Prescott Water Subcommittee Punts $700M Health Innovation District Amid Water Crisis, Site Plan Confusion, and Development Agreement Legal Tangle

Thank you. Thank you. you can see the next meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Please be seated I said I can actually explain that Music is about me for each of the very special education in working class The C&P scene. C&P's. It's going to to be wrong with it. Can't believe it's you. Good morning. Today is October 6, 2026 and this is the City of Prescott Waters Issues Subcommittee meeting.

Roll call please. Chair Roosing? Here. Member Furworth? Here. Member Gehring? I'm here. All are present. Thank you. Next item. First item is approved. Approval of the September 1st, 2026 Council Subcommittee on Water Issues Meeting Minutes. Any changes, questions? Do I hear a motion? I move approval. Second. Please vote. Aye. Passes 3-0. Next item.

Presentation and discussion regarding the amended 2022 water management policy, current residential and non-residential water budget overview for July 1st, 2026 through September 23rd, 2026. Brian Reese, Water Resources Manager, I'm Brian Reese, I'm the Water Resources Manager here for the City of Prescott within the Community Development Department.

As you are aware, the amended 2022 Water Policy Guidelines 11 through 13 establishes semi-annual water budget for residential and non-residential use. So on the budget was set on July 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2026 for a residential budget of 25 acre feet and also a non-residential budget of 25 acre feet. So today we'll just give you the amount of water that has been used for each of those budgets.

Between, we'll start off with the residential budget spreadsheet and between July 1st, 2026 and September 23rd, 2026, one residential project was approved for a total of .48 acre feet. That leaves the remaining 24.52 acre feet for the rest of the budget. Brian, I have a question. Were those duplexes sub-metered or are they on one meter? I'm not sure if they were sub-metered. They haven't come in for a permit yet. Okay, so... I'm sorry, they do.

They have a permit and they will be sub-metered based on the requirements. Yeah. Okay. Okay, because that's very important that we keep the sub-metering policy going because it encourages people to conserve when they get a bill versus when they all just get one bill and some people can serve and then other people's are out watching their car every day. Okay, and moving on to the non-residential budget, we had six projects come in.

All of them were administratively approved below the 1.5 acre foot threshold. The total amount approved so far is 2.46 acre feet and that leaves the remaining 22.54 acre feet left in the non-residential budget. Yes, Jim. Brian, my recollection is we approved a fairly good-sized commercial development up in the Deepwell Ranch area and it was roughly, as I recall, 18 acre feet. Is that in the last six months? Yeah, exactly.

Or the commercial actually was approved through, recommended through WIS and approved through council action, so it would have been on the last six month list for the non-residential. Yes, no, yeah, you're right. All right, thank you. I have a question on the medical office buildings. There's three of them here and there seems to be a lot of variation. Is that based on square footage and numbers of bathrooms? Yeah, exactly.

We take the associated usage from the water resource management model and then we interpolate based on square footage. If we see a lot of uniqueness in that particular building we try to see if we can find one that more comparable But most of the difference is probably based on the size of the buildings And does this include the landscaping? Yes. Inherently, too, the water resource management model is using the account billing.

So the landscaping is being included in that when we're doing that interpolation. Alrighty. Well, it's nice to see some medical offices coming to town. Okay, and then the last, whoops, I'm sorry, I went the wrong way. Okay, the last sheet we have for you is for approved under existing contract. Per our water policy, existing contracts, they're not included in the water budget. So this is more for informational purposes of what we see coming in for permits under approved contracts.

We didn't have anything at this point. I do believe that we might have some some bigger subdivision maps coming in and in processing over the next couple of months so you'll probably see some of those being added to the list maybe in the next budget period. So with that any other questions I could answer for you? No, I think we're okay. Next item WSA 26-037A Water Service Application submitted by IDDM LLC location Willow Creek Road and Haas Boulevard within Section 2 Township 14N range 02W.

Okay, so per the amended 2022 water policy, water service application was submitted for this project so that we could estimate water usage and for the approval of the water service being requested. This project consists of plus or minus 50 acres of a mixed use. It's located here as shown off of Willow Creek Road and Haas Boulevard, basically across the street from the Embry-Riddle University.

With this water service application, the site plan that was included in your memo packet and shown up here on the screen was provided this basic site plan, showing basically a mix of single family, multi-family, retail, hotel, and medical buildings, all kind of under the combined effort of what the applicant calls a health innovation district. for the project.

Taking this usage shown on this site plan, city staff created a demand estimate for this project and in association with the applicant for their medical usage and determined based on our water resource management model, a demand estimate for each of the aspects of the development.

So as shown for the residential uses, we estimate about 57 acre feet, estimated demand for non-residential close to 59 acre feet, landscape aspects about 4.5 acre feet, and given us a total demand of about 120.29 acre feet for this project. So the project obviously is above the 50% threshold for the non-residential budget. Per guideline 14, no project will be approved above 50%. So for this project to move forward, they have two options.

They could wait until another budget period came that could have where there's enough water, which wouldn't work for them unless we really substantially increase the budgets, or they can apply the 50% rule. So the applicant has requested an appeal of the 50% rule. The applicant shall demonstrate the benefit to the city such as job creation, wages, sales tax, economic impacts, and other benefits to the city. So the applicant has put together a letter of benefit and recommendation.

It was included as attachment five in the agenda packet. So with this project we have associated water service application 18-010, a current and existing water service application that was executed for the project formerly known as Whispering Rock.

That water or that water service application provides 60 acre feet for the project that was associated with the with the Whispering Rock pre and development agreement which was city contract number 2019 So back on September 1st of 2026 we came in with the water service application 26 and the request was for 60 It was basically the same project that you see in front of you today.

But the request was that above and beyond this Water Service Agreement 18-010 requesting the additional 60.29 acre feet needed for that particular project to be used in conjunction with that Water Service contract. The city legal department notified us during the meeting that based on the stipulations of or the terms in the agreements of the development agreement that the project being proposed would not be in compliance with that particular document.

So the ability to just grant water above and beyond the development agreement in association with that project would not be the would not be a proper way to go. Basically there was two options at that point.

There was the ability for the applicant to either build the project that was associated with the development agreement and utilize the water that was under contract for that, or they could request the full 120.29 acre feet and then work with the city to either rescind or amend the development agreement to allow that particular usage for this project. So that kind of brings you hopefully forward to where we're at today.

Given that I wanted just to go over a few things that for consideration based on the development agreement that is in place. For the Whispering Rock Development Agreement is still the binding document at this point in time. If this recommending body chooses to either recommend or not recommend water for the project, if council chooses to approve water for the project or not approve water for the project, it does not change the binding terms of the development agreement.

So we just want to make sure that that's clear at this point. The applicant at this point doesn't have the ability to change or modify that development agreement because they don't have full ownership of the land at this point in time. When they do have full ownership of the land, they would be able to come in and talk about renegotiation of that agreement.

My understanding at this point the applicant wishes to propose this project to council so that they can get some assurances if this is a project that the city can get behind. And if so, then they could move forward with that land acquisition and what would be necessary next in terms of modification to the development agreement in order to allow this project to move forward. So, again, once the applicant owns the land, then those steps that would need to happen could happen.

And the last thing I guess I wanted to make sure that is very clear is that, again, recommendation of water, approval of water by council is not binding the city or council in terms of what having to negotiate the development agreement, renegotiate it, rescind it, modify it in any way. This is an action for water. Another action would be needed at a later time to take care of the development agreement. So just with an understanding of that.

The Water Service Agreement 18-010 has an expiration term on it that would be February 2nd, 2027. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody understood those are the dates associated with the current water service application. With that, I think hopefully that gives you enough information to understand what is needed at this point. We do have the applicant here with us today. They would like to have a few minutes to come up and talk about the project if that is good at this point in time.

Okay first of all I just want to reiterate that this committee we do not vote. All we do is make a recommendation. We have a consensus and make a recommendation to Prescott City Council and they're the ones that vote. Thank you, Mayor. I have one or two questions for Elaine Moore. I wasn't here, but I did watch the entire video, got myself caught up to speed to be here today. But the same questions that I had still remain here.

If on the item summary, it says right up in the first paragraph of the background, no formal planning application is required for this project per the land development code. And I said, huh? And I'm wondering if that is because we still have an active development agreement that expires on February 2nd. That's correct in part. So the reason that you don't have that is because it is subject to a development agreement. The development agreement itself does not expire on February 2nd.

It's the water that is associated in that. There's a water service application that has been contemplated within that development agreement, and that is what expires on February 2nd of 2016. When is the development agreement other than the water? When does that expire? I will have to check because I'm kind of feeling like the cart is like two miles ahead of the horse who may not even be on the road yet.

So I'm just trying to understand normal city processes and I know this one's not normal because we have all this proceedings and bankruptcy and all the other things. So I'm just trying to understand what the normal process would be and when would we be able to execute the rest of this because there's a lot of water to commit to when we haven't gone through the normal planning processes yet.

Just looking at the development agreement doing a quick run through, the very end it says that the covenants run with the land. I don't see where we have a sunset clause in this development agreement. So the development that is contemplated here and the encumbrances on the land would remain even though that February 2nd water would go away.

And that's kind of what we got into here as well as the fact that even if the water goes away or you get more water, as of right now that land is still encumbered by that development agreement. And so since, how would we ever get rid of that development agreement? So the parties can renegotiate it. Certainly council can renegotiate the development agreement with whichever party is coming before you with the development agreement and wants to renegotiate. It's contractual so the city can do that.

And what I think Mr. Reese was trying to get into here too is the odd situation that we have right now is that you have somebody coming and asking for water who is not owners of the property. So they don't have the ability right now to negotiate a development agreement that they don't have the ability right now to negotiate a development agreement. If they were then to buy the property, then they are now entitled to that.

They would inherit that development agreement and then they could negotiate with the city at that point in time. But that's why you have a little bit of an ebb and flow here because you have a third party that's coming in asking for water. You have a development agreement that is encumbering the land. And then you have a water service application that's tied to the development agreement that's expiring. Right.

So you have a whole bunch of moving pieces and essentially you have three parties, the city council, the owners of the development agreement and the land right now, and then the applicants today who are wanting to own the land. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And there's no doubt in my mind that we have an economic development strategy that's crystal clear that we want to work on, you know, we want to work on more medical. The community's been loud and clear about that.

So I have no problem with the current plan that was approved under the old development agreement. This takes it another step higher. I see high-end retail and that is definitely part of what we'd like to see in our economic strategy. But this gets also to a density that also is like, hmm, on Willow Creek.

So I'm just trying to understand like normally I would be wanting to see that we make further progress, getting the horse on the road and the horse going down the road and eventually catching up to where we are today with the cart. So that's my concerns right now. Thanks. I have, we've never seen an application for 120 because our commercial and our residential annual budget for both, for the whole town is 100 acre feet.

And this would be 120 acre 50 acre feet every year year in and year out So this would be quite the budget buster I understand that we already are obligated legally to the original site plan the original project They already have 60 acre feet of water and now they coming back and wanting more and they changed the site plan and they added three six story apartment complexes and the medical part of this project, their new project, is the hospital is three stories, the medical offices are one and two, and then they throw in this six story building.

And I'm concerned that about the infrastructure to deliver this water. I mean, are they going to have to put in a pump station? Are we going to have to put in a pump station? I don't see public works here. But that's something we need to consider, too, before we obligate ourselves to providing water. We need to figure out who's obligated to the delivery system and maybe some storage tanks that will be involved.

So that's one of my concerns, too, because we don't have too many six-story buildings. Emory Riddle across the street has a big dorm, but this is pretty massive, this six story additions. So Mr. Gehring, do you have any comments? Thank you, Mayor. Yes, I do before we lose Brian. So Brian, can you call up the site plan again for me please? Sure. Are you able to enlarge the lower right hand corner at all? I am not able to do it. I'm not sure if I T in the back might be able to. All right.

Well, let me just go on then. If you look at that lower right hand corner of the site plan, you're going to see three six story senior housing buildings, Each one of which has 101 units in it, so that's 303 units. But above those you're going to see 20 senior housing lots. And each one of those senior housing lots is a six-story building that is 140,000 square feet each.

So, I mean, if you allocated a senior housing unit at 1,400 square feet, there would be a hundred units in each one of those lots. There's no parking shown, but if you follow that math, you can come to the conclusion that this site has 2,300 senior housing units on it. Is that in the water consideration? No, we went ahead, we utilized the unit housing values provided to us by the applicant. So, there it goes.

So, I don't have the exact numbers on this particular slide, but the exact numbers I think were provided by the applicant in their in their materials that they provided to us on this particular project. From the residential portion of that, we came up with the 57.02. Okay, I'm under the belief that that's going to be revised once we get a better site plan. But going back to that lower right hand corner, Those three six-story buildings that each one of which has 101 units in it, that's 303 units.

How much parking is required? I mean there are 66 parking spaces shown, but that's not right, is it? I don't know the exact number of parking. At this point we're just approving the water request. So parking would be provided during the permitting and the requirements during the permitting stage. Well, let me make it clear.

To me, it would be wonderful to have a teaching hospital for Prescott and these medical facilities, but I would like to have more clarity on what the actual site plan is before I agree on the amount of water it takes. And my stance is, you know, they've already got water and plans for a medical campus with amenities around it anyway, and that could be a teaching hospital. So I'm leaning towards considering the original DA in water like phase one and get that going first.

And then if they want to expand then they can certainly expand But I feeling that we already got a deal and I think we should stick to it Good morning Mayor Mayor Pro Tem I sorry Water Issues Subcommittee Chelsea Walton Community Development Director Just a couple of points of clarification relative to entitlement process So under the Land Development Code this project does not require any kind of entitlement for what they want to build right now If they move forward with the six story anything that would require a special use permit for the height.

So just building what they're building would go through the regular permitting process which would look at the parking item. If they're asking anything outside of what's already permitted in zoning, what is already approved via the development agreement, then they can move forward with that. But if they're asking for above and beyond, pun intended with a height, they would need that special use permit. And I believe they would require that SUP for anything over 50 feet.

So that may be triggered by a six story anything. But beyond that, if they go outside of setbacks, you know, all of the regular rules apply for the LDC, but there's nothing especially triggering a further entitlement action. It's just based on what they want to build. Would that special use permit go before planning and zoning and council, or would it be done administratively? No, that goes before planning and zoning and then to council.

If they needed a variance for some sort of like a setback or anything like that, that would go to the Board of Adjustments and only the Board of Adjustments. Okay, thanks, Chelsea, for the clarification. Chelsea, before you go too far. Jim? So, a six-story building, 140,000 square feet. How many senior units do you think that would be able to hold? I don't know off the top of my head. All right, thank you. Yeah, thank you.

So subcommittee, the applicant has requested to speak if that would be appropriate at this time. Okay. I will yes, please come up to the podium and Yes, thank you. IT, if you could bring up that presentation for the applicant. Good morning, Madam Chairperson and members of the committee. My name is Dr. Edward Johnson.

I am the president of the newly established Arizona Public Health Innovation Foundation that will serve as the bridge, the coordinator, the facilitator among our developers, our lenders, our teaching hospital, and other activities on the site.

I would say up front this morning we respectfully ask you to defer this item until the next meeting because we would like to provide you written proof of the commitment of our major players in these categories that I've described and also provide you any additional information you'd want to see. An example of that would be we have no intention of six-story buildings. We're not sure how that happened. We're looking at four-story maximum.

But there are a number of other issues that you may want us to address and we want to be prepared to do that so you can make the best decision possible for your community. We are prepared to briefly go through this PowerPoint presentation that would update you on particularly what's happened since our last meeting and also may help clarify some of the other issues that you have concerns about. That's all right? Wonderful.

So this project will ultimately be called a University Health Innovation District, but we continue to carry the Willow Lake name in terms of familiarity with what we're looking at. The next few slides simply give you a feel for what we've been sharing with potential partners about the excitement we have for this great community, the advantages of being in this community, why they should come to this community, and why they should make long-term commitments.

So I won't spend time convincing you why this is a great community because you obviously know that.

But we quickly go through why Prescott, if they don't know where Prescott is, Prescott by the numbers a little bit about amenities and quality of life the four lifestyle which as you know is a major attraction and we talk about that in a minute The project site location which you aware of This is really the first slide that starts to look at housing but also the other activities on the site So roughly 270,000 square feet for the core medical campus, 20 units of independent living, 303 units of active assisted senior living, others might call it, 36 units for memory care, high-end retail market of approximately 30,000 square feet, a retail and event center that would include facilities for weddings and other parties and other activities.

A high-end hotel and wellness spa that we think can be a hub for additional wellness programs in the community. So we're not focused just on health care. We're focused on health care and wellness. And our partners have a deep belief in that component of our project. So as we move along, we'll start to give you a feel for the types of wellness programs that we think might be attractive to your residents. and also 17 single-family residential homes.

So much of the housing is designed on the assumption, you'll see the number of employees we would expect to have, particularly within the medical facilities. If they want to live on the campus site, then this would enable them to live, work, and play in the same area. And we think that has a lot of sustainability advantages as well as personal preference, because we'll have, I'm sure, a number of visiting nurses, visiting doctors, et cetera.

So this is conceptually an advanced community hospital within the district that is the anchor that would be supplemented by a patient surgical center and probably some type of acute care transition building. So everything is an ecosystem on the campus in terms of primary care all the way through the 5 to 10 percent that our hospital can't take care of where you end up either being Aravac'd or sent by ambulance to another location. We're looking at somewhere between 40 and 80 beds.

So we're going to do significant studies in a number of areas. One is going to be what's the demand that suggests ultimately the number of beds that we're going to propose. We're going to do a graduate medical education study to determine how many residencies make sense for your community. We'll be working the teaching hospital then to identify students who would assume those residencies, which specialties of the seventh or eighth that are supported by residency programs.

But the goal ultimately is wellness for your community in the area and a pipeline of talent that ultimately ends up with physicians out of a residency program that want to stay in your community long term. That's our goal. And national statistics show that about 70% of residents stay in the community where they did their residency.

So we hope over that four-year period, plus or minus, they would develop the kind of connections with the community, both professionally and personally, that would cause many of them to stay that would otherwise not stay if it wasn't a teaching hospital and didn't have a significant program that we will implement in terms of recruiting physicians, incentivizing them to stay in the community to be associated with the University Medical Center.

and ultimately to be long-term citizens of your community. We know there's a couple of keys to a hospital. If you put it out in the middle of nowhere, in quotes, it's a real struggle in rural America. We all know that, whether it's Prescott or anywhere else.

So we have clear evidence that by creating a mixed-use campus, it not only helps with ensuring that the hospital is successful, but also can provide other benefits to the community that can relate to entertainment and education and other programs that swirl around medical care in your community. So examples would be agritourism, potential pavilion, a regional destination for people to come to the site, not to necessarily go to a doctor, but for dining, for retail, for educational.

programs for some children's activities that we would plan, etc. And there are clear examples in Greater Phoenix where with the two projects that we want to mirror in terms of quality but also size for this community, anywhere between 400,000 and a million visitors annually to what you would look at as a pretty modest footprint in terms of agricultural education, vertical farming, restaurants, etc. So these are just visuals to start to give you a sense.

If you've been to the Queen Creek Olive Mill, for example, in Queen Creek, Arizona, or the Agritopia project in Gilbert, you would start to get a sense of how inviting these sites are to come and spend the day with your family. Learn about farming, learn about agribusiness and sustainability, and make at least a day of it. We see an event pavilion on the site, something like you see in the lower left-hand corner, but can be a place for special occasions.

And the size and the scope of that is yet to be determined. The integrated health and wellness campus then begins to link health care with wellness. How can we prevent the need for the varying levels of health care we bring to the campus? What types of services could we provide? Both the visitors to the community but also residents. So issues such as how to eat better, how to exercise better, etc.

would be the focus of these programs, but also a high-end hotel that would have a spa and other related activities. This is a visual of other locations in Utah. That is the kind of feel we'd like to bring. So this is not Motel 6, but something you can be proud of in terms of activities and a site that you don't currently have. So the Arizona Public Health Innovation Foundation is the coordinating group for all of this.

And as we've now filed with the Corporation Commission, We'll approve it as early as next week. But essentially it would have six functions. It would advance a number of communities. We envision Prescott as the first hub for a series of rural hospitals that will all be linked ultimately both in terms of a personal app that each member of your community could have where you can actually schedule appointments, you can see your own health records.

More of a patient-centric model than the current hospital-centric model. And we all get frustrated with trying to get that information both in a way that you can understand, but also appreciating that doctors are challenged when they have all this information. What they need is slices of that to serve you with your next visit. So what does that software start to look like?

Health Innovation Districts then would be much like what we're describing for you, but in other cities that are ultimately linked through teaching hospital support, academic and clinical integrations, strategic coordinations, and funding and program strategy, and that gets back to the graduate medical education programs. So we want to be able to learn from each site, not keep reinventing the wheel, but still modify in terms of what is needed in any one rural area.

On the project team, it looks something like, on the left, these are community hospitals. They're yours. They're not ours. We do have an agreement with a publicly traded community hospital operator that would come to Prescott and operate the hospital. And in partnership, a teaching university medical school would work with them to build the whole model out. So New Tex Health, it would be our operator in Prescott. And there's all kinds of public information about them.

They've been publicly traded for a couple of years. They have 20 some hospitals around the country, three in Arizona, strong track record for patient attentiveness, focus, and services.

On the right you got who will be our developer and most importantly completion guarantor So you know this isn a dream This project going to get built And the three leading companies right now for Prescott would be the Ryan Company top ten national developer Lincoln Property Company, which is a huge national and international real estate company, and the Boyer Company out of Utah. All three expressing great interest in being a part of one of our projects.

So So as we get closer to a decision, we want to be able to give you in writing their commitment not only to develop the property but also guarantee its completion. And in the middle, the foundation plays a bridge role between the community hospital, the university, and the developer. So we would focus on site selection, all the feasibility studies I've talked about.

We do a feasibility study on the potential of private sector fundraising to support a lot of these activities and also an economic development study by a third party. In our case we would use the Pollock Company from Scottsdale, which is considered to be one of the leaders. Architectural standards. So it's our job to both translate and to ensure that What you want to come out of this project looks, feels, follows all the rules that we're going to follow.

Developer selection, construction coordination, academic and clinical cooperation, the GME program management, operational capital strategies. Hospitals don't make money the first day they open. There's always a delay in terms of being paid by insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid. So we've got to finesse that cash flow.

Grant funding strategies to bring rural planning grants and other federal, state, and local grants to support the creation of this system and also to ensure it gets off to a strong fiscal start. Certainly property management and there will be other activities also. Then property ownership, escrow, and transition as Taylor Derrick Capital transitions through water rights to Rockview Properties, IDDM, and our foundation. These entities would be the escrow holders and affiliations.

Then to your point, site plan approval we know is If there's a process coming, then that would be transferred to the developer who would then be the project completion guarantor. We've already talked about this. We are honoring, as it's been said, what you approved in terms of the entitlement process. But things do get a little confusing in the early stages.

We've never intended to build anything taller than four stories, So we're not quite sure how it became six, but I can just assure you there's no six-story building in our project. I've talked about water demand. Here are some of the numbers again for size. We've done an internal impact study which we think will be validated by the Pollock.

Roughly Probably a $700 million in construction, 1,400 direct ongoing jobs, total regional jobs of 1,800, annual worker earnings 97 million plus or minus, the regional economic activity 229 million, 2.4 million recurring annual city revenue, construction job years about 6,500, $18 million in one-time city revenues and estimated 30-year city revenues we think will come in plus or minus, about $80 million. And then these are the types of things we've been talking about internally and so have you.

We're not uncomfortable with the current grant development split between the hospital site and the senior living site. As long as we can have the assurance that we can come back to you then on a project by project basis and that water will be available once we make the case for what the project is and why we need the water. That concludes my comments.

Thank you I have a few questions There a lot of pretty much everything but the kitchen sink is part of this project What if you just could you do what you needed to do with the original development agreement I mean it the same footprint I mean it the same amount of property but you have 60 acre feet of water a year Because to tell you the truth we not really interested in developing a farm out there You know we have a 4 cooperative extension from the U of A here that educates people We surrounded up north Paul Denchino with farming We have a farmer market If people want to buy fresh vegetables we going to have a farm So I just have a hard time mixing medical in with some sort of hanging garden farming project.

So could you, like if we just stuck with the original plan, I mean you could still build your medical hospital and have retail because that's how the original plan was. Madam Chairman, members of the Commission, I think we're prepared to start the next steps with the hospital site and the senior living site with the current allotment.

We would then still want to make the case for each of the projects, why it not only adds value to the community in terms of experiences, but also helps ensure the economic long-term viability of the hospital and all the relationships. Farming is kind of a misnomer here. Hanging gardens, vertical farming would just be a demonstration project. We'd like to grow enough fruits and vegetables for our senior living component, for example, but nothing else beyond that.

And retail, nothing that anyone else is already doing in the community. But what do you wish you had that could be at a site like this that would draw attention to the site, add to the branding, and also bring people together to spend money in your community? So I don't want to over-describe the farming component. It's a relatively modest, small water usage, small acreage. But we thought we'd at least test it in terms of community interest.

And that would be an example of where we'd come back to you. And if we can make the case for a small demonstration educational project and you get excited about that, I think you would see how little. And part of vertical farming is to show how much can be grown with such little water. It's really the whole point of the initiative. Thank you. My next question is about financing.

You mentioned that this hospital is going to need some help with financing and you mentioned local grants and state grants. I've never heard of that. You know, we have a Yavapai Regional Medical Center here, Dignity Health, that is a district and it is a, theoretically, it's a taxing entity. And we've been fortunate enough that they haven't, you know, it's basically a county hospital. And we've been fortunate that over the years they haven't had to ask the taxpayers for more money.

But I'm concerned because your project is named a Health Innovation District and districts are taxing authorities, you know, like fire districts, water districts, road districts. So are you planning on asking us to form a district for this hospital and then ask the community to pay like property taxes to support this hospital? No, it's a term of art that reflects in many real estate projects the concept of it's more than one function, more than one building, it's a destination.

So obviously it would be a health and wellness destination, but it could also be a retail and entertainment destination. So the challenges of cash flow as the hospital starts, we're working on internally. And we're comfortable that we can come up with. Because you did mention asking us for going to the state or local for grants, and we just don't have the capacity to put up millions of dollars to grant in grants for a hospital. Yeah, we're looking primarily at state and federal monies.

There is significant money for rural planning grants, for example, that we would try to tap into, and also rural support. We're going to look for any grants outside of this community to support everything we want to do. It's not critical that we receive those, but they're available to projects like ours, and we're certainly not going to go after them in terms of reducing cash flow issues or risk for anybody. If you get them, fine.

If you don't, you obviously still have to have a plan B to ensure that everything works. But on paper this works When you look at New Texas track record they been around for more than a dozen years You see a clear viability in terms of their services what they serve but just as important how they serve and the customer service component along with the customer app And we haven't even talked about the use of technology.

We're starting to form partnerships with next generation technology companies in areas like surgical remote robotics. Where one of our proposed partners this morning at 730 had a physician in Spain do an operation in India through Starlink, the satellite system. The real-time delay between Spain and India is, don't hold me to it, .0001 seconds in terms of the ability of that physician.

So what we want to be able to develop here is a pilot to show the rest of the country and the rest of the world, hey, if we have these companies as partners and they're looking to join us, then how do we have a central hub where a doctor can come to for some reason? certain types of operations and operate on your people in Prescott. You don't have to come to Phoenix, let alone Spain or other countries.

Last month it was a surgeon at Columbia University of New York operating on another individual in India. Again, the same essentially non-delay time. So the company we're working at this is the next generation of what we already have in Arizona for sure, but in terms of precision and the types of operations, it's stunning what's coming next. So our job is to get that expertise into communities like yours and save lives, but also be focused on preventive medicine and preventive activities.

Thank you. I think Lois, do you have some comments please? Yeah, I was, again, I love, we need more healthcare, we need more innovative healthcare options for our residents, so I have no problem at all with your vision. I think it's grandiose perhaps in some spots, but I'd rather you go for a big picture and then wheeled it down as you work this project. My concern today, as you asked, can we delay this another month? I really think we need to delay this a little more.

I really want to understand this is the first time I'm seeing all these partners that you say you're involved in. I want to understand, you know, is it a intent or is it a contract? Like, where are you on the reality of bringing this to Prescott? Us committing any water is, for me right now, premature. But we're going to commit water to health care coming to this community. There's no doubt in my mind about that.

We're already on record as a council of saying this is part of our economic strategy. But I just feel like right now, I've learned a lot today. I'd love a copy of this presentation.

Well, we commit to work with you expeditiously to answer all of your questions and to keep this moving, because it's a complex… It's a complex and I actually would rather us work this through our normal community development planning processes that helps the city wrap all of our departments and all of our concerns and all of our codes around what you're doing. And when the right time for water comes, then I'm like, if we're feeling confident enough in whatever phase, then we'll give water.

I like your idea and I'm in alignment with you. I don't think we can give you 120 acre feet right now on a vision. But, you know, get going on portions of it and we will, if it falls in with what we want to do as a city with our economic development strategy, we're going to put water behind projects like that. That's all we're asking. Because we worked with these partners for a long enough period of time, they're ready to move.

So all we want to do month by month, if you think of it that way, what can we give you next month? And how close are we getting to your comfort level and your decision? Do we need another month? If so, let's all feel good about it and make sure they feel good about it. I'll feel good about it when some of you are like, here we've got a six story vision and a plan in our paper. And you're telling me it's not. And I'm seeing, you're saying four, I'm seeing a photo that has five.

So I'm just like, what am I considering? And I'm used to, we have departments that help us get projects to the phase that are ready for council to make decisions. So we're not the negotiating group per se, but we are the strategic group and we've laid out our strategy and we're working on our codes and renewing our codes. So I just, I know this is kind of, that's why I started with legal.

We're in this legal I'm in a legal limbo with a development agreement that now water expires, but the development agreement doesn't expire. And I'm just struggling with what's words and what's reality. We hear you. We're not going to use the word partnership with the city, but we're going to put it in quotes and say, but we want to be partners with you because we don't want adversarial relationships. Great. It's not good for you.

It's not good for us, nor our partners, nor our investors and lenders. Perfect. We just can't get started on the wrong foot. Wonderful. Mr. Gehring? Thank you, Mayor. Doctor, I gather from what you've said that there's a clear intent to phase the project. Is that correct? Yes.

Okay, so that what occurs to me is if you phase the project, you might also be able to phase the water required and fit better into our water Plan and also protect the rights of those little people who, or not little people, but small developers who need some of that water for their stuff too. So I would think really seriously about how you phase the project and how that affects the water required for the project. Yeah, and I think the project by project model speaks to what you're saying.

that we're very thoughtful in terms of when something could come online, how much water it would need, and are you prepared to make a decision to support what would be additional to a hospital site and a senior living site? And we apologize for whatever mix-up there might have been in terms of density and even parking with the percentage of parking for a senior living center is not the same as an apartment. And so some of this is just education and coordination and communication. That's all.

Lois? Yeah, just in that regard, if we don't have parking, then we need to consider public transportation, which we don't have right now to that property either. So there's lots of, that's why I'm saying lots of departments, lots of issues involved that we have to work through together in partnership to see if we can come to alignment. So my concern with looking, I appreciated, I can't tell you how many times we don't get really good economic impact studies.

So I was appreciative of your first attempt here, and I'm glad to hear you're going to bring in Pollock to help as this develops. There's a real big economic impact assumption here buried on page four of your thing that if 303 units of conventional are conventional multifamily rather than assisted living, approximately 100 to 105 direct jobs should be removed from the estimate. And that has impact on us on taxes, wages in the community, jobs, et cetera.

So as you develop and as each phase becomes more and more real, we could take these items which right now look like, oh, it's going to be the best overall total numbers at the beginning to where's it really going to end up and where we could benefit from that as a community. So, yeah, we'll work together. How much time do you need? How long do you want us to delay the project before we bring it back again?

Well, we would appreciate it if you would delay it 30 days at a time to see what we can accomplish in that period of time. We don't have a meeting in November and I think we're not going to have quorum in December. So I think the next possibility for bringing it back is probably going to be January and that's based on the clerk's official calendar when WISC starts up next year. Okay, January. Well, we got a lot of time to accomplish a lot then.

Are you allowed to have special meetings, called meetings? Pardon? Are you allowed to have called meetings if necessary? Yeah, sure. But we have to have a quorum. Sure, I understand. Okay. Alrighty. Well, thank you very much. Is there any public comment? Thank you for your consideration. Elaine, is there any motion that's needed at all? Yeah, there will be as far as if we're going to postpone it.

Okay, I move that we postpone this agenda item until our January meeting or we may call a special meeting if needed before then if we have a quorum. Second. Please vote. That passes 3 Okay next item Next item presentation and discussion regarding a review of the fiscal year 2026 water conservation rebate program Good morning, Mayor and WIS subcommittee members.

My name is Tracy Beasley and I am one of the Water Resource Project Managers with the Water Resources Division within Community Development. And this is our annual review of the water conservation programming that we have done within the water resources team with a focus on our rebate program. If you remember from our previous presentation, in recent years we've done this on an annual basis. So this is our first in alignment with our fiscal year.

So there's a little bit of overlap from the last presentation that we had, but they'll be on the fiscal basis moving forward. Okay. Something weird with the... I'm sorry? There's another one? Ah, sorry. Thank you. Wrong remote. Remote. There we are. Okay. So the first slide here summarizes the rebate offerings that we have or we have now, we had in 2026.

So there were no changes from the previous year, just some minor edits within code, which we went through in previous presentations to up some of the rebate amounts that customers might receive. Rebate receive and some of the administrative details. So first thing we're going to do is just sort of a roll through the rebate program and hit some of the highlights. This is in your packets, but this is also for the benefit of any of the customers or viewers that might be interested here.

So for fiscal year 2026, we had 84 rebates for toilets or urinals. And this is the breakdown on the screen here of what that looked like. We're always curious to see how many septic customers participate because it's wonderful to reduce the water of our septic customers because it's much more difficult to capture the water to get that back into our aquifer.

So in this case we had 18 incentives for septic customers and in the end for a little under $10,000 we estimate annual savings of about 6 million gallons of water and wait a minute here. Yeah, that's right. Just looking at my figures there. Yeah, oh there we go. Yeah, there's an extra comma, my apologies. We all missed that one. So about 600,000 and then yes, just under 9 million lifetime. Washing machines, we had 28 rebates.

Those customers also qualify for septic incentives and if they have, if they're on septic systems. So we had two customers receive that bonus. It's always interesting to try and support our customers in understanding what qualifies. And so we do have information on our website, we have it in our pamphlets, and we're always available to talk with customers about which machines to purchase.

It is true that overall the machines that are out there are significantly more water efficient than the ones of the past. What I have seen this year as a new trend is there seem to be at least on sale washing machines that are very efficient, except they have an option where you can fill the tank all the way to the top. So we have had, you'll see our denials as we get further into the slideshow.

I think we've had at least four customers who submitted applications that did not meet our guidelines. They were not efficient enough and when I looked at the machines my educated hunch is it's because they have this fill to the top setting and so that bounces them out of the efficient machines. But we continue a solid trend with replacements that have qualified.

Turf removal were actually up a little bit from last year The promotions that we did in the spring kept us on our toes We had I don know maybe 15 well we had 19 applications I think about 15 of those came in within a 60 period And so we were quite busy working with our customers to help make sure that they were able to have successful projects to receive those incentives from us I have a question. Was it mostly residential removal or was it commercial?

Because I've seen a lot of commercial removals. We had the Prescott Lakes HOA as a commercial removal. I believe that is the only... It's on the front page of the Courier. That was wonderful, yes. This was round two. They did some removals back in 2009 to 2013, And over the last two years, they had five areas where they removed turf. The maximum qualification for us was that $5,000 mark currently, and so we provided rebate funds to support one of those five parcels.

So I believe that's the only commercial we had. In recent years we've had primarily residential, but that makes sense because the amount of non-residential that we have is limited and most of that would be associated with the HOA so that we have in our community. We have our first rain garden application in a number of years, so that was exciting. And the next slide we're going to highlight a little bit more of what this customer did. This is a residential property.

This is just a sample slide of a small active rain garden. This image actually is from Mesa. It was a really nice example here. But this customer did quite a bit more. He did it in two phases. And so with the maximum $500 rebate currently in place for rain gardens, we applied a portion of the work that this customer did.

And so the gallon save estimate, this is a very rough estimate because there are actually a number of factors in determining water savings, but at minimum about 70,000 gallons of water. So I've included a few slides from this property to show the different projects. And it's quite interesting. His home was between three and four thousand square foot rooftop, which is very similar to many homes. And he had a system where he captured half of the rooftop through a series of cisterns.

And so that's what the first photo is there on the left hand side. So the water goes to the cisterns and then he has a pipe that comes out of the cisterns for overflow. And that's where you see the pipe in the second image. And any of the overflow would then go into the various rain garden areas that are on the property. So it was a little hard to showcase, but the third photo you can see he has a really interesting side yard with some terracing.

And so our intern and myself, we went out there and ground truth the project so that we were sure we had a good understanding of what was going on. And so it's really nice to be able to say, yes, we have our first project. And the work that he has done and the savings is substantial. It's more than the previous slide, Reflex. So I just wanted to give you the opportunity to see that. Rain barrels, so these are the smaller ones.

This is really the introductory effort into customers who are interested in harvesting water. So we had eight, I'm sorry, eight of the larger ones, which we typically refer to as cisterns, and most of the time those are well over 100 gallons in storage. And we had 11 of the smaller ones. And again, this is a very rough introductory estimate because there are some assumptions made about how many times a customer uses the water that's stored in these containers.

And so it's probably significantly higher for those who are actively using their rain barrels. But we have at least 437,000 gallons saved, in this case would be of potable irrigation water with the rain barrels that we had today.

And there a little footnote there One of the big projects this past year which I get into more details in a later slide has been looking at how we been making our estimates for water savings and what is in our best interest for really understanding through demand management lenses what this rebate program can offer And so in this case I put a little note here that for whatever reason historically the mathematics was based on a 15 inch rain and not on gallons of water that that rainfall could capture in those containers And so I just threw that little mathematical piece up there.

So it's a little lower for the estimate that is on the screen, but overall think about, you know, the wonderful year we've had this year compared to last year. If the customer is actively using that storage and a large square footage feeds into those containers, there is the potential of using significantly more rainwater. Irrigation timers are very popular. Again, our billing insert spurred quite a few applications that you see here.

This is one that is actually quite challenging that we'll be looking into how we might modify administration or rebate code in the future, Because we do have a number of residential customers on single zones. That means their roses, their vegetable gardens, their trees, their drought tolerant plants all end up on the same irrigation line. And the smart timers, although they are very smart, are not smart enough alone to be able to navigate that.

So it requires quite a bit of staff support to help customers troubleshoot essentially having lower water use and meeting the needs of the plants in concert with these irrigation timers. So stay tuned for more information on that in the future. But people are interested in it. They are getting installed. I have four applications right now in progress for additional smart controllers. Hot water recirculators we had 12.

And then for the summary slide just to let you know where we are we had 154 applications that were approved totaling 179 individual rebates. Mr. Gehring has a comment. Yes sir. Oh back on your former slide on hot water recirculation. Are you actively doing anything on that? And the reason I ask is I had the unfortunate experience of staying in three different hospital rooms earlier this year, and none of those had hot water recirculations.

And I sent an email off to Harry Obert, but I didn't get an answer. So I'm wondering if that's worth an effort to contact the hospital about. We have not reached out to the hospital. We certainly can. It's all about capacity. So this year we've been very focused on the long-term planning.

We've been in a one and a half year process to get all of our data out of a clunky system cleaned up and in such a fashion that our consultants can really start helping us have a clear direction and create a plan, very targeted, approved by California. So our attention has been split a little bit more this year. But we'd be very happy if you have a, sounds like you have a contact, if you share that, we'd be happy to reach out and provide some information to them.

And hospitals and commercial absolutely can qualify for recirculator incentives. Yeah, that reminds me that we've got the new hotel project on the old City Hall site. Maybe now is the time to contact them and see if maybe they can plan on having a hot water recirculation system so that the guests can have instant hot water instead of running the hot water for a few minutes waiting for it to warm up. Sure, sure. So noted. Thank you. Appreciate that.

So back to the summary, we had 179 individual rebates amounting to $46,683 with an annual savings of just under $1,900,000. And when we say lifetime, just for you and for those who are watching, there is an estimated lifetime for each item, Whether it's sun bleaching of a rain barrel or a smart controller living the number of years that it will before it's time to replace it. And so that varies from component to component.

So it's not my lifetime or your lifetime or the property owner's lifetime, it's the lifetime of the fixture or the project. But with that said, it looks like we have approximately 24 million gallons saved through this year's program or an equivalent of about 74 acre feet or better through this year's rebate incentive program. And this is our summary slide so you can see everything here in one shot.

The denials, I didn't break that out formally, but since I had, you know, direct connection this year with pretty much everything that came through, I will say that the denials for 1.6 gallon toilets were much smaller this year. So I think we've done a good job over the last two years of really educating our customers about that. It really varied. We had three or four applications that were for hot water heaters. We don't have rebates for those. We had some customers who were not customers.

We had applications come from people who did not receive water from us. And so there was no strong trend. I think it's just a common mix, but I can say we had a decline in the 1.6 gallon toilets and we are boosting our conversations about the washing machines to help customers, you know, come in and talk to us before they finalize their purchase if they're interested in the rebates that we have. Lois?

Well, I like hearing that people that live in other communities are interested in those communities putting forward conservation projects, so awesome. And those that I hear from currently, you know, it is nice that we have the work being done by the Friends of the Verde River, Because anyone who for whatever reason doesn't qualify, if I'm the person talking with them, they immediately know about that grant program.

And so if they're in Yavapai County, they can submit an application to that program. And you don't have to be a resident in the city limits. As long as you get city water, you could be out in the county and still get the rebate. Correct. Yes. Absolutely. Jim? Just briefly, I did a calculation while listening to you on the total amount of water saved over the lifetime versus the cost. And it comes out to be about $620 an acre foot, which is really quite good for supplemental water.

For instance, where I come from, $1,500 an acre foot for supplemental water is nothing. So it's a great program. We want to keep it going. Thank you. Appreciate that. So phase two, which I mentioned as a summary of what we were doing this year, is that software migration. You know, we started that about a year and a half ago now. We had a third party host.

Through the years, our rebate program had various iterations of who was managing it and what it looked like when it went into the data system. And it was very clunky and very expensive and challenging to really get even the basic information out of it. So our wonderful IT team took on the challenge of working with us to get a system that was much more beneficial to the city. And so this is a really good pause point in where that has progressed.

Again, it was 19 years worth of data, starting with our 2006 data up through where we are now. You know, our new data is in that program as well. There were 4,755 approved rebates. Those were the ones that went into the system. We have the denials in case we need those, but there was missing addresses, partial account numbers, names taught in the same fields with rebates. It was quite an adventure touching these data points many times to get this cleaned up.

And so the data is pretty much ready to go into the system. The only thing that has slowed us down is capacity, tossing back and forth between IT and myself when we can get to the next phase.

And so with another 30 minutes of my time, all of this data should finally rest within the online system where myself or anyone who's administering current rebates can pull up any application from any previous customer and look at it all in one data set And so that really exciting and everything through this program has been sent to our consultants We had several conversations with them around what this data can provide to us in that long plan process So we very happy with where we are We have most of our standard procedures written and in place now and hopefully this will be how we move forward for a very long time Lois.

Tracy, I know we're so proud of the conservation program here in the City of Prescott and the work you're doing. When you look around the rest of the county or even the state, you know, how are we How are we viewed in this regard in the county and what role models do you have in the state? Interesting question. Thank you. I hear a lot of positive things in various meetings, water conservation specific and outside of that. With regard to our program, people do reference our conservation program.

When I look to the other communities, what I see primarily is a very significant focus on outdoor water savings. A lot of staff in those programs, a lot of funding to make sure those staff are available and skilled and trained to support both residential and non-residential.

So where we have a little bit more of a mixed program in what we offer, I would say there's at least a 75% emphasis in most other communities towards that outdoors beyond the rebates, beyond what we see as rebates, more to what we offered in the first four or five years of the program. So much, much more of on-site analysis, helping customers understand what needs to be done to have a more efficient system.

And some of the other associated where we used to have, for example, aerated irrigation switching to drip irrigation. We did at one point in time offer an incentive after a customer had hired a trained professional in water efficiency to do an audit of their program. And so that's the main difference. And so as we build our long-term plan, you'll see this reflected.

And you'll see it reflected on a small scale in the last slide as far as what I'm hoping to focus on in the coming portion of this fiscal year. I'm always amazed when I'm down and we were down in the valley in August and the amount of grass, lawns all over the state. There is a lot. Or when I'm down in Tucson for teaching, I'm just amazed with how much grass is all over the state. And so we'll see what happens with the Colorado River situation.

I'm just so proud every time I come home and I see what we're doing here. This is true. Thank you for your leadership. I do see less turf. It's very true in our community. Yeah, I would make an effort to walk on the grass and it was just as hot on the grass as it was on the pavement, so it wasn't really cooling anything off. Oop, wrong way. Let's try this again.

So in conjunction with this, I cannot remember if I mentioned this last time, but there are a number of training programs available within the state to help professionals interested in outdoor landscaping understand water efficiency. And so last spring I attended the Qualified Water Efficiency Landscape Program offered by the City of Surprise.

And I have to shout them out as loudly as I can because they are currently the only city that at least that I have heard of within the last couple of months. They appear to be the only community in Arizona that is offering this training and thus far it has been free to anyone who wants to participate. So they have put money behind training people both within their community and beyond.

So last year I attended and then this year I attended the whole training and received my certification through this program. Thank you. And so I have no intention of digging up Kaliche and putting down pipelines, but I have used my learning over and over again in conversations with our customers. And so we, this I hope will also facilitate rebuilding of the partnerships with landscape professionals in our community so that I have a better understanding of what they're facing.

And so, yes, so that is an accomplishment for the city and for our department this year.

Quick summary other outreach that we have done we had 24 events workshops or event tabling events If you curious about those I do have a list that I can share with you after so you can see where we been Radio ads through the end of June we had a contract and so the themes are on the screen here for the 30 second ads that we offered Eye on water, toilet rebates, rainwater harvesting, our time of day code, and then the partnership that we had with the Friends of the Verde River in incentivizing water efficiencies.

In addition to that, we added the relocation guide to our list of print resources and we had four months in an ad magazine called Your Home First with two water conservation articles in two of those ads and then our standard YCCA magazine ad. Workshops. I have been putting together some standardized workshops. This far we have what I'm calling our Rainwater Harvesting 201 because it really helps customers get into the nuances. What are all the parts you need?

What does it look like if you're needing pumps? What does it look like to connect with the drip irrigation system? That workshop is now available on the Rainwater Harvesting page of our PrescottWater.com website. And so that was wonderful to work with our consultant to get that up with all of the links mentioned in the presentation on the same page. So if anyone is interested in finding that right now, it's kind of tucked away.

Eventually it'll migrate to something a little more apparent, but if you go to the last tab where it says additional resources on the Rainwater Harvesting page, is the very first link in there. And so you can watch, it's about 30 minutes long, and so anyone can now watch that workshop. And it's our hope to do more of that moving forward in the future.

We'll do, you know, as long as the presentation is put together well, I do a voice over later and then we'll, we'll get those posted for our customers. For social media and newspaper, we have a summary slide here with one example of a newspaper ad in the center. And, you know, it's wonderful to have both of these avenues for getting information out to our customers and hope to continue to grow that moving into the future. Websites, just a few statistics.

We are continuing to grow little by little. So FY26, we saw 16,497 views, so it's a few thousand higher than the previous year. Although I'm getting more educated and now I'm noticing there's also bots and all those things at play. That's why I have two different numbers on the bottom section there. So we'll be learning a little bit more about what all that means, but I did put how many were in the U.S.

versus how many came from all sorts of places, and those probably weren't actually people looking at our websites. We did, with their consultant, expand our outdoor section in such a way that we have more resources there and it is ready for us to also create space for additional resources for HOAs and different focus points. And so that's an exciting, no content has really changed, we've just changed the structure in that.

We're playing around with QR codes where appropriate to see if our community actually uses the QR codes. So we had some traction on two of them. This is a screenshot of the reporting page for the company where we get our QR codes. And so we had 38 people use the QR code for our April billing and a few enter your home first. Hopefully we'll try a few more of those this year. If it seems like our audience is benefiting from them, we'll continue.

But yes, so we're continuing to look for different pathways to help customers get our information. Just a couple more slides similar to what we did last year. We'll go into the details here. They're mostly there for your reference. This shows the most visited pages. I will say that I did notice the page not found on here. I believe that was early in the year. And so I do believe everywhere.

I think that was a patch from from CWAG as well as one of our city Prescott pages that was causing the break there and so I do believe both of those have have been corrected I have not been able to find any breaks Leads to go is a mystery to me but if it gets people to our website we happy Haven been able to understand what that where that comes from but it brought us 500 customers And then our partnerships we spoken about before The water saving kits I do have some in my office We have a website page where customers can get free kits mailed to them.

And our partnership with Water Use It Wisely is what brought these free kits to our community, and that partnership will continue to grow. There's some conversations about how can we expand messaging We have to go up two or three tiers into the box store management outside of our region. And so I'm curious to see where Water Use It Wisely goes in the next quarter to see if we might be able to do that. and we might be able to make that happen through that partnership.

Lois, you have a mayor sitting here. If that helped you make some connections, use it. Thank you. Thank you. Great point. Eye on water. I think this is our last primary slide here. As of June of last year, we had 12% participation and 843 people connected. June of this year we added another 1,142 and I'm really excited although we want to get higher than 15 percent, we have sustained that 15 percent all spring and all summer into the fall.

And so kudos to Water Operations and of course you know at every opportunity we have we're helping people understand it's a two-step process to get to that leak notification and giving them materials and information to help them get signed up. So this is the path here for anyone who hasn't visited making it much easier to find that information. We now have a map too so customers can look to see what year or what season is scheduled for the replacement meters in their community. So what's next?

As I alluded to, the long-term management plan is oh so important to all aspects of what the city does related to water. And so over the last month or so I've been involved because we have had that focus on demand management as a path, helping to really look at the history. So I think it'll be interesting when you get the opportunity to see the tech memos.

I've been in detective mode going through old records and old files to get a better understanding of what our programs have looked like through the years and when we were hitting some of the high points of their successes. And so now we're looking to what our consultant can provide to us for our existing rebates and what savings those might afford.

And then we'll be moving into expanding that into a larger conservation planning effort where we can look at the things we did in the past or new things that are out in the world on the horizon and really pinpoint a plan for water savings within the city, put through council, of course. And as I mentioned earlier, also the outdoor water use has been a focus of mine since I've arrived, and it will continue to grow.

And so we are at that point where we are gathering the names of every landscaping professional we can find, any landscape professional who has received any sort of irrigation efficiency certification in the last few years as the first step in reestablishing relationships and growing an emphasis on water efficiency in our community within the landscaping community. And that's what I have for today.

I want to thank you for your presentation and I would just like to thank the people of Prescott because they are very water aware and very cooperative and these programs are voluntary, not some ordinance or mandated. And we really appreciate the public being so cooperative and wanting to do what's best for the community as far as water conservation. Lois, you got a comment?

Yeah, we just heard at 4 o'clock yesterday about the wonderful world of PFAS and what that's going to do to city costs and eventually city water costs. So I really do think, you know, tying in that every gallon we can save on outdoor water use being more efficient is going to be a straight, straight reflection. Pricing into people's pockets or savings that they really need to consider as you look nationwide at the water situation and particularly here in Prescott.

We're not immune to what's going on. So thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Gehring, any comments? Anybody can do what I did. I turned off my irrigation controller a year and a half ago. Well, we did get five inches of rain for September at my house. It was unbelievable. And so that brings my total to 17.5 inches year to date.

So we got a couple more months and we have another tropical storm hopefully coming this way, remnants of Hurricane Rachel, because that was the remnants of a hurricane Polo that hit us last month. So hopefully we'll get a nice supernino happening. Thank you. Next item, presentation and discussion regarding an update from the environmental services team. Good morning. Good morning committee members. Matt Colleen, Environmental Program Manager, The City's Public Works Department.

Today we're going to give you an overview that largely coincides with our last reporting year which ended at the end of June beginning of July but also includes a lot of projects that we have coming up and just wanted to have the opportunity to share them with you. So a lot of information here I'm going to kind of blast through. I know we've got a really full agenda today but please any questions pop up I'm always happy to take them.

So as an overview we really view the program as having three main umbrella programs. The first is the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Program or MS4 program as a Clean Water Act derivative and the compliance is associated with that. It also applies to a number of our facilities like the Transfer Station, Sundog Wastewater Treatment Plant. So I'll give a brief update on that.

Healthy Lakes program is a newer program led by our environmental project manager Jeremy Cordova that is seeking to on a continual basis improve the water quality of our lakes through a number of different methods we'll discuss as that we've been deploying them. And the final one will be the Green Stormwater Infrastructure Program that very closely aligns with a lot of what Tracy was just talking about with regards to water conservation and using it in that landscape setting.

So if we're asking residents to do this or incentivizing them to do it, having functional examples throughout town is a great way to improve our water quality and conserve water simultaneously. So I thought I would also just kind of make sure that we have a touchpoint with our strategic plan as a guiding document. I think it's really well summarized in the mission statement is that we enhance the quality of life as stewards of our natural and built environment.

And that applies to each and every one of these three programs that I'm describing today. And more specifically if we drill down to result five, we'll complete watershed restoration projects that improve water quality, recreation activities, and increase riparian corridor health and resilience through cleaner and more consistent flows to our reservoirs. And you'll see some of those examples here today. So the MS4 program, very timely. Just last week we had a new permit issued.

A permit lasts for five years. They make sometimes wholesale changes, oftentimes it's more superficial changes to the requirements that they placed upon us as permittees. And this year's change was not huge. So that's a relatively good thing from a workload perspective. And so in the next 60 days as part of that process we basically submit a notice of intent saying we will seek coverage under this program. And then in the upcoming year we will fully update that stormwater management program.

It's a plan that's available online and in my office. And historically we've outsourced that, we've internalized that to save costs and to maintain even a greater level of control over the program. That program features some key components of the otherwise known as minimum control measures. They are outreach. So a number of the events that Tracy mentioned, we also will table at. We participate in Granite Creek cleanup.

We do the fifth grade outreach to all PUSD students and Granite Creek Park this past year we had two tables set up for them Illicit discharge and detection is our pollution prevention and so that QR code up there takes you to our pollution reporting form Every pollution report we get we have to report up to ADEQ at the annual report and so myself and our stormwater specialists will investigate that and resolve it as quickly as possible.

Construction that deals with the temporary and permanent controls. We have a construction of sites, the plan review associated with that. Post-construction, every commercial and subdivision has first flush or water quality requirements and we make sure that they meet the general engineering standards, city code, are installed properly and maintained. And so we inspect approximately 260 something of those per year.

And then finally good housekeeping, making sure as we are pretty significant both facility and property owners making sure that we're not contributing the problem we're seeking to reduce. So this facility, the city hall will get inspected once a year. It's not a high pollutant potential so we only need to do it once a year. But we'll look at the inlet filter that's in the parking lot on the corner to make sure that it's in functioning condition.

Things like our fleet services will get you know inspected on a quarterly basis because of the potential pollutant loads associated there. So that program is going good. Actually, we had an ADEQ audit last week of our Sundog Transfer Station passed with flying colors. Thanks to the folks, Solid Waste and Streets are the ones that really maintain that site. We inspect that quarterly.

There's always room for improvement and we'll be seeking to make those improvements but it was a great once every five-year inspection and to pass without a single identified area of corrections a great accomplishment for the team. Switching over to the Healthy Lakes program, sometimes I like to go back to why we have this and I see what happens when we don't and that's what we have pictured here. That top left picture was An occurrence when the Celtic Fair was here about three years ago.

That water was so green and algae impregnated that you could have sat a kid on top of it and they might not have broken through. And that's when you're having a pretty major tourism event at this and you go out there and we didn't dye the lake green for the occasion. It just happened to be that way. But we also have had health and safety concerns associated with both aquatic weeds and these harmful algal blooms that happened.

So this year at Watson Lake we've been making pretty significant efforts to maintain the clarity that you can see to this day. One of the things that was a bit of a change for us this year at the beginning of the year is we had outsourced, We had outsourced it to one of the few companies that have the capacity to do this.

We realized our ability to be nimble and the cost savings associated with bringing that functionality into our team was going to save us significantly, $6,000 per surface water acre. And so that's what we did. And through this, Watson Lake received a number of treatments. Phosphorus binding is the primary one. Phosphorus is the catalyst for all of those kind of negative growth patterns that algae likes to do. So if we can capture the phosphorus, it's less likely to turn green.

We're not going to see as many aquatic weeds. We also have our robotic weed eater out there, and that's a picture from Jeremy going out. He would often go out Friday mornings to utilize that, particularly at the south dock where we have really, the shallower, warmer water is going to have more weeds. And that really makes it tough for the anglers to get out, the paddlers to get out.

So clearing areas around the dock and kind of navigation pathways makes it a better user experience as well as reduces the negative impacts from when that dies and falls to the bottom and perpetuates that negative nutrient feedback cycle. And so those have been some of the ongoing activities at Watson Lake. At Upper Goldwater Lake, there are a couple of things I think that are particularly noteworthy here. The bottom center picture is a solar powered aerator. It's off grid.

There were power poles in the area, but we would have been close to six figures to bring power to that site. We also have bald eagles that like to hang out there and wanted to find something that was a little bit more user friendly.

So Jeremy our project manager Jamie Cordova basically cobbled this cobbled this system together so it a series of solar panels that are mounted on saddles on the edge of the dam We got clearances through Arizona Department of Water Resources, their dam safety inspection folks. We partnered with Rec Services to get this installed, local welding fabricators as well as our own. So those sit on and actually just have pins that provide tension but do not actually drill into the surface.

It's battery powered and so this thing charges all day. It's angled to allow water and snow to melt off with bias towards morning sun and afternoon sun and the two different panels. And it charges all day very effectively and then runs all night when the park is closed. And so we do have it open and there's a picture of what it looks like on the surface just below the Healthy Lakes verbiage there. So that's what it looks like when it's on. It's almost indetectable.

And we do have a demonstration window from 145 to 2 where it pops on just to kind of let people know that it's there. And so that's been great. We've had to really monitor water quality carefully because when you're moving that air around you can also move the nutrients and the muck and all the kind of nasties that live on the bottom of the lake and that can have negative impacts on dissolved oxygen.

So you can really have to be a little bit careful when you're getting to something like this rolling. But we've had great success to date, partnered with Arizona Game and Fish to make sure that we're addressing any concerns they have regarding fish health, as well as our own water quality health concerns. The top left one is kind of an interesting one. This is our Groom Creek Diversion.

This is a pretty significant supplementary water source to what would fall in the immediate watershed of upper and lower Goldwater Lakes. This diversion was in a bit of disrepair and so Jeremy has spearheaded the effort to improve it so that it functions in a meaningful manner to supplement the water going into Upper Goldwater Lake.

What Jeremy also was able to do at a very low cost, that pole to the left of it is remote instrumentation that through cell signals updates us periodically so we know what the water level and the diversion is. We have similar instrumentation that was recently installed at the outlet just above Goldwater Lake and one of the little side drainages. And that one we can look at what's coming in and what's going out and figure out if they are the same, do we have an issue somewhere in the system.

These are just really creative kind of problem solving approaches that Jeremy's made, but it's going to help inform us on how we maintain and manage these sites going forward so we continue to receive the benefit of that water right. Moving on, Willow Lake.

We have had a Willow Lake management planning effort in place for a bit now and it's been a great partnership with a number of the logos you can see there whether it's DEQ, Game and Fish, Prescott Audubon, Prescott Creeks as well, have all been coming together to look at a lot of key areas on how we can manage the site better for the water resources that live there and as well as the terrestrial ones that contribute to the quality and quantity of that water.

And so some of the things that are coming out, we're having draft language that'll being currently reviewed, but identifying the different focal points for future action. And so we've got a number of GSI or green stormwater infrastructure sites located kind of on the southern boundary of the lake. And that those are spots where we see accelerated urban runoff impacting the lake.

So figuring out how we can slow that water down to better deliver clean water to the lake rather than destructive sediment-laden water is the goal. We've got a floodplain area that we'll be remediating. It was used a little bit as a stockpile site. We've got partnerships with Fish and Wildlife Service looking at creating pollinator habitat through there.

So we'll be We'll be doing it largely through city forces, but we'll also be partnering with a potential grant that they have partners for Fish and Wildlife. We're also working concurrently with the rec services on invasive species removal. In addition to kind of degrading the habitat, a lot of those invasive species are just super thirsty, whether it's the tamarisk or Siberian elms or the tree of heaven.

They drink disproportionately compared to many of our native plants that would typically occupy these areas. And our water quality is an ongoing need there and that really going to be determined by our water levels which continue to be low for a number of reasons It was previously lowered to work on the sewer project on the southern boundary of the park but the ongoing drought has limited it as well.

And so these summer monsoons are great, but they aren't the moneymaker when it comes to providing water to our lakes. they can set the table but it's really that snowpack and the gradual release that it provides that we're really going to elevate our reservoir levels. And if you want to know more about that program we're actually having another community event next week. It's we it is kicking off with a guided walk.

Walt Anderson and a local master gardener who reached out to us through another partner and U of A Cooperative Extension will be leading the guided walk. Subsequent to that at four o'clock we'll have a community open house at the Phippen Museum and we'll have a number of tables and partners set up there so that we can address community concerns, questions, talk about different approaches that this plan will be taking.

We've had a press release out on this and it's been on social media a couple of times and it'll ramp up in this coming week. What we do at the lake is not a guess. We do this based on Actual monitoring and water quality. We've increased our capacity. My team are both are kind of cross-trained on a number of these monitoring. We also work with DEQ to make sure that we're following their protocols for a number of these things.

But these are important methods for us to understand what the results of some of these treatments are or the need for a treatment may be visible in these lab results before it is in the lake itself. So that allows us to be nimble and thanks to our department partners with wastewater collections, we share laboratory equipment to reduce costs on that front.

And we also want to make sure that we maintain consistent transparency for all of the water quality that we take and as such the water quality dashboard available at participateprescott.com continues to be updated as we do this water quality monitoring.

We have general advisories as those that are pictured on the right that are kind of traffic cone red yellow and green to give people a quick glance and understanding that yeah I'm good to go paddle Watson today and then we alter those based on what we're seeing out there presence of algal blooms or other concerns that we may see.

We've had a couple weeks ago we were at about 2,400 visitors to that site and we'll see that kind of pop up as we make social media plugs for it as well particularly ahead of long weekends, holidays or just the summertime. So switching over to the third and final program element and that would be the green stormwater infrastructure or otherwise another Another municipal jargon, acronym of GSI. It's also alternatively referenced as low-impact development, GSI as what we tend to use here.

Our first project will be under construction within a couple of weeks. That was at Strickland Park. I had a number of great public meetings that brought over 60 folks from the community out to view it and the consensus was everybody was really on board with the project. Crop. And so that one will be shovels in the ground here within a couple of weeks, I believe.

And generally speaking, we'd like to see kind of a paired approach where we've got a couple in construction and a couple in design kind of on a continuous pattern going forward. So others that are kind of in the queue in that regard, Montezuma Rainwater Harvesting. Christine, this is right in front of Air Village. It's the right of way parkway that is largely just weeds or dirt.

And so we have an opportunity here as it also reduces in a small but significant way some of the downstream stormwater capacity issues we have. We've got a number of residents that are in the floodway there that you know are challenged by some of the storm flows we've witnessed recently. This will take a little bit out. It's not going to solve everything. But if we take a little bit out here and there and there, the downstream impacts won't be as significant as what's been recently experienced.

Did also hold a public meeting there on site. It was great to see the journalism partners attend as well as some of the local interests there. And so that one we're at just about 90% on that and have done a lot of the utility work to make sure that we're not Digging into anything that is of particular need of protection. The next one that is just kind of kicking off is a small area kind of on that northeast corner of Kennelly Park.

It's an area that stormwater kind of rips through and it creates erosion behind curb, unstable footing for anybody that's going to the park to skate, picnic or see a sporting event. And we've got a large impervious area immediately up between the city's facilities and the Museum of Indigenous People. There's a lot of parking lot and slope heading into that area.

We're wanting to capture that, slow it down and help green up that space, provide a vegetative buffer between that and the area residents, and avoid things like the heat island effect that is common with these kind of un-vegetated spots. In terms of existing sites, we continue to work on a number of them, partnering with local schools to think about how we look at urban planning, urban restoration.

There's a lot of natural elements and ecosystem services we can bring back into the city boundaries. And so working with young people to get their ideas and to let them know kind of the challenges that we face has been really productive last couple of years really. Annually we will host a Prescott College restoration ecology course out there. So we're working with a number of different community partners and school groups to use these as outdoor classrooms.

Another element that kind of goes back to that result five of the strategic plan in terms of restoration within the watershed. These are activities where we've looked at a number of places surrounding Acker Park and the Acker detention basin, the new Penn Eastwood basin as well. And then other spots as we kind of discover them through town. Boil de Busk has a severe erosion issue behind the cabin, the historic cabin there.

And so starting to work again with AmeriCorps, with school groups to identify the benefits. There's a pretty good white paper catalog of benefits of reestablishing these. And a great example of a place we're going to be doing this going forward is around Goldwater Lake. And that we have accelerated runoff coming off of Senator Highway. It's transporting a fair amount of sediment with it.

If we can stop it before it gets to the lake, we're preventing water quality issues and ensuring that that water quality is there when it does get to the lake. That area is tentatively scheduled to have a prescribed fire that will be conducted by Forest Service in fall of 2028.

We're already in the planning stages with Conrad Jackson and the city's fire folks as well as the Forest Service to look at that and start thinking about installing these features because after a fire happens you can have different runoff patterns. Flagstaff has witnesses at huge scale. This is not a wildfire type setting. It's a much more controlled setting so we shouldn't see those, you know, that significant level of impacts.

But we still want to protect our waterways and our drainages so that we are not delivering a large load of organic material to the lake, which can result in dissolved oxygen dropping off the table, fish kills, and then subsequent kind of down channel negative water quality impacts. So that's something that's ongoing and we appreciate the coordination with Conrad and the Forest Service as well.

We're also going to be installing water quality for slush samplers, so when water quality goes off we can do compared analysis of treated drainage ways versus untreated drainage ways. What does it mean for the water quality of our lakes? We've also been working with the Forest Service hydrologist Chad Yoakum as well. So that's a fun one really, and so we're looking forward to that. And here example of some of those little features just above Acker Park detention.

They're simple, but they are incredibly effective and they both recruit vegetation, you know, catch that sediment and increase the persistence of water, the recharge of water into these systems. and also some you know some firewise strengthening in terms of we have more resilient vegetation on the ground because it's better watered than it would be otherwise.

And that brings us to the conclusion another great picture from Walt Anderson of Willow Lake there and at this point I be happy to take any follow questions you may have Well I really want to thank you and your team for spearheading this stormwater program and the revegetation of our wetlands And you've got, from what I can tell when I went to the Strickland Park presentation, you have a lot of community interest. The neighborhood was very engaged. In fact, I think you had to do it two times.

There was such a turnout. So I just want to thank you for all the hard work that you guys are doing and for your commitment to the community. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. Next item, presentation discussion regarding establishing a definition for high water user. All right, getting down to the final stretch, long meeting. So the Water Issues Subcommittee, we've had this discussion before.

It was of interest to this subcommittee to look at and to start the establishment of a high water user definition. So we put together some research and We've done some planning on that and we like to start that presentation, this presentation, to start that process off, get some feedback and see if we can move forward with it. So why define a high water user? We're looking at an ability to consistently identify customers who have significant water demands.

We want to do this for, to start off with the identification of these high water users and use it in correlation with our long-term water management planning so that we can understand where these users are, who our existing customers are, who potential customers could be, and put that planning in place.

We have this golden opportunity as we're putting the long term water management plan to make sure that we're utilizing the data and the strategies of that plan to merge with the high water definition. So in itself... Lois? Lois? Lois? Lois? Lois? Lois? Lois? Lois? Lois? Lois? Lois? So I would like to integrate that as well as we look at those possibilities down the road. Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

And that's where the long-term water management nexus comes in because our economic group is going to be working side by side with us in the development of that.

So in itself, the formulation of the definition of a high water user doesn't create any type of regulatory standard at this point in time, But it will identify those customers, identify those uses, and we can then further consideration at a later date can establish if there's going to be any type of regulatory standards, conservation requirements, or even adjustments on rates based on high water users. So it's an important first step to get that established.

We utilized and we brought to you before I think earlier this year was the Arizona State University Kyle Center for Water Policy. Arizona municipal water providers are regulating how they're regulating large volume water user white paper. So it was a great resource for us to start this kick off this project. In that document, they have two different kind of definitions or different patterns of use that should be identified when you're looking at high water users.

So annual demand is the one we kind of, I think, default looking at. Those users that have a really, really high number of high volume on an annual basis. And they're important. They affect our long-term planning strategies. They're big water volume users, so it's important to be able to identify and know who they are. But there's also peak demand that should be at least considered or known about too.

So these are users that maybe don have the same annual volume but they tend to use water a large amount of water under shorter durations of time And that can affect the infrastructure and how our infrastructure operates whether we need larger pipe sizes because they have capacities that might be very very high for let say a 15 minute period or a 20 minute period but you still need a pipe big enough to get that water through for that shorter amount of time They can affect the storage facilities or water tanks because they could draw them down really, really fast even with their short duration usage.

So we might have to have, you know, upsized storage tanks or facilities, booster pumps, all of these things that are needed in order to sustain that usage. So, so this exercise we wanted to see about the evaluation of both of these things. Thank you, Mayor. Question on our, as we look forward to more companies coming, is this kind of stuff on our application process where we would get to see things ahead of time to say, oh, we don't have the size for that?

Or is this something, like how are you thinking about using this and using the water application process or ahead of the game? Well, I think our water service application process is pretty good for helping us identify if we had this in our water policy or in our codified in some way because... I'm thinking the peak demand. Like, I know they have to say how much annually, how many acre feet they want, but to really understand the peaks and the valleys. Right. Is that in there right now?

In the water service application? No, not really. Not really. I mean, we would have a description of the project. Right. Right. And with them providing a narrative of what they're going to do, we have enough information, we would at least have a general information that this could be categorized in a peak demand category.

For instance, an industrial process where they had water tanks because they have to have a large amount of pressure to do what they're going to do, and let's say they have to fill their water tanks up once a week. Well, there's a peak usage right there. It may only take them two hours to do it, but they're pulling a lot of water out of the system in order to do it at that point in time. So yeah, but no, it's a good point.

If we adopt these definitions, we'll have to make sure that we have the elements, the protocol to be able to identify them also. So something we will be considering. I wanted to talk a little bit about our existing framework too. On that peak demand side is, you know, affecting the infrastructure and how our infrastructure works. So we have a capital improvement program in place that evolves on a five-year cycle through the Public Works Department.

A consultant has an ongoing wastewater model and a water model that basically models all the pipelines and all the storage facilities, the pressure requirements, looks at all the demands that are protected over a time period, runs these models to see where there's deficiencies in capacity or deficiencies in water pressure.

And then they create a list of infrastructure and updates and things that will be needed over the next five to 10 year time cycle or period in order to keep up with the demands that we have. So that's already in place. That's something we've done for a long time. And it's a system that the city or a process that the city does on a regular basis.

From those modeling efforts and that infrastructure recommendations, rate studies are done by our financial department where they take that information and they say, okay, if water operations and wastewater needs this infrastructure, we'll need to adjust the rates and modify rates in order to pay for these updates that are needed. So we have that rate structure that work together. And then now we have the long-term water management plan where we're looking at the demand and the supply.

over a 10, 25, and 50-year period. So we're looking at a longer period of supply and how these demands and projections that we're doing are impacting our supply. So we have the ability and we have the tools and the resources to be able to understand how peak demand impacts our infrastructure. So for us, we have these things in place that can, that we could utilize that for establishment of a high water definition.

Other places may not have those type of reporting and processes in place and it might be more difficult for them. So I just wanted to point that out.

Long-term water management plan too our consultant has looked at our non demands They pulled it out into 25 non Categories already which so we already kind of compiling the data necessary so that we understand uses for various industries and we can kind of sort them out and as we doing the definition if it helpful to have that data we have it in place So we're kind of well prepared or we're getting well prepared for this type of exercise.

Ong is going to go over four different framework options that I just like to put together for your consideration. You know, the first one looks at that annual water use. So again, that sustained demand over a yearly period and what it means to the city's water supply. The second one is the peak demand infrastructure. So looking at that 24-hour water use, something in that realm, a shorter water use, but a higher volume, maybe not so much. They may not have the same sustained water use all year.

So from a picture of the water resource management model, when we look at averages over the year, they might seem like they're just a moderate water user. But they have impact on our water infrastructure. Meter service capacity kind of gets to the point of number two. You can look at if a meter size is over a certain threshold, consider that use a high water definition or by the definition be a high water user.

So I think that's a good consideration if a community doesn't have some of the things that we have in place, like our modeling, like our water resource management model and our wastewater and water pressure models. So for us, it might not be necessary, but for other communities, that's a good way. A good rule of thumb is to look at the meter size necessary. And then fourth is combination annual plus peak demand. So looking at basically those one and two that impact your system.

So just a you've probably had a chance to take a quick look at this and it's not really all that complicated. Option one is you would create a framework for your definition around an annual water volume. If the annual water volume for this project exceeds this many acre feet in a 12 month period, it is defined as a high water user. So it's one that a lot of communities in the state are utilizing, obviously because it affects your long term water supply, which is a major concern.

Option two follows the same type of framework but looking at that peak demand. So there's a number of communities in Arizona that are summarized in the Kyle Institute paper that actually decided that they were going to look at it from a peak standpoint. Maybe it helps them with their capital improvement programs and their understanding of their fiscal needs or the impacts on their facilities.

So, you know, exceeds a certain number of gallons in any 24-hour period was the approach that they were looking at going at. So, advantages, measurable with AMI that we're installing, you know, that captures these peak demands, helps support your system planning. So, considerations, annual impact might be modest. You might be missing a user that has actually a high annual usage but doesn't exceed a threshold on an average daily basis. Number three, again, the meter size.

It can be very effective for a community that maybe just doesn't have a whole lot of other tools in their toolbox to help them understand their impact to their systems and how much water they're using. So you can just define if you use over in this case as example three inch meter, you're defined as a high water user.

So again the community can use this information to identify these larger meters and understand how many of them they have to make estimates on what their water usage is and what they would need to do. In reality, with our community, with the tools and things that we have, we probably, instead of having just kind of a proxy meter size to give you water usage, we have the ability to kind of estimate those usages and understand them through our tools. So maybe not exactly needed for us.

And then number four is just a combination of one and two. So again, I think the key to I think the decision on this is if, you know, what is the importance of this high definition user if, I think we all understand that a high annual demand taxes our long-term planning and our supply. But it could be considered, since we have the tools in place and the information in place, maybe we consider putting that peak demand in that definition too.

You know, since we wouldn't have to create too many more elements in order to do that. We have all those tools in place with our capital improvement program and the modeling that we have. So just something for your consideration. At this point, I see with the tools that we have available, there's no reason we couldn't do a combined definition. Several communities in Arizona have done that combined definition. I think we're probably ready to take that on if we want to.

So here's my pitch to you at this point. We come up, get feedback from you on how you want this framework established, whether it's around an annual or around a peak or a combined. We're in position as we're doing this long-term water management plan as I was talking about, we've been compiling all of our water use data. So we're able to then take that framework from you and provide some, get some statistics and get some analysis going where we could define water users.

example, one top one percent of all our water users, top five percent, top ten percent. We could break, also break down into those non-residential components and look at, you know, top users for each of the individual categories.

Bring, kind of compile that statistics, look at it and see where these thresholds may want to lie, whether it's a volume threshold on an annual basis, if we want to look at a five percent or a The top 5% user or whether it's a peak flow and we're working with our water ops department and looking at and getting consensus from them, what starts to tax the system?

You know, is it taxed at 50 gallons per minute over a two-hour period or is it more like, no, no, what really taxes is 150 gallons per minute over 10 minutes? And start getting some thresholds and bring those together for you. So compile that data up and bring it back to you after we've established what we want to look at, whether it's volume or whether it's peak or whether it's both. And then we come back and we make that decision on where we think those volumes need to lie.

So with that, I guess what I'm asking today is if you have any feedback on this framework and how you'd like us to proceed. Well, thank you for doing this. I think this is something that's very important that we need to identify not only for our long-term water plan but also for our water policy. I like you recommend option four, which is a combination of option one and two, but I'd also have a question. Why wouldn't you include option three?

Make that part of the combination with the language about the meter size. I think because basically if we're capturing a peak flow volume that we know is going to be kind of exceeds a threshold where it starts to impact our infrastructure, that volume in itself, regardless of whether it's a three inch meter or a four inch meter or a two inch meter, I think that's the important information for us as we establish, you know, how many of these users are there, How they could potentially impact us?

Do we need to provide some type of, codify some type of regulation on their usage or requirements or conservation strategies? So it felt like just capturing and identifying that peak demand volume pretty much does the same thing as identifying a certain meter size. Redundant?

Yeah it feels a little redundant to me Exactly And stronger to identify the peak flow because a meter a three inch meter could use a variety of flow You could have a you could really be I think you could really be really taxing that meter out with one type of application versus barely using the available volume in another type of application If we identifying with that peak usage we know exactly what we going to what it going to how it going to impact our system Okay and then my next question is this would apply to current high water users but I would also like to see it apply to potential high water users Maybe put something on the water service application to give them a little heads up that they'd be in a different category.

And then also it's blank here, whose water use exceeds blank gallons or acre feet. We need to come up with some sort of a criteria or some kind of a number. And I was wondering if you had any suggestions. Or is it too early? Well, that's in the two part process of here. You let me know which one of these options you want to go with with the blanks.

And we'll come back with our recommendations on that based on taking our actual water users and creating some statistics on them to determine what makes sense in terms of a 1% user, this is the volume that we would be talking about. 5% user, this is the volume we'd be talking about and we can come together to a conclusion about what makes sense for our community based on the real data from our users. And have you thought about, you know, we have a tiered billing system based on consumption.

Would we have to like include maybe another tier for the high water users and charge them more? And from the definition spurs all the possibilities. Once you have your definition, you can move into seeing if you want to create any requirements in terms of requirements when they come in for permits and what's needed from the infrastructure standpoint to conservation plans to impact or to adjustments to the rate tier structure based on what we're seeing if it jumps into a high water.

So yeah, I think that all spurs from our definition and is something that we can think about as we move forward. Okay, thank you. Lois? Yeah, I'll admit I was reading this Sunday night and I was pretty beat and Tracy will appreciate this. I'm always watching my little graph on my Ion Water app and I can tell when I return from my vacations I'm not going to go to my vacations because I'm doing four or five loads of laundry for the family and boom I go bright blue.

And when I was reading this I was like, oh my God, are they coming after me? Is Big Brother going to come after me and tell me I can't go on vacation, not use water for a few days and then hit a 24 hour peak? So I really do think, because I literally had that go through my head Sunday night, that we have to integrate in here that we're not going after residential customers. We're not going to, you know, this is not Big Brother.

And they need to sign up on Ion Water because they'll get a lot more attuned to conservation and those things. So I really want to insert those words that this is high water user, we're not focusing on residential customers. That we are focused on commercial and other kinds of high water. So the gallons thing would hit that for me and keep it scoped where we need it to be. And I do again after the four o'clock session yesterday. Whew!

High water users, with the amount of money we're going to have to spend implementing and maintaining a PFAS system, you know, it makes you sit back and really think what we should be doing there and not passing those costs along to everybody, whether it's additional pumps or whether it's, you know, it makes you think through that what do we have to do from a rate structure with high water users down the road so that the average citizen isn't as impacted by these customers who are making profits.

So those were my thoughts and I just wanted to be crystal clear, you know, Big Brother, you know, is not watching you residents. Please, please, please get on Ion Water and use it.

Definitely and yeah we can when we look at these these gallons per minute or gallons per 24 hour period they will be substantially higher than any type of residential use and we can we can probably bullet point that in our presentation just so that there's no that there yeah that it's perfectly clear so okay now thank you for that recommendation. Jim do you have any comments?

Option four Okay thank you Okay thank you Next item updates and announcements from staff First item presentation regarding the long water management plan information sheet number six I think we've almost hit afternoon so I'll be very brief. Leslie Grazer, Water Resource Project Manager. I don't know if our IT can put the PDF up on the screen for me. Okay. Okay, if not that's okay.

So as a reminder these information sheets are the basic findings of the in-process project called the Long-Term Water Management Plan. Into the mic. Okay, thank you. Thank you, sir. So these are the information sheets that provide basic findings of the in-progress work of the Long-Term Water Management Plan. They provide a better picture of what the city currently serves to water customers, or this one in particular, what serves to current customers.

and also the volume that is obligated by the city for future development. The quick three items, if we can go to the last page please, page 12. Thank you gentlemen. As I said, it's 12 pages and it's because we put in lots of maps to help understand this. This last page, the important part I'd like to point out is the blue bar. So the blue solid bar is the current demand and then as of 2024 and then the obligated demand.

So that shows your growth potential based on contracts that you're involved in and lands within the city that will probably need water. So the last piece of this today is these are available on the city's website now, both the city's actual website and Participate Press Kit. Hard copies will be available at this week's Farmers Market as well as the city's presenting to the Citizens Water Advocacy Group from 10 to noon.

And last, these will also be available in hard copy at the library presentation the city will be doing on the long-term management plan on October 21st from 1 to 3. And that's all I have for you today. Happy to answer any questions now or when you have them later. Yeah, I have a question.

I was going through my file and there was a presentation on July 2nd, 2024 to the Water Issues Subcommittee about milestones for the long term water management plan and it says June 2026 to October 2026 stakeholder review and a final report. Are we anywhere near that? At that time frame we were presenting based on the Bureau of Reclamation grant.

Your current timetable is that you'll have a draft report, looks like end of December of 2026, early January 2027 to meet your strategic goal that you have of a final plan by July 2027. Okay, so not too far off then. Not too far off. Okay, thank you. Lois? Lois? I am so, so, so happy. From the moment I joined council, I was like, what is the balance in our bank account? And now you've exactly let us know here on page 12. It's 1,047 acre feet.

I'm fearful that some of that is paper water, but it is what it is. I have an answer. So thank you. I think this is really going to help us moving forward. And the one question I had, because I don't have all the details of how deep you went, but when you looked at Guide to Application Beyond the Existing 2024 Demands, you were really looking at what's coming our way.

And in our development agreements, how did you handle the clause of, and this is why we have a proposition on the ballot coming up, how did you handle or think about the clause adjacent and adjoining when it came to water projections. So thankfully this work is predominantly done by Herb Dischlip Consulting with staff arm in arm as we go with this.

So he recognized that some of those lands were state lands but more so let me back up there are a lot of categories so we didn't go through them all Right now, but the adjoining lands were if we had city properties that adjoined. So you might have something that you own just outside of the planning boundary, and we wanted to make sure we figured it's going to be something. You know, the city didn't buy it for no purpose. So you made a projection, let me make sure I'm understanding what you said.

If the boundary of the adjacent and adjoining was within the city current city limits you put a projection of what they might need in this future obligations But if they were outside city limits we put no projection I just I trying to get crystal clear Yeah this is not this was going to be super brief and I happy to dig into it later for you Okay, you know what? Good. Well, let's just put this on a future agenda. I really do think we need to go a little bit deeper to understand what's in here.

Quickly, we can help you here. So if the folks in the booth don't mind going back to page two that shows the planning area, That's the key one and that's why I apologize I went through this super fast. So what you'll see here on the map is the planning area consists of the city limits and then sometimes you have things just outside the city limits.

So if there was a piece of property that was not something under a contract or something we knew about but it was owned by the city, we made the estimation that there would be some kind of water demand. So if we can dig down into this more for you at a different time, I'm happy to do that. And then I'm so glad you brought up that map because some of them are red and some of them are orange and there was no key what is orange?

Right, this has thrown a lot of people so these are kind of our in progress work. And what that is is there's an overlay of the city so it makes some of the red go orange. So as we clean up this product for the, sorry, don't worry you're not the only one. I had lots of people like wait where's the orange? What is the orange? So it's the overlay that happens through the GIS process of the city limits. Yeah. I'd also like to remind everyone that you know we do supply water outside our city limits.

We have a water service area boundary which is an area where we supply water outside the city limits. limits so it's a lot larger area than what we initially thought. I have a question on, I looked at the page 15 of our 2022 amended water policy and figure eight water resource management model demands and it has current demand, committed demand, projected demand, Total demand estimates came out to 14,529 acre feet per year and then I see on your current chart that it's 15,460.

So that's another thousand acre feet. Is that because you're including affluent or something? You know it could possibly be that policy that you're referring to that was built, gosh, back in 2022. So we've grown since then so the model is going to look the water resource management model is going to be capturing more things that the city has acted upon to provide water. But I can find the difference for you not right now but definitely find the answer for you.

And then yesterday we had a special meeting on PFAS. We had ADEQ up here and they are providing a grant So that we can hook up several small water districts in the, not water districts, but water companies in the Dells area. And I'm thinking this is probably as our, as people's wells run dry and as the PFAS levels increase or whatever contamination there is, we'll probably be taking on more and more of these small water districts.

I'm going to suggest that maybe we look at that as including as a potential the water districts in our water service area. I know we've taken on some from out Iron Springs Roads, we've taken out several out in the Wildwood Kingswoods area. And I would just suggest that maybe we identify some of these water, little water companies that might be failing and have to take those in and into consideration. We will, yeah. Okay, thank you. Mr. Gehring, any comments? Thank you, Leslie.

Actually, at this presentation we're not answering my main question, and that is how long is the water in the aquifer going to last based upon the current rate of increase in demand. If time allows, we would love to have a future information sheet on that. So you did have Matrix New World present to you at a study session, and that had the hydrogeology work underway. And then typically what I do is once I know they're at a pretty solid standing, then I'll produce a basic information sheet.

And I guess this, you know, I'm not guaranteeing one because we're now in the full run towards December, but I'll see what you know is possible for that question. All right, thank you. Okay, and thank you Leslie for taking on this long-term water policy task, you and your team. Thank you. Okay, we have one final item. Introduction of new water resources management analyst. Good morning, morning still. Oh, is it good afternoon? Oh gosh. Chelsea Walton, Community Development Director.

I have the distinct pleasure of introducing a gentleman who has filled a position that council awarded community development in the FY27 budget adoption process. July 1st, community development, I think we actually after council approved, we went ahead and started right away the recruitment process. But Mr. Jeffrey Switzer is here with us and he has filled the water resource analyst position. And Mr. Switzer, I had to bring a copy of his resume with me.

Jeffrey, come on up to the podium so we can see you. His study at the University of Arizona included hydrology and atmospheric sciences with an emphasis on environmental hydrology and water resources So right up the alley welcome Jeffrey Thank you. And we know that Jeffrey's going to be superior because he went to the University of Arizona. No comment?

Well, I just want to say welcome and we're excited to have you and as you can see City Council and our community supports the Water Resource Department very much. So thank you. Thank you as well. Okay. All right. Any questions for us? No, I think, do we have any announcements? Okay. All righty. Okay. Thank you. This meeting is adjourned. All right, thank you.