it to a quarter of the size of the landing facility that we're occupying. And the height would be limited to 40 feet, which is pretty standard commercial height, not an industrial type of height.

There would not be any heavy industrial uses allowed The types of business park uses that they considering would be small spaces with an office showroom in the front for a small business and maybe they have an inventory storage in the rear but nothing of any sort of significant scale In addition to the the land uses that we just discussed this does include a variety of residential standards within this amendment that's designed to cover a variety of housing products in furtherance of our goal to attract different types of products that different people want.

Not everybody wants a A traditional detached single family house. Some would like a cluster home or patio home or a townhome for less maintenance purposes, exterior especially. So those would be supported in some of these areas. And again, the multifamily parcel would be limited to a height of three stories. All of the development standards for those are standard.

The commercial district development standards are based on the C2 district with no deviations, and they are exceeding our open space requirements by providing 20% open space across the whole property, as well as a western trail and buffer. I'll show you on the previous map. Where the site directly adjoins West Park, currently there's local streets that kind of loop here, so no house directly abuts this site.

But nonetheless, we've asked for a landscape trail buffer along this West property line, which will be a 30-foot wide buffer, including a trail surface and landscaping. I just wanted to highlight this particular image. This is only one, just to go back. This is one of many images within the CMP depicting things that could be built in portions of this. And I know there was some attention drawn to this particular image, and I wanted to talk through a couple things.

Number one, this building here is not designed to be a warehouse or you don't see truck loading on this building. This is more of an office or research and development type of facility. Certainly something like this, if it met the height restrictions and whatnot could be included. Staff believes this is an attractive looking building, but certainly we could work through architecture if there were concerns over that.

If this were a warehouse, it would be limited to, again, the 50,000 square feet, which would just be a percentage of the building that you see on this screen here. There was a neighborhood meeting very well attended back in May, about 30 residents, maybe a few more than that. All the typical concerns, traffic, potential for impacts on the adjacent neighborhoods, buffering, screening, all the normal stuff. The applicant was very responsive to the feedback they received.

They did revise the proposal. to lower the density from what was originally provided, restricted some additional commercial uses beyond what was originally planned, and provided that western buffer that I mentioned.

We did receive some written comments before the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting along the same lines, and then at the PNZ meeting, there were two speakers, both residents and surrounding area, One in support and thankful to the developer for addressing their concerns and the other still with some remaining concerns though I wouldn't characterize them as being overly concerned. Both school districts have confirmed adequate existing or planned capacity.

The proposal is consistent with the general plan designation because it is master plan community, which is intended to be guided through these types of CMP amendments. We feel from a staff standpoint that this is an appropriate location to provide some increased residential density is close to the freeway. That is where you typically like closer to the freeway, but not directly adjacent to the freeway is where you kind of like to have that density, give them, give the most of the freeway.

give the most amount of residents the easiest direct access to regional transportation. The land use plan, we worked carefully with Mr. Blyly to transition the uses to have the least impact on surrounding residents. So that means the lower densities abutting West Park as well as Northwood Park Estates.

I mentioned several times the separation of the trail corridor that provided that help offset impacts even further With regard to the commercial uses, specifically the ones that I spoke through, we think they're pretty restrictive, much more restrictive than what our code typically would allow in a commercial parcel and we do feel it's appropriate for this particular parcel. This does not, I just want to highlight again, permit conventional large-scale warehouse distribution within this CMPA.

The type of product that it would allow would be a small business, maybe a contractor of some sort who wants his design center and a small store room in the back. All the open space trails designed within this proposal are above city standards. So with that, Mayor, Council members, staff is recommending approval of this proposed CMPA subject to conditions A through Z. This is a public hearing. I'm available to take questions. Mr.

Bliley doesn't have any prepared remarks but is available should you have any questions for him. Okay, thank you, Ken. We will first open up a public hearing and I have one speaker request card. Tracy Wolf. Come on up. Hello, good evening. Thank you for letting me speak. I was the one person last time that opposed the multi-family housing. And parcels, the lower two parcels along the north park, those are also high density.

And I can't wrap my head around how that canal, high density homes, the apartments will all just fit all that traffic comfortably, wanting to turn north to hit I-10. I agree it's a quick route to get to I-10, but if I'm facing east and leaving my apartment community, how am I going to be able to easily turn north to hit I-10?

I just can't wrap my head around that size of construction project and would love to see that multifamily plot move across the street when that portion near the elementary school develops.

I don't see multifamily fitting well, no matter how you look at it, no matter how it's designed, those second and, Heaven forbid a third story apartment building, they're going to look over into everyone's yards, whether it's a rental home or I'm hoping more owner occupied properties will be available rather than the West Park Reserve, which is nothing but rentals. Beautiful community. But I'd like to see, you know, a more calm environment. Parcel A, I believe it is.

I'm not sure why that's zoned or purportedly going to be zoned medium to high density also. That seems like a really weird, A place to tuck back some high density needing again to travel out on lower Buckeye and then north ahead on Miller to the 10. And I'm not sure why parcel F and A are just not unanimous or uniform because again those residents that share that portion despite the 30 foot setback and landscape trail if we have some high density there I don't know it just doesn't fit.

And cosmetically, I'm kind of a stickler for that too. We see all these little cluster gated single story. I don't know if they're considered multifamily because they're not attached, but they're like little cluster homes. And they're just so bland and gray and look like little mini prisons from the freeway, much like I don't know what's going on just north of the freeway and west of McDowell there in the Murado area. I'm like, what are they building over there? They're flat roofs, they're tan.

Granted, they kind of blend in with the desert, but aesthetically I wouldn't go, oh honey, let's go look over there and see what those rentals are about. So I'm hoping for whatever happens. It's beautiful, it's unique and not cookie cutter like most of what you see. And that whole commercial thing, I'm reading an article in Buckeye paper, shops are not guaranteed. And I get it.

It'd be nice to have some, you know, opportunities for like a developer to have his, you know, design shop and samples of his hardwood floors and wallpaper and whatnot. But I don't know that that size of building is going to be able to accommodate enough of that type of business. Y'all could move City Hall there if you want. Thank you very much. We're not going to open up that can of worms here.

Can you speak to some of the questions that were brought up regarding the multifamily and what the single family residential is around? Mayor Mrakas Yeah Mayor Mayor Mrakas And also just probably to note I don think this deals with traffic and traffic movements what we considering here tonight but maybe an idea based on the map of what that would look like Here comes the attorney.

Jeff, with regard to the access issue, we do have a TIA that's Pioneer Street that's on the north side of the multifamily piece. Can you bring back up the map? That would be the main access. And the reason the multifamily is there, it's because next to the commercial, which is kind of what you want to see in a planning effort.

But there'll be a collector road that runs right on the north side of that between the commercial and the multifamily, and that will tie in with Pioneer on the other side of the road, and that'll be a signalized intersection. So that's going to provide the real access. And I'm not sure why. The other parcels surrounding it are all single-family residential. They're not high-density residential.

I mean, there's different nomenclature with medium density and things like that, but it's all single-family residential. So you wouldn't see bungalow-type products there. You wouldn't see multifamily products there. You would see single family detached one and two stories that type of development. But single family for rent, right? No, no. Or is it deeded? It's deeded.

Yeah, the only multi-family piece that you've got for rent is the multi-family piece that we have right on Pioneer Street, just south of the Correctional. The rest is going to be traditional single family of various density. You know, like Ken pointed out, it's going to provide a lot of different home products.

You could have, you could have townhomes, you could have single family attached, but it's all, It's all for sale product of variety of densities and can point out even when you add in the multi-family overall, the overall density is only 5.5 and that's with the multi-family piece being at about 20 I think units to the acre. Vice Mayor. Yeah, Jeff, acronyms are a big thing. Can you explain what TIA means? The traffic impact analysis. Not a mini stroke.

Yeah, so anytime we do a zoning case, we have to submit a traffic impact analysis, which we went over. It was very thorough. We've been at this process for about two years on this piece of property, met a number of times trying to get the uses down. As Ken pointed out, we had a very robust neighborhood meeting, and we made a lot of amendments to that. For instance, the piece at the south corner, south east corner, we initially had that kind of a candy stripe for commercial.

There was some concern about that commercial being close to Warner. So we removed that, changed it back just to single family. So, yes, the TA, the traffic impact analysis, what we did submit, and the city's reviewed it and approved it. And so all of our access, most of the access points on Miller have been identified. And then, of course, that Pioneer Street being a collector through, and then there's a north north south collector that'll go up to Lower Buckeye, which is a minor arterial.

Mayor Mrakas- Right. Thank you. Mayor Mrakas- Mayor, I can address a couple of the other points. I think all of us cringe and know the project, Single-family for rent project that the speaker talked about that has flat roofs and looks like a gray prison. We're not proud of that project. That is unfortunately in a zoning district, a CMP, the Brado CMP that restricts staff's design review authority. It's entirely left to the discretion of DMV, the master developer. We don't do that anymore.

We maintain city control over design, and I would tell you without a shadow of a doubt that that particular project would never see the light of day. We have very strict design standards that require not only interesting and good-looking products, but varied designs so that if you did have a bungalow type of community, it wouldn't be the same house repeating and repeating.

It would look like a traditional neighborhood where you have five or six different house types different roof lines different. Arrangements of features, so that it felt like a traditional neighborhood so that one is it's a sore spot for everybody. I think there's there's an unmet demand in Buckeye for those types of alternative products, especially for empty nesters or young professionals who don't want to take care of a yard. And this would would allow some of that. It doesn't require that.

It could all be traditional single-family homes if that's what the market warrants. But it gives that option. Okay. Real quick on that. Ken, you said that you said that there was not intended for that type of product, but is it allowed? Intentions, I mean, it's a pretty vague word. And Mayor, Councilmember Yonker, when you say that type of product, you're talking about multi-family? Yeah, or the density. Well, the density is very specific.

So it has this chart here and it says how many units can develop in each of these colored areas and that totals between the one, two, three, four, five residential parcels, that 862. So that's pretty clean cut in stone there. Whether you could do a for rent product in one of these with those densities, I'd have to double check the language.

It might be possible, but it certainly doesn't allow for what we think of as traditional multifamily on any of the parcels except for the one, This rectangular piece in the middle without frontage on Miller, but without any frontage against any of the other residential. Okay. And approximately how many more units are going to be able to be built on this from the 2010 plan? Mayor, Councilmember, about 429. More? Yes. Okay. And what is the anticipated population of those 800 and whatever? Yeah.

I mean, if you use the, sorry, Mayor, Councilmember, if you use the average household size for the Maricopa County region, about 2.9 residents per unit, you're talking 2,400 or so people. Okay. So, it's also concerning that we had 30 people show up to the community outreach and in that 30 people that were there, were you there, Ken? Was there anybody that was high-fiving and thumbs up and want to get this project go, go, go? Or was everybody that showed up not a big fan?

Mayor, Councilman, I hate to paint with such a broad brush. I would say the people that spoke, which is not everybody, which probably wasn't even half the people there, they tended to be on the more negative side. So that's the community members weren't real happy, it's their community that weren't real happy about the prospect of this being in their neighborhood. At that time, that's correct.

One of the more vocal gentlemen at the neighborhood meeting came out to the planning and zoning commission meeting last week in support of the project and thankful that the applicant worked with them to resolve their concerns. I'm hopeful that the reason that there's only one speaker here tonight is because most of them feel that way. But that's a presumption. Yeah, hopeful. I think that it's something that's very concerning.

You know, it's some the, you said the staff thought this is a good use for the property. I think that that's a little bit of a jagged pill to swallow because if you count between baseline and lower Buckeye, we've got 7 multifamily projects that are either completed or in different stages of whatever. That quick math, quick councilman math, I don't have my, I still have my shoes on, so the numbers aren't going to be right.

But that's probably around 10 to 12,000 people on that road that would be living in those seven developments. That's probably a little conservative of that number. I know we have lots of plans for the roadways and things of that nature as development happens, you know, growth pays for growth until it doesn't. Thank you, Patrick, for that. I think that this is a very tough sell for me because of what we're looking at with the number of people that we're going to live in that area.

And, you know, we still don't have, we're working on it, from my best of my knowledge. We still have a great plan and a timeline for when we're going to get the crossing at the R.I.D. canal built.

I know that it's in the works, working through all the things, but I think that until we start throwing thousands of more people, we need to have a plan and be smart about how this is going to affect the people that are there now and the people that are going to be there in the future is that we just have this can read at a bottleneck I think it I think it not a great way to go So thank you Thank you councilman. Let's can we address that.

Particular point, we'll keep going through the council comments and then I'll close the public hearing. Uh, maybe, uh, oh, sorry. I was gonna just some of the numbers might have been a little large, uh, even if there were seven multi-family projects at 300 units, 300 units per project is 2100 units. I'm very close to right. If you want to check it out and get back with me on it, I'll let you do that. But there's a lot.

Yeah, I just, I don't think it's 10, but, um, again, Miller Road is being expanded. I think that that project is underway right now for the expansion. So, and given the proximity to the freeway, this makes it, to me, in my perspective, it's a good location for additional density, given how close it is to the freeway and with Miller Road going in. This site is not going to be developed with any residential for probably three to five years.

I mean, it's going to take that long to go through the plaiting process, do everything else, the infrastructure, all that has to happen before we can even, you know, pull a permit for a house. You know, we did have a robust neighborhood meeting. I think Councilman Beard was there. I don't, I think there was a lot of comments that we addressed during the neighborhood meeting.

I think the reason, typically the reason when we don't see as many people at the PNZ commission and the council is because we've done a pretty good job of addressing the concerns. We reduced the density by 15%. We reduced the density on the multifamily fees by 20%. We eliminated a commercial piece that they didn't like. We added a buffer. We provided all the same notice to everybody that was there that these hearings were coming up and we had one person show up.

Actually, two people show up and one person who was at the neighborhood meeting got up to actually say we did a good job of addressing all of their concerns. So, you know, we're hopeful that we can get support for this project because we really think that this is the right plan for this area, given that it's going to take time to develop out. I'll let John talk about the Miller.

John, and maybe talk about the requirements of what this project is required to build in relation to Miller Road and then everything else that's going on at Miller. Yes, John Willett, Deputy Director of Transportation Development Services Department, Mayor, Council Members. So typically a development of this side will be required To design and construct their half street of the frontage.

If you all may remember, we applied for a MAG grant, received some funding to improve Miller Road from Lower Buckhead of Broadway to four lanes, two lanes in each direction, median, street lights, and all that. The city has since pivoted since that grant funding. We were working with the developers to say, let's go ahead and go to three lanes in each direction. So we would work with the development to say, hey, you would have normally, and I'm going to use just numbers for discussion.

You normally would have spent $50 to do your half-fid improvements, give it to the city. We've also worked with the property on the east side. If you recall on the Copper Basin rezoning, the Gabbage property was supposed to dedicate the right-of-way for, I'm sorry, Copper, I always say Copper Basin, that's one of the now counties, sorry, my bad. Copper Falls development, they were going to dedicate the right-of-way. They since done that. So we have that right away in place.

So in the meantime, we've selected a consultant. They're moving forward with the design. The goal is to do construction starting in fiscal year 28. Now, does that mean July 1st? Does that mean December 1st? Does that mean March 1st? I can't tell you the exact day till all that stuff falls into place. The one caveat is ADOT is to administer this for us because we have MAG funding, but we are taking care of the design.

And that includes improving the RAD canal to full width, improving the traffic signal at Warner and Miller to its ultimate location, and three lanes in each direction, median, curve, gutter, side of walk from Lower Buckeye all the way down to Broadway. So, will it beat Mr. Bliley's project? Exactly. I don't know how long it will take him to turn dirt and get buildings going up, but we should have a project completed.

I can't tell you exactly, but summer, 29, the latest, we should have all the roadway completed. On that, on the road that you were mentioning, is it, is it Pioneer, you said, I believe? Pioneer is the collector, the east-west collector. The East West Collector and that's going to that's going to jump out on to Miller, right? That will have an inter that'll be it.

I going to imagine John is that going to be a right turn only exit or does that have a Mayor Councilman Yonker that will be a signalized intersection So if you drive Miller today that is the so fire road access that comes off the south side of John McCain school and connects to Miller So we're going to have between Lower Buckeye and the canal, there's going to be three lights? No, sorry. There'll be one at Warner, one at Pioneer, and Lower Buckeye.

So yes, three when you count both ends, yes, sir. Right. And not relatively close? A quarter mile apart, yes, it falls within what we allow. It's within what we allow, that's not the question I asked. Isn't that a little bit close? We can work through the progression, which is fine. Quarter mile spacing is fine throughout the valley. I just see it being a traffic nightmare.

You start talking about putting that number of people in that with what's already there, and there's going to be three lights to make it through in half a mile? That's just, I hear you that it fits within the, it fits within our code, it fits within what's allowable, but Is it really the best plan? Mayor Councilman. Are we making it fit to work with the project? That's the big question of the day. Can I tell you, Travis, we're perfect 24 hours 7? No. No. But we'll work great 90% of the time.

Yes, we're just fine. And John, that'll- And pardon me, Mr. Bliley, please wait to be recognized. Okay. So, yeah, and I'm sorry to go back as Ken enlightened me. The signal pioneers always been there. The traffic signal has been planned at the Pioneer intersection since the original Monte Verde development. Well, and that's great and all, but that it's been there since 2010 or 2004, whatever it was, but is it the best thing to do?

I mean, I get that it's been there and it's been on the plans, but is it the right thing to do? That's what I'm talking about. Okay, Mr. Bliley. Thank you, Mayor. I was just going to mention the same thing that that traffic signals going in one way or the other because of the development on the east side of Miller is going to require that traffic signals.

Even if we didn't get, you know, this, if our plan was going back to the old plan, it's still going to be a signal as intersection because of the traffic being generated on the other side of the road. But. John said the same thing. Okay. Any other questions or comments from council? Council member Beard. Yeah. Can you go back to slide 6, please? You guys built the development on Roosevelt with the money pool and stuff, right? Correct. Okay.

Why didn't you guys put any buildings that looked like that Over there. We certainly could. These buildings were put in here just for architectural, just, you know, you can pull elements from them. As Ken pointed out, this is not a building we could possibly build. That's over 100,000 square feet. And as when we were working through this, you know, one of the concerns was the size of the buildings and the heights of the building.

So this was more to identify what a nice looking office type building could look like because offices are permitted use in all commercial residential zones. But no, this would never be built. Again, this would be much smaller scale, 50,000 square feet. The way we, and again, warehousing distribution is not a permitted use. So what defines a warehouse? Is it a concrete tilt-up building?

No, I mean, warehouse distribution, the use is defined by a use where the building is being used for warehousing and distribution. That is not a permitted use. So is one tenant leased this to store items in, is that not warehousing or is that called something different? That would be, if this was a 110 and just was used to store something, that would be called warehouse distribution, which is not a permitted use. Okay.

So, even if the building was 50,000 square feet, if somebody, one tenant rented the entire thing to store items in, would that be warehousing them or? If it was just for warehouse and distribution, they could not do that. The use is office warehouse, so it has to be warehousing tied with the office, which is what we were trying to accomplish was for the kind of the small business owners.

So what we would see is you would see these 40,000 square, these 50,000 square foot buildings devised up to four times. And so what you would have on the back side is at most four type of doors that would be used for accessing, you know, the back of the building. That would be the most you'd ever see. So it would never be, you know, dock doors, cross dock, that type of thing for warehouse distribution. So your plan is to build four 50,000 square foot buildings? No, I'll be frank.

Our plan is not to do that. Our plan is to have that as a potential use at some point for the kind of the in the back. We've seen quite a bit of activity, frankly, on the commercial. So we think most of the site's going to develop as commercial, much more traditional retail type commercial that you're seeing.

But what we wanted to do was make sure that we didn have any type of uses that that that you found objectionable that would be too big So whereas if we were just straight C2 you could go in and put an office and it could be too it could be that big or bigger But we restricted that down to 50 to make sure there wouldn be anything that resembled anything that looked like a big box you know a big box you know industrial type building So it would just be small scale office small scale flex that would allow that that you know that individual user to you know that you know business owner to try to have a space to to rent space But again our plan is not to do multiple phases of this Kevin C.

Given like what i'm hearing from the activity on the site, it is it's a it's a pretty high profile site and we think it deserves more than 15 acres of commercial because it's two miles from the Watson road corridor and as Councilman Younger pointed out, there's a lot of development happening on Miller Road, so those folks are going to want commercial opportunities without a drive over to to Watson or over to Verrado. So, we think long term, that's not going to happen overnight.

You know, 50 acres is a big site, but we think it's going to accommodate that type of development over the next 10 to 15 years of the commercial that's probably going to want to locate on the Miller corridor. Yeah, I mean, I would be fine if the, and I think the neighborhoods around there, if the commercial properties looked like the slide before this on slide five, where it shows like a bash is, you know, and some other shopping centers right there.

But I mean, it's really hard to argue whenever you build a 50,000 square foot concrete tilt up building and you get 80 of us standing in front of it and ask everybody there, what type of building is this? Is this a shopping center or is it a warehouse? And I'll guarantee you 99% of them is going to say it's a warehouse. And I think at one point council drew the line that no more warehouse type buildings north of Southern Road.

I mean, I might be wrong, Because I wasn't on council at the time, but I'm pretty sure that's all what they said. So, I would just like to see the council follow through with what they brought up 3, 4 years ago. Sure, but I mean, if you build an actual shopping center, I think. That's fine, but a concrete building as a warehouse. No. Yeah, and I don't, I don't know how to say it anyway. That's not what's going to build. It wouldn't be a tilt up concrete building. I mean, you don't.

You guys show that picture right on the slide. It really shows it for the glass. I mean, if you want, we can stipulate that picture out of the approval. I'm happy to do that. I mean, it does. It's not supposed to be indicative of what's going to be built more of an architectural style. Mayor, Council, if I, if I can interject too, and I hate to get into construction methods, but, um, broader marketplace, a good portion of it is tilt. Um, uh, the, the EOS fitness, the sprouts is tilt.

Uh, actually the sprouts might not be, but the Eos Fitness under construction is tilt. Tilt can be dressed up really nice. It's a good building material. I wouldn't equate it with being used on a million square foot warehouse to being a bad material. So I just want to point that to us it's the use that we're most concerned about. We feel like we have a lot of good design measures in our code that would make sure it looks good.

The design majors got put in place after the five below or I'm just kind of curious because that building is everywhere than all heck. Well, yeah, there's only so much you can do with a million square foot warehouse. How about not painting a bright blue? Yes. That'd be a pretty damn good start, right? Yeah, we've updated our code since then. Could you still use blue to an extent, but not to the extent that they use it? We do limit accent colors to a smaller portion of the side.

That's all I have right now. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Beard. Councilman Hagestad. I do think I remember two years back, this is that area with high below, if I'm coming those ones, is that just out there? And I do remember some concerns about, I think it was a warehouse of that area, but you're saying that that's not what you're saying. It's absolutely not, Councilmember Hirested. I mean, again, the Funko building is a million square feet. We're 50,000. It's 20 times larger than that.

So, I mean, again, as Ken pointed out, the landing is 200,000. It's a fifth of that. One of the examples I think Councilmember Buren we met was like what's happening at Bullard and Van Buren. At that scale, that's exactly what this would be, that type of building. And with the 40 foot height limit, I mean that's again the buildings you're seeing the big ones are 50, 55 feet. This is 40 foot, which is just your commercial height restriction. That's what you can build a commercial.

And I don't know if you remember council member Hess's concerns at that time were after those other buildings joining in. Have you worked together with the applicant to make sure that all of those Mayor, Councilmember, Mayor, Councilmember, Yes, those are the concerns that the former Councilmember has brought up are a lot of the same concerns that the residents brought up at the neighborhood meeting. So, yes, we address those. We don't see this at all. Like, Mr.

Raleigh said, this is nothing along the lines of the project. We don't see this at all. Like Mr. Blyly said, this is nothing along the lines of the projects that are existing to the north. This is really neighborhood scale that's built in these types of locations proximate to residences across the valley. It's, in my opinion, good planning. Can you, I know Mr. Bliley trying to explain some of these things, but my understanding is that there was a CMP on it. Yes.

And it had a certain amount of density, a certain amount of risk tension. Correct. Then you all came forward with a new plan, a new proposal. It's not reduction in density or just pure numbers from the original plan, but you propose something else and it's from that proposal that you gave the 20% reduction in the different items. Correct. Councilmember Hanks, yes.

As you can see on the map, we initially, like I said, we've been going at this for about two and two and a half years, And and initially we had looked at potentially some more industrial here and we met with staff early on. We met with some of the council members and we got a you know that was a no a no go. So we kept modifying the plan. And so, yes, what we've done is, you know, it's been 16 years since this plan was first approved. Things have changed.

So we did increase the commercial significantly. Again, working with staff, everybody thought that was a good thing to do. We have increased the unit count from what was in the original plan. Lot sizes have gotten smaller over the year over the last 16 years. The variety of home types are more desirable. So yes, when we had a plan that we had submitted and gone through a number of times, we had about a thousand units, about 1100 units max in that plan, and we reduced from that down to here.

So this is still an increase over what's currently approved, but we reduced the plan that that was shown that had gone through the staff process and was that we'd shown to the neighbors at the neighborhood meeting. Okay, thank you. What I'm concerned about is the concerns that were raised by the residents, the 30 of them, the county, and the county. We feel like the city addressed all those concerns that were raised. Were there any big concerns that were not raised?

Mayor, Council Member, Hagan... I mean, yeah, I guess some people just didn't want multi-family at all. So, I mean, there's still multi-family included in this proposal. Some people were opposed to commercial period, and they're still commercial in this period, in this proposal. It was...I don't think there was any concern. I...to put this another way, I don't think there there was anything they could have done that would have made everybody in that room happy.

uh yeah well we have a project that's 16 years old and it's been updated and modernized and took into consideration the issues that the council raised after the other warehouses right yes so this is this is a response both to all those the new needs fixing concerns that were raised by council Yeah, I would summarize this as an updating of the old plan for the 2010 plan to match current market, but heavily tailored to reflect the city's vision and desire for this area, which is based on the input that we've received through the process and through the residents and through the council.

In my opinion, yes. Can we feel like this is the same thing that this is the area that we have to do? Yes, we feel this is a great transition. Something has to go between the million square footers and Northwood Park Estates, and to me this represents a perfectly logical, really good transition with commercial transitioning to higher density, transitioning to lower density.

That really kind of the intersect transect model of planning and that what we shoot for Mr Willis take on was that the transportation system will be the main the density and the traffic Yeah, he's giving you the thumbs up and, you know, when it's three lanes in each direction, this is, it's going to, you know, feel like any other location in the valley where these types of things are present next to one another. I don't think you'll notice any issues. One last question. Institutional use.

That's a good question. That's a government use. That's a school use. Those types of things. Thank you. Council member. You said three lanes on Miller on a weak side. From where to where? Mayor, Councilmember Beard, currently there's three lanes from I-10 down to Lower Buckeye. The City CIP project will take it from Lower Buckeye down to Broadway with the forthcoming CIP project continuing the three lanes all the way down to Monroe or MC-85. Okay. I just got to laugh.

The three lanes all the way down to the Monroe. That is the intent for our transportation master plan. Yes, sir. So, at first, three lanes from I-10 to Lower Buckeye. That's what they're today, correct. Okay, and then Lower Buckeye to Southern? To Broadway initially, and then eventually to Southern. And then baseline. So, Lower Buckeye and Broadway will be done in the 2029? Yes, sir. That's the CIP project under design currently. Yes, sir. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. Councilman Hustis.

Do you have a question? No. Any other questions from Council? Just a couple clarifying questions. Thank you for all the time put in on talking through this. Probably important to note, what's reflected today is a plan that's gone through a lot of iterations. And the initial concept that SIHI had brought forward was much heavier on the industrial uses.

So not the million square foot bomber buildings, but significantly bigger industrial buildings that were meant for the warehouse distribution, not cross dock, but warehouse distribution. Is that fair to say? Some of the initial concepts that were presented? Mayor, that's correct. Yes, when they purchased the property, seeing what happened north of there, there was a vision to extend some of that.

And then going through the process and meeting with council members and talking with staff, it was determined that that wasn't an acceptable use from a city perspective. And so that was refined, taken to a public meeting, or going through the process still, but then taken to a public meeting. The public had Other items that they wanted dealt with. Some of that is the density that's reflected here. Those larger industrial buildings were taken completely out. There's now a commercial corner.

I'm hearing retail, commercial retail instead of, I guess, the flex industrial type uses, perhaps. But who knows what the market bears? Mayor, that's correct. We went through a number of iterations with staff. We've honed this down probably a dozen times. And we keep responding to what we're hearing the direction that we've been getting and making those changes accordingly.

Right, significant infrastructure investment that's going to happen both on Miller road, that, now it sounds like it will be a part of our CIP project, that the developer will be paying for. And then there's also going to be. Infrastructure improvements on, that's Lower Buckeye that goes into the West Park community, so from where their infrastructure. their ultimate condition roadway ends all the way out to Miller that all gets improved as well. Mayor, that's correct.

Yes, we have the lower bucket on the north side. Okay. In addition to that, we've got significant other infrastructure, the internal roads, of course. This property is also part of the Psi High's portfolio and they have an agreement tied to this property that to develop a well over on the Van Leeuwen property that they would then use for the water source on this piece.

So that's another and that would be dedicated to the city and that test well has already been built and so that's it's a good well but it's it's kind of goes part and parcel with the Van Leeuwen property which is at the if you're familiar with the southwest corner of Yuma and Borado. We had a zoning case on that a year or two ago.

Okay in in addition to the so appreciate that in the from a water perspective in addition to the infrastructure that gets built out there impact fees that will be paid per the impact fee schedule that exists in this area as well Is that correct Mayor, yes, of course, we'd be paying all the impact fees. And that's per unit, whether it's multifamily or it's single-family homes or industrial or commercial. Correct.

Yeah, we pay them the way the city assesses them and now it's per unit and when it comes to water and so it's really based upon the demand. Okay, and some of that includes roadway infrastructure impact fees, and I don't know exactly what that impact fee schedule looks like for this specific area, but each one of these areas includes roadways, water, sewer, parks, public safety, all of those items. Mayor, that's correct. Okay, all right.

And then last is the change from the industrial to And then maybe multifamily, one of those concepts may have been a little bit more heavy multifamily. Is that due in part to the ag to urban and the ability to take advantage of ag to urban? That's all in ag right now. So from a water perspective, the homes that are being built on there are significantly less water users than the alfalfa fields that exist out there.

Mayor, this piece had a cause on it previously, so we do have a limited amount of cause. I think To answer your question, we did have a more robust multi-family which has been tailored down. Psi High does have a multi-family arm of their development. They've gotten into that business so they have selected strategic locations within their properties and they think this is a good location at some point. I will tell you it is way down the road.

I mean, I realize it could happen tomorrow, but I'm telling you it's way down the road. But it is a site that they like in the future at some point in time. And that multifamily generally feeds the commercial that would be right adjacent to it. So you have that walkable, go to the grocery store, if it's a grocery store, to the restaurants that might exist there, and then across the street to the commercial retail that's being built east of Miller Road. Yeah, that's correct. Yes.

We tend to try to locate the higher density directly adjacent to commercial. It's usually the best location. Okay, okay. I don't think I have any other questions. We need to close the public hearing. Thank you, Mrs. Attorney. Hold on, please. Quick. I always want to comment on one thing that we've come back on. We talk about working with the residents and coming up with a different iteration of a project and this and that.

I think that, I think it's one of those instances where the people that are being having, because everybody I've spoken to is like, it's sour grapes, right? They don't really want the project, but if this is the best iteration they could possibly get, like, yeah, I guess we can deal with it. Nobody's just to reiterate. Nobody's like, yes, this is like the best thing for that. That's what I want to see in any in any way, shape or form. I think that we keep giving away all of our.

In that corridor, keep giving away all of our commercial for projects with these smaller. Multifamily housing pieces, because that's where the money's at right now. I just think that we have to listen to constituents and whenever they tell us that this is the I want this project in my backyard because everybody I've talked to about it is negative against it. Just want to lay that point one more time. Thank you. Thank you council member.

We will close the public hearing and council on agenda item 5A. What is your pleasure? Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion that we do approve I approve agenda item 5A as an Adam. I'll second. I have a motion for approval and a second on agenda item 5A. All in favor say aye. Aye. And opposed? Nay. Want to do a roll call? Yes, please. Okay. Councilmember Yonker? Nay. Councilmember Berry? Nay. Councilmember Hagestad? Aye. Councilmember Beard? Member Beard? Nay Councilmember Hustis?

Aye Vice Mayor Goodman? Aye Mayor Orsbord? Aye Motion carries. Okay thank you. Appreciate the discussion. Item 5B, we'll move on to that Council will take action on the nonprofit community funding subcommittee's recommendations to award funds to various nonprofits that serve City of Buckeye residents. And Christian you're presenting, good to see ya.

Good evening Mayor Council Members Tonight I am pleased to present the subcommittee recommendation for this year nonprofit community funding grant program This program is something that Buckeye can be truly proud of It demonstrates the City commitment to investing in people who live here and supporting the organizations that serve them Our nonprofit partners bring dedication experience and strong relationships to the community They are providing the vital services that the community needs As you see, the organizations that apply represent a wide range of services from food and emergency services, assistance to youth programs, health support, transportation, and veteran services.

For a resident, a benefit can be very personal. It can help meet an essential household, an essential household need, a safe place for children to learn, access to equipment that makes daily life easier. Our role is to consider each proposal benefiting Buckeye residents and how the City's investment can support meaningful results. Each year, nonprofit organizations submit applications and the panel of council members and community members review the proposals and recommend awards.

During this year's cycle, you can see that applications were due August 7th. After the deadline, the committee gets together, screens all the applications, making sure that all the requirements are met. On August 31st, a panel of council members and two community members specializing in a non-profit area met together to make the recommendations for the council. Today we are asking council for consideration of the subcommittee recommendations.

And then within the week of October 12th, all the awards will be, all the awardees will be notified. We're ready first thing in the morning. Finally, June 1st, we will ask that all awardees will submit reports with their outcomes and measurables, making sure that the return on community investment is met. This year we had an incredible 48 applicants asking for a total of $478,857.

From all the applications reviewed, the panel chose 19 Nonprofit partners with the total recommendations of $124,000. Each recommended award supports vital services and measurables that benefit our residents. What you see here are the 19 organizations that were selected. The ones that are starred are the newcomers. We have five of them. And this speaks to the growth of the program and the city's investment into the community.

For our next steps, staff would like to return in the coming months to discuss future direction. Staff would like to recommend standalone MOUs for certain nonprofits that are longstanding partners of the city. During the process of this panel's review, there's always room for improvement and identifying how we can do things better.

So going into future cycles, we're looking to group all the different applicants into categories so the ones that serve the same areas can be evaluated within the same scope and identify which ones can serve better. And then finally, staff will be coming to council. Staff will compare our regional partners and how they contribute to their individual programs so we can better match what is reflected in the region. Short and sweet, we'd love to hear any questions.

Okay, any questions from Council Councilman Yelker? I really don't have any questions on it. I was fortunate enough to be on that subcommittee and we deliberated over what was the best thing to do for all of these approvals. And I think it's important to note in the amount of, can you go to slide two real quick for me, Christian? One more. The total ask of everybody with the 478 and then the 124, 124 was landed on because that was the budgeted amount.

That's something that we didn't really mention. I want to make sure that that's out there. We did the best we could to spread that money out across all of the applicants that showed us what What was looking for in the projects and what they were going to do with the money. I also want to mention that the group of people that came together to do that was awesome. It was a great group. Lots of different knowledge base and thoughtfulness. Jermaine was on the phone with us.

We did it relatively quickly and it was just a great process to go through. One takeaway that I'd want to do after this is the second year I've been on this. I think that with the amount of need that is out there in our community, we need to increase that 124 in the next budget. Next budget cycle and or maybe find out a different metric to better fund a percentage of these people that are out there doing the hard things to support their neighbor.

So I think that with some of the things that we talked about and we talked about it on one on one. I just wanted to say it in a public forum that this is with the size of our budget that we have looking at all the projects that we do and the staffing and so on and so forth. I think we need to be a little more diligent about making room for these big impactful things for a majority of the less fortunate people in our community. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Any other comments from- I just want to echo Councilmember Yonkers' comments. Had the opportunity to serve on this committee, not this past year, but in prior years, and it's, you know, an infinite amount of need out there, and we have a limited amount of resource. And I too would want to see additional resources applied to this and get creative on how we can support that need for our residents. All right. Thank you, Council. Item 5B, this is for action. Council, what's your pleasure? Mr.

Mayor, I make a motion we approve. Agenda Item 5B as in boy. Second. I have a motion for approval of 5B in a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? And 5B passes unanimous. Great job, Christian. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. Item 5C, Council take action on Resolution No.

94-26, declaring as public record in approving and adopting the following City of Buckeye policy, strategic water planning, reclaimed water, water acquisitions, and funding, water conservation and water allocations in designated areas, providing for repeal of conflicting resolutions and provisions, and providing for severability. Mr. Terry Lowe, how are you? Terry Lowe, Good Mayor. Thank you. Mayor, members of council, good evening.

Tonight brings together, excuse me, I've got a little bit of hoarseness going on, brings together a culmination of about three and a half years or so of work of putting together a framework of water policies to manage and protect our resources.

With that brief presentation tonight, but I'll go through some of which you've already seen before, but go through the purpose of the policies, a brief timeline of how we got to this point, some policies that other communities themselves have adopted, some stakeholder input. We did do a stakeholder workshop not too long ago, and I'll give you the results of those, and then I'll go over briefly the policies themselves.

So again, very simply put, the purpose of the policy is to again memorialize council's commitment to sustainability and water as well as the security of the city's long-term goals. Not just the water goals, but the long-term goals of the city because as water goes, so does the city. And then finally, it provides us with, as staff, direction on how we can better manage our resources with our development stakeholders. So a little bit of timeline in 2023, I had a workshop session.

I brought up the likelihood of policies being something that would work well for us as a growing community. And thank you to council for putting that as one of your strategic plan goals. Brought it up again in 2024, a little bit of an update. At the time, we only had four. We've since moved on to five. But more recently in June, we talked about bringing this towards a stakeholder workshop.

of which we and many of our development partners have a chance to review, provide us with feedback, and then we're here again tonight for adoption. Really briefly put, quite a few Valley cities as well as some outside the Valley that have policies in place. Peoria sort of took the ball and ran with it initially in 2007, right around their growth period.

And so we're-as a growing community, these policies are something that-that Raise the level of sophistication of how we look at water and view water So had a stakeholder policy in between excuse me a stakeholder workshop in August and September invited quite a few of our development partners We had developers we had some water attorneys as well as engineers received feedback from about 10 of them which all in all 66 comments is quite a a good feedback but very positive They were very supportive of the direction we were going and their comments had been incorporated into the policies that you seen This graphic here is sort of very indicative of the role of the policies, not just in mentioned long term water resource goals, but as I mentioned before, the goals of the city as a whole.

to be a vibrant, vital community in which people want to move and locate and live, raise their families. And through these policies, we'll be ensuring that water is going to be managed well, water will be available, and let's hope that it'll be also affordable if we do things right as it relates to water. So, very briefly, overview of the policies. Again, there are five of them.

Strategic water policy is a catch-all, memorializing a lot of the things we're currently doing right now, but it will ensure that we continue to do those things.

Integrated water master plan, establishing a frequency of when we look at the integrated water master plan, establishing timeframes by which we want to continue to look at our rates to ensure that we are collecting the appropriate amount to keep up with market forces, working collaboratively with partners internally, such as economic development, putting putting bringing our minds together to ensure that we are looking at not just water use or not just jobs or salaries, but putting those two things together to ensure that we're looking at looking at everything for the benefit of the city.

The use of reclaim policy is one where not too long ago effluent was a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process. We had to find places for it to send it, to go. Where can we get rid of it? Not anymore. Reclaimed water is a valuable resource that we utilize as part of our portfolio as a groundwater sourced utility, PUTTING RECLAIM BACK INTO THE GROUND TO KEEP THAT CYCLE GOING IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

WE PRIORITIZE THAT AS NUMBER ONE IN THE POLICY, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT CAN'T BE USED TO AUGMENT THE DEMAND FOR DRINKING WATER FOR THINGS SUCH AS LANDSCAPING OR EVEN PROCESSED WATER FOR BUSINESS GROWTH AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. WATER CONSERVATION POLICY, AGAIN, IS A LITTLE BIT MORE OF A CATCH ALL. YOU CAN PUT A CHECK MARK NEXT TO CODE, PLAN AND PROGRAM THE POLICY IN AND OF ITSELF.

What it does is it provides and protects the valuable resources that we currently have, ensuring that we can utilize it more wisely, not just we as the city, but also our end users, our customers, providing, you know, supporting programs by which they can use their water more wisely, as well as us internally. Last two, water acquisition and funding policy. This policy does not say how much water we're going to buy or how much is it going to cost.

This is the match between the different assets, classes of water that are out there that will be there that we need for our portfolio, and what are the funding mechanisms by which we should utilize these things. So, for example, If you recall in our rates, we have a portion of our rates goes to buying water every year. We put a small amount of money to buy water assets, credits, rights, you name it. Every year we bolster the portfolio with that capital.

But we recently made a Harko Hala purchase, very large long-term investment, long-term play for the future. What is the appropriate funding source, long-term play to fund that type of solution? So it's the match game between the different asset classes of which is identified in the policies and how do we – how should we go about acquiring them.

In addition, into that policy, it does set some limits by how much of the portfolio we should have as a minimum to ensure that – forgive the water puns, but the ebb and flow of the environment and the availability of water. If our portfolio was strong in the market, something that we're dealing with right now, the market goes down, we still have a strong portfolio to continue to provide water to our customers.

And then lastly, the fifth policy that came about as we were developing our designation of shared water supply or the alternative designation of shared water supply for the white tank areas. Once the city goes designated in whole or in part of the city, we have a tremendous responsibility of we have we are now the resource for the city. What is our what is what is our role with making sure that our current customer base has has resources to them?

How do we how do we fairly allocate water resources in terms of the Adaws The rights that came to the city came from other development How do we share do we fairly allocate that those resources to those that may be in that position And then finally if development is coming to the city looking to develop you know there going to be some expectation that development is going to be paying for acquiring and bringing to the table water for the city to then manage in the end as opposed to it being part of the city As opposed to it being part of our rate base.

So I ran through that fairly quickly. Um, with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay. Questions from Council. A few years ago we had, I mean, I'm, I'm mostly okay with this, but I'd have some clarifications. A few years ago we had kind of a contentious vote on the conservation issue. We set it back and came forward with some changes.

There was too many punitive provisions in there against the residents who was requiring them to do certain things and people that bought into communities were being told that they, it was proposed that they not have the ability to deal with their property that they had when they purchased the property, things like that. We came back and said it was sold to us as an education thing.

We want to tell the story about how conservation should work and educate the customers so that they would be better with water because they wanted it. And we got rid of the punitive provisions and the fines and penalties and things like that, that if you didn't have certain type of water monitors or irrigation that turned off automatically when it rained and things like that. Does this touch any of those changes that we made to that previous bill? The policy does not.

So the policy supports the code. The code is then something that staff would bring forward, council would choose to pick and choose, and we settle on what is the best for the city, but it does not. Okay. So as far as the residents are concerned, this is just a policy document that supports what we've already put in code. That is correct, sir. Okay. Thank you.

Then the other question I had, can you explain, I think it's on slide nine, you talked about fairly adequate Allocating resources in the designated areas. Tell me what you mean. William Moore, D.C. That is that that's that this we were we were going back and forth as we talked about going designated.

And so if you recall, I use the a does as as the the example there, where the resources that were brought to the table that the city would then have final control over started out as ownership of the development group. And so, you know, we could certainly take those resources and say, tough, you guys, now this is the city resources we're going to allocate what we think you may need.

But when we look at that, it's it's the those since those resources started out as the ownership of somebody else, how do we then turn right around and fairly allocate those back to it? The Adaws was a good example in a sense there were no other demands in that area. It was just those three development groups.

So we could then take those resources, recalculate them, utilizing-I get too much into the weeds, so I apologize-taking that spillover concept that actually allowed for more development within that same bucket of water, and then fairly assessed it back to those developments.

If there's an area where we already have an existing demand, we've got to make sure that those existing demands, those existing customers, those existing rest ofments, are part of that designation, are part of our customer base. And so the water that comes to that designation fairly gets us just one, back to our existing customer base, and then looking at who's left over. How did that water come to the table? Does it go back to anybody?

Or do we work with those developments and say, okay, what is your plan for growth? And we'll assess and allocate water to you to match your rate of growth. Okay. Maybe let me see if I can summarize that so when a developer comes in and they're going to develop a residential project.

Yeah We asking them to bring water to that project to make sure that those people have 100 years water supply Correct What I think you saying is that they may bring more to the table than is needed for their particular project and we want to know whether we can use it however we want or we need to allocate it and make sure that it goes there first The challenge comes in when we are starting out as a non entity and we move into a designated entity we have to look to see how is that water that created our ability to become designated.

That basically, essentially, the developer, if we're already designated, the developer comes in, We say, hey, our portfolio has no access capacity for you. You've got to bring water. If it does have access capacity, they still essentially have to bring water, but they would then be compensating the city for the loss of asset.

In the world where we don't have a designation already established, in utilizing the ADOS, those developments brought water with them, but it was the city's responsibility to actively manage those resources. And so, but from a fairness doctrine, they came from someone else's sweat and tears to establish those. How do we then fairly assess, provide them with an allocation that fits their need?

And in that ADOS situation, there was a concept called spillover water where when the certificates were established, they utilized a factor that is much higher than what we're seeing today as far as each dwelling unit's demand. And so that's where that additional dwelling units could be realized from that bucket of water. And I hope that that addressed where you were going. I think so. Great. Thanks, sir. That's all I got. Can I maybe just add a little bit to that?

So maybe taking Harkwahala as the example, we have 6,000 acre feet per year. And when we do become designated, that is a bucket of water that we have. We'll have many different developers that are coming forward saying, hey, we are ready to develop and we would like to take advantage of that water. They pay for that water, whatever agreement we work out with them. But we can't do all the development at one time with that 6,000 acre foot.

So This is also helping us determine how do we divvy that water up in a fair way to get all development, all the development we want going, and not giving all to one developer who's going to sit on that water potentially for a long period of time shutting down the rest of the development that could potentially happen in an area.

And I mean, in the Sun Valley Parkway area, that's the, and I think what we were seeing over the road we were headed down with the ADAS, as there were certain developers that were ready to go, and other ones saying, hey, I'm not going to go, there's a bucket of water that we're given based on the certificates and developer number one says, well, I'm going, I should get all that water and I want to build on out so I can get the return on the investment that I'm going to make.

Two or three says, hey, wait a minute. A part of that water is the water that I brought to the tables. That's a slightly different example than the Harkwahala, but it's the same. You understand our dilemma. Yeah. Right. So it's trying to deal with with all those items. Good. So one other question on it. As other water becomes available or Other things change.

Does this allow us the flexibility to chase different water or come up with different ways to, if there's a new water that will exist out there, whether it's desal or Bartlett Dam water or some other source of water, does this allow us the opportunity to pivot and go after some of those other water types? That flexibility is built into this document. Absolutely. They can forgive the water pun, but the lane lines that we use there can kind of ebb and flow.

The water acquisition funding sort of identifies those potential different projects that come about that we don't even know about at this point in time. And then it's a matter of, you know, those larger ones are okay, how should we seek to acquire those, fund those.

And then the designation component will be if we do acquire those, then development, could be coming to us and we then have to say okay well your development plans are pretty grandiose, we have this bucket is fixed and so therefore I think we can we can allocate starter I'll call it starter water to get them going while they go scour the market for um for additional supplies or pay us and we go and grow our portfolio with that.

Okay okay thank you all right council any Any other questions on this one? No, just a comment. Thanks, Terry, for all your hard work. Appreciate it. Thank you. Folks I talk to live in mine, have been here for five years or less, maybe 10, as a long-termer. Then one of their questions is, you know, we're running out of water. We're not. Now, Arizona, if you go back 150 years, we've been managing it pretty well.

Matter of fact, better than most across the country, which puts us in a position where we are today. So this is just building on that, where we are protecting that resource, allocating it appropriately, making sure that it's there for future generations to use. And we just need to remind people we live in the middle of one of the largest deserts in the world. And it's the water that we have and that we steward very well that allows us to grow.

So again, thank you to you and your team for putting all this together. Absolutely. Thank you, Vice Mayor. We've got a great team. Okay, Council, Agenda Item 5C, what is your pleasure? Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve Agenda Item 5C as in Charles. Second. I have a motion for approval of Agenda Item 5C in a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. And opposed? And 5C passes unanimous.

5D, council to take action on ordinance number 25-26, declaring as a public record those documents on file with the city clerk entitled Property Maintenance Code, amending chapter 15, Building Regulations, Article 5-2, Building Codes by Repealing Section 15-2-8, Property Maintenance Code and adopting chapter 26, Property Maintenance Code, providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions, Providing for severability and setting forth penalties for violations.

You're not, it says Robert Sanders is going to be presenting. You're not Chief Sanders. I'm the prettier version. The much, much, yes. So as most of you know, it's been quite a while since we've done a major, major update to our, our property maintenance code. So that's kind of where we're trying to take this now. So, I kind of started off with something a little funny because I think we kind of need it. This is kind of how it is with most of us right now, just getting through the rainy season.

Can't find anything because it's all underneath your grass and weeds. So, the property maintenance code has not been fully updated, like I was saying, since it was first adopted in July of 2007. There have only been a few small amendments made over the years, with the last one being as far back as October of 2018. So it's definitely overdue with all of our growth and everything we're going through.

The reason we're trying to change it from an International Property Maintenance Code, which is what we've had this entire time, to a separate Chapter 26 under just the City Code, is because a lot of the International Property Maintenance Code that everybody goes by is written for the eastern half of the United States with their more extreme weather, different building structure needs, mostly in our dry desert climate. We don't relate to a lot of that.

And what that then makes us do is we have to do a lot more amendments to the IPMC, the International Property Maintenance Code. It's just a lot more work and it just, it doesn't always make a lot of sense. So rewriting the Buckeyes property maintenance code to fit our city's needs, our wants, our building requirements, and our current growth under our own chapter of the city code is just what made sense at this time. So that's why this is a new updated city code chapter 26.

That's why it was written this way. It does follow a lot of what we previously had. It's just it's an updated version for what we needed. It starts off with one of the very first sections that was rewritten. It existed previously, but it was in a very unorganized, hard to understand on how things were done. It explained how we did our procedures, how we sent our notices, how we issued our citations and where it went from there. But it wasn't all written in order.

It was here and there and all over the place, and you kind of had to piecemeal it together to try to understand what we did. And it just didn't make it easy for anybody to understand, even for those of us that did it on a daily basis.

So it been written reorganized so it clearly defines what code enforcement functions are our processes how we handle our cases and the sequence in which it done And so it easy to read straight through it and know exactly what the process is and what you could expect if we were to come to your door This is kind of how we run our enforcement process. So we initially receive a complaint either by email or for phone call or in person or proactively.

We do accept complaints and we do pick up our cases proactively as we're out there. We'll complete an inspection of the property, attempt personal contact for the violations we do note on the property. We provide education to the homeowner or occupant for any violations that we see if we are able to meet them at the property. We then issue a first notice of violation that lists any of the noted violations.

We explain what needs to be done for compliance and give them a time to complete this, which is usually two weeks to 30 days, Depending on the extreme or the extent of the violation. After that notice expires, we complete a re-inspection of the property. Note any remaining violations, if there are any. If there are, we issue a second notice, which is an order of compliance.

The same information we gave them in the first notice, the explanation of the violation that they are in violation of, and then an explanation of what they need to do to bring it into compliance. And again, we give them some more time to get that taken care of two weeks to 30 days, depending on the extreme, depending on the violation. We then complete a third inspection of the property, again, noting any remaining violations if there are any.

If there are, that's when we issue a citation with a court date that's approximately 30 days out from there. So at this point, they could have anywhere between 30 days to 90 days to have completed bringing their property into compliance, whatever that violation is. On top of that, we'll work with people if they give us a call, hey, this is my situation. I'm having somebody coming in to help me with this in two weeks. Can you give me an extension? Yes, we're going to work with you.

We've got a volunteer group coming in to help somebody that maybe that is, that needs the additional help. Yes, we're going to give them the extension for that. We work with them with all different situations. So it's not just a hard fast, you have two weeks, take it or leave it type. So that's why the extension can be up to 90 days before a citation could even be written. They have plenty of time. The next part that has been, this is our biggest change in the code, is the civil citation finds.

We've updated them, we've separated them, And we've increased them. The current fine structure that we have is very insufficient. It has little impact. It doesn't give motivation for continued property maintenance. That's part of the problem that we run into very often. The existing fines fail to influence larger businesses, LLCs, and corporations as they're very minimal compared to the cost of property upkeep.

It's easier for them to keep going to court and pay a hundred dollar fine than it is to hire a contractor to fix something that might be $1,000, $2,000. So how we've broken it down is by individual ownership and by business corporations or similar type ownership. And this goes for both residential and commercial properties.

So if you've got a commercial business out there that owns 25 rental properties, they're going to be held to the same fine structure that A commercial restaurant or a commercial big box store is going to be held to because they have they have the bigger incomes. They have the means to take care of a property where individual ownerships don't always have that same those same opportunities.

So for an individual ownership, your first or second offense, meaning the first or second time that you get a citation and appear in court, the fines will range a minimum of $150 up to a maximum of $250. For your third and any additional offenses that you have to appear in court within a 24-month period, your fines will start at $300 and can go up to a maximum of $450.

For businesses, corporations are similar, the larger ownerships, your first and second offense is going to start at $200 with a max fine of $350. Your third and additional offense within 24 months is going to start at $400 and could go up to a max of $550.

This is just a look at what comparable West Side cities are currently or what they currently have their city fines at As you can see we very comparable if not still under some of the other West Valley cities Some of them they got their fines and fines So we definitely under other cities even at this point This is one you guys may be pretty familiar with, parking and storage of trailers.

This includes your RVs, your boats, your camping trailers, the small flatbed trailers that people use to carry off their weekend tree trimming articles, things like that. This has been a huge issue, not only in just your single-family residential areas, but on your larger properties, the acre properties, where currently the city code states they have to have it in a side or a backyard behind a solid fence. Well, if you've got an acre-plus property, you're not going to have a solid fence.

And we've been fighting that for quite some time. We've given them some leniency, but has it been fair? No. We kind of needed to make it fair all the way around for everybody. You've got some of the smaller homes coming in that houses are now six feet apart, it seems like. So they don't always have that same side yard width to put a trailer into. And our code said that they couldn't park it on their driveway.

So they were everybody had to spend the extra money that they don't always have in this current financial state to go rent a space at a storage unit to put a trailer. So that was one of the big reasons we chose to update this part of the code is because it's a big point of controversy with a lot of homeowners. So what we've changed it to is we're giving allowance for trailers up to 20 feet in length because that's a typical driveway length of any single family home is 20 feet.

So trailers up to 20 feet in length can park on their driveway, permitted it doesn't block the sidewalk, an easement, a right away, a right away, or a neighbor's visibility when they're backing out of their driveway. Trailers over 20 feet long can park on the side yard. It doesn't have to be behind a fence, but it does have to be on an improved surface and again, not blocking any visibility for any neighbors. A couple of sections that we did remove from the code pertain to citizens.

There was a whole section in there about citizens could file an appeal. We've never been able to do that. We've never had that ever since this was put into effect in 2007. The city doesn't even have an appeals board, so they had nobody to appeal to. It was determined that their way to appeal was if they then went to court and they were able to speak with the judge. That was kind of their appeal time. So, it didn't even make sense to have that in the code, so we've taken that out.

And then the section that we had in there dealing with backyard pool fencing was removed. This is a huge safety issue. However, it is already addressed through our development code, the building code. No need to have it written twice. And we enforce it through the development code the same way. So that's why it was taken out of that. So, pretty short and sweet. You have any questions, comments? Okay, counsel, any questions or comments? Councilman Yonker. Sorry, Mr. Councilman Yonker.

Back on slide nine, I believe, if you can go back a couple, it was talking about corporations that own, you made the example of if a corporation owned rental homes. This one? Yeah, A. Yeah, that one. Okay. Thank you. So what's the definition of that? Because what if somebody owns their house in an LLC? I mean, are you... that you're saying it's a corporation, it's a corporation. Correct. It would fall under this. If it's a trust...

Just because someone chose to put their house in a corporation, that a business owned it, You would then charge the private individual that because that's how they chose to affix their ownership of their home? As it's written, I guess so, yes. Yeah, I don't think that's right. Yeah, I think that's a, that's a, that's a, a slippery slope if somebody wants to own their house in a trust or a corporation or something like that. A trust is different. Trust is, should, is that different? Okay.

Then if they decide to do it in a corporation, Then, I mean, that doesn't, it is a private individual. That doesn't mean that we should charge them more. It's a private individual. I think that needs a little bit of polishing up. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Councilman Hustis.

One thing a good thing I can say about this and I found out that this does not override HOA rules Am I correct HOA rules are completely separate Right So in other words if I got a trailer in my driveway and the HOA says I can have it there I can have it there and this will not allow me to have it Am I correct Mayor and Council members, I believe city code would trump HOA laws, if I understand it correctly. So they would have to move it.

They would have to take it to their HOA to argue that, I guess. Right. I guess what I'm trying to say is if I'm under HOA rules and it says I cannot have one there, I can't use this to say, oh, I can have one there now because this says I can have one as long as it's not over 20 feet, as long as they're not blocking my neighbor. Mayor and Council members, I guess I can't do this straight edge on that. Mayor and Councilmember, yes, that is correct. Okay, so HOA would in that scenario, yes. Okay.

HOA can be more restrictive than City Code, but not less. That is correct. Okay. Yes, that is correct. Very good. Okay. Thank you. That's all I've got. Thank you. Councilman Agiston. Okay. Got a couple of them. I'm sorry. The flexibility you were talking about to give extensions, that's built into the code that the staff has the authority to give those extensions. That's in the code. It's not written. We just do. It's our own policy, I guess. Okay.

But I wonder if we need to give you the authority to do that or because the code is the code, so Mayor and Council members, if I may, in the code, it doesn't state if you've got tall grass, you have two weeks. It just states having tall grass is a violation. Right. What I'm saying, and maybe Tosca, you can... Please continue. I think that if the code says one thing, I think we need to give you the authority to make exceptions or extensions.

I don't know that you can have that freedom to do that unless we build it into the code. Is that correct? And there is some discretion when it comes to the enforcement and implementation of the code, council members. And it's built in? CCCCO- It is not built in expressly. If that is the direction that council is giving to staff, we can come up with some parameters. But again, there is some discretion built in in the enforcement as the officers are carrying out their duties implementing the code.

That is not expressly worded at this time in the draft before you. Okay. Mayor, Council Members, if I can kind of maybe help put a little bit of clarification that I would liken it to if a patrol officer stops you on the street for speeding. Speeding is against the law, but he doesn't have to give you a ticket. He can give you a warning. So I kind of liken it to that type of we don't have to give them the ticket. We can give them the extension. We can help them out.

Well, but I think it gives those people making those decisions, if we had the authority within the within the document, then you'd have authority for that. Technically you may not, unless the discretion is built in like we were discussing a second ago. But I'll let everybody else think about that, what they want to do with that. Can I just ask a clarifying question? Yes.

What gives the discretion then you said that the discretion it's not expressly put into the code but what what gives the the officer the discretion in the case of code enforcement so um i i would be come trying to come up with hypotheticals so i don't know if you have some actual in the field examples that you would like to show but there are some gray areas that perhaps might trigger the exercise of discretion in enforcing the The code.

Don't know again if you have any examples that readily spring to mind. Not immediately. Okay. I think but I mean the example that you've given just a minute or two ago of you know the speed limit is this you can get off with a warning of a slow down. Same with the code enforcement. We could show up and start writing tickets. But you also have discretion to say, I'll be back in a week, fix your lawnmower and get this taken care of, right? CCCCO PINCORNICKI- Correct. CCCCO PINCORNICKI- Yeah.

CCCCO PINCORNICKI- Does this also, that discretion, since we're talking about that, does it also, does that one of the tools that you use, like when somebody is a senior citizen or on a limited income, for them to be able to find help to get some of those things done? Is that one of the tools that you use to give them a little bit more time to get something fixed to find the help or monetary cash flow to get the get a project done?

like let's say the one of the things that you used to pad in there was a an approved surface for parking a trailer on like if they didn't have the money for the rock where they park something like that was that one of the tools you use to give them a little bit more time? It is. Okay, so I think what Councilman Hagestad saying is he wants to make sure that they you have a little more teeth in the code is that is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I want the I want staff to have the ability to have some discretion given the circumstances. But I also know that you add discretion into things and then you've got abuse of discretion standards and did you can get the city into other issues. But I want that ability for you guys to make a determination and say, enforcement, you've already got a process of enforcement you've already laid out.

And within that, there's certain time periods about inspections and then second inspections before that first code violation is actually, the citation is actually given. But what I'm saying is, you know, in the circumstances where some, an individual, you know, say they need to get a contractor in and the contractors are out 60, 90 days already. So the 90 day timeline, they're stuck with that, but they can't get a contractor in for 120 days or whatever.

And that's not probably a lawn maintenance issue. But if we're talking about, you know, a building that needs some maintenance itself, you might have some time there. And so I would just like to have some discretion for you guys, and I want you to have that ability and that authority. But if there is some discretion built into the code itself, Then then that's fine. I just want to make sure that you have the ability to do that.

And Mayor, Councilmember Hagestad, there we have some guardrails and verbiage that prohibits the waiving of certain code provisions, but does allow discretion to implement some rulemaking that carries out the intent of the property maintenance code.

um in my opinion I I do think the verbiage is is sufficient but again we can always if council would like to see a little bit more express vocabulary you can go ahead and and we could bring something back as well if if Mayor Councilmember Hagestad in in the the code that we're presenting under 26-3-1 Section on inspections and notices.

It actually says that notices will be will allow between two weeks and 30 days to be brought into compliance depending on the severity of the violations and the discretion of the code enforcement officers. So that is written into this code. Great. Thank you for that. On this particular slide, I think we covered it. Where would you say a trust would fit in this? Because that's in a lot of estate plans. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. A trust would fall under individual ownership. Individual.

Like a family trust or something like that. And that's your, you know, which provision that is. I mean, you don't have to tell me, but you know that that is a provision that's in there. Okay. And then with respect to this again, on the third, And additional offenses, do these offenses stack upon each other? For instance, say they've got their first offenses is a boat in the driveway that's longer than 20 feet for a trailer. Their second offense is, you know, their grass is too long.

Or those types of things. Is one first offense and one's a second offense? Or because they're different offenses, they're each a first offense? C. C. C. I do. And mayor and council member, um, no, it's your first and second offense. If it's tall grass, your third offense would be tall grass. It's not this offense, this offense and this offense. It's the same charge. C. C. Okay. So it's based upon that particular issue violation. C. C. That very specific charge. Correct. C. C.

And then if they have a different violation, that's the first events for that violation. C. C. Correct. C. Okay. Thank you. That's all I got. Thank you. Okay. Thank you councilmember Weissman. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions on this one? We do have a question. Can we do a Tosca, a serial procedural?

Can we do a motion with working out the language if an individual owns their individual home that they live in under a corporation that that wouldn't be treated as that under this code if it's owner-occupied? Can we just stipulate that in a motion or do we need to table it to work that out? That could be included in a motion.

Okay That it approved subject to a revision to that effect Okay I think with a business corporation or similar ownership they have a business license or tax privilege license or something like that. I mean, that's not always the case. But I- Meaning that's the trigger. Yeah, I mean, if it's, you know, I get that somebody owns their house and or an LLC or it's not really a business entity, right? They're not conducting any business. It's an organization piece.

I think with this, if we need to flesh out the definition, is it, are they conducting business or I think that's the separator? I don't. Yeah, that's why that's my question. Is that, is that written in the code? I mean, because her example was that if they own seven houses, then that's a business. What? Right. Right. But if it's. They're renting. Then they're renting, yeah, but if they're living in just one, I think we need to define that. Yeah, or leave discretion.

Would this fall under discretion? No, not necessarily. And to me, that would be the type of item that should, that direction should come from council and should be written in. And so it is uniform and included as a definition. Mayor and council members, we can put that in as a definition. I've never in the multiple years, we'll just say that, that I've been doing this, I haven't run across that situation.

So I've never had reason to put that in as a definition, but I don't have a problem doing it. Mayor, members of the council, and I would say that staff clearly understands what the intent of that is of an LLC owner occupied. Um, not a business, so we understand what that is and if the motion includes language like that, we would know what we would need to do to put that definition in. Okay, so then with that being said, Mr.

I'd like to make a motion that we approve this agenda item with the stipulation of working out better definitions of what constitutes a corporation under this code. Can I rephrase that? Sure. Wordsmith away. No, I think it just a little cleaner. Pardon, I was taking notes, but I believe we had a, we have a valid, we have a motion in a second. Oh, I didn't hear the second. I'm sorry. Is that correct? Again, we do have a second. I can withdraw it from this. Okay.

I'll draw it so you can make your clarification. Yeah, I think just cleaner language that, you know, to have a definition of what a, you know, a business or corporation or similar ownership, just there needs to be one or two lines that says this is what this is that would exclude, you know, the other owner occupied within a trust or LLC or something like that. I would accept that clarification as a part of my motion. Thank you. I'll second. He stole your second. That's okay. Okay.

So we have a motion with the condition and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. And opposed. And that motion passes unanimous. Thank you very much. Good discussion. Item 5E, Council take action on ordinance number 15-26, declaring as public record. Those documents on file with the city clerk entitled ebike 12-2-10, or 12-2-10, adopting the same by reference, amending this Buckeye City Code to add Chapter 12.

Traffic Code, Article 12-2, Traffic Regulations, Section 12-2-10, Electric Bicycles, Electric Stand-Up Scooters, Micro-Mobility Devices, and Electric Motorcycles, Motor-Driven Cycles, Providing for Repeal of Conflicting Ordinances and Provisions, Providing for Severability, and the and setting forth penalties for violations chief Sanders. Good evening mayor. Good evening council members. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for your time.

I know it's getting a little late and I'll work on the police department's council action reports to shorten those because I see you have to take two or three breaths when you're reading our council action reports. We'll work on that especially after eight o'clock at night sir. Here we are again. I appreciate your time. We've had several opportunities to have many community meetings.

I thank the community their input several parents In the end we made some minor adjustments specifically regarding the age However the overall theme is safety get our kids outside make sure they get home safely So with that I going to show a couple videos here actually four videos The first three I want to pay attention to maybe bring home the point our concern is community concerns police officer law enforcement and just the safety for our kids Pay attention to where the kids are riding They riding in the middle of traffic and some of the readings I had the kids I talked to the parents who now they realize some of the awareness issues that they didn quite understand what they were giving their children Kids are being asked to make decisions Normal drivers have They in the middle of the streets They don have the training the experience and they 14 years old 12 years old but they out there in the middle of the street riding e or motorcycles, e-motorcycles.

Our first one here is Southern and Miller. As you can see, they're in the middle of the intersection. They're with the other traffic, and they decided they want to pop some wheelies, and maybe race or not race the other cars through the intersection. Our next video here is on a, I believe it's a Thursday at 6 30. It's a group of kids. Some are on the sidewalks, some are on the streets, some are in the bike lanes. And just pay attention to where they're riding and the vehicles.

Most of these are e-motorcycles. Ashma, jeez. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. I would not show that video. Our next video is another interesting video with kids riding in the middle of the street. Around traffic, through traffic, with traffic.

In many of the conversations we had with parents, actually there was one parent who after reading some of our material, talking at one of our community meetings, she took the e-motorcycle away from her kid, gave him an e-bike, but he also had to sign a contract that he wouldn't operate on safely or recklessly that you're going to see. Again, traffic's normal as can be and the kids come through the intersection. So what's our goal here?

We just want our kids to get home safely, have some fun outside, but understand that you're not supposed to be riding these battery operated motorcycles and e-bikes with the rest of the traffic. And here's a YouTuber in our city, a social media account. He's great at what he's doing, but it is reckless. It is unsafe. And I'd like to point out that that bicycle helmet's not rated for what he's actually hoping it will protect him from. So with that being said, why is ordinances necessary?

We want to have clear rules, guidelines for our community, for our kids, for our parents. We conducted many community meetings. We had our feedback. Great conversations. The tone of the conversations changed over time, I noticed. More of I was answering questions to rhetorically, I was asking parents questions about what they were thinking when they actually bought their kids their e-motorcycles.

In fact, one of the last discussions I had was with a parent when I said, well, let me put it to you this way because we're not connecting on the same level about the safety of these devices. Would you go out and buy your son or daughter a motorcycle, gasoline powered, toss them a bicycle helmet and go say have fun? And then when I finally I saw her eyes open and she goes, now I understand. Well basically an e-motorcycle's doing that.

Okay, the bicycle helmet's not going to protect anyone going over 25 miles per hour. It doesn't have a face guard, it just has the head and they're not rated for that safety. So we're going to go over the proposed ordinance, again talk about what an e-bike is and what an e-motorcycle, and in the end we'll have some questions and answers. So what we want to do, we want to search for solutions. So year to date, 43 incidents or bike crashes and injuries.

Fortunately for our community, our city, we have not had any fatals since my last conversation. We want parental engagement. We want parental engagement. We want to keep the road safe for everyone, including the drivers of our vehicles. A lot of times those are the complaints we get because the kids are riding in and out of traffic, around traffic, through traffic, blowing through stop signs, and those are the complaints we get. and those are the complaints we get.

So by the time we get out there, the kids are already gone. We want parental engagement. That's probably the most valuable component of the community meetings, which is talking to the parents. Education, awareness, and in the end, if necessary, consequences.

Of course we had community feedback I referred to it earlier We had we conduct another community survey We had three community meetings We talked to our youth council and again we were obtaining feedback through the city portals and the PD social media portals This is our chart This is our Ride Right program social media awareness program It provides the charts As you can see in here and I go over it later we reduced the age for class 1 and class 2 to a minimum age of 14 Class 3 e-bikes are still 16.

And we also added for electric scooters, minimum age is 20. Again, the age doesn't come into play. It's not a factor if they're accompanied by their parent. The helmet requirements still stayed under 18 or minimum age is 18 just because again, I'll refer to that here in a second. It talks about because community survey overwhelming community meetings in persons and 88% of our community still believe that minimum age for helmets is 18.

I move this slide to the beginning because since our last meeting our conversation, E-motorcycles seem to be a majority of our problems. These are the what you saw in the videos. These are the kids riding in and out of traffic with no regard of what they're doing or the traffic laws. The minimum of age for this is 16. This isn't guided by our city ordinance. This is state law. E-bike versus an E-motorcycle. E-bike has pedals. It shouldn't go over 20 miles per hour pedal assisted.

If it does, then it's going to fall into an E-motorcycle classification. But let me make sure we're all on the same page. Helmets, E-bikes, E-motorcycles, E-scooters, E-mini-scooters, electric go-karts. If the operator is not being reckless and they're not being unsafe and they're not being in the middle of the streets, on Verado or Southern Miller, then we're not really concerned.

If they're abiding by the laws and they're being safe and they're respecting the community and the drivers and the vehicles, then we're all going to be okay. E-bikes, again, minimum age is 14 for class one and class two. Minimum age for class three is 16. E-scooters, we added the mini scooters to this, but the minimum age for our regular scooter that goes top speed at 20 miles per hour is 12.

Helmet requirement again 88% of the community on the survey they still believe that helmets for all operators under 18. This is of course excludes traditional bikes and any mini scooters. Community goals promote activity to say if we want our kids to come home safe get outside have some fun great technology just make sure we're doing it respectfully. Be respectful of others on the roads and please be careful on the on our streets. Implementation. We modified our phases.

Again, our education is it started way back in January. In phase one this October, education, schools, social media, retailers, community events. Phase two would be warnings. We're providing warnings now. Most of our officers are giving warnings. It's only when the operator is reckless in the middle of traffic or they cause a traffic collision. Continue our education. Of course, we're going to have some community events. Mr. Hopkins has been here at all the events.

He's waiting for the Lions Foundation. They're going to provide some of our positive reinforcement by funding some coupons or gift certificates. Then again, targeted enforcement, continued education, and community events for phase three in December. Now we get to the consequences. Unfortunately, there has to be consequences when the operators are riding unsafely. Our first violation is the $100 fine. Second violation within 12 months is $250. Third violation within 12 months, $500 fine.

We're going to impound the device regardless of what it is. And then minors under 12, citation will be issued to the parent. Minors 12 to 15, citation issued to the minor or parent, that's officer discretion. And then we added this back into our city ordinance because you usually don't find this in other city ordinances. E-motorcycles are subject to impound on first violation, depending on the operators and if they're being reckless. Therefore, I know it's getting late.

We recommend the adoption of e-bike ordinance, amending city traffic code. And with that, I'd be more than happy to answer questions. Okay. Thank you, Chief. We have one speaker request card on this. Michael Nuses. Good evening again. My name is again Michael Nuses and I'm here tonight regarding 15-26. I urge you direct staff to expand the protective mandate to all, sorry, the protective helmet mandate to all e-bike riders regardless of age and fix a gapping enforcement loophole.

Let's be clear about why we are here. The ultimate responsibility of this city council is to protect the people of Buckeye. The criminal charges safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of our residents. While opponents often argue that adult helmet mandates infringe on personal liberty, decades of established legal precedent, including the U.S. Supreme Court, prove otherwise.

The judiciary has consistently ruled that traffic safety mandates are entirely constitutional because of the consequences of severe brain injury ripple far beyond the individual. When a catastrophic crash occurs, it strains our first responders, ties up trauma beds, and burns the public purse at long-term medical costs. And the medical data demanding this protection is overwhelming. Class III e-bikes travel up to 28 miles per hour.

Trauma Center data shows that e-bike raters face double the rate of traumatic brain injuries and five times the rate of internal bleeding compared to a standard cyclist. A helmet reduces the brain injury risk up to 88%. Gravity and asphalt do not care how old the rider is, and your responsibility to protect them shouldn't stop when they turn 18. By fulfilling your responsibility to protect the community also means passing laws that actually work for our police department.

The current draft e-backs are banned from streets with speed limits over 30 miles per hour. Yet all of our high schools sit directly on roadways that far exceed this threshold. If we don't mandate universal helmets, how do I expect our officers to enforce this? Are they supposed to sit outside every high school every single day trying to guess how old somebody is? It is an administrative nightmare.

By making helmets mandatory for everyone on an e-bike, you fulfill your duty to protect our citizens, simplify enforcement for our officers, and send a unified message of Buckeye values human life and brain safety. Please prioritize public safety tonight and direct staff to mandate helmets for all micro mobility operators. Thank you. Okay, questions from council or vice mayor. Go ahead. Yeah, just Mr. Nusis' comment, is a motorcycle rider at age 18 on helmets optional, correct?

Yes, sir, that's correct. So it would be difficult to mandate wearing a helmet on somebody older 18 when they could just trade their e-bike for a motorcycle and not wear one. I don't think it's good practice. I think everybody should be wearing a helmet, but I think we've got to draw some parallels here.

I think the way this ordinance has played out, I been very involved with putting this together I think age 18 is an appropriate age above that They the age of consent and they can consent to be stupid if they want to be stupid I just want to commend you and your team for kind of working through this. I know it's been a difficult process. This came to council a few months ago. I asked that it be tabled so we could get additional public comment.

You and your folks went out to the public, solicited additional feedback, feedback from the residents that participated in the open sessions and the surveys that were online were helmets at 18. And that was fine. And I think even more restrictive things were recommended and we kind of backed off on all of that. So it's not that we're ignoring public safety. This is a common sense kind of piece to it. Again, I'd like to mandate helmets for everybody. That's right now is unrealistic.

I think what's been put forward is I think a good baseline and I think gives the PD a good foundation to operate on to start bringing some control to all of this. I really like the education component, that we're going to go into the schools, we're going to bring back bike rodeos and emphasize safety overall. And it's as much educating the parents about this as it is educating the kids. So I could drone on, but I won't. Again, I just want to thank you and your team for putting all this together.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I had a lot of help. I think Judge Burkholder's here and our prosecutor and Billy from Thrive. We had a lot of a lot of people involved. Yeah, it was the way it should be. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Hustis. Just a little while ago, and I knew this was coming up on the agenda, and by the way, I also want to compliment the Chief and his staff and the folks that have been working on this. I got an email.

The The gentleman spoke first tonight Tim Holloway had left and he sends me a text Craig I just got just brought my dog down to the dog park Looks like a kid got hit on one of those motorized bicycles with no lights and it looks like it could be fatal which it was not I not sure but there a lot of cops and it doesn look good down here at the intersection of lower Buckeye and Rainbow So that just how fast something could happen I text the chief chief check it you know the guy is injured but he not dead And but just that fast somebody sends me a text and says this is what happened.

So just so we're all aware of just how dangerous it is and what you have put into it to try to get us and the children protected. So, I do appreciate it Chief. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr Mayor. Thank you Councilmember. Chief, a couple questions. One is community meetings. You mentioned community meetings. Can you give an idea of how many and whereabouts those community meetings were?

Well, we scheduled three community meetings on downtown, up by the ATL or the other city, the other city hall. The landing. The landing and then was up north in festival. Okay. So those three different locations, public meetings, advertised out on social media, opportunity for the public to come in. Mayor, that's correct. Yes. And I think the biggest number of folks were probably at this one here, if I remember correct. Mayor, actually, the festival meeting, we had the most people there. Okay.

Especially residents. Some of them traveled up there from down here just because their schedules didn't arrange with the other ones. Okay. All right, perfect. And this is, I think, at the request of council and actually the public, but it's really been police department driven in coming up with what makes sense here, what matches and makes sense in some of our neighboring communities. Does this give you what you need as a police department to enforce?

And I think you had said it even more inform the public, parents, kids that are buying and riding on e-bikes or e-motos. Mayor, that's correct. Very succinctly you said so. The end for the police department are the consequences. If we have to enforce the city ordinance, then we have to enforce the city ordinance. However, with even the last meeting, our community meetings, our website that we now have up, the awareness has increased.

And actually, we've had fewer of these writeouts or writing through our intersections of our major intersections. So the awareness, the education, and the parental engagement appears to have increased. It's difficult to measure. I go by on calls for service, but that seems to be working now. Okay, great. And just to be clear and hit it one more time, 18 and under requires a helmet.

Yes and that state law That traffic law We mirrored it similar as Mayor Vice Mayor was commenting We mirrored that along with our bicycle laws that are traffic law related Okay So they paralleled it Okay All right Thank you chief Any other questions from council Not seeing any Council, what's your pleasure on agenda item 5 E? Mr. Mayor, I'd like to move approval of item 5 E. Second. I have a motion for approval of 5E in a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed?

5E passes unanimous. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Chief. Thank you, Council for your time. Thanks for all the work on this. Item number six is comments from Mayor and Council. Any comments tonight from Mayor and Council? I'm not seeing any city managers report in some of your current events. I guess I got a couple pages here to take us well into the night. I put my bed on we'd go to nine o'clock, so I'm going to make sure that I win.

Buckeye is officially kicking off its annual holiday food drive on October 12th. We're calling on residents to help us exceed last year's record collection of 6,200 pounds of non-perishable foods. All items collected will directly support local nonprofits assisting families in need across the community this holiday season. We will be issuing a press release and additional marketing material to be on our website and social media beginning on October 12th.

Secondly, the movie in the park series will be at Town Park for the first time this Friday, October 9th. Families are invited to bring their lawn chairs and blankets and enjoy Back to the Future under the stars at Town Park located at 207 North 9th Street. The movie begins at 7pm with food trucks, activities, giveaways for the community to enjoy. And then finally, yesterday we had groundbreaking of our Victory Fire Station 709.

This is the first of three new fire stations that we will be constructing over the next year to two years. And it is the first public safety project funded under our voter approved general obligation bonds that were approved in calendar year 2020 2024.

overall we have 137 million dollars that was approved for fire stations headquarters in training facilities the construction of fire station 709 is underway and is anticipated to take approximately one year so that is what I have thank you very much thank you sir item number eight is proposal for future agenda items any from council I'm not seeing any item number nine with nothing else on the agenda. We are adjourned.