Scottsdale delays Oldtown Tavern parking-credit decision amid 41-space dispute, phantom-parking concerns

Good afternoon. Thank you for your patience and sorry for the delay. I'd like to call the February 10th, 2026 City Council regular meeting and work study session to order. City Clerk Ben Lane, may we please have a roll call. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Lisa Barowski, present. Vice Mayor Adam Quasman, council members Jan Devoscus, Barry Graham, Kathy Littlefield, Maryanne McAllen, present. And Solange Whitehead here. City Manager Greg Kaitton here. Interim City attorney Luis Santea here.

City Treasurer Sonia Andrews here. Acting city order here. And the clerk is present. Thank you, mayor. And let the record reflect. Councilwoman Littlefield has just sat down. Uh this evening we have police officers, Scottsdale police officers Eric BS, officers Kyle Scholac and Ray Wilburn, as well as Scottsdale firefighters Hunter Ferguson and Michael Frell. If anyone requires their assistance for any reason at all, please let a member of our staff know.

And for the pledge of allegiance, I would like to ask Councilwoman Whitehead to lead us. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And uh Councilwoman uh John Debasquez will assist us with the invocation tonight. Thank you, Madame Mayor. It is my pleasure to introduce Ryan Goal, the campus pastor for Scottsdale Bible at the Shea campus.

Uh Ryan is a leader in all aspects and I am so excited to hear your invocation tonight and your blessings for the city of Scottsdale. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you for having me. Uh I invite you to pray with me if you would like. Almighty God, we come before you this evening uh servants of one another. Here to live in harmony, here to live for the betterment of our city and of one another. Lord, we are neighbors. Remind us of that fact that we are to love one another.

Keep us safe and honoring uh to one another's opinions and to help to the best of our ability the least, the lost, and the lonely in our midst. uh direct us, give us courage and honor. It's in the name of Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you very Thank you, Pastor Gobble. Thank you for being here.

For the mayor's report this evening, I'd like to begin by celebrating the amazing events that we have uh all participated in and experienced over or at least many of us over the past uh week and a half.

It's been quite the uh showcase for Scottsdale as we were featured on I guess it was a week-long uh commercial with the the Waste Management Open and then prior to that of course was the Barrett Jackson which I think was a 10-week uh full-time uh advertising Scottsdale uh Scottsdale in all its beauty. and what successful results. The 2026 Scottsdale auction uh was one for the record books again this year. It seems like we say that every year, so that's very cool.

generated at least $195 million in total auction sales, featuring 1,911 collectible vehicles and more than 6,500 registered biders who traveled from around the world to be part of our iconic Barrett Jack Barrett Jackson car auction. Uh, which of course is a one-of-a-kind uh Scottsdale event, born and raised here. So, thank you to the Barrett Jackson family for all they bring to Scottsdale.

And of course, equally um fantastic was the charitable impact that the auction had raising $5.85 million for charity. Very, very impressive work and it was such a gorgeous uh experience out there this year. And of course, we have the People's Open uh at the TPC, which is led by the uh Thunderbirds. And not only is it a worldclass golf event that attracts visitors from all over the world, it's one of the most influential economic drivers our city has. In fact, our region has.

It supports local jobs, boosts our hospitality sector, and brings substantial benefits to large and small businesses. This year, attendance uh is was estimated to be between 500 and 600,000 fans during the week, making it one of the largest annual events in our state. Thanks to the outstanding work uh and really a great big thank you and and congratulations to all of our public safety officers.

Uh there were there was so so many um examples of how our Scottsdale PD and fire department really worked together to make events like this amazing and event. So for all of the uh public safety that was out there and of course our um our executives that arranged for all of this, thank you very much for a safe, well-managed and memorable experience. And uh so I'd like to start with a round of applause for our public safety and all the events and we couldn't do it without you.

So thank you for all that. And uh looking forward this week kicks off the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show and that uh I think that that starts on Friday with the Global Champions Arabian Tour. And for those of you who have not heard me talk about this, it's another example of how iconic our Westworld equestrian and event uh venue is. Horses come from around the world. They literally fly um you know a hundred horses or so over from other countries.

So it's it's something to see and I would encourage you all to go check it out. Uh and tickets are widely available. To conclude this evening's report, I'm going to talk about a proclamation. Uh I'm proud to share that February has been designated as career and technical education month for uh career and technical education gives young people the chance to build the academic knowledge, technical skills, and realworld experience uh with meaningful learning and hands-on application.

students engage more deeply in their education and often often achieve at a higher level because they see a direct connection between what they're learning and the future they're building while they're learning about it. And so this evening, I am pleased to present this proclamation uh recognizing our CTE students, their instructors, and the programs that they uh they employ and participate in, which help Scottdale's future and our workforce.

So, I'll walk down and present this proclamation to the members that are here from CTE. Thank you very much for being here. And I would invite everybody here to walk down as well. There you have guys. Well done and keep up the good work. We appreciate you being here. All right, for presentations tonight, we have the employee recognition program, uh, where the city council recognizes employees with 20 or more years of service as of this month.

So, uh, with that, I'll call on Holly Peralta, communications and public affairs interim senior director to talk to us about that. Mayor and city council, good evening. Tonight, we are proud to recognize our employees who have reached 20 or more years of service with the city of Scottsdale this February. Each of these team members represent decades of dedication to our community and to one another. Their work help helps keep our city safe, responsive, and welcoming.

And their experience strengthens the services residents rely on every day. On behalf of the mayor, city council, and our entire organization, thank you for your commitment to public service, and for helping make Scottsdale a better place to live, work, and visit. I would like to name the employees who are here with us this evening, invite them up for a photo. We have Aaron Bolan, Michael Conway, Leia Peller, Stephanie Tippet, and Deanna Zupin.

And if you'd like to come forward, we'll take a picture. Congratulations. Wow. Anyone else want to come down and take a picture while we're all I'm so excited all of those employees were here because uh that's a huge landmark and a lot of times we don't have um those employees here. So, thank you for being here. All right, moving right along to a public, excuse me, possible executive session announcement, which we have at every meeting.

During tonight's meeting, the council may make a motion, if appropriate, to recess into executive session in order to obtain legal advice on any applicable item on the agenda if or authorized by the council. The executive session would be held immediately and would not be open to the general public or to the participants here. uh and if that in that event we would um return to the regular meeting after the executive session concludes. So moving on to meeting minute approvals.

Uh I if there are no revisions or questions or concerns, I will entertain a motion to approve special meeting minutes of November 17, 2025, executive session meeting minutes of November 17, 2025, joint work study session meet minutes between the city council and the budget review commission of November 17, 2025. And finally, regular meeting and work study session minutes of November 17th, 2025. So move mayor Oh, we got a second over here. All those uh please register your vote. All right.

And before we move on to the cons consent agenda, I understand Councilwoman Tabasquez would like to make a motion on a future on a regular agenda item. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to make a motion to continue the work study item related to the sound ordinance. Second. Unless anyone has any questions, we can take a vote on this motion. Thank you. All right, moving on to the consent agenda item. uh items one through nine.

Do any members of the council have any questions on the regular consent agenda items or requests to move off the off the consent agenda to the regular agenda agenda? Councilwoman Dascus, items number three and five, I'd like to have a little bit more robust discussion about the Oldtown Tavern as a whole. All right.

Council, Councilman Graham, Franken, Franken Lupes was a historic iconic restaurant in Oldtown and I see it on the consent agenda tonight to move to Gayy Ranch, Gayy Village if that's correct. So, I just want to call that out and I'm excited there's going to be a revival of Frank and Lupes. Thank you. adding to that. I didn't realize you were a fan. Yeah, me too. So, that's exciting news. Excellent. Thanks for pointing that out. All right.

With the exception of item number three, which has been pulled off the consent agenda, I will entertain a motion to approve consent agenda items one. Three and five. Okay. Three and five. Uh, I'll entertain a motion therefore for items number one and two and four and six through nine if I'm doing my math right there. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second. All right. Please indicate your votes on those consent agenda items. Thank you. Let's go to public comment.

Just footnote, there were no uh public comments on the consent consent agenda and so we are moving right along to Do we want to take item number three and five now? Might as well. So, let's move on to item number three and talk about uh who's presenting on this item. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm Casey Stanky, senior planner with Scottsdale Planning and Development Services. Uh, here to present cases 5 and 6 UP 2022, 1 IP 2025 and I think 97 LL2025, which is item number three.

You can see the site location here, Oldtown Tavern, uh, right in the middle of downtown. And closer up, you can see it at the intersection of Maine and Brown, right where Main Street intersects with the Civic Civic Center Mall, a couple hundred feet uh, west of where we are right now. And the zoning on this site is C2 Commercial with the downtown overlay.

So, up until very recently, for the past several decades, Oldtown Tavern has operated out of the suite highlighted in yellow here, that lease is up and they are looking to move into the building a little larger space uh directly to the east of of where they were. Now, although it's the same owner and a ostensibly similar operation, uh the way conditional use permits work are they don't go with businesses. They stay with the land that they're for that gets them.

And so the new location highlighted in blue would need to get conditional use permits both for a bar and for live entertainment in order for the operation to exist at this new establishment irrespective of the fact that it's seemingly a similar operation that used to exist right next door. Therefore, uh the owner requests that council adopt three resolutions associated with these two cups and the inloop parking credits which we'll discuss at this location. Here's a look at the floor plan.

The building itself uh historically was multiple suites. Uh the owner is currently operating a restaurant out of the area on the left half highlighted in red. Although the endgame here is to combine both of these operated as a bar with a series 6 liquor license. And the entirety of the space in here would be about 4,300 square feet with about an 800 square foot patio. uh same floor plan highlighted the stages as they're proposed now.

Uh the stages it's not maybe not that important where they are now. It could change in the future. The most important part is probably the fact that they are stipulated to have no exterior speakers and not propped open doors and windows to try and help mitigate any of the potential impacts from the live entertainment. There's also no residentially zoned uses in the vicinity. So, here's a look at some of the project and site data. I mentioned the relatively modest size of the building.

Despite that, because it is a bar and specifically a bar with live entertainment, that is one of the most intensive parking requirements in the zoning ordinance and therefore this 4,300 space square feet would require 58 parking spaces. Obviously, common sense would suggest we're not feasibly going to cram 58 parking spaces onto a 6,000 square foot lot. And so, the zoning ordinance affords a number of tools to help business owners achieve their parking demand.

In this case, there's a number of credits at play, bike credits, inl credits, which we'll discuss, and then 15 historical credits, which is a bit interesting. Actually, the 15 credits uh were from when this building was originally constructed in the 1970s. And the owner at the time contributed money to a pool of funds to actually help construct one of the garages we have now in what turns out to kind of be a precursor to the Inloo program, which was later developed in 1985.

So, they are requesting 41 inloo spaces. Now, the Inloo program exists partially to help spur reinvestment and redevelopment with evolving uses in situations where you otherwise simply wouldn't be able to meet the current ordinance demand, especially if it's been decades since it's been last developed. And so, the Inloop program explicitly helps them uh redevelop and reinvest into the property understanding that areas evolve.

The other part of it is the inloo program in the ordinance specifically references a goal of reducing on-site parking in downtown and instead focusing on pedestrian oriented activities and activating the street. And obviously it'd be a bit difficult to do that if you have parking lots everywhere. There's also a potential conversation which did briefly come up at planning commission which is the idea that you know zoning ordinances and any ordinances um they take time to evolve.

They don't always evolve with the functional world. And in the modern world, people take lifts, they take Ubers to bars, they ride share, whatever it might be. And so there's a pragmatic conversation that could be had about the combination of that in tandem with the idea that just to the north of this uh the parcel abuting this, there is a surface parking lot, there are several garages in the area, and there is on street parking in the vicinity.

So, um, a conversation could be had about the practicality of parking versus the strict requirements of the ordinance. And of course, that's what you all would get to decide. The city did also do our standard outreach to all property owners in the area. Up until the day of planning commission, there were no public comments. Though the day of planning commission, we did receive two um written comments.

Uh the owner also held an open house and at the end of the day um last month planning commission did recommend approval unanimously on this topic. So that concludes the staff presentation. We do have Paul Mitchell and his representative for Oldtown Tavern for questions as well. All right. I don't Are there any questions? My our screen is There we go.

Councilwoman Dascus, from the materials, it looked like this uh request for 41 inloo was a departure from the number of inloo parking spaces that we have u recommended or approved in the past. Can you discuss the difference and why uh 41? Mayor Bowski, Councilwoman Debbasquez, I don't know that we've ever made as a staff uh a claim to what's a reasonable or what's a normal amount of inloo. Um it is a departure from what we typically see.

Um I will say that we have had in the last decade, I think the closest was 21, although Kelly's at Southbridge several years before that did have 27 evening use credits. Um, I don't have the information to say this is some kind of record or anything like that, but it's probably is a departure. I don't know that we have a particular stand on whether or not it's reasonable or not. And what was the their their prior location? What was the size and the parking requirement that they had before?

You mentioned this is a little bit bigger. Counciloman Debbasquez. Uh I don't I couldn't find actually a floor plan and maybe the applicant can speak to this on the exact size. They were grandfathered into parking requirements from decades ago. And so they were able to operate. If they were to start operating a new bar at that location today and they were not grandfathered, they would probably require I think um maybe a fifth or a quarter of of this just based on the size.

but the applicant may be able to better speak to the size differential. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman McCallen. Thank you, Mayor. Um Casey, thank you for your presentation. Uh my question is, how many current spaces are behind Pepperwood, the building that is next door, that open flat lot? Councilwoman uh McCallen, I'm trying to load a picture here of of the parking numbers in the surface parking. I'm trying to see. I think it's 12. Am I seeing that right? 123. Is that the correct spot?

Maybe not. Okay. So then my next question is currently Oldtown Tavern is already in this space. It's just expanding its space. Correct. Uh they are moving. So this is the new location. Sorry, let me load this one. I know they're moving next door, but it's already operating. where Oldtown Tavern is moving to is already operating as a live music restaurant venue currently. Correct, Council Mckllen. That is correct for at least part of it.

I think the the Eastern Suite is being worked on or is not operational. So, it's a new business but doing the same exact thing in the same building basically. Well, functionally speaking, it might look that way. Technically, they would have a series 6 liquor license, which affords them a little more flexibility with their operation, but it might look and act similar. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Graham. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Casey.

Um the um yeah, this this application just kind of uh I spent a lot of time studying this application and um what is um has staff analyzed the cumulative effect of bar density in this area? I mean this is you Oldtown has the highest concentration of liquor licenses in Maricopa County. Is that correct? Mayor Bowski, Councilman Graham, I I'm not particularly personally aware of the whether or not that we're the highest density.

Um I also don't know that we've explicitly in my time here, I'm speaking for planning mostly, um done any sort of research on the density of of bars. I'm not sure that's been brought up before in a formal council item. Um, so staff hasn't analyzed the cumulative effect of recent bar approvals and taken that into consideration as far as their impacts on noise levels or public intoxication or resident complaints in the area.

I would say that we have not in my to my recollection I don't believe we've analyze that specific question. No. Um, I'm I am so as far as As far as the inloo fees collected to date um do you know of any spots in the area that have been built with inl uh parking payments that have been paid by people that have purchased them? Councilman Graham, I off the top of my head, I'm not I don't have a list of who uses inloo in this exact area.

I know um north of here Sanchez I know boondocks I know those guys have inloo I'm not sure about a lot of these like rusty spur and grapevine and those they might have been grandfathered out of that so I don't have that information on hand I guess what I'm kind of seeing here is that you know you mentioned about the evolving needs um of what is going on in this area but I you know we have these standards for a reason and so when you talk about evolving needs needs and what you know may be dynamically happening down there.

But we have standards and we have code um uh codes to protect the stakeholders and what's going on down there. You know, I think uh Oldtown development must be balanced to prioritize our residents quality of life over some of this unchecked expansion. And I think uh the proposal to expand an existing bar to uh inflate the bar density in an already saturated area um it just necessarily relies on what I see as a flawed inloo parking program to paper over real infrastructure shortcomings.

So um I see this as um the inloop parking program as a phantom solution. 41 spots kind of sticks out to me. I mean, that's we got a memo today from the city manager and that's I think the largest I don't know how familiar you are with the the Inloo program, but I think that's by far this would be the largest entitlement under that program so far. I kind of see the city manager reaching for the microphone, but I don't know if that No, no, he's not reaching for the microphone. Absolutely not.

Um, so I just wonder I'm just wondering about the feasibility of I mean we're selling the city is selling paper parking credits a lot of them parking that does not exist to an area that's underparked and we have no measurable plan to add parking with those inloop dollars to this particular area. So, those are some thoughts right now and I maybe you want to hear some more of what my colleagues have to say. Um, I don't know.

I mean, what do you guys think about maybe continuing this for another for another time and we can kind of talk about it some more. So, maybe I might make a motion here. Um there'll be obviously opportunity from more of my colleagues to say to say more, but um I probably will make a motion to continue. Councilman Graham, city attorney would like to chime in. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor and members of the council. Um keep in mind there's two items here.

Um there's a liquor license item number three and then there's the inloop item. And if the on item three, if the um council doesn't make a recommendation that on that, that will be the effect of having no recommendation and and that will proceed forward anyway. Um so just keep in mind there's there's two different items. You're talking about number three. If we if we move to continue it, that will be decided effectively. Yes.

Because there's a a certain time frame you're you're supposed to provide a recommendation. didn't know that. Okay, that's good. That's good to know. Um, I mean, everything I everything I'm seeing right now, I I can't support it as it is. I can't support the idea that I'm selling as a city. I'm selling, you know, over 40 virtual paper parking spaces to an area that is already has that's already underparked.

So, um, city attorney, is that is that um requirement is that airtight or is that like we move it to the next meeting and we still have time? We'd have to ask Mr. Curtis because I think I believe the statute says we have to provide a recommendation within 60 days. So I don't know how much time we have left. Mayor, members of the council, uh Tim Curtis also with the planning department. Correct.

The uh state um provides us the application the city the application for the local governing body to make a recommendation within 60 days. The 60-day time frame is very short, especially when you're processing um associated conditional use permits like we are the bar use permit for the bar liquor license. Uh the 60 days to answer the question is due on Valentine's Day this weekend.

So, um we are out of time in terms of providing a recommendation to the state regarding the series 6 bar liquor license. I think um and and the city attorney can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way that the state liquor department operates is they will move forward with that application with or without the the local governing body, the city council's recommendation. Do they how closely do they scrutinize what the local recommendation is? You that that may be speculative question.

Mayor and uh Councilman Graham, the uh that's difficult to say. Um that board changes from time to time, right? The city attorney might have a little bit more experience with uh how they operate uh at that level. I mean, it's just it's not it's not the fault of my colleagues and me for that.

that it's, you know, so close to the deadline and this, you know, we're we're dealing with we're dealing with this as soon as it came to us and um so I think it's kind of one of those um you know, I think we still we can't we can't let we can't let the pressure of a deadline like that affect alter our what we're going to do for Scottell residents.

So, um I think with that I will just move to continue this and maybe they can get an extension or some other some other satisfactory um you can get an extension or some other satisfactory alternative solution can be presented but move to extend uh item number three Oldtown liquor license 97 LL2025 and item number five resolution 13592 13593600. Thank you. I didn't hear a second. So let's continue with the debate I mean with the discussion. Okay.

So, I don't I'm not following the basis for the extension because I don't know what we would learn more so than we have available tonight. For example, inlue parking credits 41. I mean, are is the business owner going to be able to go get 41 actual parking spaces or the requisite number of spaces? Do you know the answer to that question? Just so we know for the purposes of this particular motion, Mayor Broski, there's no physical spaces directly tied to this.

It goes into a pool of money to help us build and maintain public parking spaces. As long as he can pay the monthly fee, it goes into No, I I'm well aware of that what you just described, but I think the objection is the inloo the fact that they are inloo. At least that's what I'm hearing and I echo those concerns. So my question was if we continue this tonight to a different date which is after the expiration of their deadline.

Um what can you find can they find 4 41 actual parking spaces adjacent or close to their compliant with the requirements? Mayor Barski, in our conversation with them, we've tried other outlets, remote parking and things like that. Um, unless they have new information, um, it seems unlikely that there's another mechanism. So, I'm not going to support the motion to continue it because I don't know what difference that would make.

But, nonetheless, I'll still listen to the conversation here about that. Maybe it'll flush out some additional basis for that. Uh, but I do have a question for you just for the public's sake.

I I don't think we've talked about inloo parking uh since I've been here on the dis this time around and this is a very kind of you know mysterious conversation and I think it's important for the people watching this or that watch this at some point later that they understand these are as Councilman Graham pointed out um they're kind of illusory uh parking spaces that actually don't exist and so I'll just use an example or just um yeah an example of that.

If I go to find an inloop parking space, where do I park? Mayor Broski, you would find public parking. So, which begs the question um or the issue, the point I was trying to get at, we've had a lot of conversation on the other hand about actual parking spaces and um building a new garage, right?

And I think if there's a problem, which I agree with uh Councilman Graham on a couple of the points he made and I disagree with a couple of the points he made, but not withstanding notwithstanding that we arrive at the same result. The Inloo parking um program and maybe this is something we should look at very closely soon because I think it doesn't serve the purposes that we need served right now. uh meaning if there's a shortage of parking, which we don't know that.

I' I'd like to see today's updated uh study on that. Hopefully, we'll get one of those in the near future. Um why are we allowing um imaginary parking spaces to be utilized or purchased, which that money, I'm assuming, goes into the general fund. Is that right, Mayor Broski? It has a specific fund. a specific fund that goes to what? Building parking garages, which we're out of land to build parking garages. So, we're coming full circle, right?

It it kind of doesn't make sense at this point for me, unfortunately. And just a little bit of a correction, this has been an an operating business about 10 feet from where it's moving into. So, it's not a new business, but nonetheless, it's a very busy business. So to the extent it's added to any parking deficit over the past, you know, decade or two decades, uh it certainly would increase now because there's more buildup around it.

So I believe it should be subject to the rules of today and but I don't like the fact that the ENL is being used here. So that's what I'm going to leave it at. Councilwoman Woman Whitehead, thank you. Thanks, Casey, and thanks, Mayor. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what's been said. I mean we in my time five parking spaces in Lou was scrutinized pretty good but I just want to um clarify a couple things.

So the original so we're going from the 12 to the six it so it's operating as a restaurant today. Correct. Correct. And it's and it has no live music today. It it is not entitled to have live music. Um so unless they're operating they should they shouldn't be having live entertainment right now. Okay. So, so it's really the same business, but there are some significant changes in that it's going to be a bar versus a restaurant and it's going to have live music.

And I just I do want that clarified. And I did I actually watched the planning commission meeting. So, I think the pepper lot was brought up as public parking, but I think we have a contract on that for valet. Don't do you know if we do? So, I think quite a few of those spots um are reserved for valet during certain times of the day and night. Uh, Councilwoman Whitehead, I'm aware that exists. I'm not familiar with the specifics of that. I mean, I know it is public parking.

I don't know the details of the valet agreement. No, I don't. That's okay, Casey. But, yeah, a lot of it is valet, I believe. Um, or a significant portion. I I guess I'm just in agreement with most of my colleagues here. This is sort of um a difficult one. I don't see any benefit to a delay, a continuence either. So um that's kind of where I stand. Thanks, Councilwoman Littlefield. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with your comments and I think that, you know, I've I've been up here a lot.

I've seen a lot of businesses come up primarily in the downtown area asking for inloo parking because it is tight. Uh every space is basically snapped up as soon as they can snap it. Um but 41 spaces that you can't make that up in in loo parking trying to find alternate spaces in the downtown area. There just I don't think there are that many available. if you can't get the parking spaces that you you have the right to have. And I I can't accept that.

That's just going to cause more and more problems in our downtown area with parking. Um I think it's a problem that needs to be figured out and solved and then come back to us and we can say yes then. But I can't approve this. this will just create more and more traffic problems, parking problems, space problems. Um, and I and I can't accept that at this level. It's just too much. Thank you, Vice Mayor Quasman. Thank you, Madame Mayor.

I just, you know, I see Luis has g has left left his uh desk, and that's okay. I I I was just wondering why if if ARS9835 just googling it, looking at that, I see on se on on section I this is just I tend to I tend to agree with council member Littlefield and the mayor on this issue.

Um but just looking at it in in terms of academics, it says in subsection, it says in section I by mutual or written electronic agreement, a municipality and an applicant for a license may extend the substantive review time frame for the overall time frame. This is with regard to a liquor license. An extension of the substantive review time frame and the overall time frame may not exceed 50% of the overall time frame.

So I and I'm getting a not a a headshake from an attorney, which is always a is a better attorney than I am. So it's always a it's always a bad situation. So um I'll ask the question to the uh to this, uh city attorney.

So, um, mayor, members of the council, um, and, um, I'm sure Councilman Quasman's an excellent attorney, so, uh, but he's citing something from the regulatory bill of rights, and there's a specific section 4-201 that's applicable to liquor licenses, and it talks about a 60-day time frame. Now, my understanding from uh, speaking to our liquor detective just now is they do have a temporary license that allows them to operate to u May.

Um it's uh possible that um perhaps uh we could come to some sort of voluntary agreement with them um between now and the 14th to see if they would allow an extension um to resolve this particular issue and we could file something with the um the liquor department to give us more time. Um I can I I'll go offline right now and I'll discuss with her attorney and see if we can reach that agreement. Thank you, Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor.

I was able to um kind of just talking to myself right now. Are you done? There's no one there. I have questions for Steph. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking to yourself. I don't Sorry. Oh, I can. That's what I heard. I I don't know. I said, "I'm kind of talking to myself here." And there was an awkward silence. Casey uh was doing the people's business and, you know, working with the applicant. Okay.

So, pulling up the memo for, you know, this is this is an application about for starters, it's a it's a restaurant right now or it has been and they want to convert it to a bar. Is that right, Councilman Graham? That's correct. And what's the square footage of the of the prior footprint and what's the what's the whole footprint square footage percentage-wise? Is that double or triple the space? Are you talking about the previous establishment? Yeah, the yellow to the blue on that. Yeah.

Um, what's the And and while they're talking, mayor and members of the council, the applicant's attorney would like to address the council and see if they can answer some of the um questions if if possible. Councilman Graham, the applicant informs me that the previous location was about a thousand square feet interior and then uh I think 1 1500 square feet of patio.

The the previous one previous so 1500 square uh patio where those umbrellas are and then a,000 square feet which is I mean that's a small restaurant. Um and then what is what is the new square footage? So it's going to be patio eight. So, a smaller patio but a but a 400% increase in the interior. Correct. And the category is going to go from a restaurant to a bar. And so you're saying Casey that the you can go back to other slide if you don't mind. Um the Oh, actually, yeah, stay here.

um the the bar designation just drives a lot of parking demands and I appreciate what you're doing for the applicant to explain to us that the dynamics and the evolution of what's going on, but we do have these standards in place. There is a parking problem in the downtown. The Pepperwood parking lot to the north was not funded out of general funds. that was funded out of a special taxation district.

So they can't park there from the standpoint from the standpoint of the people that the people that paid for that for that specific purpose that was that was funded by a specific group of people for a specific purpose. So you come to us and not you but you know the applicant. 58 parking spots are needed. 58 parking spots. The most we've ever sold of Inloo parking spots was to Marley's Grill. We 41 spots. Was that Marley's or was that something like there? I think it was Marley's.

And that was actually in the entertainment district. And that was a mistake. Um 58 parking spots. Two of the parking spots are going to be credited with bike racks. That's kind of a joke. Um, I wish we could do something about that in the code 15. The the prior tenant or owner of the blue of the of the existing plat 15 they they are you saying what do you mean by 15 spots were credited that are going to transfer to the new tenant? Did they did they purchase this or are they just a tenant?

Council Graham. Oldtown Tavern is the tenant. It's still owned by SA. So, how does that 15 credit carryover work? 15 credit carryover spots that you talked about. How does that work? Uh, well, we had a conversation with the legal team and they submitted, uh, a document that we were not aware of that showed that they participated in this unique program. And so, uh, we thought it was reasonable to give them credit for those after legal looked at the document.

So you're saying that staff had a staff had discretion on that? The legal team. Okay. So you're saying it could have and and so the decision was made and they had 15 15 credit carryover. And was that from the Inloo program or from a from a predecessor program? Uh Councilman Graham, I don't know that it was officially an ongoing program, but a predecessor of sorts maybe. I just I'm sorry. I just don't know what that means. 15 spot carryover. I I don't know what that means.

Can you explain that to us because you brought it up? We are credited. We are allowing them the 15 credits they paid for in perpetuity from 1975. Where are the spots? We don't I we don't understand what that means. I don't understand what that means. So, just like the Inloop program, they paid money and we helped construct a parking garage nearby. So, can you point to us where the construction the the garage was built nearby? Yeah, it was the uh the civic center garage. Okay.

Which is 685 on here, I think. And then we're going to sell them 41 inloop parking spots. Pull my notes here. which is which would match I guess the record for inloo parking spots. Let me ask you this. Is there do you in your opinion is there a parking problem in this area of the oldtown? Yeah, Councilman Graham, that's a pretty subjective question. Um it's broader than just planning's perspective and it's Well, let me let me ask you this way.

We're selling paper parking credits that don't exist. If there was plenty of parking, couldn't we just locate, identify parking spots and say those over there, we'll sell you those? You can get credit for those. But there's no parking spots to do that. Is that right, Councilman Graham? I think the idea is we get the money first and then later we can construct the parking. The Inloo parking program, $800,000 has been paid into it since the program began.

Um, the city has spent about a quart million dollars out of that. I don't know how many parking spots we've even gotten from that. Oh, there it is right there. Is this the inloop parking data? Okay, very good. It's got a current balance of $685,000. I mean, this um I think what we're going to charge this tenant would amount to about $80,000 per year of inlue, $4,000 a month or per spot or the exact math is comes out to $80,000.

But we know that parking spots cost over $100,000 to find the land and to buy it, to acquire it. $100,000 per spot. If we can't sell them parking, does that not suggest we have a parking problem in this area? Council Graham, I'll I'll leave that assessment up to you. Okay. Um, like the mayor said and many of my colleagues said, we're selling them a record number of inloo spots, including bike racks. Um, we're giving credits for those. And um there's nowhere to park.

A new parking garage is going in 450 ft away from this voter approved parking garage. That's not a I mean in the in the packet it says that they can use that parking garage as an option. It's not really how it works. That was that was approved by voters. the city sells bonds and the and the voters said raise my property tax to sell those bonds and pay them off because that's for the already the existing shortage down in the downtown area.

So, I think there's just a lot of questions about this application and so there is a motion on the table and a second which I appreciate my colleagues for and I'll leave my questions there for now. Thank you. Thank you, Casey. Thank you, Councilwoman McAllen. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I would like to request to uh have the the person who's requesting this permit to talk. I would love to hear from them. Yes, I was going to call the applicant up. Thank you. When our discussion was over, so thank you.

Welcome. Good evening, folks. My name is Cameron Morgan. I represent Paul Mitchell, who owns Microphone. Uh, I represent Paul Mitchell, who owns the Oldtown Tavern. Mr. Mitchell's in the background over there. Um, folks, I heard a lot about parking, but I I don't know if you understand the history of the Oldtown Tavern. Oldtown Tavern has been there for 40 years, either in the current under the current name or in the predecessor names. It has been playing music for 40 years.

It has been using the parking lots for 40 years now. Um the building that it was previously in has become dilapidated and so we made plans to start moving next door to the Saber Brothers building. Towards that end uh Mr. Mitchell got one half of the building as you saw on the prior um slides and he started the backdoor restaurant. That was a class 12 license. Now, when his lease came up for the Oldtown Tavern last year, he proceeded to try and move everything up to the Saber Brothers building.

We thought that first of all, there was no parking required for Oldtown Tavern, no parking required for backdoor restaurant, and we thought that no, there was going to be some parking required when we merged the the two, but it wouldn't be that significant. We in no way believe that it would require 58 spaces. However, um the way that the the statute reads, it ended up being 58 spaces. Now, uh Councilman Graham asked about how we got 15 spaces.

The Saber brothers built the that building in 1975 and entered into an agreement with the city that is reduced to writing and is recorded and they got 15 spaces in perpetuity in the area so long as the city had parking. So that's where we get 15 spaces from. It's recorded and it's binding. It runs with the building. At the time that at the time that building was built, it was believed that that's all of the parking that would ever be needed for the Saba Brothers building.

Now, obviously, statutes change, codes change, and now we have the inloop parking program, which is code, and we have the uh requirements for parking, which is what we're dealing with here. Now, couple things. We do not believe that moving Oldtown Tavern 30 feet needs 58 spots. That's just ridiculous. But that's where we're at. And we're willing to go along with the city and spend, as uh as Councilman Graham indicated, 80 grand 80 grand a year to to make this move.

Now, the use, the actual number of spaces we need is no different than it was before. We didn't need spaces for Oldtown. We didn't need spaces for backdoor. All we've done is added on 2,000 square feet. And that's what we're really talking about here. Now, the other thing is we're not going to really change our numbers in terms of patrons. Uh Oldtown Tavern is a local bar for Scottsdale residents.

In season and in spring training, we have a lot of people come in, but that's only a couple three months. And other than that, we don't really need 58 spaces. Now, the last thing you need to know is you're talking about we have a a parking problem. We do not have a parking problem at Pepperwood. It's never completely used except for lately because somebody gave Epic parking, Epic Valet now has a contract to use city property for private purposes.

I don't know who gave him that, but that's what the parking problem is in that particular lot. Now, um the the the other issue is what will happen to my client's business in the event you don't give him his uh permits and you don't let let him move his business. This 40year-old business will fail and will fail pretty quickly. We need we need to get up and running for baseball season. And if we don't at the rent we're paying, we're going to be out of business.

So, we have employees, we have musicians, we have distributors, uh, everybody. There's a whole bunch of people that are relying on your decision to let Oldtown Tavern move 30 feet. Now, we don't think that Oldtown Tavern's going to cause any significant burden to parking in the area. And there is parking. You mentioned the garage at Second Avenue. Have you ever looked in the bottom of the garage? It's never used. You have a hundred spaces down there that are not used.

Have you looked at the parking at Pepperwood? There's 125 spaces. 40 of them have been leased out to private. Why? So if if it's never filled except for Prada, what do we need to be leasing it for? Now that 125 spaces at Pepperwood has always been sufficient not only for our business, but for every other business in the Scottsdale Mall. That's who uses it. It's never full and I would request that you approve the applications. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I have some questions, but I think Councilwoman Okay. So, I think it was Councilman Graham that talked about the square footage. So, it's it's really not First of all, you said the business has been there for 20 years, 40 years in business, right? under different names, right? M Mr. Mitchell 16 years prior to that. Prior to that, 40 years. Okay. Well, a lot has changed. There's been a lot of buildout in the area. Unfortunately, he lost his lease um at that building.

If he were any applicant coming before us and asking for you don't have the square footage, 5,500 square foot restaurant bar. It's actually just a bar, right? 12 series 12. We would be applying this. we would have be having the same discussion and these same concerns would exist. Now, while I agree with a lot of what you just said with respect to the parking, there's does not appear to be a parking issue except for at the highest tide times. So, I agree with everything you just said.

However, these rules do apply to everyone coming before the city to open their business. And unfortunately, this is seen as a an opening of a business. And Councilwoman Mckllen, I'm sure you've been at the location, as have we all. This business hasn't been there in this form for a long time. That's that's inaccurate. The back door opened, I think, a year ago. It's been a much more smaller, intimate restaurant. Jumping to the series 12 for 5,500 square foot space is a whole different machine.

Exactly. So while I agree with you in theory about the parking situation, there is a strong perception on this council majority speaking to of the majority that there's a lack of parking and we've taken steps which I've been completely opposed to to build a parking garage because of this perception, right? Um, and maybe there is lack of parking, maybe there isn't. We need to get an updated study. Having said all that, it's unfortunate, but these rules apply to this application.

So, you know, I I stand uh with my prior comments. I don't know what a delay is going to do. I don't see any scenario where you're going to go find 41 actual spaces. Um although you could you could be buying them for from another business owner and I just that's I'm going to leave it at that. So mayor may respond. Uh absolutely. But do you want to hold your response or you want to do it now? Just real short. Okay. Thank you. Um a couple of things. We agree with you. We want to follow the rules.

The rules are in loop parking. That is the code. That's why we came up with the 41 spaces. It hurts us to pay the city $80,000 a year, but we're willing to do it. If it'll help you build parking places, great. Bottom line is we need to follow the law to pay you the money for the inloop parking and open our business. I'm really glad you just said that because I heard something earlier that sounded like, well, just so long as we pay the money for inlation approved. I don't think that's true.

I think it's discret discretionary and if it were not discretionary on the inloo side of it I don't think we've been having we'd be having this comprehensive conversation because you would have checked all the boxes and that's why we're here discussing your approval. So can city attorney or uh city manager do you want to speak to that issue because I think that's worthy of explanation. Madame Mayor, are you speaking to discretion? Is that the question?

Way I would describe uh inloo fee as a relief valve.

Uh inloo parking is uh quite common in old towns or downtowns because you take a snapshot of the uses at any given time and therefore your old towns or downtowns are going to evolve and therefore it's quite challenging to come up with new spaces and you want to have density in your old town generally speaking and so there's a I call it a relief valve or an option for inloo that usually contributes to to the municipality to add additional parking.

And so it is discretionary in the sense that uh it is it would come before you for consideration and it is an option. Uh there are other options and this is the option for your consideration. Yeah, that's the question I was getting at. It's not it's not absolutely you haven't complied with you know a requirement and therefore the box is checked. It's discretionary and that's why we're discussing it and voting on it.

And to the city manager's point that you just ended with, what are the other options if it's not 41 inl spaces? Uh I think you have to go back to the the 58 and what drives the 58. So what drives the 58 spaces is the use.

There was a use uh before and as uh my colleague presented uh this is one of the higher utilizations of parking per our code and therefore 58 is arrived at that they have to produce and therefore the options uh are in loop that is one and then given the 15 that they're credited they can also go find uh spaces as referenced and so uh if I'm missing another option I look to my colleagues um but that's generally uh the options before you uh inloo uh pro prov provide the space or or change the use.

That's right. Okay. Or or smaller space that would drive. So that's another you know if you match the the utilization of the square feet with the 15. I've seen that on a restaurant for example reduce the scope. Gotcha. Okay. I don't have any other questions. So thank you very much. And Councilwoman Mckllen. Thank you mayor. Um I think this has brought up a whole another issue. So, I think that this will continue to keep coming up as more uh businesses um you know, start up in Oldtown.

I happen to um like the mayor said, I have been to uh the original site which was Jchu um and then it became Oldtown Tavern and now that it's moved over to Backdoor, I've I have frequented all three places. Uh I don't think the parking demand will change. Um, I think the size of the building is changing. So, uh, I completely am supporting this because the function has been the same in all three places. It's not truly changing. I used to work in the Pepperwood building. I've seen how it worked.

My office was there for years. Um, I don't think that is the issue. I think the greater issue is the in lie of parking and how we're handling it. Um, I think that that will call for a steady session all on its own. sometime in the future because there are so many questions that nobody seems to be able to answer tonight that um are impacting this business's livelihood and it truly is moving from one space to another. So, I will be supporting this. Thank you, Councilwoman Whitehead.

I just really appreciate your remarks. So, I'm glad you got up and you know, I do want to comment on the Inloo. The inloo isn't for a private business to buy parking spots in a garage or anywhere else. The inloo is to contribute to shared parking. So while $80,000 a year doesn't buy a lot of parking spots for the city, uh together with other inloo, the idea is uh it it would and and I want to recognize that $80,000 for a small business is a year is a tremendous amount of money.

So I I do appreciate that. Um, I just want to make sure I understand this, like I said, even after watching the planning commission, I'm finding some questions. Um, and what I am leaning towards is if I don't support this is supporting a continuence because I nobody wants to put a business out of business, but I So there's the original site which is the Oldtown Tavern. Did you separately are you already out of that business? Are you out of that building? Correct. Okay. Okay.

So, that building's gone. Was that a bar? I believe that those owners are asking you for a beer and wine license to reopen it. Oh, so it's staying. So, your original facility, your original bar, the old town building is I thought it was having problems. So, it was vacant. It's it's it was falling apart or somebody said something. It does have problems.

It is vacant, but they are going to they're attempting to get a beer and wine license uh they I think they have an application before the city now. Oh, so they do. So, okay. So, that's a separate bar that will come forward, but they for that property they already have they're just going to be asking for the series 6. They don't have to ask for anything else. Correct. They will not be asking for a series six. A beer and wine license is a different Oh, okay. Okay. Beer and wine. Okay.

I don't know the liquor licenses. Okay. So, the new location. So, you've already your client has already moved to the new location and the new location is operating as a restaurant right now. Correct. It has been for four years. Okay. Somehow that wasn't clear in the planning commission meeting. So, you've been operating as a restaurant for four years. And what what is the impact of live music anyway is in terms of parking? Does anybody have like an idea adds 20%.

I mean is that a key component of this business? I mean I'm trying to figure out we've just never seen any business come to us asking for this kind of in loo and I agree with the parking. I I don't know. Uh the pepperwood, as I mentioned, the pepperwood, the loss of that because of the private contract and then but I do agree second street is uh always vacant at the bottom or appears to be um the So you you're operating a restaurant. What is adding the most uh burden to your parking needs?

Is it the Because I would think as a business you'd be pretty motivated to lower that number, have your client lower that number and lower the $80,000 a year. I mean, that's a lot of money. I wish I could. Okay. So, if it was not live music, would it be significantly less if it was still operated mostly uh majority restaurant? We have operated as an acoustic music bar for 16 years. Without acoustic music in that location, the the bar or the restaurant will fail. Okay.

But in the So, you've been operating that way, but in the old location, it's just because you moved that that this came up because you were grandfathered in in the old one. We Yeah, we had music in the old It was grandfathered in from 1985. Okay. And And so you in the restaurant today, is there music today? Is it There's acoustic music today. Okay. Okay. And and that's acoustic is live. It's live. Okay. It's guitars. There's some applications.

So you're just expanding that and you want to basically serve a higher proportion of liquor to food. When we did our application with the with the planning department, uh we tried to uh put this into a restaurant and a bar side by side. Okay. That would not pass muster with the liquor board. So we had to go with a series six for both locations. It's not what we wanted to do, but that's what we were forced to do.

So, that's why we ended up with this higher amount of parking uh up to this 58 places. It's simply a happen stance of the codes government getting in the way a little bit. I'm not going to say that. Um, okay.

It it is a much more complicated than somebody coming to us and just saying, "Hey, we want to burden public parking." Um, I do I I think what I'm going to do is support I think it seems like there's an extension possible at the state and and I just want to stress to my colleagues what we're seeing here is the restaurant is being labeled as a bar.

So you still have the restaurant and then you have the bar next door, but the restaurant is being treated as a bar and being parked accordingly even though it's in a sense that as that part of it not changing. Correct. Right now we have a restaurant. We want to put in a bar next. Well, you just want to move the bar over 30 feet, but that's the effect of it legally is it will become Okay. Okay. Um, yeah, it's, you know, redevelopment is complicated. This one's fits that.

And so I do appreciate all this explanation. City attorney, mayor and members of the council, I think it's important to point out that there are two separate items here. Three has the recommendation regarding the liquor license and then number five has to do with the cup and the um the conditional use permit for the bar and for the live entertainment. um and the inloop parkings wrapped in that in order to operate the bar. They need both.

They need the the approval of the liquor license and the cup. They if for some reason um the council doesn't forward a recommendation, the liquor license gets approved, they can't operate the bar without the cup. Um they could still probably operate the restaurant um without the cup. So, there's some moving parts here um to think about as as you decide how you're going to vote on this. Thank you, Mayor. Can I respond to that? Uh yes.

So, if you delay both, then if we continue both, then the state can continue their license, their decision. the the statute ARS4-201 doesn't provide provide for an extension. Um there'd be a possibility they might entertain one, but there's it's not automatic and it had have to be something the applicant would have to uh agree to. Okay, I'll think about that. Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor. Um I I got just a couple things contradictory I wanted to clear up.

Casey, the city staff leazison said that said that currently Oldtown Tavern is not allowed to play live music. We do not have an entertainment permit at this point. However, our position is that Oldtown Tavern has had been grandfathered to play music for 40 years. So we we're relying on our grandfathered status. So would would a staff member agree that you're allowed to play? I doubt that the staff would agree to that. So you're admitting that you're out of compliance with with that.

We're out of compliance with the planning department's uh understanding of the law, but our my understanding of the law is that we're grandfathered and it goes with the uh with the owner. Mayor, if I may, um we entered a settlement agreement a number of years ago with Downtown Tavern and they are allowed to play um non-amplified um live music on a portion of of their patio. And there there was actual settlement agreement with the city on that.

Um, I don't remember how many years ago, but it it it did occur um maybe 10 years ago or more. The the staff presentation that was given to the council and the public said they're not entitled to live music. So, there's a little bit of contradiction there. I I I believe that's inaccurate because I worked on the settlement made an agreement and we mapped out specifically on the patio where they could provide live music that was not amplified. Um, I would um I'd like to vote in my motion now.

Oh, so if I call the question. Thank you mayor. For a continuence to the next available or whenever for for a date to be determined. Okay. All right. All those in favor or opposed? Guess it doesn't matter. That motion passes and we will move right along and see you at some point in the future. Thank you. All right. Did you get everything you need on three and five? That was on three and five, right? Okay. So, we're good with that.

So, that concludes the consent agenda items and the two items that were removed. So, I am going to take public comment on non-aggendaized items. Public comment is reserved for Scottsdale citizens, business owners, and our property owners to comment on non-aggendaized items that are within the council's jurisdiction. No official council action can be taken on these items that will the speakers will discuss and the speakers are limited to three minutes each.

If you wish to speak on a non-aggendaized item, please let the city clerk know and I show we have three speakers starting with Melissa Kemp, then Steve Sutton, and followed by Steven Cross. And you'll want to stand over here where Melissa's heading. Uh Melissa Kemp, McCormack Ranch. I believe you've got my address on record. Uh this is in my three minutes tonight.

I'm speaking not just to our council members, but to anybody who may be thinking about speaking in the future sometime or somebody who's watching this video. Uh in the first two sessions, I talked about open public comment and its function as an early warning system and I spoke about broadly civic engagement as an asset, a valuable asset. Tonight is about something deeper.

Uh, tonight is about the courage and resolve it takes for somebody from the public to do this, to come up and speak to council. At the lectern, you are exposed. I'm here. I'm alone. I'm on camera. My voice is recorded. If I shudder, if I tremble, if I make a mistake, it's there for everybody to see how I look. All of that. There's no hiding. People physically react to this kind of pressure. It's one of the greatest public fears. Who hasn't had that nightmare of waking up naked in a crowd?

That kind of thing just will haunt you. But this isn't a nightmare. This is real. And this is hard. People do this anyway, even though it's that hard. That's not a flaw in open public comment. That's your proof point. Because if it's this hard and people do it anyway, then you know they care enough to go through this kind of pressure. People will register in advance. They go through a med metal detector. They wait for their name to be called. They prepare. They do their planning.

They time things. And they show up knowing that they're going to be heard and they want you to listen. So, it's important that we respect open public comment and the comments of the people who use that time. I'm going to contrast that with what's going on up here where you've got city council members who are seated behind a raised platform on a deis. It's easy for them to see me. It's not as easy for me to see you. The sightelines are not great.

You have no time clock, no requirement to be relevant. No equivalent exposure. There is a power imbalance built into this system. It's built into this room. It's there on purpose. Here's my main point tonight. Open public comment is the one of the very few places where even narrowly briefly that imbalance shrinks because this allows me to be heard and it allows us to put accountability to our civic servants front and center in this room.

So when you restrict public comment, it doesn't feel neutral. It feels like you're redesigning a system to protect the comfort up there, increase the pressure down here, and weaken the accountability that public comment is there to do. In 2025, this council majority forced people to come back to work in the office because you said being there matters. You had to be showing up and present to do your job. Well, guess what? This is a representative government.

You are here because this is where the job happens. So tonight, I'm asking you to rethink public comment, increase access, and when we're here, please pay attention. Put down your texting, put down your phones, and give the respect to the people who are speaking that deserve it. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. Next, I have Steve Sutton request. Possibility showing Why why don't you step up to the microphone so we and and you want to start the three minutes?

So do you want to start three minutes right now? I wanted to make a request first before I started. Sure. Go ahead. What's the request? That the graphic that was used in the last presentation that showed the number of parking spaces at the various areas be put back up on the screen. Which graphic was it, Steve? It was the one that showed an overview of all the parking areas near the Oldtown Tavern and it had numbers assigned showing the number of parking spaces at each of those areas.

Is it possible that that could be put back up? So, I I don't know how readily available that would be. I have no problem with you doing that. If we can pop it on the screen. And this is comment that, as you well know, is reserved for non-aggendaized items. And so, you're not speaking on the last item, right? That's not No, I am not going to be speaking on the last. You just want the graphic. The graphic itself. Well, I have no problem doing that if we want to. Anyone have that handy? Okay.

Well, that was easy. All right. Well, we spent more time talking about it than it was to pull it up. Yeah. All right. The wizard. City clerk Ben Lane. Thank you. Well done. It wasn't me. It was the staff. Okay. We're going to start your three minutes. One two three go. If I'm looking at this graphic correctly, the parking corral is shown on this graphic and it's showing that there are 98 parking spaces at the parking corral when in reality there's over 200.

Someone has failed to count parking spaces on the lower level when they made this graphic. And now for my comment. Steve Sutton, address on record. Good evening, Honorable Lisa Barowski, mayor of Scottsdale, and other council members. I'll be asking the council to answer questions on an issue within their purview at the end of my comment.

But first, I want the council to consider the fact that thousands of Scottsdale residents are aware of three circumstances that would logically support the decision to spend 15 to 20 million to build a parking garage in front of the historic old adobe mission and end the 17-year tradition of the farmers market at the parking corral. A new parking study would be a supporting circumstance. The 2015 parking study did not support building a garage.

In October 2025, the city manager refused to conduct a new parking study. So, that supporting circumstance is unavailable. Voter approval would be a supporting circumstance. As pointed out by me at the last city council meeting, the language of the 2019 bond election ballot clearly shows that was not a vote for building a garage at the parking corral. Thousands of citizens petitioning for a garage would be a supporting circumstance.

Of course, the opposite is occurring with thousands of Scottsdale residents petitioning against building a garage. Currently, over 4,000 Scottsdale residents.

So considering the lack of logical supporting circumstances to build a garage, Scottsdale residents are asking themselves, why are Barry Graham and Solange Whitehead, who have a record of acrimoniously not cooperating, and other council members, with the exception of Mayor Barowski, united in an effort to force the farmers market to move so a parking garage can be built in front of Scottsdale's historic Old Adobe Mission.

Incompetence and political corruption could be the answer to those questions. The proposed building of a parking garage at the parking garage and the forcing the farmers market to move appears to be a case of opposing council members of the current and previous councils agreeing to a we'll give you this if you give us that deal and the rewarding of individuals who politically and financially supported their candidacy.

It certainly is not because of a proven need for a new garage or the farmers market benefiting from a move or because it's in the best interest it wanted by Scottsdale residents. Councilman Graham, you're continuing to claim that voters approve the garage has people thinking you are a shameless casual liar.

Councilman Whitehead, as more residents learn the truth of how the farmers market operates, your claims that the farmers market will benefit from moving has people thinking you are a laughingstock. Council members, do you understand the implication of over 4,000 residents and property owners and business owners in less than four months signing a petition telling you don't build a garage, don't move the farmers market. Thank you very much. We're going to give you 10. Okay, you're good. All right.

Thank you so much. Point of border. Madame Mayor, is there a is there a decorum rule for just tone and and uh within the speech on non-aggendaized public items? You're aware of the rules, C Vice Mayor Clausman. Not that I mean vulgarity and yelling and threats, I guess, would be um examples of those. Thank you. All right. Uh, moving right along to Stephen Cross. The major the majority of this conversation will be for Chris Cross, the owner of Select Education Micro School.

I just want to make quick introduction of her soontobe proposal at 9201 East Happy Valley Road. It's the existing Living Water Lutheran Church. It does have 144 parking stalls and 16 bike racks. uh for 40 students is the proposal. Two classrooms will be leased from the church. Uh there aren't any scheduling conflicts etc. We've planned that out with the church. No physical changes are proposed to the existing uh education building.

Uh the worship facility is a separate building and the office is separate building. Uh there are very few schools in the trun Happy Valley area and also nothing in Rio Verie. So this is highly desired but she's limiting the school to 40 students and Christa solely owns this business so I shouldn't speak anymore but Christa is an educator and she'll describe that. Hello. Hello. I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Christa Cross.

Um, I've been an educator for more than 30 years in Arizona. Um, I previously owned a school for 21 years, went back just to teaching. Um, and I don't mean just, but you know, it's simpler than running a school. And I was approached by a group of parents asking me to please start a micro school again um to serve them in this area where they're not feeling they can get to a school quickly, etc.

Um, I considered it and I really am very excited to find a location like the Living Waters Church on Happy Valley because it really couldn't be better. It has an enclosed playground. It has great parking. Um, it um it has great classrooms that are already set up as classrooms and I'm I'm looking forward to hopefully getting the school up and running for this upcoming school year so my students still have a home.

It is a private Montasauri elementary and around us are all sorts of preschools and then a little bit further out there's the public schools but these parents are looking for something um and that's why it's select education something smaller where they can get um the attention that I'm known for and I actually won a national teaching award for Arizona um but it was a national I represented Arizona back in 2000 and I was recognized for this exact thing which is really paying attention to the needs of every student uniquely.

So I'm very excited about the project and for hopefully you guys to review it. Thank you. Thank you for coming to tell us about it. All right. Uh, Michael Fernandez. This is my This is my public comment card, right? Because I have a petition, too. Non-aggendaized, right? Public comment. Yes. Thank you. Welcome. Uh, thank you. Do they have the uh how can you expand the bottom? So just for clarification, Mike Fernandez, I don't want you to be confused.

There's not an additional three minutes for the petition. No, I I have a a petition that I I had two petitions. They're only giving me three minutes for two petitions, which I cannot understand. But this is a public comment. So, just so you know, you don't get three additional minutes with the No, this is Okay. I just want to make sure this public comment is about the parking garage. Gotcha. The petition is a completely different thing. Okay. Got it. Yes. Okay.

So, uh, thank you for your patience. I'm new at this. I haven't done it in 45 years. Uh, Michael Michael Fernandez address on record. For most of my life, I've been involved in Scottsdale. I grew up working at Pottery Paradise and ended up owning it. Pottery Paradise was founded in 1951, the same year Scottsdale was incorporated. In 1999, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with citizens fighting the canals of Scottsdale. The people voted 54 to 46 to kill that project dead.

Here's what Councilman Graham, Councilman Duboscus, and Councilman Quasman don't understand. When that battle was fought, Graham was a 14-year-old kid. Duboscus was 23 living in California, and Quasman was 16, living in Tucson. They weren't here. They haven't bled for this place. They can't possibly grasp the fierce love and protective passion we longtime residents hold for our old town, the beating heart of everything Scottsdale claims to be.

If they understood, they would have championed creating a downtown task force on January 7th, giving stakeholders a real voice in shaping our collective future. The future that determines whether Scottsdale remains an envy of the Southwest or becomes just another forgettable suburb. Instead, they turned a deaf ear to the public, just as they are doing in building a three-story garage in historic Oldtown directly across an old Adobe Mission and Cavalier's blacksmith shop.

Two structures whose beginnings predate Arizona as a state and Scottsdale as a place. It was clear on January 7th, Mr. Quasman mocked those in attendance by making a post on X. Perhaps if he owned his home instead of renting, he would have a stakeholders mentality. Council should be paying attention to the public's business, not mocking them from the deis during council sessions. They should also remember that voters have long memories and there's an election coming up.

It's not too late to stop the oldtown parking garage. The clock is ticking and the question is simple. Will we let Scottsdale soul be turned over to bureaucrats and disingenuous politicians? Thank you, Mike. All right, that concludes the non-aggendaized public comment and uh next we have receipt of citizen petitions. So, we do have two citizen petitions, but I think it's just one right? Mayor, it's two petitions, but he has three minutes to present both petitions to the council. Okay.

So, Mike, you still have two petitions. Is that that right? Okay. So, we're gonna call uh Michael Fernandez back up. No worries. Thank you. Uh, Michael Fernandez address on record. It's 27 days. It's day 27 and counting since city manager Greg Katon suspended Mayor Barowski's chief of staff Lamar Whitmer without explanation, paralyzing the mayor's office and blocking her agenda. the agenda on which she was elected. To date, no reason, justification, or explanation has been been provided to Mr.

Whitmer, the mayor, and the public. This is unprecedented breach of American due process. Is more like something out of the former Soviet Union. Simply put, show me the man and I'll show you the violation. The mayor has been forced to operate with only a skeleton staff. This isn't an accident. It's a deliberate obstruction of Mayor Barowsk's agenda to involve residents and stakeholders in city affairs. This is a blatant attack on the mayor's residents. Excuse me.

This is a blatant attack on the mayor and residents. Mr. Kton has repeatedly instructed city staff not to work with the mayor, making her an outcast in her own administration. The suspension of her staff, excuse me, the suspension of her chief of staff is simply the most brazen escalation yet. Even more disturbing, based on restrictions in the city's January 14th letter, Mr.

Whitmer has essentially been confined to his house during working hours, placed under what amounts to house arrest and without being told why. Mr. Kentton's broader record is equally troubling. After barely six months of residency, Mr. Ken was appointed city manager and a stalinistic maneuver. He purged the city's upper management with decades of institutional knowledge.

He's replaced expertise with fear, turning city hall into a place where employees are too intimidated to speak up or work with their elected mayor. This isn't how America works. This isn't how Scottsdale became the envy of the Southwest. Mr. Kton's actions are a clear example of Ronald Reagan's axiom. Government isn't the solution, it's the problem. The city council must act now, enact a policy requiring basic due process.

Anyone suspended deserves to know the charges against them, and so does the public, especially when that suspension cripples an elected official's ability to govern. No secret accusations, no silent suspensions, no house confinement without explanation. Just transparency, accountability, and respect for the democratic process. Thank you. Were you going to pass that out? Do you have a written petition? Oh, okay. Got it. I don't think we have copies of that up here. Only by email. Okay.

Uh so anyone have any you had two petitions? Okay. All right. So on this uh we have three options uh in terms of making a motion which are displayed on the screen but not there yet. Direct the city manager or other responsible charter officer to agendaize the petition for further discussion. direct si the city manager or other responsible charter officer to investigate the matter and prepare a written response or with a copy to the petitioner or take no action.

So, uh anyone city cler mayor I apologize just to clarify. So, there's there's two petitions. We we'd like the council to act on each one individually. So the the first petition is um requests that the city council reenact its ban on electronic devices from the dis during council meetings. So that that's the first petition that we have agendaized to to have the council reenact its ban. Yes. Councilwoman Littlefield.

When you're talking about mechanical devices, are you talking about iPads or devices that would hold the council agenda and the detail of that as we go through each item in detail? So, Mayor and Councilwoman Littlefield and members of the council, we can have a discussion on the petition. There's uh you can do of one of three things. It's either uh direct the city manager or other responsible charter officer to agendaize petition for further discussion.

direct the city manager or other responsible charter officer to investigate and provide a report or written response back to the council petition or take no no action. Um so those are the those are the three a three options. I move we take no action. Okay. Second. I don't see anybody else on the board, so I'm just going to speak to this.

Uh, while it's become an issue before I we take the vote, uh, while it's become an issue with, uh, for various different reasons with, um, texting, posting, being on your device. Um I was enthusiastically supported uh killing this um or or this council rule that you couldn't have devices.

And the point I made uh back then on day one, I think it was day one that we were in office was if you can't if you can't uh we're elected officials and we're adults um and if you can't trust your elected official to be on this dis responsibly, we don't need a rule. You just need to say so in elections, right? That's what we have elections for. So, I uh I'm completely I have to tell you, as you know, as much drama and controversy that's been surrounding this, I'm completely opposed to it.

I think that um that your petition, Mike, I I I think it's in good spirit and I understand the issue. Uh but, you know, that's when you hold people responsible through elections, you know, whatever your position is on that.

And if we can't be adults and be trusted to be on our devices um when necessary and speaking for myself, it is necessary occasionally for me because candidly I need something from um a very important person in my office and it's just would be weird to walk down or you know knock on knock on the door and announce it. So and for lots of reasons. I have a daughter who's 21. She's in California. She frequently needs me because it's frequently an emergency. Okay. perceived or otherwise.

I'm just saying. Money does not count. Okay. Sorry. I'm I digress. I digress. But there are emergencies nonetheless. Um, so I'm I'm a no on this. I I understand the issue, but I don't think this is the right vehicle to enforce that issue. So, with that, I don't know that anybody else has something they want to say there. So, let's take a vote on do nothing, which I'm supporting. All right. Then the second one. Well, that's more complicated for me. I feel uh a bit conflicted.

I don't It's not a technical conflict, so I'm not going to recuse myself for it. Um then there's no secret that the individual an example that uh Mr. Fernandez has discussed uh with us here tonight as the basis for the peti petition um does have a direct impact on me albeit non financially or any basis for a conflict. Uh and there's no also no secret that I have been very bothered by the way that this happened and was um was articulated to the public. Uh, and I am hopeful. We're working on that.

We're going to work on that and I'm hopeful that does not um that does not happen on in our future and I'm hoping this gets resolved quickly. But I do think it's worthy of an overall policy discussion and I think it's important to have that. uh you know, we have a human resources department uh and a city manager that makes decisions for staff. Um again, this is only impacting the mayor's office. I'm not going to be the only mayor here.

you know, I'm here now and there will be future uh mayors and for the benefit of the office, I do think there needs to be clarity on what the role is and what how that is um how that is played out and how that is affected in situations uh where there's some allegation. I do think it's fair to to let that be known to at least the individual impacted by it um at a minimum and to the direct report which would be the mayor ideally uh together with the city manager and charter of officers.

So with that I'm going to call on the city attorney. Thank you mayor and members of the council. I just need to interject here and remind the city council that these petitions are not agendaized for discussion, which means there's three things that the council can do on any of these. Uh so I'd ask the council to refrain for from further commentary on the items and just select one of those three options, please. So I totally get your point and that wasn't for purpose of debate or discussion.

I was just going to explain the basis for my motion, which is number one to direct the city manager to or any other responsible charter officer, which would be you presumably to agendaize the petition for further discussion. That's my motion. I'll second that. Can she speak to her second? Yes. I I I think there's a problem with the way we've agendaized these in that we don't allow for discussion.

I think in the future that we could agendaize them for discussion if that's what the council wants, but it's it's set up specifically with three options and it was intended to basically receive these and do one of three items. Not to have a debate or a discussion on what the merits of agendaizing it. That's what the council wants in the future. We can do that, but it's not set up that way. May I speak to my second? Is that okay? Technically, no. I mean, but you do so at your own risk.

Well, can I just interject with totally respect your judgment here and your advice, but with any motion, you know, we've had these come before us lots of times, and this is the reason why we're going to take no action. For example, if we were taking no action, I just did that in the last one. So, why is this one treated differently? In fact, I can think of many examples because I I was forebearing um without interjecting.

Um I think that if we want to have discussion, we need to agendaize it for discussion. And it's not agendaized for discussion. And um justifying one's vote is also discussion. And we we can change this in the future where people can speak to their vote and and discuss these, but that's not how it's agendaized. And I'm very mindful of open meeting law complaints. have had to respond to a lot of them in the last couple months.

So again, I can think of so many examples over the last year when this exact agenda item was preceded by a discussion about it with staff and you know more further fleshing out it. But it's okay. I hear what you're saying and my apologies. I you know that's kind of a new discussion on this one. So with that, let's take a vote. No, you're not allowed to speak. He just said so. Madame Mayor, I'd like to make a counter motion. Alternative an alternative motion. Okay, no problem. Go right ahead.

Madame Mayor, I'd like to I I move to uh uh take no action. Second. All right, we're going to vote on the alternative motion. All right. So, that passes. So, we won't even have to get to my long- winded motion. Moving right along. Thank you, Mr. Fernandez. All right, that is I think all she wrote. Nope, we have Let's see. Oh, this is mine. Where where is Miss Monica Boyd? You're here. There we go. We So, I spent a I'm not going to say anything before I get to this. Never mind. Hold on.

Uh this item number 11 is a mayor and council item and requesting council approval of my reappoint of Monica Boyd as the head of the merit system appointee for the public safety personnel retirement system police and fire boards. Uh I'm going to make the motion to appoint reappoint Monica Boyd as the head of the merit system. Second. Thank you very much. I don't see any uh requests to speak. So with that, please register your vote. All right. Work study sessions.

Uh work study sessions are a less formal setting for the Did I Did we not vote? Oh, why isn't the button working? There we go. Work study sessions provide a less formal setting for the mayor and council to discuss specific topics with each other and city staff. Work study sessions provide an opportunity for staff to receive direction from the council and for the public to observe the these discussions.

Uh we have received some public comment on this and as soon as I find my list So let's take the public comment on the work study starting with French Thompson followed by Bob Pedman, Andrew Gould who I believe has left the building and Sonni Kurtley and there's more but we'll get to those. So, if I guess I should ask if or uh say if Jude now is still here and Okay, David Smith will take that place then. It sounds like Go ahead, Branch.

I'm just wondering how long I can stand here and delay before I get to start my three minutes. I thought maybe I could just stand here and shuffle my paper a little bit. Steve entertains me when he does that. Uh my name is French Thompson. My address is on record. Madame Mayor, my city council, I spent a lot of time working with city staff and city council on the previous tourism development tourism plan.

And one of the things that never showed up in it was there weren't any actionable or deliverables. The whole plan was basically just aspirational. You know, aspirational is winning the lottery. I mean, I've got that. Probably a lot of you have that. The only problem is if you don't go buy a ticket, you can't do it. So, there's a big difference between aspirations and actually doing what it takes to make things happen.

So, I would like to see a future plan have some actionable plans and I'd like to have it have some definite some deliverables. So, some of the things that happened before is we hired these outside consultants, which I've seen this over the many years that I've been here in downtown. They've got a column A, a column B, and a column C, and they go to Tulsa, and they go to Denver, and they go to Scottsdale, and they go to Mesa, and they just pick something out of column A, column B, and column C.

They don't really look at the existing assets. This city of Scottsdale has got assets that other cities don't have. We have the worldclass Oldtown Scottsdale. We've got a world famous Scottsdale arts district. Those are assets that need to be promoted and moved forward. You don't need to bring in outside businesses to do events here.

When you have homegrown assets that keep their tax money here, they keep their salaries here, they keep their employees here, and they don't take their profits out of state. So when people talk about bringing in outside things, outside events, that's how you grow it. No, you grow it by promoting what you have here and making what you have here better. Honestly, if you got a great garden, you still go out there and fertilize it and weed it and spend some time with it, give a little bit of love.

You don't just bring in a whole different bunch of dirt and just dump it on it and throw in some new plants. No, you you cultivate it. And that's what city of Scottsdale needs to do with this tourism plan. So, I just would urge you, city council, to direct staff to include actionable strategies and request deliverables, much like you asked the city, the Museum of the West, to have some deliverables and show them to you. So, that's what I'd like to see in this plan. Thank you.

Thank you, Bob Pedesman. Thank you, Mayor Barasi. Council members, Bob name is Bob Pedron addresses on record and I want to go back to the Keen survey. So about 3 four months ago, the city invested money and um company called Keen did a survey of 150 Oldtown stakeholders. And the result of that survey showed a major disconnect between what the stakeholders would like to have be done as far as as far as a tourism plan and the city's existing tourism strategic plan. Major disconnect.

And I'm assuming that this work study is here to bridge that gap, right? So, so to have that input of those 150 stakeholders be reflected in a new tourism plan in a rewrite and not just the 150 plus more. So, but what is Oldtown? Oldtown is really a collection of existing core assets. What are those assets? small retail shops, restaurants, art galleries, museums, civic center, waterfront, etc. Right?

But when I look at this plan and I glance, you know, the plan looks, you know, kind of convoluted in the way that you don't know where it's really going. However, I did a word search. The word event occurs 150 times or more. But when you look at these other core assets, Scott Museum is the west happens only once. There's zero mention of the word art galleries. There's four mention of the word restaurants, five mention of the word retail.

I mean, we're not talking about this is self- serving about the galleries, the retail we're talking about. In the meantime, over 150 references to events. On page 25, it says attracts attract new yearround events. And and that's fine. events are great, right? But this plan should prioritize the existing core assets. So, no wonder the result of the survey was so poor because the merchants don't feel valued. They feel that they're here providing a great product, great service.

Collectively, they they constitute Oldtown and instead every consultant comes in and wants to put the focus on outside events. And I think that this is a great opportunity in the rewrite to make sure that not only the existing core assets are prioritized. We should actually make a special place in this plan to include the Oldtown marketing plan in it and tie it directly to the 5% of bet tax. We need specific stuff and enough of this aspirational stuff.

You know, I mean some of the language used in here is explore opportunities to expand the promotion of retail. I mean, how many how much more unactionable can you make that right with all these qualifiers that make it like not something that's actionable? Um, I do believe that since the Keen survey was so effective, we don't have to reinvent the wheel on this, we should use that survey along with the input direction from council for the city to go back and basically come up with a new plan.

I hope this is not going to be a six-month process. I think because you already have the survey and count and you know the recent, you know, temperature and stuff here, you you can actually speed this into a three-month process and come up with a very solid plan that really takes advantage of Oldtown's great assets. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Next, we have Andrew Gold. Just gold. Just making sure he's not here. Uh Sonnie currently. Nope. I don't see her either. Uh, Robert Marsh.

No, Jude. Now, we don't think we he's here. David Smith, you're up. Welcome, council, former council member David Smith. Thank you, Mayor and Council. So, by default, I get a chance to address you. You have a big job ahead of you and I'm the only thing standing between you and doing that tonight. So, I'm going to be as brief as I can, but I'll echo the many of the comments that were made by the previous speakers.

I think we need an actionable plan with deliverables and metrics for measuring a marketing program for the city's greatest asset. It's not galleries. It's not restaurants. It's collectively all the businesses that comprise and by the way also the the government-owned properties that comprise the downtown area as the major tourist attraction for the city. So their plea to you is not to support their business. Their plea is to support the Oldtown visitor attraction.

It's it it is enumerated in the plan. Um, there is a section that talks about the importance of Oldtown, but just nothing talks about how we're actually going to market it. One other thing I would make as a suggestion when you uh it says in the plan that you want to make sure that we actually consider tourism on the actions that we take. There's a way you can do that.

Just as you have on your council reports a financial impact of every decision, you could add the requirement of a tourism impact for every decision. So, if we're going to build a building, what's the impact? If we're going to do a road, what's the impact? It would be an easy thing for staff to address and it would give you some guidance as to what these initiatives impact on tourism.

And finally, I'll say I know in another section of the report uh which doesn't relate to Oldtown, but you're going to look at the feasibility of looking uh or considering a new and larger performing arts venue.

I would urge you to put together a consortium of of interested parties, the folks who actually run the performing arts activities in the city and start with the biggest music fest up north or Scottsdale Arts, what they do, or put in some of the smaller venues, for example, Ravenscraftoft if you've ever been there, or Don Bluth's Theater or Desert Stages. ages or the Kurr Cultural Center.

There are many many interested parties and they need to be collectively all heard from and as you consider this I you have a big job ahead of you. I hope you can bring definition and clarity to the plan. Certainly everybody's waiting to hear for that. So good luck. Thank you. Thank you David. Appreciate your input. All right, that concludes the public comment on the work study session.

And with that, I'll invite Kevin Burke, uh, senior director of economic development and tourism to take us through these slides. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Kevin Burke, and I serve as the senior director for economic development and tourism for the city of Scottsdale. I'll appreciate your patience and forbearance this evening. This is my first opportunity to speak with you uh in these chambers. So, thank you. Welcome, by the way. Thank you. I appreciate that.

It's been a tremendously exciting first six weeks. I'll say that. So, our purpose here tonight is to discuss and for staff to solicit input on the tourism and events strategic plan. Uh excuse me. Scottsdale has a successful track record of using strategic plans to guide our tourism efforts. The current plan was adopted by the city council in January 2023 and was intended to be implemented through 2027.

The full document was included in your materials and is organized around eight experience principles that are listed here. I believe the plan has served the organization and the community well. However, with the rapid pace of change in the global and the regional economy as well as evolving expectations of both visitors and local stakeholders, staff believes it is timely to begin development of the next iteration of our tourism strategic plan.

As senior director of economic development and tourism, I strongly believe that using the strategic plan to provide a roadmap for our team's efforts to establish goals and key performance indicators and to have a framework to track our performance. So tonight, uh I am requesting mayor and council's input on the process, structure, and content of the new strategic plan.

and my team stands ready to engage a broad and representative group of stakeholders to develop a document which we would then bring back for consideration by this body. With that, be happy to address any questions and uh take direction from the mayor and council on this topic. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Burke, thank you for your presentation and um we're glad you're here. Welcome on board.

The I want to thank my colleagues for bringing this back up for the council's consideration. Um, I'm very uh appreciative that they chose to do that. Um, I'm really happy we're taking another look at the tourism strategic plan. The I think the goal of this in my mind is to put an emphasis on the yearround and the known assets that we have in our city.

um the museums, galleries, performing arts, independent restaurants, specialty stores, civic center, waterfront, public art from the southern border to the northern. Um the things that really define us and bring visitors here. Uh as I I agree with Mr. Pedman, he pointed out uh the Keen survey, and you're probably you probably already studied up on that, gives us a solid input from 150 Oldtown stakeholders that we should use to guide a recraft of the plan.

Now, this is this is going to be a a group effort. My vision for this was not a wholesale change, repeal it out, repeal everything, and replace it with something. This was just a refinement. That was kind of my vision for it. Um, as you know, the existing plan did come to us from some shouldn't say some, but from an existive from an expensive Toronto-based consulting firm and it does kind of read. It's got nice pictures and I I got no problem with the pictures. Let's keep the pictures, right?

It's got a lot of flowery language. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Um, but there's a lot of things that are in it that read like generic off the rack boilerplate um that doesn't celebrate doesn't deeply dive and celebrate Scottsdale's unique character as uh David Smith mentioned um actionable plan with specific deliverables, clear steps or measurable outcomes. Um, but I mean truthfully I would say almost any focus rewrite it would be hard.

I I think it would be hard if you gave this an honest try to uh to focus to give it a focus rewrite it will be a big improvement. Um, so I kind of want to keep my remarks brief. Um, I I just I do have these um advisories um because these you know I've been part of these plans when I was on planning commission, I was on transportation commission.

We go through these action plans and master plans and general plans and I've seen how they can I've seen how they can snowball and they can veer off course. They can rat hole and people can just start, you know, getting fixated on things that before you know it, you're completely off mission. Really try to resist that temptation. Um, this is not a repeal and replace. That's the way I saw it. It was a refinement. Um, I don't think this should require an expensive consulting firm.

That's kind of what you said. It's kind of what I heard you say. I agree with you. I think that we have the data before us. We have the stakeholders. I think it should be collaborative. I think it should be consensus driven. I think that we have the experts on staff with the knowhow to do it. I do. Um, we have stakeholders. We know how to find them. We know how to engage them. Um, I don't think it should be a six or nine month process.

You know, a lot of these plans, it's just like it's almost like the longer I take, the more I I time I put into it, the longer I make you wait, the more I'm justifying why I'm here. doesn't mean it has to be overnight or next week, but I think that, you know, belaboring it, protracting it needlessly, um I don't think it's necessary. I think we can resist that. Um I don't think we need a long study to learn what we already know.

Um, I do think maybe the tough part and I don't know, maybe this will maybe be staff's decision, but maybe you want to interface or go through it with TDC or something like that. Um, that may be kind of what you're thinking. Just um, but this is these plans are updated. These plans get updated all the time. these types of plans where you take the prior plan and you just, you know, you update, you improve what needs improved and you set aside maybe what's outdated or expired.

Um maybe staff will leaz with TDC and get their input because I do think it should be like I said be consensus driven. Um I think it should be bottom up. I think that might have been a little bit of the problem with the last one is it wasn't so bottom up. It was probably a little more top down. I think the toughest part of this exercise is like all these exercises for these plans is um building a consensus um on reshaping goals and defining success.

Success definition I think is especially in the world of marketing. You know, that's one of the things I respect about marketing about marketers. They find ways to say, you know, how to how to how they've returned, you know, how they brought return on investment. Um because marketing is sometimes can be difficult to measure that. So that's your that's your expertise. That's why we hire experts like you and your team um that we can lean on.

And so I don't want it to um you know grow ball or stone is something that's you know some unexpected Leviathan that we didn't see coming. Don't want that. Um and again I just my gratitude goes to my colleagues and my appreciation to them. My appreciation to you for um the elacrity you've shown in taking this on. So thank you Mr. Burke. Thank you mayor. Thank you Councilwoman McCallen. Thank you, mayor. Welcome to the city of Scottsdale, Mr. Burke. Thank you. Uh last week, uh Mr.

Burke and I had the pleasure of attending um a a forum on tourism and how it affects uh Scottsdale, Tempe, and kind of the metropolitan area. uh those present at the um tourism uh summit, that was what it was called, tourism summit. I was trying to remember what they called it. Uh was that was put on by Congressman Stanton.

Uh we had the pleasure of having the National Transportation and Tourism uh authority for all of the US uh there from DC and his assistants and they were talking about Scottsdale and I I kind of felt sorry for Tempe because it was in Tempe but they just kept throwing accolades on Scottsdale and it was great for uh Kevin to be there and to hear how wonderful and you know he is pretty excited to be representing Scottsdale.

But one of the things they did say that we do write is the city of Scottsdale depends on experience Scottsdale. We use the professionals and this gentleman who's the CEO um the head tourism authority for all of us said that experience Scottsdale is the number one destination marketing organization in all of the US and we have it and we're smart enough to use them. So, I thought that was very exciting for us to um hear that for other cities to hear that.

And uh so what I would encourage the staff to do um Mr. Burke is to listen to the professionals as well as what Mr. Graham said, listen to the stakeholders, listen to our citizens, members of the tourism development commission. There's a reason why they were appointed. Um the people on that commission are professionals in the tourism industry and they're also residents of Scottsdale. Um that's very important. Uh what uh some of the speakers tonight said, I think it was Mr.

Thompson, he said uh to listen to the stakeholders from throughout Scottsdale, how it affects Scottsdale. And I realize Oldtown is its own entity and it's a geographic area per se, but other events affect Oldtown. An example, the Open. People come for the Open knowing that they're going to spend their evenings in Oldtown. They may attend Barrett Jackson during the day, but in the nighttime they're going to spend their time in Oldtown. They're going to attend the Art Rock on Thursdays.

they're going to attend maybe um concerts at the Center for the Arts, things of that nature. So, ancillary events that may happen in Scottsdale, outside of Scottsdale, those are also stakeholders because when they advertise to the citizens throughout the world, those people are also going to come to Oldtown. So we need to be looking at all of those um stakeholders.

I believe not just um you know in Oldtown but those that are interdependent and ancillary of Oldtown uh is something that I would suggest and we heard that at the summit the other day how these major events even in Tempe they were saying how booked up Tempee was for the Phoenix Open that happens in Scottsdale. Um, so those would be my suggestions and again, welcome.

You have a big task ahead of you, but I think that you're going to enjoy it because you're going to find out um just how great Oldtown is. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Dascus. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Hi, Kevin. Hello. So, I think when Councilman Graham originally approached this idea, what he was sort of um broach the ideas. Um we have a tourism plan. It's not specific about some of the things that we've been interested in discussing over the last several months.

And so maybe we have some opportunity instead of sitting here with a big five-year plan that's not maybe hitting us on all cylinders that maybe we could do a few updates. And so I presume that um you're thinking about the the long-term plan, but you're also then refining what we're doing today and and going to do that.

So my comments really are going to address the long-term plan and sort of where I see us having some holes and then also I think you can glean from that what we need to um maybe work on in the short term as well. Um, I I feel like part of what we need to do every time we do something like this really is to identify our strengths and our culture because over the course of five, seven years, we do adjust over time, right? So, Scottsdale is cowboy chic.

Scottsdale is food, art, open space health sports baseball golf uh, soccer, um, all those good things. Uh we even have the Fiesta Bowl Foundation here, right? So we have lots of good sports, uh resorts, um and all kinds of interesting special events. So taking a a look at us as a holistic view, we also have Oldtown, we also have museums, we also have this whole big long list of assets. And um I think some of that can get lost when we look at and we try to define eight ideas, right?

So, taking a look at our culture, we really are very unique here. We're really proud of that. Um, and so I think our tourism can highlight that a little bit more. Um, we have so many James Beard finalists. Our restaurants, um, you know, number one restaurant, the most romantic restaurant in the United States. Um, we have some of just the most fantastic restaurants in the city of Scottsdale. Um, it's really an honor.

And so I think some of those things could really be u teased out a little bit more and highlighted. Um we're known for our super season and uh and so the opportunity to bring in tourism during our super season. We're doing that really really well. Um we are at max capacity at a lot of places. Um it's hard to get restaurant reservations. It's hard to find parking. All that good stuff. Um let's work also in this tourism plan on how do we fill in the offseason, shoulder season, summer season.

Let's focus on um you know the golf courses. Uh all they can do is charge more in January, February, but in May, June, July, uh they have some openings. So let's let's focus on the tourism plan in the off season. Um and then uh something that I have thought a lot about is it feels to me like when we walk through all these different venues and opportunities, a lot of it has been in silos.

And so I think bringing um some of our collaborators to the table, walking through what is our event season, how how can we maximize and leverage each other's um uh assets, whether it's marketing assets, maybe it's not our own dollars, right? Maybe we can get some of our partners to work together and use their dollars and and maximize um and sort of break down some of these silos that we've had over the over the years.

Maybe we have super season, but we also have super weekends where we can have multiple events and really highlight um an offseason uh weekend or two um and and see how we can have an impact there. Of course, all this is going to be dependent on us having metrics, being able to really identify whether it's geoloccation for cell phones, things like that, and really um to be able to understand the the numbers of the actual economic impact of what we're doing.

you know, when we talk about bringing folks into Oldtown, which is, I think, what everyone would say is the one thing that's really stand out different about Scottsdale. We do want to make sure that we have places for them to park. Um, I'll give you an example. We were in San Diego over the summer. Um, my husband and my my dad and my son went to go sailing. My mom and I took the girls to go to the science museum.

Um, the men couldn't find a place to park to go sailing and they turned around, they went home. My mom and I go to Balboa Park to go to the science museum and it took us 20 minutes to find a parking space. We almost went home. We never want that to happen in Scottsdale. So, keeping an eye on parking in the various areas of the venues, I think, is also going to be important for our tourism plan. Um, so we should probably consider what else do we need? We think Scottsdale is amazing.

We think we have everything. Um, but it would probably be helpful to look at competitive cities, to look at um at other strategic plans, to have some conversations with your peers throughout the United States in these competitive cities and talk about what are you doing, what's doing well. Um, do we have venues here that we could maximize in a new way, in in an interesting way? Um, is there something missing that we could we could leverage and and do it even more?

Um, and is there something else that we should offer or maybe there's another way we could consider it? So, I think a competitive analysis of where does Scottsdale sit in the tourism could be very interesting. Um, and then one of my colleagues mentioned the TDC. Um, we do have tourism professionals that we work with. Um, and the TDC, it feels like I mean I I I look through the agenda, I watch the meetings, but I I feel like we're not leveraging their expertise and it's very heavy on hotelers.

So maybe moving forward, we want to think about the hotels are already doing a great job advertising. Um, maybe we could use some event managers. Maybe we could use some um folks who work in advertising and marketing on TDC to sort of have some different thoughts and and sort of to grow the TDC in a new way and and and that they might help push us and and think differently a little bit about our tourism. So, that's something to consider.

Um I also think we should be really cognizant that this plan sets the tone. uh we don't listen necessarily to our contractors. Our contractors should be listening to us. So we need to really think through who we are and where we want to go and set the tone and then we need to let our contractors know this is where you're going and these are our expectations for you at a minimum.

So that concept of having activated numbers for and targets for folks to hit, those are things that we should be um communicating to our our um our partners, our business partners um and and making sure that everyone understands that we're setting the tone. We're paying you to do these things, right? Um rather than the other way around. Uh the city of Scottsdale, I mean, we sell sunshine all day. It's a fantastic place to be.

Um, anyone who comes here says, "Wow, this place is amazing." Um, at the open over the course of the weekend, I had family come in. Our daughter from Seattle, it had been raining and raining and raining. Um, our our nephew from North Carolina, they have had bomb snow threats things. Um, another nephew from Colorado, it's snowing there, too. So, people are thrilled to be here. This is a wonderful place to sell. And so, um, I think I think this is going to be an exciting project.

So, thank you very much for working on it, Kevin. Of course. Thank you, Vice Mayor Quasman. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I have the privilege of working with Kevin and in the economic development committee and he's just an outstanding individual and I want to thank you for all the humans work you you're doing and the rest of the city uh the charter officers and the city staff. Um, I want to echo just a couple points really quickly. I think Mr.

Pedman is correct in in his assessment of making sure that established merchants, established businesses in the Oldtown area, uh, especially are um, and and throughout throughout the city are reinforced. I think it's the it is the lifeblood, the heart and soul of our uh, of our economic engines, our small businesses in the city. Um, I want to reinforce uh uh Council Member Graham's um uh uh statements as well as as well as Council Member Duboscus' statements.

I think they were all um they were all excellent. I just have a very while I it's one of those times when I could use a bully pulpit uh uh for good. So, I'm just going to bring my little while we're in a work study session, I'm going to bring my little two cents in.

One of the most underserved um um aspects of this city is the especially in a postcoavid era is the growth of Scottsdale as a tourism destination for uh for Jews outside of New York who like to travel on the shoulder season of Passover. Um they don't all just go to Florida uh for the Passover holiday. They come to Scottsdale. There is a growing population. The Hilton I know puts on at least 600 guests. Um, and there's multiple locations throughout the city, uh, throughout the valley.

Um, and and uh, these are big families coming out and they're eating and drinking in in Scottsdale and uh, looking to move here. So, I just want to put that out there and see that uh, don't let uh, don't let Florida take them all because uh, Arizona is a wonderful place to live. Councilwoman Whitehead. Thanks. You know, I agree with um some of the statements such as we don't want to rewrite this. We want to modify this plan.

Um having been on council when it was written, I was also quite surprised that we brought in somebody a company that wasn't even here. Um I think what we need to do not only listen to the stakeholders, uh but we really have to follow and experience SCS is a great source. We have to follow trends. It's what do visitors want? We have really unique everything. You know, the sonor and desert is unique, but then we have to have the types of activities that they want to do.

And some of the having been on experienced Scottsdale board for two years and um been involved. The environment hugely important to national and international uh tourists. That's uh was considered in this year's I think annual meeting. that was a top consideration. Um celebrating different cultures was also a top item. Um the local hotel years and this makes sense since it's already in the plan want um to have a wellness week also, you know, and that's already in this plan.

And I I do want to point out some of the many successes we had. It used to be until 20 I think we did it in 2020 or 2021. We didn't have access to our own stadium. Only the San Francisco Giants did. So, we changed that contract. We rebuilt the Civic Center Plaza. We did a lot of things so that our tourists have more places to go. We have more venues where taxpayers get some revenue out of it.

and um you know so it's uh we've expanded um it just drastically changed um contracts at Westworld to accommodate um more events and to focus on what our residents want. So we have to listen to the tourists not just um the stakeholders and I think there's some overlap in this discussion between marketing and a plan. This is a plan and a lot of what I'm hearing is how do we market this stuff?

That's that I consider separate and you know we need to obviously constantly invest in marketing but also invest in our city and our environment so that it's amendable to those visitors. Thanks. Thank you Councilwoman Littlefield. Thank you mayor. Well, this is not an area of my expertise. I was one of the very few people who failed art in eighth grade because I could not draw. However, music was a different story.

Um, I think what we're doing has been highly successful and I'll give you an example of why I think so. My husband and I took a long desired trip several years ago to Europe. We went to Italy and we got on the boats and we were going down through the canals and we were having a great time and I sat next to a older man from Spain and since I spoke a little Spanish and he spoke a lot of Spanish we were kind of mumbling along and he asked me where I was from and I said I'm from Scottsdale.

No, I said I'm from Arizona in the United States. And he goes Arizona? And I go, "Scottsdale." And he goes, "Ah, Scottsdale." He knew the name, but he didn't know the state. And so I'm thinking that kind of recognition is really what we want, that people will know Scottsdale's special. Scottsdale's unique. That's the place we want to be.

Um and I'm finding that um the programs the past programs and activities that we have done have been uh very highly um successful especially um if if we want to go to activities that are year round because a lot of people don't have a lot of choice as far as when they can take a vacation.

they're kind of it's kind of determined by the company they work for that the number of days or weeks that they have available for a vacation how far can they go and so I think it would be helpful to have a number of different timelines for trips to do things like 3day 4 day 6 day two week that kind of thing so that they have options um and I think ask the stakeholders what do they think is missing of what they enjoy here in Scottsdale? Ask our own people.

Um, we're growing areas for visitors all the time. What do they look for? What do you hear from them? Um, and something I think you will find all of them say is they're looking, our visitors are looking for something unique that's just Scottsdale. Now, that may be a little hard to find, but I think that would be a real winner if we can do that. Um, what are the wishes? What are the new things that are coming down the pike? Those are things that we should be looking at.

Not just, you know, the parada, we've done it for years and years and years. It's highly successful. It's a wonderful parade. Everybody loves it. But what's new? What's something else that they can come and see if they've already been to see the parata? So those are the kinds of things also multiple um talents and not just a play, not just the stage, not just art, but music. How about different kinds of music, different kinds of things and we do a very good job with that.

Um I think bringing in the Indian community is excellent because it's unique, it's special, and it's real. And so if we can bring those kinds of feelings like I've seen something that is really part of America, part of the culture, part of the country, but it's not something you can find, you know, in New York. So those are the kinds of things that that would be really special for Scottsdale to have a handle on. And I think we've got a good start on a lot of that.

Maybe we could grow it and make it better. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm last, but um I can't wait to talk about this. One of my favorite topics. So, before I talk about it though, I I really want to hone in on what your goal is and what you know, what you're looking to get from us because I can I could sit here until literally 10 o'clock tonight telling you all the great ideas that I think we can we can launch, right? Um, but there's a co cost associated with those.

Uh, all those ideas, big costs in some cases, very dimminimous in others. Um, I did see in here that you're planning to work with consultants, but I'm not sure exactly what that means. So, that's very um it's it's rather vague. I' I'd like to just understand a little more of what your what you're looking for uh tonight, what your plans are because um the action item or the it's not an action item, but you want input in input on updating the uh tourism and event strategic plan.

So, I don't know that it needs to be updated, maybe executed in a more up-to-date way. I don't know that I would spend a lot more time, you know, a lot of time on rewriting it as Councilman Graham pointed out, but what are you looking for? And then I know this is going to have a budgetary impact when you come back, you know, for the upcoming budget cycle. I mean, sky could be the limit like what's our budget to do this, right? Um, can you just speak to those two things? Of course.

Thank you, mayor, and members of the council. Um, intentionally vague in the staff report because our intention tonight was to come forward and get a sense of where the council is at with their desires for how we should move forward with the plan. And so, of course, we have the full range of options.

We could take the existing plan and put it in the recycling bin and spend $100,000 with consulting firms and take six, nine months to engage every single stakeholder that we could find uh from, you know, between Tempe and Cave Creek. uh or we could take the existing plan and have a skinnier process where staff internally goes through and does a quick rewrite of that uh and enhances some of the areas that we've talked through.

Um I think personally coming into this position, one of the things that I was really excited about was the opportunity to do strategic planning in both of these areas, economic development and tourism and events.

the direction from the city manager uh creating this position with the intention of integrating these two related functions was really interesting to me personally and professionally and so I see that as probably the biggest opportunity here right so what we have uh laid out and in the council materials what was alluded to is a budgetary decision uh in the proposed fiscal 2627 budget there is I believe $100,000 that is earmarked for strategic planning efforts in both of these areas, right?

And so it's not that we would use every single scent of that because again we have the range of opportunities, but that uh with mayor council approval of that budget request would give us the latitude, right, to fully explore our options and find a path that is the best fit for strategic planning in both economic development and tourism and events. Right? Based on what I'm hearing, sort of a sense of the council here this evening, there's a lot in the plan that perhaps is good.

There is a lot of work that has been done recently, right, in and around Oldtown and tourism related that helps to inform that effort going forward. And so perhaps that uh full option of, you know, bringing in and having a consultant different process that is longer and more expensive is probably not the option that we're moving towards right now, right? And so something perhaps in the middle of the skinny version.

Um I think there is a lot of value in bringing in an outside consulting group in some form or fashion. So some of the things that I heard at the day um was talking about comparisons with pure cities talking about uh what are we missing and what are other communities doing that we might want to consider just bringing fresh ideas to the table and there is a lot of value in bringing some outside perspective to do some of that.

The other piece where I think there's a lot of value in using outside uh consultant or I would just say facilitator in this regard is we have a lot of stakeholders. A lot of people are interested in this topic. And so for staff to take that on um with just our staff resources in addition to all of uh our day-to-day workload I think is a is a heavy lift honestly.

And so I think it would be really valuable to ensure that we are truly engaging with all of the stakeholders that we can to bring forward all of the best ideas and incorporate them into the revised version of the plan would be well worth our while and time and effort. Okay, that's helpful. So it's the $100,000 internal budget that you're looking to tap into to do this process and this you're looking for our direction as to where you should spend most of your focus. Okay.

Well, hopefully you get a summary or collective idea of what that is, but uh I would say our number one goal uh and it's been some each one of the council members vice mayor has said this is really I think the number one goal for us right now we're positioned so nicely so in such an amazing way not only in the country the state the country but globally. So this is we this is our time and it's it's been a great year and it's our time to really take it to the next level.

I would articulate the number one goal as elevating experience. Okay. And I think that you do that through so many different ways. There's so many ways to do that. Getting all the ores rowing in the in the same direction with constituencies.

I think top tier for example the Westworld uh event producers they can be super helpful with this you spoke about this getting constituents involved constituencies the oldtown downtown uh merchants that are here you know bringing them together to articulate because really I don't think I happen to agree with uh most everyone here I don't think we need outside consultants it's just so obvious how do we elevate experience here Um, for me it's uh how to move people from place to place, how to tap in and showcase, spotlight what we have already.

Bob Pedman said that earlier for example, uh when when the open start with this, let's change it to the Waste Management Scottsdale Open like it rightfully should be titled. Let's get to work on that. Showcasing Scottsdale and everything we have to offer. But if we can't change the name right away, why don't we have a launch event in Oldtown at the waterfront where the spotlight is on Scottsdale? I can tell you, I love the open. They don't talk about Scottsdale at all out there.

You never hear Scottsdale. I mean, the broadcasters say we're in Scottsdale. Um, and that's true, but that the focus really could be uh Scottsdale more more centric, right? Same with Bear Jackson.

They do so much for our community and I don't think they could improve on much but having a you know pre-launch event down at Oldtown and you know while Bob Pedman said it's centered on events I think we can all agree that events bring energy to Oldtown and to the merchants I mean you cannot argue with that. So getting people to Oldtown which is the next major point. How do you get people there? Already we struggle with how do you get around Oldtown?

People that live here, people that come here, how do you navigate Oldtown, having some elevated experience to to traverse not only Oldtown and downtown, but the entire city. You know, this has been a big issue for a long time. If we could solve that problem, I think or that get an idea, that launch to get people from anywhere, North Scottsdale to Oldtown, a shuttle.

I I don't know what it looks like, you know, technology-wise, but collaborating to get Yeah, I just think there's such a such an opportunity to do that. Uh showcasing the the upcoming Scottsdale Arabian Show, right? Um organize horse farm tours. The city of Scottsdale could do that. People want to come to Scottsdale to see. They really want to see horses. You know, we really don't there's nowhere to see them unless you're going to the show or you're going to the Prada.

So, horse, you know, farm tours would be a super cool idea. Um, youth sports, someone touched on this earlier, really improving our parks. I know we do an amazing job, but expanding opportunities. Uh, for example, lacrosse. I know there's someone in the audience that's very passionate about expanding lacrosse. There's just no room for lacrosse right now. But I think we have the room if we put our minds to it and if we can, you know, work collectively.

Uh I don't think anyone on the disagree that attracting youth sports and visitors associated with youth youth sports to the city of Scottsdale would be a win-win. Families spend more money than they than they can afford to spend on their kids sports, right? Anyone guilty of that here? Yes. Um let's see. Talked about shuttles. The preserve, getting people to the preserve. I think that's an an entirely underutilized asset for us. People know about it generally speaking.

Um, you know, who's going to take an Uber to the preserve? I I don't know if there's a way to get a shuttle there. That would be phenomenal from Oldtown, get people around town. And I'm not sure how you solve that problem, but since you're the expert, you're gonna you're going to solve that for us. But I do think transportation in our city, and no, I'm not a light rail person. That's been well documented. I'm not a big bus person. I don't think we need more buses.

If there would be shuttles come to mind, trolley have been discussed in Oldtown. I think this is a real opportunity for us to take us to the next level. Um, from a marketing perspective, another question about that. Do you are you working with Experian Scottsdale on this? because there's a lot of over overlap and education, you know, synergy. Are you planning to work with Experian Scottsdale? Short answer, yes. They're a key stakeholder for the city.

I think that they're they're probably going to have a lot of good input, but you know, instead of uh Vice Mayor Quasman made this um observation quite some time ago, but instead of trying to be all things to all people, I think you hone in on what we do really really well, what we've already perfected.

I was going to burn up the spring training using the Scottsdale stadium, enhancing the uses there, making it making it easier for people to not only do the uh iconic events, but making it easier for people to get to them, making them better known and celebrated, and uh just an overall better experience. And that includes the transportation component I talked about. So, I think that's it. I don't know. Oh, in the performing arts center that I think we could really use in the future.

I don't know how, you know, this isn't going to get us there, but ideas would be great. Okay. Not to take away from Scottsdale Arts because I love it, but just, you know, add to 1500 seats to that. So then then we're in the ball game of big event, you know. Yeah. Thank you. Very good. Okay.

If there's nothing further, I really uh appreciate the feedback and the opportunity to bring this item forward to council and um we will um I believe what I would like to do is summarize what I heard tonight and then we'll follow up with mayor and council in memo form and chart our path forward um I think with direction uh and approval mayor and council's approval of this item in the budget. Okay. Thank you. I just want to add one thing.

I think this was goes without saying because we've gone over this before. improving the walkability in Oldtown. The sidewalks, the look, the feel, the rocks that someone planted all over Oldtown. There's a lot of complaints about those. Just making Oldtown more beautiful and it already is. Yeah. Can we all agree on that? Oh, we we have consensus on one on one issue. I love this celebration. And with that, we'll adjourn. No kidding. Thank you Kevin. Very good. Thank you.

I I think we're done, though. actually as it turns out. So, council member reports. All right. Can we put our names on the board, please? Anybody? Councilwoman Whitehead. I just want to call out our solid waste staff for getting a grant for the city of Scottsdale and our fire department for uh becoming a food waste free uh fire having food waste free firehouses. So, that's really cool. And I had something I wanted to put up. Yeah, there we go.

So um you know I was so intrigued last year how every single meeting there are people I didn't know talk about how important it is for sustainability but you know it is and there was about three or four things that were uh rotating on this electronic board at the waste um at the waste management open. Zero waste event was one of them and sustainability was another one. So, yay to both our fire department solid waste and the uh W and the Waste Management Scottsdale Open. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman Mckllen. Thank you, Mayor. Uh I just want to give a shout out. This Friday in Scottsdale at Frasers, uh just up the street, we'll be opening the Scottsdale Baseball Experience. This has been in the making for a very long time. two hometown um gentlemen uh Mike uh Phillips and um Charlie Basilero. Uh one went to Sarro and one went to Cornonado.

Charliewood Cornado, Mike went to Swarro and they are bringing the Scottsdale baseball experience to life uh in Frasers and it will be a very big deal for those of you who've been around those of you out uh listening from um the internet on uh Don and Charlie's was kind of that sort of feel. This will expand way beyond that.

I'm so proud of these two gentlemen and it will be a an anchor um mini sports museum hall of fame owed to uh Scottsdale and the history of baseball in Scottsdale and I'm looking forward to it. I will be at the grand opening and I invite all of you. It's this Friday at Frasers between 4 and six. Excellent. Thank you, Councilwoman Dascus. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Just wanted to give a shout out to Scottsdale Police and Scottsdale Fire.

Um the deputy chief Adam Hoster gave me a tour of the command center for police and fire at the waste management open and it's really impressive work that they do all day every day. I'm talking with police officers outside tonight. They are exhausted. Um but they did a great job. We had a really good event. So thank you very much to Scottsdale Police and Scottsdale Fire. And I wanted to remind folks that uh Councilwoman Littlefield and I will be available for office hours here in the KA.

Our next event will be on March 2nd from 4 to 6. So please feel free to stop by. We're happy to speak with anyone. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Kasman. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And and also a very special congratulations to Chris Garup who uh crushed it in overtime and to take the championship, take the waste management.

Um, uh, big big shout out to the PGA, big shout out to Thunderbirds, big shout out to Scottsdale Police, uh, and all the other wonderful, uh, Scottsdale teams that put together, um, an incredible waste management. Wow, what an amazing city we have. Um, well done. Let's do it all again next year. Thank you. Uh, move to adjourn. All right. Thank you everybody for sticking around.