Scottsdale approves Axon Campus MOU 6-1, cuts units to 1,200

Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started. I'd like to call the uh November 17th, 2025 special meeting and possible executive session of the Scottsdale City Council to order. City Clerk Ben Lane, can you please do our roll call? Uh, thank you, Mayor. Mayor Lisa Barowski, present.

Uh, Vice Mayor Adam Quasman, council members Jan Dubosquez, Barry Graham here, Kathy Littlefield present, Maryann McAllen present, and Solange Whitehead here, city manager Greg Kaitton, interim city attorney Luis Santea here. And I'll note that um, city manager Craig Kaitton just walked in. Thank you. City Treasurer Sonia Andrews here. and the clerk is present. Thank you, mayor. Thank you.

For item number one, we have a possible executive session to consult with the city city's attorneys for legal advice and consider the city's position uh regarding the taxpayers against awful apartment zoning exemptions at all v state of Arizona and all other matters related to Senate Bill 1543 and development agreement number 2020-138-OS including amendments and to and also to address a proposed memorandum of understanding between the city and Axon and the proposed ordinance number 4697 relating to a selfcertification and third party certification program and for all uh for legal advice related to all these items.

Can I uh at this time I'll entertain a motion for to enter into executive session. Second. All those in favor, please indicate your vote. We will now uh recess into executive session and be back when we're finished. Thank you. Right, we've wrapped up our executive session and at this time we are rec reconvening the special council meeting. For the record, uh the council, most of the council is here and I saw Barry here. We're all here and uh the charter officers are also in in attendance.

So moving on to item number two uh for consideration a memorandum of understanding for the Axon world headquarters campus. This is a request to adopt resolution 1313567 authorizing contract number 2025-195- COS a memorandum of understanding between the city and Axon Enterprise.

Theou outlines the terms for development of Axon's international headquarters campus, including a reduction of the total number of residential units previously approved from 1882 1,882 apartments to 750 apartments and 750 condominium condominiums for a total of 1,500 residential units.

uh which will include phase construction of office, manufacturing, hotel, and residential components, affordable housing provisions, infrastructure commitments, including roads, trails, and utilities, access to a real uh time crime center, and use of a third-party permitting and inspection process. Uh we do have some speakers on this, so I'm going to go ahead. Uh first, we're going to hear from our city attorney who's going to give us a brief presentation on this. If I could please get the Elmo.

Thank you, honorable mayor, members of the city council, and members of the public. I'm Luis Sante. I'm the interimm city attorney, and I'm going to speak briefly on the items that are being uh considered this evening. The first item that's being considered this evening is the memorandum of understanding. It's an agreement between Axon, Inc.

and the uh city of Scottsdale and it outlines a proposal where um Axon would do certain things and the city would do certain things and it involves the development of Axon's international headquarters located here in the city of Scottsdale. Theou would include phase construction of the office, manufacturing, hotel, and residential components. There are infrastructure commitments such as a dog park, roads and trails, and utilities that Axon is um promising to do.

There's some affordable housing provisions. There's also access to a realtime crime center for the Scott Police Department. And uh it also involves certain other um conditions. One of the biggest things about this particular proposedou if adopted is the number of units. Um, previously approved, Axon was authorized 1,882 units. Under the agreement, uh, they would be changing the number of units that they're doing to 750 apartments and 750 condominiums for a total of 1500 units.

Of those units, 38 units would be dedicated as affordable housing and they the construction would be phased, meaning that um 375 of the apartments and 375 of the condos would be deferred until after January 1st, 2030. They would begin the uh headquarters building um sooner than later before the ancillary stuff. In addition to theou itself, there are two ordinances that are related to theou that have um would be agreed upon if theou passes.

One is um a self-certification and third party certification program. Uh this type of program is authorized by state law and a city can limit who this type of ordinance applies to. In this case, only world headquarters campuses. Um right now there's only one um world headquarters campus within the city of Scottsdale and there's only a couple other parcels within the city that could possibly fit that definition.

So it's very limited under the self-certifying ordinance or third-party certification program. It would allow licensed engineers and AR architects to basically certify the plans, conduct the inspections, um, and make sure that Axon is building and developing the property appropriately and properly. The third part of this is or the is the repeal of the zoning ordinance. Um, right now, as we all know, the uh current zoning is has been referred.

So, it's kind of been suspended until there is a referendum. This would repeal the current zoning to what Axon had before, which is basically light industrial. The entire is predicated on the idea that SP543, the international headquarters state statute is lawful.

The final thing that the council may be considering tonight is an item to authorize me or my design to file appropriate counter claims, cross claims or third party claims in the matter of taxpayers against awful apartment zoning exemptions at all versus state of Arizona, city of Scottsdale. That's a lawsuit that Axon is not involved in. But obviously because it involves uh SP 14, excuse me, SP 1543, um it has repercussions for this particular and and and further development.

With that, I'll take any questions from the city council. Thank you, Vice Mayor Clausbin. Thank you, Madame Mayor. And I really want to appreci I want to just say I have so much appreciation for you, Mr. City Manager um Mr. City Manager and Mr. City Attorney for all you have done um to uh help put this all together in such short time um just having been an attorney for a decade and seeing uh and seeing deals get put together.

Rarely are they this comprehensive uh with this time frame and that is just something to be extremely extremely proud of and it shows the quality of uh of leadership we have in this city right now. Um, I also want to thank uh I want to thank Axon um who has who has uh come to the table in a way that is um you know there's a Yiddish word menchike.

You know you guys are a bunch of menches and you came in with uh with real terms and uh whatever happens at this vote uh this afternoon is a uh it's it it is a reflection. It's not a reflection on um it's not a reflection on the negotiations that took place and I think that's really important. Um I just want for for everybody uh listening whether they're going to see this tomorrow or today. Um I'm going to do my very quick Ben Shapiro impression and go and get to where we are now.

So all right folks let me let me just give you let me give you a little background. So last December, former council got us to uh roughly 1900 apartments. Referendum uh succeeded getting signatures, puts it on the ballot. The 1543 was passed. Okay. Which then uh allows uh those um businesses that Axon would would qualify under to not be subject to referendum. Lawsuit ensued. Okay. But I want to be very clear under under 1543 and under the development agreement, 1900 apartments would be allowed.

Okay? If we had a referendum today, if everybody just paused and we had a referendum today and Axon won, the development agreement holds and it's roughly 1900 apartments. If the referendum held today and Axon lost the referendum, Axon's property becomes re-evaluated. uh it gets reclassified as light industrial and therefore 1543 holds and they get to build 1900 apartments. There is no difference.

The v those anybody telling you that the voice of the people is not being heard well guess what your outcome has already been decided by the state legislature. If Axon wins the referendum 1900 if Axton loses the referendum 1900 that's the law. So the question is then is that then going to can they say wait the law is being challenged there's a lawsuit occurring. Okay. Now here's where I could speak to as a as a litigator and as a former legislator.

I have seen special legislation challenges being brought in front um in front of the uh in front of the state supreme court and I have seen successes and failures. But what gets to happen there is the state legislature gets a second crack at this. And so in any complaint, you have to list the issues that they feel is unconstitutional. And the legislature now has a list of things that they could use to amend the legislation.

Now, I I have been around I haven't been around as long as some of these people in this audience, but I've been around long enough to know that legislators don't like to be overruled. And I promise you that the amount of votes that took to get over the hump to get the first piece of legislation through, they're willing to make the amendments that make sure that it's legal because nobody wants to be the one who's holding the ball and be declared unconstitutional by a state supreme court.

And that's what brought us to this moment. So the idea is the idea is what can we do to make sure that we listen to residents don't have 1,900 units 1900 apartments. What can we do to make sure that we bring a residents first approach that is a compromise, that is mature, that is realistic, that serves all parties, and make sure that we don't get overrun by by a state supreme court and a state legislator, a a state legislature.

And that was the impetus behind this compromise and this memorandum of understanding. only good intentions that was then borne out to be good compromise and a good final memorandum of understanding that we have here today. Those at this disas might want to tell you reasons that they vote no today, but the fact of the matter is is that as recently as 3 weeks ago, we had uh we had a majority approving this this language specifically, which is why we printed it out this way.

If we didn't have a majority approving this, I wouldn't have put pen to paper. So, the proof is in the pudding. Use a use an aliteration here. It's just the facts. Um, I respect my clients and their votes. I respect everybody who came to the table. And Arizona was just rated number 22 for jobs in this country. Sorry. Yes. As a state in this country. Um, number 22.

And if we don't do what we need to do to create a regulatory environment, not to be corporatist, but to have stable rules with a regulatory environment that does not crush entrepreneurism, then free enterprise is going to go elsewhere. They already are.

This is our chance to make sure that we revive and recover a regulatory environment that I consider extremely conservative, extremely free market, and make sure that we have stable rules so the entrepreneurs can go as far as their god-given talents can take them and hire incredible people. So with that, Madame Mayor, thank you. Councilwoman Whitehead, would it be possible to have the public speakers come up before the rest of us speak? Absolutely.

Exact same thing because this could turn into a long discussion. So, let's have uh Andrew Walman followed by Barbara Burns and Dan Isaac. Anybody know how to turn this work? There we go. Get up here. Start. Sorry. I'll leave that that part of it. I think you can get the gist from there. There we go. Got it. Good evening, Mayor Council members, before I get started, did anybody notice the smell in the room? It's I don't think it's the room.

I think it's the process because something really stinks here. Because when a deal arrives, this polish coordinated and insulated after weeks of executive sessions, the odor isn't subtle. It's the smell you get when transparency has been sealed in a back room for too long. We've been told that this memorandum of understanding is merely an administrative act. That label isn't legally nec isn't a legal necessity. It's a legal strategy.

Calling this administrative shields it against another referendum. That is is not a coincidence. That's a plan. And the clearest sign this agreement wasn't shaped by Scottsdale is it was shaped by Axon. You can see the fingerprints everywhere. The structure of theou protects Axon, not the public. The foundation shows outside influence in places the public is not allowed to be.

When binding development terms, zoning reversals, infrastructure commitments, and oversight transfers are negotiated out of public view, then returned as a prepackaged inevitability. It's not administrative. That's legislative action hiding under another name. The self-certification ordinance doesn't streamline anything. It outsources the city's own permitting and inspection authority to a private corporation.

Axon will pick its own inspectors, issue its own certificate, interpret its own compliance, and no other developer has ever been issued this power. It's ridiculous. Placing the litigation item last on the agenda is not an accident. It theou passes first, the referendum becomes moot. That's not democracy. That's gaming the order of operations.

You're negotiating residential entitlements in the middle of an active regional water crisis with the Arizona Department of Water Resources already halting groundwater dependent developments, thousands of them. And out of 1500 units, we are only allowing 38 affordable housing units. That's the bare minimum required by law. Is that a good citizen of Scottsdale? I don't think so. Ethical government requires transparency, independence, fairness, and meaningful public participation.

None of those principles are visible tonight. Please take the garbage out. Give this city a process that doesn't smell like it was cooked weeks ago. And one other thing I'd like to say is I'm a resident 40 years in the city and it is shameful that Axon takes the seats of people who actually live in this city and makes us stand while you come early on buses paid by your employer so that we have to stand. That is showing you how good of a citizen your company is.

I would welcome Axon here to be honest, but I am concerned the way they behave and I don't want the apartments there. If there were 400 apartments, four employees guaranteed a low rate. You guys all deserve a a good apartment rate. I would be 100% behind that. But this has nothing to do with employee housing or apartments. It has to do with a a play to do multif family, residential development, restaurants, a hotel. It has nothing to do with Axon's actual primary business.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, Barbara Burns. Mayor and Council, I am here today in support of the council approving agenda item number two, theou for the Axon world headquarters campus. I'm a 52-year resident of Scottsdale and also a 30-year past employee of the city, retiring in 2004. And 13 of those years, I was an assistant city manager. When I joined the city in 1975, the population was 75,000 residents. Today, it's about 242,000. So, we've grown a lot.

During my 30-year tenure, I witnessed a number of what I call signature projects being built in Scottsdale. Mayo Clinic on Sha Honor Health North Westworld, TPC and the Championship Golf Course, the Princess Hotel, Hyatt at Gayy Ranch, Scottsdale Stadium Rebuild, and many others. All the projects had significant citizen opposition and we spent hours probably like you all do in council meetings listening to people residents.

But the various councils held firm in their beliefs and the pro that the projects had enormous economic development opportunities for the city that would reach far into the future. And today we are able to see that they were right on target. And it took a lot of bravery and courage in order to approve those projects. I consider ACT Axon as this signature project category.

And as important, the city should not be allowing instate and out of state union activists dictating what is built in our community. Arizona is a right to work state and we should uphold this law. On reflection, the wording of the referendum question was misleading and confusing. I even signed the petition, not recognizing its deceptive nature until further resource and review.

I was approached at the farmers market and whoever the petition person was said, "Are you against all these apartments that have been built in Scottsdale?" And I was. I think there's been a lot of big box bad apartments that have been buil built here. So I signed the petition and then my husband was with me and like a good husband he signed the petition too.

So there are two signatures in on there that in hindsight we wouldn't have done and I feel that both of us were duped and I also feel that I was lied to which I'm not happy about in retrospect. Axon is an international cuttingedge corporation we are fortunate to have in Scottsdale since 1993. Its net worth is $43 billion with re revenues projected to be 27 um point 2.7 billion.

And Axon's desire is to build a worldclass headquarters which will be another jewel and an economic engine for Scottsdale's crown. And they have been great corporate citizens and their plans of inspe expansion only increased that value. It would be sad to lose Axon to another entity as we did with the Mayo Hospital campus going to Phoenix. So, in conclusion, I encourage the mayor and council to approve the MOU and quit wasting valuable time because time is money for all of us. Thank you.

Thanks, Dan Isaac. Followed by Gail Golick and Lesie Lurman. Dan Isaac, address on record. Um, I am here asking the council to vote yes on theou and I echo many of Vice Mayorwasman's comments about why the city should. But let's be clear. We are here because Bob Littlefield, some shortsighted council members, and their controlled city manager denied residents the right to vote. They denied Axon the right to have a speedy resolution.

And because of that denial, our state government once again overreached like they did with short-term rentals, like they did with the ADUs, like they did with adaptive reuse, like they did with school funding. The list goes on and on. But we now have an agreement that's far less than what Axon originally came to, far less than what Axon negotiated last December, and it includes ownership opportunities and more open space and more amenities for the city. It is a good compromise.

More importantly, where will we be if this doesn't get approved? Well, there are only two futures. One is oops the TAS lawsuit fails. If the TAZA lawsuit fails then Axon can pretty much do whatever the heck they want. They're not limited to 1900 apartments. Now I believe Axon will be a good corporate citizen as they've demonstrated over the past and will comply with the originally approved plan.

But they can do what they want and we will have wasted valuable time and we would have 19 at 100 at least instead of 750 apartments, 750 condominiums. The other alternative is the TAZ lawsuit is successful. And if that happens, Axon potentially leaves the city, taking hundreds of highpaying professional jobs, having a multi-billion dollar negative impact on the state and a multi-million annual impact on our city.

And they will then sell the property to a developer who is going to maximize their return. And instead of a beautiful campus, we will have a bunch of soulless boxes of warehouses and logistic centers which don't require a single change to our zoning. It might have less traffic, but it will have semi trucks, light industrial trucks 24 hours a day. That is not an improvement.

And I want to reiterate, I do not understand on what planet, Kathy Littlefield, whose immediate family member is a party to a lawsuit against our city is allowed to vote on this. And Barry, I don't want to hear your opinion because you're not an attorney. There has been nothing documented saying that there isn't a conflict of interest.

And since you are the only council member who has been proven guilty of violating ethics and lies on a regular basis, your opinion on the conflict is akin to Jeffrey Epstein commenting on consent. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Uh Gail Goock, followed by Lesie Lurman, Tim Loda, and last we'll have Gabby Hitchcock. Madame Mayor, Councilman, and women, um my name is Gail Goolic, resident of Scottdale Stale and State Committeeman uh for LD3. I'm here to speak on this new memorandum of understanding.

Thisou eliminates Axon's only water obligation, the requirement to transfer 3,000 acre feet of long-term storage credit storage credits to the city. That 30,000 acre um footage was the only water related commitment attached to this project. You are now being asked to approve an NOU without any requirements at water requirements at all. But even more important is what the city has already admitted to me in writing.

In the city's official petition response dated November 4th, 2025, Scottsdale confirmed, "The city has no documentation showing where the water for this project will come from. The city has no 100year water calculations. The city has no current water portfolio analysis on file. The city has no enforcable water commitments from Axon. Although I I wrote this and I understand that Axon is no longer required to do this.

So this city the city of Scottsdale is required as a designated water source to provide this information and the city is relying on the 2013 DAW analysis and the supporting documentation is not in the city's possession and if it is they're not providing it to me. This is not speculation. These are on by your own city manager's written admissions.

So today the council is being asked to remove Axon's only water obligation while the city has already acknowledged it is zero documentation showing the 100red-year assured water supply for this document as that directly conflicts with ARS 45576 which requires a demonstrated 100-year assured water supply before the city enters into the development agreements, zoning approvals or any development action. Under that statute, Scottdale stale cannot lawfully approve thisou.

You cannot lawfully modify the de development plans or restructure obligations without first providing the public with identified water sources, 100-year demand modeling, any binding water commitments, and confirmation from the ADWR that this project fits within Scottsdale's DAWs. None of that exists today and the city has already admitted it does not exist. Therefore, a yes vote on agenda item two would be taken in violation of ARS45-576.

It would knowingly advance a project with no demonstrated 100-year water supply and it would be legally challengeable and subject to review by the Arizona Department of Water Resources. I urge you to vote no until the city produces the documentation required by law. I realize that things can, you know, happen actually in the background and and you guys can come up with documents, but the reality is is that no documents have been provided.

And if you can get the documents that prove they have the water, go for it. But follow the law. You have a obligation to uphold the law as a council members. Thank you. Thank you, Lesie Lurman. Thank you, mayor and city council. My name is Lesie Lurman and I'm a board member at Scottsdale Stonebrook 2. Uh, of course, in order to be on the board, I need to own a property there and uh and we do.

But I need to make it clear that I'm speaking on behalf of myself as a homeowner and not for the board of directors. We haven't taken, we haven't pulled the community and we don't know what every community member thinks and so it wouldn't be right for me to say I represent all of them, but I can say that I've been here before concerned about the residential density. I I can't believe how much time has been invested in this process. I think I was naive about the whole political process.

In addition, there are legal legal matters that need to be resolved. I'm not even going to speak to that. Nor am I here to request lowering the density. I think that the group that has been meeting with Axon has accomplished as much as they possibly can. Remember, it's a two-way negotiation. You can't just keep saying, "No, we only want 500 residential units." There has to be a compromise. And I give Axon credit for the concessions it has made. They have in many areas dug deeply.

I think everybody has heard the saying that the end of a successful negotiation leaves everyone unhappy. And I think that's the case here. My reason for being here is to remind everyone of some specifically negotiated concessions on the part of Axon. They aren't listed. That doesn't mean you don't intend to include them. I just haven't seen any reassuring sign. So, here are the three things I'd like you not to forget.

ensuring that Axon workers and visitors don't have access, direct access into their campus from either Mayo/UN Hills or 82nd Street. The last plan I saw had that blocked off with a tall planted burm. The other is moving the tallest buildings away from the residential development. These are all single family homes, about 175 of them. And no one wants people in the tall buildings looking in their backyard or their back windows.

And the last is creating a wide, tall, planted burm to provide privacy. And that would be along the north side of Mayo/UN Hills. So, I want to look you in the eye and say, Axon, mayor, city council members, we're asking you to honor those commitments. Thank you. Thank you very much. Tim Lod. Good afternoon, mayor, members of council.

I'm Tim Loda on behalf of TAZED taxpayers against awful zoning exemptions and I urge a no vote on items two and three and I want to talk briefly about the referendum. You know, we've kind of heard some words of what I would call the defeated arguments against the referendum. It's out of state money, union interest, special interest, all those things. Those are all the arguments that have been made already. Uh they already failed.

And that's what people say when when they lose the argument is they they and they they say, "Well, it it was this or it was that. It was unfair or someone misled me." Not true. I helped draft the language for it myself. It was perfectly honest and it got 27,000 signatures. And that is no small feat. I know all of you carry those clipboards around and and get signatures from voters. It's not that easy. So that is a huge accomplishment and it should count for something.

It should be honored by the council. The council should fight for the voters and fight for their right to be heard. Um in terms of this, it looks like with thisou and the item number three, um the self-certification program, it looks like the council would be following suit with what the Arizona legislature did. And the Arizona legislature decided they would create a special law for one company. And that was an extremely disappointing dark day.

I think for our legislature, I don't think that should happen here in Scottsdale. I think that's exactly the wrong thing to do. And I know there's a lot of talk about density. The number is too high, but but that's going to be remarked on a lot. But I think more than anything, the thing that just stands out to me is now we have the self-certification program. So we've got the Axon statute and now we have the Axon ordinance.

City of Phoenix, where I live, has had a self-certification program for for many years. It it's a lot of people like it, gets some good reviews, but it's not limited to one company. Anyone can use it. I've never really heard of just saying we're going to implement this entire new program for one company.

Um, so I think that it's at the end of the day, this is just more of what we've seen already, and that's when Axon does not get its way, it demands to be treated in a special way that nobody else is treated. So I would urge a no vote on two and three. And I think Scottsdale needs to fight for its ability to um to have to be able to determine its destiny and not have that dictated by legally in my mind. But I'll talk on agenda item five in a few minutes. Illegally by the Arizona legislature.

Thank you. Thank you, Gabby Hitchcock. And then Josh is ner. I'm Gabby Hitchcock, a resident of Scottsdale. Um, city council members, you had an extra meeting today just to repeal an ordinance backed by well 26,000, but it looks like it's much more than that in the petition signatures. and to replace it with one that gives axon everything it wants. Posting this late on a Friday shows that you're acting against the citizens you represent.

Scottdale voters have already removed council members for approving smaller projects than this. I may have made a mistake in my votes. Reject this giveaway. Protect our city's character and join the TAZ lawsuit to defend our right of re of referendum. Scott still belongs to the citizens. Thank you. Uh Josh is ner can we get this to work on this side here? Okay. Madame Mayor, council, nice to see you again. Um Mr. Quasman, Vice Mayor, thank you very much for your statements already.

Mayor, you posted two hours ago that you wanted us to arrive at a deal with TAZE. This is a text from TA's representatives this morning. We did not agree to 500 units over the weekend. They came back and they panicked and proposed us this deal. So, mayor, if you want us to agree to this deal with TAZE, it's right in front of you. Make the motion for 700 units instead of 750. We'll agree to the 60 months on the next 200 and we have a deal.

That's what you asked for and we're willing to do that deal. What we're not willing to do is let TAS parade around in their self-righteous fashion saying we canled an election and all this other stuff when they are proposing a deal that I have here that I can prove to you is from TA that will cancel the election. So, let's just forget that narrative moving forward. It is patently false. They do not care about the election.

They are so panicked we are going to beat them in court and go to the state legislature as Mr. Quasman just articulated that they are willing to walk away from all of this over the last two years over a 50 unit reduction. Okay. So that's the deal they've proposed. We're willing to do it. It's exactly what you asked for, mayor. All you have to do is motion to update the numbers and we will agree to it right here. The second thing I'll say is, Miss Littlefield, I admire you.

You've been great to our community where I live for years and years. As a member of the DRB, you were very good to us in a dispute with our homeowners association. But Miss Littlefield, your husband stood out front of council after the last vote and said, "My case will be stronger if the city joins this election." That's what he said on TV.

I don't understand how anyone on this earth could deem it appropriate knowing it's your husband who's already a party to the suit to say you should be voting to join that same lawsuit. I just don't think that is fair. I don't I I have tremendous respect for you and the service you have put forward toward this city, but I do not think that is fair. Thank you very much. Thanks Josh. And uh I think Steve Sutton there's one more speaker. Steve Sutton, address on record.

Good afternoon, Honorable Lisa Barowski, Mayor of Scottsdale, and other council members. As Tom was just mentioning, I'm one of those petition collectors, but not about accent. something entirely different but also trying to protect Scottsdale but more about that later. Facts supported reality and emotion supported perception can have equal power in influencing the beliefs and actions of individuals. Either can be at any time more powerful in influence than the other.

Regardless of the opinions of the members of this council, city policy, or what criminal or civil law may determine not to be a conflict of interest, the perception of an increasing number of Scottsdale residents is that a conflict of interest exists. I and other residents do believe Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield has a conflict of interest in discussing and voting on matters pertaining to Axon due to the activities of her spouse, Bob Littlefield.

Councilman Littlefield has said, quote, "I am my own person and defending herself from the accusation of having a conflict of interest." However, being Bob Littlefield's wife provides legal protections to her and her husband that could conflict with the interests of Kathy Littlefield's Scottsdale constituents. At some point in the future, testimony in court may not be available due to Littlefield's having marital privilege protecting marital communications.

from being revealed and preventing testimony against the spouse that could be detrimental to the city of Scottsdale in civil case 202534961 taxpayers against awful apartment zoning exemptions at all versus state of Arizona city of Scottsdale at all. Council member Kathy Littlefield should recuse herself or be required to recuse herself from any city council discussion or vote on matters pertaining to Axon and civil case 2025-034961.

So far this council's actions regarding Axon are a perfect example of for Schlim Besserum, the German word for attempting to make something better and making it worse. For over 23 years, a de facto family dynasty seat has existed on the city council. That type of situation is rarely good for governance of a city the size of Scottsdale. Scottsdale is a city large enough to have an ample number of qualified individuals that could give good service on the council.

I believe this council has gotten the attention of those qualified individuals. Kathy Littlefield has given good service to this city, but this is not about past deeds. This is about the current situation. And I have one last statement for you to contemplate and I know you know what this statement is. Cartago Delenda estroski. Thank you Steve and that concludes the speakers. Uh so I'm going to talk about what's been going on here.

So as you all know we've been working on this since we took office since January. And this has been a very long uh conversation. and it's been a a huge divisive um issue for the city of Scottsdale. I feel for TAZ or excuse me for Axon and uh you know being put on hold and going through this process. I also feel for the residents who um are so you know invested in the outcome in the opposite direction.

So over the weekend, Josh uh Iser just talked about uh some negotiations we were still having um over this last weekend. And it is true uh that I want to see this matter resolved and I want to see this matter resolved where everyone can live with the outcome and there's going to be finality with the outcome.

And so with that in mind, uh when you know we originally talked about 750 apartments, 750 condos, um I got a I got notification from TAS that if we sign this if we approve thisou that they intend to do another petition drive and refer it a second time. So that is not finality for me. That is absolutely not finality and I do not want to see this this mess really um continue. I want to see it wrapped up and I want people to go on with their lives and I want TAS to build their headquarters.

So with that in mind, I uh met with uh Rick Smith of TA of Axon over the weekend and their attorney and we did come up with an agreement. Uh Josh, I understood that we came up with an agreement through the H.

I had also Tom Hatton was uh talking to both Rick Smith and to TA and I understood there was a deal for 500 units which to explain that further TA the opposition group committed that they would uh stand down they would not refer it and there would be finality pretty good result 500 uh 500 apartments and then as many condos up, you know, up to what the number of condos were not identified yet.

So, uh, you know, unbeknownst to me, TAZA fired off some communications to Axon, which essentially blew up what I understood to be the agreement. So I'm extremely disappointed in that result because I thought the number 500 was a good number with the understanding that build a great project come back come back in you know a year or two whenever you want to do some additional apartment apartments and sell you know that case to us. So uh where I stand right now is not in favor of this.

I'm not in favor of having another referendum and I don't want to take that risk. So Josh, that's a great update. I I really want to understand what this is and and hear more about it and get confirmation. I don't think it's fair to do that without the other parties that are threatening to refer a decision like this um again. And we can trust that they've done it once. I don't know why they wouldn't follow through with that a second time.

So, I'm gonna um I'm gonna move to take a 10-minute recess so we can go have some discussions about this. Uh second. Second. All those in favor, please indulge me with your confirmation. Oh, voice vote. Yeah. Yes. I I Okay, thank you. We're going to recess for 10 minutes. Sorry for the delay. Um we've been busy and very serious discussions about how we can resolve this uh item number two. So I know there were some a bunch of speakers on here. So I'm going to let uh go down the list.

Councilwoman Whitehead No, it's okay. Well, good evening. Um, I'm going to keep it somewhat brief based on how we end up here, but I will just say that having been involved in this for a long time, I do want to thank everybody on uh both sides.

Um, and again, just it seems like a year ago that uh, Vice Mayorwasman spoke, but just remind everybody here and whoever's watching that this vote is about whether or not the city council uh, accepts anou to significantly reduce apartments and add uh, condominiums, which is something that a lot of our residents want, that middle housing and keep the many uh, investments ments that our community will get from the deal that was negotiated last year.

Many of us here in this council and the last year's council worked really hard with the residents of Stonebrook and with the residents generally to get some of these investments which include a dog park, a walking path. This is an area that doesn't have a lot of walkability and connectivity. So, um this deal will include all of that. also um really important some traffic abatement and one of our public speakers mentioned that.

So this deal does include a road to keep the neighborhood and Axon's traffic separate. Um I think that what we're here and and the alternative again this is not about zero apartments and zero development. That's not on the table tonight. What's on the table is a localcont controlled negotiated deal that is a win for all parties and actually to counter one of the speakers. You can negotiate and have everybody happy more or less, but not everybody gets exactly what they want.

So that's definitely the intent here. Um the alternative is to allow the state law to take um effect. it is in effect but have acts on um build to that state law which means uh roughly 1900 apartments. So it is my goal it is my aim to uh see this council do what we're elected to do which is solve problems and create a win-win. I won't go into all the benefits right now, but clearly um we want to keep an employer like Axon here.

We're facing a lot of headwinds in the economy and we also want to have the highest quality development. Having a world-class uh city and to have a global leader in public safety is really uh a good match. Uh, I will say just briefly that Axon not only keeps uh our residents safer based on the numerous public safety people that spoke during the course of many meetings, but also keep our um police officers safer. So, we're really excited about that.

So, I am supporting um I'm waiting to hear the final motion. I don't have a motion, but I support local control. I support keeping this important employer here. I support protecting the neighbors most closely impacted and the residents everywhere. And I support referendum process. That's how we got here. The referendum helped bring Axon back to the table and helped uh bring a better deal to fruition. So I'm going to leave it at that for the moment, but thanks everybody for your patience.

Thank you, Councilwoman Dasquez. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um thank you to Axon for coming out tonight. Thank you for being a major employer in our city. We appreciate the service that you provide to the city of Scottsdale. We appreciate the service that you provide worldwide. Um you are a known leader in your field and we're proud to have you here in the city of Scottsdale. So thank you for coming out and appreciate all your employees as well coming out to show that you u support your employer.

Um, as a member of the economic development committee, I'm proud to work with a variety of employers throughout the city of Scottsdale and promote business in the city of Scottsdale. So, um, it is, um, it is a a wonderful thing to have an employer like Axon, who's a market leader in our city. So, I just wanted to say thank you very much to Axon. My concern with this project um, is always been the number of units in that particular area as well.

It was zoned no multif family and so um I remain concerned about the number of units but I'm very much in interested in keeping axon very much interested in the hotel and the opportunity that that offers their business to bring conventions to the city of Scottsdale and um so with that I just wanted to say thank you to Axon tonight. Thank you Councilwoman Mckllen. Thank you mayor.

Um, I too would like to thank um all the parties involved, Axon, my fellow uh council members as well as the citizens who took the time to come out and voice either their uh opposition or their pro for this because that is what the process is all about and you've heard a lot tonight from the dis about that process being removed from the citizens. Uh so we hear some of your concerns.

Obviously we also need to make sure that we help the legislature understand that local control is always the best option that we want our citizens, our city council to actually affect the city we live in. And so with that being said, I appreciate all the work that Axon has put in to coming back to the table uh with the city. I do think uh someone had mentioned before about the city losing Mayo Hospital uh to Phoenix. We've also lost other things to Phoenix. It's like Chandler back in the day.

They almost lost intel. It took council members to make really bold decisions. And with that, I'm going to say I I am going to support theou and I would love for Axon to stay in Scottsdale. I am glad to see the number of units go down because the citizens voiced that concern. Uh but the fact that we're working earnestly right here in front of all you to try and make this work so our city can have what's um best for our city. An employer that will be a good communal um supporter.

someone that's going to support events throughout the city in the future, that will sponsor events, that will be here for the citizens of Scottsdale as well as their neighboring community. Um, and more importantly, they support our public safety, and that is truly what is important. So, thank you. Thank you, Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I want to I want to make a few remarks tonight and I I want to start by saying that this is not about Axon the corporation.

This is not about their global headquarters which we support.

Axon bought the 74 acres where they are today at Hayden 101 with a deed restriction that there would be no multifamily housing and the price was adjusted accordingly for that discounted accordingly for that deed restriction and in 2020 it was zoned industrial with a height of 52 feet and Axon wanted to go bigger for their global headquarters at that point and they did uh a lot of back and forth and negotiations in 2020 and I was on the planning commission at that time and I voted to increase reszone Axon's land in 2020 as a member of the planning commission 58%.

I voted to increase it from 52 feet to 82 feet. I I did that because we wanted to keep Axon in Scottsdale and that meant for them to have a the headquarters that they desired. In that vote in 2020, I also voted uh for a reimbursement for infrastructure. So, it's not about Axon as a corporation. Um I feel like this process is rushed. You the public were given notification approximately 72 hours ago on a Friday afternoon.

I know there are reasons for that, but it doesn't feel like there's an emergent reason and that you should have you should have had more time to review this. I want to stand up for my colleague um Councilwoman Littlefield. uh some aspersions were cast against her and I'm going to repeat it that it is totally debunked according to our legal department that Councilwoman Littlefield has a conflict of interest that has been scrutinized and vetted.

Um, I also want to address one of the arguments that if we deny this tonight that Axon will just go back to the legislature and get something that's less special and then we will get 1,900 or 2,000 apartments. See, here's the thing. The possible schedule uh possible legislation that they're talking about would have to be broader. And that means that it would include more cities and more towns. And what that would do is drag more cities and towns into the fight to be concerned about it.

Something else that should be people should be aware of is that since Senate Bill 1543 was signed, many legislators have felt the sting from their voters. So we don't have any clue, we have no clue what their appetite for an amendment or alteration to the legislation would be. Um, I want to go and ask the city attorney now a few questions. Um, first one I want to start, this is a very basic question. This is called a memorandum of understanding. I'm not I'm not an attorney.

When I look up the term memorandum of understanding, it defines it as a formal non-binding agreement between two parties that outlines their mutual intentions or objectives. Can you please explain to the public how this memorandum of understanding is binding and contractual? So, um there is sometimes a a mis understanding that a memorandum of understanding is not binding. Uh they can be non-binding, but anytime you have a contract that has offer, acceptance and consideration, it's binding.

So, in this case, um there's an offer, there's acceptance and consideration. Therefore, this memorandum in particular is binding uh because Axon is giving up something. We're giving up something. Um they're getting something, we're getting something. So, there's definitely offer and um acceptance and consideration. So, if it is So, if it is binding, is it is it referable? So, you're asking me to provide legal advice. Um and that's not something I I can address in in the public ultimately.

whether something is referable is something the courts would have to uh determine but generally administrative acts are not considered referable. Okay. I asked you some of these other questions I'm going to ask um earlier and you gave me answers but it was it was uh privileged so I want to ask it and then you can answer it to the best of your capacities as far as what's legally appropriate. Um in thisou we are repealing another ordinance.

Can we repeal another ordinance for an upzoning for um for an applicant? Can we legally do that? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. So, the the MLOU itself is not repealing the ordinance. It's um asking it to be agendaized for consideration, which it is agenda for consideration tonight. So, one of the additional items tonight is the zoning ordinance, and that can indeed be repealed by the council um as the council has done in the past. Um, I think South Bridge is is is an example of that.

So, what I thought was South Bridge and South Bridge 2, that was a 2019 where there was a referendum on that 15 stories downtown. Um, I understood that that the applicant withdrew it. So, I guess my concern here is um um can applicants can this if if we if we vote on this, do we have to come back at another meeting to repeal the ordinance or is is that done tonight? It's done tonight, sir. Okay. Okay.

And then if we repeal that ordinance, does that take away the referendum that was signed that has 26,000 signatures? Yes, it would. Okay. If we remove the ordinance tonight and the courts rule that 1543, if the courts rule against 1543, do we have any legal exposure because we've taken rights, legal rights from them? No, because they're unrelated. Um the referendum is strictly based on this uh the zoning ordinance.

Uh so without 1543 um the city council could have at any time repealed the zoning ordinance and negated the right to referendum. It 1543 is just an additional kind of legal complication. Uh and just like with Southbridge, I don't believe there's any state legislation pending on the horizon. Um in that situation, um section 13, water pumping and sewer lift stations, it says that the applicant may elect to build these critical facilities to city standards and dedicate them to the city.

So it says the language is it may elect. If Axon chooses to lower standards, the city and its rateayers could be left for substandard infrastructure. Can they choose? Can they build to a uh can they build to a standard below the city standard? So, mayor and members of the council, the intent of that section is that we will only take that infrastructure into our ownership and into our operation if it meets our standards.

they still have to meet the um codes on the books um for any private um commercial development. So it the idea that they would be below standards I I don't think that is accurate. They just won't wouldn't necessarily be to our city um municipally operated standards, but they should they have to meet whatever the code standards are. So if they don't meet them, do what do we do?

Do we have an enforcement mechanism where they have to go back and and and upgrade them to a higher standard only if they want to turn them over to us? If they meet the minimum code standards like any other property owner, then then they're on their own and then then they're subject to uh what other whatever um problems th those facilities might cause for them. But they're minimal standards they have to meet. Okay. Okay.

So, speaking of water and sewer, um that general topic, November 2024, uh during the lame duck session, there were five members that voted for 19,895 units or apartments, something like that. And in that development agreement, Axon was to bring 3,000 acre feet of water. This um does this memorandum does thisou remove that requirement? Yes, me mayor and members of the council does. Okay. And what what do you think the market value of that of bringing that that kind of water to our city might be?

I would have to defer to the city manager because I don't know. Madame Mayor, Council Member Graham, uh, regarding the acre feet, as you referenced, 3,000 was in the originally approved approximately a year ago. Just for context, I'll provide to city council that requiring additional acre feet is fairly unusual. The thought process at the time was how we arrived at the 30,000.

I believe that's important for the discussion purposes and my understanding that we did calculations and anticipated over a 5-year period uh based upon the development uh as proposed at that time, it would bring a demand of approximately 600 acre feet on an annual basis. and therefore for five years uh which was what could be acquired that's how the 300 acre feet came okay Mr. Kaden respectfully if you just if you have a market value and if you don't that's okay.

We uh madame mayor and council member Graham. So that's important to put in context the acre feet and then what I would add to that is that we don't buy our water that way. Uh this is also uh storage credits and we have approximately 277,000 acre feet in storage credits. So to put the 3,000 acre feet, it's much like a savings account, if you will, for water services.

And so in context, approximately 8,000 acre feet were submitted into our uh account, if you will, added to our account for last year. So again, we don't buy them. Okay. I have heard So this is it's it's basically five years of what we predict the the buildout facility to use at the 1900 units. Okay. And so I think should there be a discussion of a different unit mix then that acre footage certainly changes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, M. Thank you, Mr. City Manager.

Um, back to the city attorney. The self-certification clause in this. Um, is this the first time we've done that for any applicant in the city before? Yes, Councilman Gum, that's correct. Okay. And um what would be the benefit to because I don't know whose idea this was, but what would be the benefit to the applicant for receiving that? There are various potential benefits.

Um and I would point out in the ordinance that the uh licensed engineers and architects, they have to be mutually agreed upon by the parties. So it's not a unilateral decision on on on who to use. Um so the benefits are and and the the cost of these people would be borne by Axon. It would not cost the city money.

Uh the benefit is that um that Axon has people that they can rely upon um to accomplish the inspections and not be concerned with potential delays uh with city uh processes or or or city staff or concerns that the city might delay the project for some reason. Those are the potential benefits from an Axon Axon standpoint. Um, from a st city standpoint, it's limited in that there's very few properties that could be international headquarters in in Scottsdale. Um, there's more than one.

So, it's not a special law um our ordinance because there are at least three other properties that could be developed in its um head uh international headquarters processes. From the city standpoint, um it relieves um our personnel from having to um work or inspect these projects. Um I understand that we have fairly um heavy case loads. Um there is some obvious concern with city staff um uh placing that control in an outside agency.

Um but it's basically something that um was important to Axon and um and it's limited in scope to to such few properties that I don't think uh it materially impacts our our inspection and permitting processes. But I could certainly um defer to city manager Kaden if he would like to have anything. Just for the record, what I heard you say was that some of our internal staff are uncomfortable with it, but it was important to act on and so we did it.

And so it sounds like they're getting something and I just wondered what we're getting. So I just I'm just expressing my discomfort with that. Understood. Okay. Um the unit count, I don't know what the unit count is. I know there's been some negotiations. Um, the last I saw was 1500, but that that may have changed since, you know, in the past 30 minutes. Um, can Axon legally for any condominiums for ownership units that they put in there, can they use those legally as short-term rentals?

Yes, they could. Okay. Could they legally um open Could they legally acquire those units? condomin condominium units in an LLC and lease them like any other investment lender uh lesser presumably. Yes. As long as they don't put um it all depends what kind of CCRs they put on those properties. Okay. Um I want to talk about a couple more things and then I'm going to wrap up my comments.

Uh section 19 is um section 19 is a city council liaison where we appoint the city council economic development chair as liaison between Axon and city of Scottsdale and um that just when I saw that I just that just seemed very um kind of jumped out at me. Have we ever done anything like that in the city to your knowledge? To my knowledge, no. Um, it it appears to endow one council member with a significant amount of power and it almost seems like it makes turns him from into an agent.

You know, if he's a leazison who appraises he who who appraises his or her performance and is he giving he or she giving orders to staff? Um it gives me discomfort to think about if he may be directing people and you know I see our job up here as governance not management. We shouldn't be executing these. And so um if I could just sort of sidestep this a little bit and make a motion to delete that provision from thisou if my colleagues would indulge me.

Um and we could just kind of delete that and u that could be removed from the from the agreement. So, I'll I'll move, but then I'm not done with my comments, but I will make that motion. I'll second that. So, we have a motion and a second. Um, uh, Ben, is that a motion? Is that is that clear to you what we're saying? Okay. I'd like to speak to that motion. That's okay. Um, Councilwoman Littlefield.

Yeah, let's let's go down the list real quick because she's been waiting and then I don't know if Councilman Graham is done. I want to be respectful to Councilwoman Littlefield's place in line, but I'll also happily speak to the motion. Either way, I'm happy to defer to you. I have some more comments to make, but um I wanted to make this motion. Maybe I can make this motion at the end of my comments. I'll just make a few more comments and then I'll put the motion on the floor for us to debate.

Um thank you. Thank you. Uh, Councilwoman, are are you still still going? I'm almost done. You're still going. Okay. Yeah. Almost done with my sermon. Um, I have concerns about thisou. I think the client the compliance language is weakened by some carveouts in the document. um very strong, very grave concerns with removing a referendum with signed uh with uh containing 26,000 signatures.

I'm concerned about the removal of the water and I'm also concerned about if we do this are we telling other commercial interest if this acts if this council doesn't doesn't give into their command uh desires that we they can just head over to the legislature and get legislative relief and go around us.

I do agree with um Leslie Lurman from the Stone Brook to HOA that negotiations should be two ways but through this process too many residents have told us that this has felt one way instead of guiding growth they tell me it feels like the process has overridden it. So, I appreciate those are my comments for the time being and there's a motion and a second on the floor and I thank you my colleagues for I know we're going to debate the motion.

I think thank you I appreciate my colleagues for voting on it. Thank you, Councilwoman Littlefield. Okay. Thank you. Uh this really isn't regarding the motion so much as some of the comments that were made earlier. Um, I would like to let you all know that my ability to represent the citizens of Scottdale regarding this issue has been reviewed um, previously and I draw upon our city attorney for his conclusion which he gave to me earlier.

City Attorney, honorable mayor and members of the council, um Councilwoman Littlefield uh asked me to um publicize the fact that we have evaluated whether that she has a conflict of interest in this matter and we determined that she does not have a conflict of interest in this matter. Thank you. I do not. I am a separate person from my husband. He does his thing, I do mine.

And it is in my own right that I have listened up here to the comments and the considerations and the wise and the where's and the hows and the who's and made my own decision. The only other people who have influenced me are the citizens of Scottsdale. I listen to them and they are very forthcoming with their opinions and their reasons and their wise and their wherefors.

I have well over a thousand emails still waiting for me to answer after the last three days I have spent entirely answering their emails regarding this issue Axon. They are very concerned. They do not want this expansion of Axon and that is everyone who emailed me and there are thousands except one person who wanted it. That is who I listen to, the citizens of Scottsdale.

I do try to represent them and I've spent almost four full days reading their emails and I haven't come to the end of them yet. They're still there waiting for me so far. And with the exception of one, all citizens have said no to this. Every single citizen. No. As their representative, it is my job and my duty to listen to them. With such overwhelming negative input, I will not support this. It is, let me get where I am here. It is against what I swore I would do as their representative.

I represent the citizens. That's who I am. And I will continue to do so. I am not against coming back to Exxon and saying, "Let's renegotiate. Let's look at this. How can we bring this more in line with what our citizens want so that we can all live in peace?" Because we're not going to with this. Let me tell you guys, they will not be happy.

I am open to that kind of a negotiation, but I cannot actively and directly vote against thousands of Scottsdale citizens who have emailed me and asked me to say no. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Quasman. Thank you, Madame Mayor, members of the council. Um, I do not find uh council members uh council member Graham's motion um a hostile a hostile motion.

Um I'm in support of the motion and happy to um uh remove it from the memorandum of understanding understanding or designate the city manager as the as the liaison. Thank you. Councilwoman Whitehead. I think I'll make my remarks after we uh vote on Councilman Graham's motion. Okay. Uh the motion on the table is to remove the council liaison from theou. All those in favor that How about we just take a voice vote? There they go. All those in favor? Oh, there we go. Okay. Thank you. All right.

I don't see any. I'll speak now. Oh, I lost my spot there. No, no, it's okay. Okay, go ahead. Go right ahead. Did we cast a vote? Okay, woman. Um, yeah, I just want to wrap up on a couple things that were mentioned. Um, there was a lot of talk about the number of units and the density. Um, so I do just want to give people a little bit of perspective there. Uh I came in this evening having been part of a negotiation that was 750 condos and 750 apartments.

And that's a really important distinction and and again all of those community investments. And I can tell you that I personally have spent thousands of hours with residents and as one can imagine 240,000 residents don't all agree on anything. I have not received a thousand emails, but I have spent over the last couple years thousands of hours with residents. So, there's support and there's um opposition.

But let's talk about that density at what the the numbers that I have that I support, which is significantly lower than what the state will allow. The density is 21 about 21.5 uh units per acre. And as comparison, there are projects in the air park in that same region that are 60 units to the acre. So the density here um has changed so dramatically and people have been so upset about the original number that I think it got lost in the uh in the negotiations.

And I also want to stress that again the community has been very involved. We all are up here representing residents. Residents don't all agree on everything. And I think the former employee spoke beautifully about change. We choose Scottsdale. We love Scottsdale. Change upsets everybody. And the incredible opposition to the waterfront. Reminds me of tonight's decision. The waterfront saved our mall. It is one of the most um vibrant and economically uh beneficial spots in our city.

It was a height 150 foot towers for open space trade and that council at that time I think Mary Manos was mayor went ahead and did that. And what we have here today is dirt on a freeway that is not productive, not helpful to the neighbors, not helpful to anyone, and it will be developed. Just look a couple miles east and see what warehouses look like. And so what we're proposing here is not no apartments.

That's not on the table, but what we are approving is something that's actually very low density for the area. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Quasman. Thank you, Madame Mayor. I move to adopt resolution number 13567, adopting contract number 2025-195- COS uh between the city and Axon Enterprise, Inc. with the following modifications. Section six amends to is amended to oh as amended I as previously amended by the last by the last amendment.

um and then follow with the following uh modifications. Section six is amended to reduce the total number of units from 1,500 units to,200 units. And of the,200 units, 600 will be apartments, 600 will be condominiums. The first phase will be 500 apartments, 100 condominiums. The second phase will be 100 apartments and 500 condominiums as designated in theou.

The city council authorizes the city manager and the inter interim city attorney to make conforming changes consistent with this modification. Um miss and and before I finish my motion um um with that with that sitting on the table, do I need to amend my motion, Mr.

City Attorney, to discuss the um uh to discuss the 48 hour aspect of it or is that coming in a later Honorable mayor and um vice mayor, members of the city council, you can when we get to that item, it should be amended appropriately. Okay. Just to um say regarding the signature stuff if that makes sense. So nothing else right now? Nothing else right now. M if I may, Mr.

Vice Mayor, I would suggest uh there was uh I understand a discussion about a proportional reduction in uh the commercial as it relates to the reduction on the residential piece. And so it was um to be uh commen commensurate with that reduction. U then I'm going to I'm going to restate my motion if I can if I can.

Madame Mayor, I move to adopt resolution number 13567 adopt adopting contract number 2025-195- COS as previously amended uh between city between the city of Scottsdale and Axon Enterprise, Inc. with the following modifications. Section six is amended to reduce the total number of units from from 1,500 units to 1,200 units. Of the 1,200 units, 600 of those units will be apartments and 600 units will be condominiums. The first phase will be 500 apartments and 100 condominiums.

The second phase will be 100 apartments and 500 condominiums. Uh furthermore, there will be an appropriate uh proportional reduction of commercial of of commercial space as um uh in order to align with the reduction in in um residential building. Uh the city council authorizes the city manager and interimm city attorney to make the confirming the conforming changes consistent with this modification. I'll second that. Thank you.

Uh I don't see any other speakers, but I'm going to be supporting uh Vice Mayorwasman's motion. Uh I think the parties have worked really hard to come to a number that is dramatically lower than what uh we inherited uh when we took off when I took office. So going from nearly,900 apartments down to 600 I think is a positive result.

Um and especially with all the other moving parts which you've you've heard so much about over the the past eight nine months uh you know even with the election no matter the outcome uh under the state state law uh they can do the 1900 units or more. So I spoke earlier about wanting finality for me this is this creates finality on this issue. It gets the conversation moving in a direction of let's break ground and start construction and let's go build a great project. So I am pleased about that.

Uh I appreciate the effort all of the efforts that went into it. We've all we've all worked fairly tirelessly on this and you know that involves talking to all of the residents as well and I just want to touch on the self-certification uh element of this. I'm actually very excited about this. I like the fact that we're going to do a test case here. Uh especially when we have um we can you know have a a role in the selection of the individuals. So I think we're in good shape there.

I know uh other jurisdictions have this and they out outsource the um you know those capa those uh obligations to a third party and I think that's it's going to be great to see how that works and I I think that's all that I have. Uh but I will be supporting the motion. So without any further comments uh let's go ahead and take a vote. Point of order is is we is this is this item number two, three, and four or just two? It's just two. We're going to have to go through three and four. Okay.

All right. Okay. That motion passes and moving right along. All right. And so item number three, the selfcertification and third-party certification. This is a request that was that in your motion? Okay. This is a request to consider uh ordinance number 4697 authorizing the establishment of a self-certification and third party certification program for qualified international headquarter campuses.

The proposed ordinance enables licensed professionals, architects, and engineers to certify plans and inspections. applies only to projects qualifying under uh Arizona revised statute section 9-461.19 and includes provisions for city over oversight, audit rights and enforcement and will be sunsetted on January 1st, 2035 unless otherwise extended. So I know we have a couple of speakers on this so let's turn to those. Gail Golc, followed by Tim Loda and Gabby Hitchcock.

Good evening, Madame Mayor and council members. Um, my my name is Gail Golick and I am a state committeeman with an LD3 and also a Scottsdale resident. And you this is basically we're going to be speaking the same the same thing that I mentioned before but I want to reiterate this. Um I'm speaking on agenda item three which recreate which creates a self-certification and third party permitting programs for large headquarter developments.

This item must be considered in light of a simple but extremely important fact. Axon no longer has any water obligation. That means Scottsdale must independently demonstrate a re the required 100year assured water supply before it advances permitting uh permitting for this project and state law is absolutely clear on whether this proof when excuse me and when this proof must occur. I want to quote the statute.

A plat of a subdivision shall not be approved by a city or town unless the director has determined that the subdivision subdivision has an assured water supply. And even more to the point, ARS 45576H, a city or town shall not approve a plat or permit the construction of a subdivision unless an assured water supply has been demonstrated. A self-certification permitting program is by definition a pro a program that permits construction.

Therefore, under 45576, it cannot be approved unless the city has already demonstrated the 100year water supply. But Scottsdale cannot demonstrate it and has admitted so. In the city's November 4th petition response, Scottsdale confirmed. It has no documentation identifying the water sources for this project. It has no 100-year demand calculations. It has no up-to-date water portfolio analysis. It has no enforcable water commitments from Axon. Never mind, don't need it. And sorry.

and Scottsdale is relying on the 2013 uh DAWS which whose planning horizon goes only through 2025. That's only six weeks from now. The city further admitted that the supporting documents for the Dows are no longer in its possession and the ADWR has not approved Scottsdale's new de that their water supplies plan. This means Scottsdale's 100year water model does not extend beyond 2025. The city is outside its planning horizon and cannot show 100-year water supply required by law.

Therefore, approving item three today, which advances construction without a demonstrated 100-year water supply would violate ARS 45576. It would move a development forward with no water obligations from the city, no proof of 100-year math and an expired 2013 planning horizon. This exposes the city to legal challenge and an AWR review. I urge you to vote no on item three until the required 100-year water documentation is publicly produced. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Tim Lota.

Thanks, Mayor and Council, but I already spoke on this item effectively. Okay. Thanks, Gabby Hitchcock. I don't see Gabby Hitchcock. Anybody? No. All right. Moving right along. That concludes the speakers. And so, anyone want to bring bring a motion? You ready to make a motion? Okay. Um, mayor. Okay. Um, I'm going to motion. Yeah.

Request ad to adopt ordinance number 4697 authorizing the establishment of a self-certification and third-party certification program for qualified international headquarter campuses. The proposed ordinance enables licensed professionals, architects, and engineers to certify plans and inspections. applies only to projects qualifying under Arizona Revised Statute sections 9-461-9. Includes provisions for city oversight, audit rights, and enforcement.

It is proposed to sunset on January 1st, 2035, unless extended. Second. All those in favor? Oh. Oh, excuse me. Go right ahead. Mayor and members of the council, there is no date delayed repeal date in the in the ordinance that was presented, I believe. Okay. Do we need to do anything about that, Louise? The signed copy that is submitted did not have a delayed um repeal date. Um, so that's the issue where the ordinate I I believe the ordinance does not have a delayed reveal date.

So to clarify, do I need to just take out is proposed the sunset date? Yes. Okay. Then I'll strike that last sentence. Is proposed to sunset? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Graham. Sorry, Mayor. Thank you. It it does say is proposed to sunset January 1st, 2035. So, I just that's what I'm reading. I think so there's an error on the um agenda language, but the actual ordinance doesn't have a delayed repeal date. So, the Okay. So, the Okay. So, the so the council can adopt it either way.

Um could add it into the ordinance that was actually attached as a delay or or or or keep it out. Um, okay. My understanding it's going to take Axon much longer than uh 10 years or whatever to to to finish their campus. Yeah. Okay. Then I choose to strike it from my um ordinance and motion. I'll second the motion with the that section struck out. And just so as the council knows, the council can always come back and change ordinances. this was just to automatically take it off the books.

And mayor, I'd like to speak to my emotional. Go right ahead. Right. Um, for those of you in the audience, this is a very common practice to have third-party certification. Um, almost all the cities do it, especially on massive projects. And so, we'll be entering into a new phase here in Scottsdale doing this. But it is a very common practice and it's one that helps expedate.

And the reason why we do it um in other cities uh through my research is that not we don't always have enough staff to expedite what's happening, enough planners, enough reviewers, enough engineers. So then when you have a third party doing that, it's just like overtime for public safety. It helps expedite a process. Um but professionally and you use the right people that you need to accomplish the right goals. So this is a common practice.

I don't want anybody to think that we're doing something crazy. All right. All those in favor. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Next, we have item number four, and that is the repeal of ordinance number 4658 relating to acts on resoning.

This is a request to adopt ordinance number 4698, which amends ordinance number 455, the zoning ordinance of the city of Scottsdale and authorizing the repeal of zoning ordinance number 4658 that would restore the prior zoning designation for 44.7 acre site located at 8300 East Axon Way. And there's one speaker, Gail, did you want to speak again on this? No. Okay. All right. So, uh, I'll entertain a motion. Go right ahead. Councilwoman Whitehead. Okay. Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, I move to adopt ordinance number 4698, amending ordinance number 455, the zoning ordinance of the city of Scottsdale and authorize the repeal of zoning ordinance number 4658, which would restore the prior zoning designation I1CD for the 44.7 acre site located at 8300 East Axon Way. I would like to Are we going to have the date? I would like to add um uh that we are requiring um this is repealed at the end of the business day on 1119 when uh we receive theou assigned.

I'd like to add that to the motion. Um members of the council, normally once absent an emergency, um an ordinance is not repealed for 30 until 30 days. That's true. So I don't believe we could add that provision. Okay. Thank you. Okay, there's a motion. Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor. So the okay I'm gonna I'm gonna ask probably almost identical set of questions that I asked about this earlier because this is just for me this is just trying to wrap my my brain around this one.

We are repealing an or we are repealing a reszoning that was authorized during the lame duck in 2024 to reauthorize industrial to mixed use. And this undoes that. Is that correct, mayor and members of the council? Yes, that is correct. It it repeals the or the zoning that's basically on hold because of the referendum and it makes it go back to the original zoning. Okay. So, here's where I'm trying to get to my point.

um when we do this vote, this this vote removes the referendum election because there's no nothing to refer anymore. Is is that correct? Yes, sir. That's correct. Okay. Um, again, I I kind of I've talked about this before, but we can't just in my mind, it's just strange that we would go and an applicant comes and asks for a reasonzoning and gets it and then we pass an ordinance to to undo it.

that to me now in in a normal circumstance you can't do that because that's you know a downzoning taking away property value from them and then they can file a 207 challenge which is the uh which is the I don't know if it's a constitutional amendment but it's a state uh legislation that says that cities and governments can't downzone or reduce the value of people's property So that's the reason why we normally couldn't do it. Is that correct? I think that's a good way of looking at it.

Uh the twist here is you have SP 1543, right? That basically um upzones it again, right? So we we go back and we say, okay, we're going to delete that reszoning from November 2024 and then it would revert to in to industrial. And in that case SB 1543 says if you own industrial and you meet all these conditions then you can build you know apartments it it goes to this other zoning.

So because of that we don't think that there's going to be a 207 challenge because the property owner is going to be happy with what they get when this is undone. Is that correct? Yes. We don't believe there'd be any sort of diminishment of value. Okay. So what would happen in the case? Cuz I understand I don't know anything about it, but I other than the fact that a legal challenge is happening. What if the legal challenge happens and the the courts rule against Senate Bill 1543?

Could and they say no, you can't do that law. Could then the property owner come to us with a 207 challenge? I can't speculate on that. We we'd have to do the research and I I'd have to provide that um legal advice in close session or via legal memo. But it but it's a good point that you raised. Okay.

I just I know it's I know there's some kind of got to go run through the scenario, but it seems to me that if I'm Axon and a and the courts rule against 1543, the city just took away my resoning and then and then I'm and then I'm not in a good place and then I may may have cause to challenge what we did here tonight. So that's why this especially this in addition to taking away the referendum, I have serious concerns about this particular item.

And so I might make a motion if we can just defer this one for the time being and maybe we can come back next week and get um some legal advice because I don't want to expose us. I mean, you city attorney, your goal is to minimize liability, exposure to the city. Um, this could put Axon in hot water. This could put us in hot water. And so, I don't want I think maybe just a little the benefit of a little more time. If I could move to defer this um to defer this item for the time being.

If I could get a second. Second. Thank you. There was a motion on the table, but I there was no second. Is that right? That's correct. That's correct. Me. Okay. So, let's let's deal with Can I can I speak to Sorry. Alternate motion then. Can I speak to council member Graham's? Yes. Altern. Um, Mr. City attorney, sorry to bother you when you just stood up. I ap Oh, I embarrassed him. Okay.

Um, I just want to remind um everybody that uh TAZA was willing to uh to uh withdraw all all claims including in support and in support voting against the referendum for a number higher than what we just agreed to just now. So further and furthermore, I would like to ask the city attorney, Mr. city attorney. Um there I seem to remember in Southbridge there was there was precedent for withdrawing a uh a referendum prior to a referendum being held. Is that correct?

Yes, that's that's exactly what occurred. So there is precedence for this. I just want to be very clear to everybody there's precedents for this and that the the actual backers and founders of the organization to promote the referendum was okay with a number higher than what we agreed to today. So I just want to be very clear that everybody knows the real truth and to know that that and also Mr. City Manager I just want to ask two questions.

If if we if the referendum were held tomorrow, let's say, and and Axon were to win the referendum, would they would would we still be withdrawing the under what we passed today and and the me and the memorandum of understanding, would we still be withdrawing their development agreement, which would be the same outcome as if as if the referendum failed? it would be the same outcome. Am I correct?

Uh, madame mayor and vice mayor, I believe if I understand the the question correctly is if the if we held the election and the election repealed. Is is that the question? Mhm. that if it were to repeal, then we still have 1543 that is in standing, which which would then put us back into the same the 1900 apartment uh apartment units that were that were in previous and and so No, I'm I am going to second. Thank you. Thank you, council member.

I'm going to second, but I also I also want to say and if it were to pass, we would still then be in be in the abil have the ability to negotiate the very ordinance that we just negotiated just now. Is that correct? If the I'm sorry. If the referendum failed, if the referendum failed, we would be able to still negotiate the very sameou that we just ne that we just negotiated. Yeah.

A fair amount of hypotheticals here, but uh madame mayor and vice mayor, if the referendum were to be held and it failed, then one could argue that you would go back to the original ordinance which stands at the 1900. I would point out that stands in isolation from 1543 still being in existence, right? One with a development agreement, one with the development agreement and one without.

But at the end of the day, we're still at 1,900 apartments, which was the impetus for the referendum in the first place. And with that, I I I um I we have the alternate motion on the table. I don't think I could second the previous motion until the alternate motion is voted on. So, I I I'm going to uh I'll yield the I'll yield the floor. Thank you, city attorney. Thank you, mayor and members of the council. I've consulted with council for Axon regarding the Prop 207 issue.

Uh they pointed out that in the original application there is a Prop 207 waiver. They're also committed to um completing a new one related to uh this project um or this uhou. So, um just wanted to bring that uh to everyone's attention. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Whitehead. Yeah. I just want to remind everybody that we're elected to solve problems and I personally have been very involved in referendum our citizen initiative.

So um 2018 I was uh one of the leaders of the protect our preserve uh citizens initiative which did pass overwhelmingly and when Southbridge 2 was approved a very high density development. I had voted no and I supported the citizens referendum to repeal that and rather than waste more time and more of your tax dollars, we resolved we solved the problem right here on the dis um by repealing that ordinance.

So what we're doing today as vice mayorwise said certainly has precedence and it's certainly the more efficient route. I just want to address the comment that the people who signed the referendum opposing the 1,800 plus apartments aren't being heard. So, first of all, they are being heard because we've just substantially reduced the number and we split the units into condominiums and apartments. So, in fact, that referendum helped produce a better project.

I think every one of us up here, uh, whether or not we supported it tonight, we're certainly happy to be here where we are. So, I cannot stress enough that the residents of this city were heard and that's how we got to tonight's agreement. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor.

Um this is this is a little bit this has become a little bit Byzantine and um it uh there is no precedence because we're talking about this Southbridge 2 referendum and with the Southbridge 2 referendum there was never ever a factor about a court ruling it against it. that was always about the referendum, but there was never a question about legality. Um, you know, Axon's going to do what's best for their shareholders. They should do that and we should do what's best for our residents.

That's what we should do. And I don't fault anybody for pursuing those interests. Um, I don't agree though 100% with Council Member Whitehead that voters got to vote, got to be heard because when you sign a referendum, you typically expect to vote in the referendum and that's not the case. Um, so, city attorney, you made a comment that in the past case they the applicant signed a 207 waiver and then you said that in this case they're committed to signing a 207 waiver. Yes, mayor.

Members of the city council, they um as part of the original application, they apparently filed a 207 waiver and they've committed um verbally to sign a new one. Okay. Um based on the concerns that you raised. Okay. So, in that case, in that case, I since we've got a motion on the floor, we've got an alternate motion on the floor to defer and a deferral motion takes precedence in our rules of procedure.

Um, I would just say let's just defer this until we can get that uh signature in writing and then um and then we can and then we can bring it back. So, we if if I'm I'm ready to to vote if if that's okay. Uh, Vice Mayor Quasman, I call the question. Okay. Uh, we're voting on the alternate motion to continue this to another date. I said defer, but I meant continue. Thank you. Okay, so all those in favor or opposed? All right. Now, we're going to go to I second.

Madam Madame Mayor, I second your motion. Uh it was Councilwoman Whitehead M Council member uh Whitehead. I I second your motion. Okay. Okay. I don't see Oh, do you want to speak to that? Yeah. I would like to amend my motion to include the signing of the 207 uh waiver. So, honorable mayor and members of council, you're um making the repeal the zoning ordinance contingent that they um sign a 20 prop 207. Yeah, I would just like to have that if that works for you. I'll let you discuss.

I can pull that. Mr. Madame Mayor. Yes. Um, Mr. City Attorney, would it be cleaner if we put it in theou if we amend theou? If we amend theou and put it in theou. Can we and can we reopen item number I voted in the affirmative. So can I can I call can I call it back to actually how about how about we do this? So there's a final item which is how about we do this? There's a final item related to the litigation, right?

And the litigation um is there to make sure that Axon actually signs theou within by the 19th. Um, how about you put a condition on that that they they sign the um theou by the 19th otherwise we file the crossline and they also sign the prop 207 waiver. Yeah, I accept that for my motion and I just want to be clear that for my motion. Well, I I I drop I I dropped so my original motion stands and I just want to be clear that we had a verbal agreement.

I'm not concerned, but in government, we like to go ahead and dot our eyes and cross our tees. That's all I'm trying to do. I'm fine with it in the next motion. Thanks everybody who kind of gathered for that one. Okay, let's go ahead and vote on that. All those in favor, indicate your vote or opposed.

Okay, last item on special meeting agenda item number five and that is litigation authorization uh a request to authorize the interim city attorney to file any appropriate counter claim cross claim or third party or third party claim in the TAS uh v state of Arizona and city of Scottsdale litigation. I have two people uh indicating actually I think there's no one left to speak on this one. The um Gabby Hitchcock. Okay. So, Vice Mayor Quasman. Thank you, Madam Mayor. All right.

I move to authorize the interim city attorney and or his designate to file any appropriate counter claim, cross claim, and third-party claim in taxpayers against awful apartment zoning exemptions at all versus the state of Arizona, city of Scottsdale at all. um CV 2025-034961 with a with a proposal to sunset, right? Is that Mr. City attorney? How would I?

So, so I would suggest that um I only file it unless we do not received the signed from Axon along with the Prop 207 waiver by the close of business on um the 19th. June 19th. Thank you. Okay. November November 19th. Sorry. Did I say June? I apologize. All right. Uh, would you like me to repeat the whole thing? Yes, sir. Mr. Parliamentarian. Yep. Okay.

Madame Mayor, I authorize the interimm city attorney and or designates to file any appropriate counter claim, cross claim, and third-party claim and taxpayers against all apartment zoning exemptions versus at all versus the state of Arizona, city of Scottsdale at all, CB2025-034961, unless a the memorandum of understanding is signed by Axon Enterprises by close of business day, November 19th, 2025 as and Axon delivers a signed uh 207 waiver uh by the close of business day, November 19th, 2025.

Second. All right. I see Councilman Graham wants to speak. Thank you, Mayor. I'll make an alternate motion to for the same motion, but the deletion of the two conditions. I'll second that. All right, let's take a vote on the alternate motion. Okay. and Councilman, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Clausman, let's go ahead and take a vote on that motion. Please indicate your vote. All right, that concludes our business for this afternoon. Sorry for the delay everybody that was here for other matters.

But uh at this time I'd like to move to adjourn the special counsel meeting and we will move on. Second. Yeah. Let's let's take five minutes. I know we've had a lot of delays. Um but so everyone can clear out and see you back here. go ahead and get started uh with the I'm going to call the November 17th, 2025 joint work session of the Scottsdale City Council and the Budget Review Commission to order. City Clerk Ben Lane, please conduct our roll call. Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor Lisa Barowski, present. Vice Mayor Adam Quasman, Council Members Jane Debascus here, Barry Graham here, Kathy Littlefield here, Maryannne McCallen present, and Solange Whitehead here for the budget review commission. Vice Chair Daniel Schwiker here.

Commissioners Skyler Badin, Carla here, Bob Lary here, Brad Newman here, and Mark Stevens here, city manager Greg Kaitton here, interim city attorney Louis Santea present, city treasurer Sonia Andrews here, acting city order here, and the clerk is present. Thank you, mayor. Well, welcome budget commissioners. Thank you for joining us tonight. So sorry this has been so delayed. a long night so far. So, thank thank you for your patience.

Um, and I'm going to go a little bit out of order because we also have uh some individuals here that are going to uh receive a proclamation. So, I'm going to jump over to my mayor's report and give it now instead of after this joint session. So, for tonight's mayor's report, I am proud to recognize Chapperel High School's DECA program and its outstanding students led by business and finance teacher Mason Renfer. DECA empowers young leaders in business, marketing, and finance.

And Chapel's team continues to represent Scottsdale with excellence. I have issued a formal formal proclamation naming the month of November 2025 as DECA month here in Scottsdale. Mr. Renfer and his DECA students uh will be the ones accepting this proclamation this evening and I will read that now and then I will join you up there and we'll take a quick photo.

Whereas DECA is an international student organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management. And whereas DECA's programs integrate classroom instruction, apply learning through relevant projects, connect students with business professionals, and promote the development of 21st century skills.

And whereas Chapperel High School DECA along with other chapters in the Scottsdale Unified School District provides students with opportunities to engage in leadership development, academic competition, and community service that be benefit both students and the city of Scottsdale. And whereas the achievements of DECA members reflect the dedication of local educators, business partners, and the community in preparing our youth for success in college, careers, and civic life.

And whereas recognizing National DECA month demonstrates the city's city of Scottsdale's commitment to fostering educational excellence and workforce readiness. And now therefore, I, Lisa Bowski, mayor of the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, do hereby proclaim November 2025 as National DECA Month in Scottsdale, and encourage all residents to join me in recognizing and supporting the accomplishments of those DECA members, advisers, and partners in our community.

In witness whereof I have unto set my hand and caused to be affixed to the seal of the city of Scottsdale. Congratulations. Thank you all for being here. Okay, we are back. The joint work study session will provide us uh a less formal setting for the city council and the budget review commission to discuss specific topics at length with each other and city staff. Joint work study sessions provide an opportunity.

This joint work study session will provide an opportunity for the budget review commission and staff to receive direction from the city council and for the public to observe these discussions. So, uh I don't do we have any comments? What? Okay, hold on. I don't see Mayor Steve Sutton. Oh, Steve, come on down. There we go. I guess it's now good evening, Mayor Barowski and council members.

Uh, I just spoke a little while ago about facts supported reality and emotion supported perception and I just want to quickly clear something up. Nowhere in this entire comment is there a single disparaging word about Kathy Littlefield. In fact, at the end of it, I actually mentioned her years of good service. Now, it may be council members Graham's perception that she was disparaged, but in reality, she was not.

After speaking with volunteer members of various city commissions, it has come apparent to me that members like never before need to be prepared to demonstrate zilla courage. That is a German word that translates as civic courage. It is also a synonym for moral courage. Moral courage is what you demonstrate when you take action that is in the best interests of others, even if it means bad consequences for yourself.

Commission members must be prepared to risk being removed or not renominated to the commission in order to speak truth to power. The power being the city council and the city manager. I urge the commission tonight to investigate the use of 2019 bond funding to build a garage at the parking corral for which there is not a parking study showing need and why funding was not used in 2020 for a parking study the council agreed to do. Cartago Dela asked. Thank you. All right, let's get started.

Uh again, welcome and thank you for your patience. Good to see several four familiar faces and one new commissioner joining us, Bob Luteri. So, thank you for that. And uh this is not this is an opportunity. Personally, I really want to hear from you. Uh I know four of you four of you were on the commission previously and we're eager to get this kicked off. So do you want to start by telling us just a little bit about your background and also your experience?

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council. Brad Newman. Um spent 30 years in pharmaceuticals.

uh my background moved to Scottsdale here 5 years ago from Chicago and so a career in commercial operations and finance and uh various engineering projects along the way so um it fits with budget budget commission so thank you uh I'm Mark Stevens I uh 36 years with Ernston Young I was a managing partner of the Phoenix office and San Diego office at the end of my career I worked in San Diego as part of a citizens review function to to look over their budget and make significant recommendations.

Uh and then I was part of the commission last year and uh pretty involved on writing a lot of the reports and making recommendations. Thank you. I was also part of the uh commission last year and I founded my company China Miss Tea Company in the Scottsdale Air Park in 1982. Had it for 35 years before I sold it. Spent 12 years in the Paradise Valley Town Council. moved to Scottsdale about 14 years ago and just happy to donate some effort back. Terrific. Thank you. Bob Luri.

I began my career with Deote. I remained in finance for the last 40 years. I've moved from controller to CFO where I'm currently a fractional CFO with four clients. Great. Welcome, Carla. Um, I come at money from a different perspective perhaps. After working at darn near every restaurant in town and then um running a small business for a decade, I helped found the McDall and Orin Conservancy, which is a nonprofit and was the executive director for 10 years. Um, helped create the preserve.

I'm an officially recognized preserve pioneer. And I come at it from the viewpoint of a South Scottsdale kid who didn't have much money and it's you just look at everything in a very tight manner and I think we tried to do that last time. We just flat out ran out of time. So great point and thank you for being here. Uh this time around you'll have a lot more runway. So, I think we're going to see a different approach and and hopefully a little more uh substantive involvement in the process.

And so, uh I'm going to Does anyone want to burn up any comments or questions or I'll kick it off. I I'm I'm going to start with a just a blanket. This is where I think I would like to see you go. I I'm challenging the city manager and staff to find 5% across the board efficiencies, also known as reductions in the budget for the next fis fiscal year.

I'd like to hear from commissioners uh h how you think the budget review commission can best help staff find the efficient find those efficiencies, which of course four of the members were here last year, so I'm sure you have some thoughts on that. And uh question for you. Have you met yet as a group? No. Okay. So, tomorrow is your That's right. Tomorrow is your first meeting. So, that's quite the challenge. And if we can do that, that would be fabulous. Councilman Graham. Thank you.

Mayor, are there going to be remarks before we ask questions? Do you have remarks for us or did you come Okay. Um, good feedback, Mayor. Thank you. I'm gonna kind of repeat I'm gonna kind of repeat myself, but um, you know, first of all, it's um, your service is appreciated and we have some extremely talented people up here. uh would like to hear from you as far as areas that you want to dive into or dig into, drill down into.

Uh I talked about this last time we met and it still interests me, but I really care about trends, ratios. Um I care about those both over time and compared to comparator cities. Um overtime is a percentage of total wages. How do we compare? Probably higher than comparison and probably higher than uh trending up because we have more events here. Uh personnel cost as a percentage of total operating expenditures. Operating expenditures per capita.

Fund balance as a percentage of annual operating expenses. Um debt service as a percentage of operating expenditures. Capital capital project change orders expenses or expenditures as a percentage of total budget original budget preserve sax uh preserves uh sales tax revenue as a percentage of actual preserved expenditures. These you know these kinds of ratios can be very illustrative.

Um and like I said you compare them to comparison cities and over time we can get trend we can see trend lines and people that can read that it can really be meaningful. So maybe I could hear your thoughts about stuff like that. And because when you look at when you look at ratios like that, you they they they communicate things and they can set they can set off questions and lines of of uh questions. So maybe those don't interest you and that's okay, but maybe some of them do.

And so, um, I hope that beyond just the ratios and the, you know, uh, the trending, we can take a sample of capital projects and dive into what stuff that may have gone sideways. Um, I've spoken with some of you, you know, individually, and I think that's kind of what you're interested in doing. Um, we want to empower you to bring transparency to our taxpayers and uh, you know, find any leaks that we may have in the ship. So, um, those aren't those aren't commands.

Those are just ideas and thoughts and um, use your talents as you so desire in those directions. But, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman McCallen. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank you all for uh taking time out of your busy lives to uh volunteer for the city. I think it's very important. I also believe we have a highly professional staff at the city who does a great job. Um I think last year you spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the BRC fit in.

And I still think that maybe we haven't quite defined that enough. Uh I don't necessarily think that we need to dive so deeply. I think that um there are issues that do exist that um maybe concentrating on those uh like CIP things like that. Uh any type of bond that hasn't been done looking at overreaching things that may um incur or appear to have some waste. Uh but the day-to-day operations I believe are pretty well taken care of.

Uh but the bigger overarching issues, unusual things, um those are opportunities. But really a budget review commission is to review the budget, not tell the city employees how to budget, um because they're professionals. That's this is just my opinion, but I believe looking at it and maybe um like the mayor said, possibly trimming things that may come that seem overreaching, but uh I believe we have a great staff that does know what they're doing.

Um but looking at it from citizen input about what's important, maybe like what Councilman Graham said, trends, uh things of that nature. But I welcome your opinions and what you find interesting once you're presented with the budget. And um thank you for your time. You councilwoman Littlefield. Uh thank you, Mayor, and thank you all for being here tonight. We really appreciate your time and all the work that you do on on your commission.

Um I have a fairly simpler outlook on budgeting and stuff like that. I look at the numbers and say, "Hey, compare these to the last three years, including this year, and what are we looking at next year? Can we justify increases? Can we justify the decreases? Why are they happening? If they're happening for a particular reason in one department, can we look at other departments and see should we be doing the same thing if we're cutting back?

And does it make sense?" Um, can we, in other words, can we cross borders on departmental monies and changes in percentages and ratios and things like that? Um, compare budgets uh versus the actual costs. If there are large differences, um, why did we make a mistake in the budget? Did we forget to put something in? Is that going to affect next year's budget? um or did we just not estimate the actual cost accurately?

Um so there's a lot of reasons and things that you can be looking at and uh I think giving a report back to the council would help us so that we don't repeat those mistakes in the coming years and we get a more accurate feel for actual costs, actual possible changes, different ways of doing something that might cost less, things like that.

um justifying the act the larger costs and you know is it because of increased cost of materials or labor or did we just mess up and is it something that we need bad enough to pay that additional cost. So those are kinds of things to do. um ways to curb it a little bit if there's cost cuts that we haven't thought of that you can look at and see as professionals and say, you know, if they just did it this way and round it about here, we could cut 10%. Something to look at. Um watch the trends.

That's the last note I had. Thank you very much and thank you for all you do. We really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, Councilwoman Whitehead. Well, also thanks all of you, especially those of you who that was a long year last year and it really helped. So, the way I see it, you guys are the planning commission of the budget. So, the planning commissioners, they don't go out and look for construction projects, but they do thorough reviews of the construction projects that come forward.

So, that's really in my view your job is we have we're going to have a budget. That budget's going to come from direction from this council and from staff. Um and then on the I love we're always looking for um being as efficient as we can with our tax dollars especially as we see some revenue uh we the actions at the state we we have reduced revenue streams. So um but my question is always what is the cost of not doing something as well? So that's an important question.

So, if we're going to cut the a cost, is there a cost of that co of that action? And there was another thought I had too. Um, oh, just cities have to look cities look five, 10, 30, 50 years down the road. So, that's how we have to make decisions too is we always have to look at the long run. But anyway, you guys did a great job last year. So, I'm just speaking up with some other ideas. Thanks. All right. Well, I don't see any other speakers. Do you have questions for the council?

We can make this short and sweet since we've all been here very long time tonight, but we'll we'll keep our eyes on you. We're going to keep in touch. You know what I mean? Okay. Yeah. I I'll start it off real fast. And I you know, I think we agree pretty much down here, the ones that know each other, um, with everything we hear up there. I guess some of our questions are, you know, how do we get there?

Um, you know, last year there there was a different set of of directions we had from the city attorney as to what we could do and and from the new new uh interim city attorney. It's a different set of directions. And I I think Mark has some comments he'd probably like to make on that. Um, I kind of view us as all working together and each one of us will have our separate interest areas and we'll come together and what we would like to do is add value to the city.

if there's ways to save money by us looking at it. You know, I guess the question is what can we do to get the information to make those decisions? And Mark, you want to talk for a minute? Yeah. But none. Okay. Uh yeah. Yeah. I'd like to. We we actually did have one meeting last uh last month where we kind of debriefed on what happened in the prior year and staff presented to us their model for how they would like this year to go.

uh from what I understand uh legal counsel has kind of informed them that they need to narrow our ability in order to discuss things with people to get information. Uh a lot of the words I uh dig deep dive was mentioned that they don't want us digging into things. So there's a little bit of a conflict going on here now because some of you are saying I want cost reductions. I want you to look at things. I want you to investigate. I want you to see why construction projects go ary.

And then I've got another set coming from legal counsel to staff saying, "Oh, no, no, no, no. Make sure they only go through the city treasurer. They can't be talking to other people. If they talk to other people, we have to then make sure everyone on the commission gets the same information." So, the construct that's set up for this year is not well suited to, I think, what you all are looking for.

And what I'm hoping comes out of this is the way this will get done well is if we can scope out the areas that you want us to look at, work with staff, be sensitive to their time frames, and then be able to either individually or as a group of two look into certain areas to gather the information and then possibly report back to the commission and then talk about it. We would not be making any directions to staff. We would not be telling them what to do.

uh if I understand meetings and what's been provided to me by legal counsel, meetings are individuals of a quorum talking together. But I think staff's being told now from legal counsel that if you have one or two people going and talking to anyone other than the city treasurer, that's a violation of the open meeting law unless we provide all the information to people. So I feel a little bit hamstrung right now.

And uh one of the things we mentioned at our last meeting was to see if legal counsel could come back and tell us ways in which we can gather information or investigate without violating open meeting laws. So I think one of the biggest things we need to work out is how do we get the information that we need to do our job without violating open meeting laws. And so that might be something we need to work out to be effective for you. Yeah, I I think you raised a good point.

So, uh, Luis was had stepped away, uh, for a minute when you first started this, but I'd like to hear from our city attorney as to what Mark is referring to. I it that didn't make sense. I mean, two commissioners aren't violating the open meeting law, so that that didn't make sense to um, mayor, members of the council, members of the budget review conviction, it depends. Um, if the two commissioners are now a subcommittee of the um, commission. Yeah.

could be an open meeting law violation and only the um council can create subcommittees. Uh what's unusual about the request is uh compared to other commissions, they want to create a or perform an audit investigative role. It sounds like they want to go out into the field basically and review stuff and talk to people. No other commission has ever really done that. They usually rely on the information that's brought to them.

um this would be a little bit unprecedented and almost sounds like an audit function and there is already an audit department and an audit committee. So um the there there's two two two issues here. Obviously commissioners cannot give uh direction to staff. The other issue is and for example in your rules of council procedure um individual council members cannot um require individual staff members to do a certain amount of work right without a vote of the council.

And some of the stuff that's being proposed sounds extremely labor intensive and that would cause a lot of work. And typically the way our commissions work is there's a department that's responsible for them and there's a liaison and the comm commissioners go through that leaison. The leaison gathers the information presents it to the commission as a whole and the talk generally is we want all the commissioners to have all the same information just like we want all council members.

So, um if the um council wants to take a different approach, you probably need to amend the um the your your budget commission ordinance a little bit to give them some of these capabilities. But it does um run up against various things. And to me, sending out groups of people is effectively a subcommittee and that you would you would need to authorize that and you would need to have the open meeting law apply to those situations.

So I think that raised more questions than I answered, sorry to say. Uh why if they are two people just going to visit with staff, um why would that have to be a subcommittee? I mean, Vice Mayor Quasman and I can go meet with constituents or staff or whatever. We're not That's very different. you're not conducting um a a work for the specific council. You're not conducting work for the commission as a whole. So that's one distinction.

But more importantly, let's assume that they're not a subcommittee. They're interacting with staff. They're directing staff to provide them stuff. Um those are orders in my opinion. The other thing about it is the depending without the the commission as a whole deciding what they want. They they could be um requesting hours and hours and hours of staff work um on an individual basis.

That's why it should be the commission as a whole should be requesting the information and getting the information as a whole.

I don't disagree with what you just said in terms of uh setting the agenda as as a body like they would want to have their priorities and their work plan if you will um v you know voted on amongst themselves and maybe there's a there's a scenario where you you pick 10 categories or 10 line items maybe that's too many maybe that's not enough and that's what you're working on this year so I don't know I didn't support the revisions to the ordinance when we had this discussion a couple months ago because I think it does hamstr you know use the word I feel hamstrung that's that was my read on the on the ordinance too but I want this group to be productive and and supported uh to become productive so I don't know how we get there but um you know certainly they're going to be here volunteering and doing good work for the citizens of Scottsdale taxpayers and I think they should have the resources to do that, but I'm gonna I'm going to turn the m the floor over to Councilwoman Dascus who's been waiting to speak.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um I was actually going to recommend something similar to what you were saying. I think identifying the scope of where you would like to go in your meeting tomorrow, identifying now that several of you have had the opportunity to sort of take a look at the budget, identify these are the areas that we would like to explore further for the 26 27 budget. I think that could be really helpful.

Um, one of the things that happened when you came in was we did have runaway expenses with our u CIP with our capital improvement budget and it was very concerning. And so in response to that, uh, our city manager, um, sat down with you and actually took some of your recommendations and you're no longer seeing those things come up on our on our, um, agendas anymore because the internal processes are working. Our city manager is taking the feedback and and having regular meetings on that.

And so you have had an impact on that in a significant way already. Um, and so maybe there are things like that that you can identify and and focus on. Um, where the city staff has already identified something that they're working on. Let's not have everybody running down different rabbit holes, but rather, you know, have a more focused approach. And I think that could be um could satisfy uh your desires as well as the city staff. You know, they are also working very hard.

We never want to appear to not be transparent to the residents and I don't believe that that was anyone's intention was to try to try to not seem that way. So, um I think maybe some of that was just let's figure out a process because this was new for everyone and so um maybe that's some of the feedback that could be useful for this year. Thank you. And um yeah, to be clear, I don't have a dog in the fight. I just kind of want to know the rules we're playing by.

So I think some of this clarification we get from you will be very beneficial uh to that. Bob has a comment he'd like to make. Then Carla would like to make a comment. Okay. Go ahead Bob. Yeah, I think that ratio analysis can be an effective measurement of performance, but I would like to know whether the underlying data that the ratios are calculated from are accurate and don't know what my boundaries are.

But my approach would be to take a look at variances from budget and see what's driving it. Was it an anomaly uh an intervening variable? It wasn't u anticipated. So, I would like to be uh allowed to analyze budget budget variances. Great. Go ahead, Carla. Thank you. Um first I want to stress that last cycle and every time we interact that city treasurer Sonia Andrews is and her staff are excellent.

They worked overtime last cycle and they give us everything we ask for and try and make try and help us to understand everything that we ask about. So I want to stress that. The other thing is I want to reiterate what councilwoman Dboscus said which is the recommendations we made last year particularly about the CIP process and how those costs were estimated. City Manager Kaitton is on that and it's changing for the positive because as Councilwoman Littlefield said that was a huge concern.

Um, so I still feel with what you have all said that we're going to need a little bit more clarity and direction still because you know personally I don't think we should be Scottsdale's version of Doge which is just cut to cut because as Councilwoman Whitehead said you have to ask what is the cost but at the same time you want to look at things. Um, I don't think we are trying to replicate and we shouldn't be replicating the audit committee because we already have one.

That's why I have a concern with the term deep dive. Um, I respect Commissioner um Stevens, you know, desire to look at why, but we're not an audit committee unless you tell us we're an audit committee. We serve at your pleasure. So, are we really a budget review commission, which is under the treasurer? We're not operations, which would be under the city manager.

Um, so if we're looking at the budget and we're saying there's a disturbing trend or um, Commissioner um, Newman had brought up something to me that if there's a variance above a certain amount, then we need to look at that specifically, you know, not every variance, but if it's above a certain amount, let's ask why, you know, and I just feel like we need a little bit more clarity in the direction because we can't put ourselves in the same position where we're going in a freeforall here and we end up behind the eightball on time again.

You want we're here because we want to help and we want to be productive. But if we're going in deep dives, we're going in, you know, let's cut everything, we're going in, you know, we just need a little bit more clarity. And what you're saying is very helpful, but maybe just a little more tightening so we're not wasting time and we can get to work. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Commissioner Newman has a comment.

Also, if I think about where we started last year, um all of us were getting familiar, council and uh and commission and staff working with us and we really had the opportunity to identify, okay, roads are a big deal. We need more money in roads. Okay, there's a suggestion. um capital projects.

It was obvious there is an opportunity there and and city manager Kaitton's done a great job of putting some process in place and and and and putting better review process in place and treasurer Andrews Andrews has worked endlessly.

One day she had four note four big notebooks as big as her going across the parking lot as I'm trying to help her to get to the other building, you know, and she wouldn't take the help, but characteristically, you know, but um nonetheless, it's hard in the budget cycle to add a bunch of projects and all that stuff. So, I have a couple of suggestions here.

One is governance and one is an actual one as an actual possible project here that might um help solve some of the problems that are brought up here. Well, first on governance, I've talked with uh Treasurer Andrews and I think I've talked with uh city manager Kaitton about this, but um and Carla touched upon it is the when you look at variance to budget, okay, we review budget, we've got that and we did a good job of that.

Um, but when you look at variance to budget, we have a chance to go through projects, but there's two aspects of that and oftentimes those seem to end up end up in consent agendas and you don't necessarily have the time or the bandwidth or or the depth to go through that. Why can't the budget commission, this probably requires an ordinance change, but why can't the budget commission review when there's a change over a million dollars or more than 10%.

That has to come forward for review and a vote before it goes to council. That's a possibility. Now, I don't want to add a bunch of work for people, but that's a that's a stage gate that that forces accountability in terms of in terms of projects. We know that there's we know that there's an opportunity there to solve some things and it it it will it will force the questions to be happen to happen before it comes to you. So, you can make a more informed decision at the second one.

Any project over $10 million scope, cost, schedule, review in terms of budget commission, it goes to every other planning commission and they give a vote. But there's also a financial aspect to that. So I just some suggestions there to con to consider and obviously I don't want to I don't want to speak for staff and what that means or anything like that.

But um the role of the budget commission could could play a role in taking workload off the council and off staff in terms of projects running more efficiently and and doing that. So and you're looking for the 5%. That gets my second thing now that we have a new um computer system that has been transferred over over the summer. Uh Treasure Andrews has been working very hard on that.

One of the things we talked about last year was um there's a consultancy out there AI that uses AI to and benchmarks against municipalities to go through the whole system and find where those opportunities are. So you know you want to do auditing and things but to go through the budget and say where are the where are the opportunities in this um and AI can do that very efficiently and not put a lot of burden on staff. It would require hiring the consultant to do that.

But to uh to Councilman Graham's comments of metrics and things like that, it it would give you benchmarks against other municipalities. How are we doing? I think that's a shortcut kind of a cut across the Enfield strategy to get to the answer much more quickly if we hire some resources to do that. And then I realize all these things mean that Treasure Andrews and and City Manager Kaitton have to do some more work on that. and that I just I I'm sensitive to adding a bunch of work to them.

But if we want to make the budget commission work effective, I think getting some resources like that would uh maybe help help allow us do the work without a lot of burden on staff. I really like the looking at those issues that are, you know, a cost of over a million or 10%. I think that's a wonderful suggestion, but that would require an ordinance change to do that, I think. Yeah, we should we should hopefully look at that.

I think it's a really great idea and along with your other suggestions too. Good idea. Uh, Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor. The Yes, it's true that they can't direct staff, but mostly what we're talking about is pulling reports. That's almost everything we're talking about. Um, that should be okay.

When I was on I've been on I was on three commissions and whenever we'd want to discuss something we could make we can agendaize it and then like you're agendaizing something and that requires staff to go pull up information. You have to pull it and then present it. I don't see a problem with that. the capital budgets. I mean, so the capital budgets that one we got they got many of them got out of hand in 2023 and four and all that. Um we without you, you know, we wouldn't know for sure.

You told us that we weren't lasering in on our cost estimates. We weren't putting, you know, good estimates together. We also weren't following up with change orders. We weren't we weren't closely monitoring progress. You I mean didn't you teach us that?

So it would be nice maybe you know without putting anybody on the spot but like maybe knowing more detail about that you can agendaize that you know project specific whatever without embarrassing somebody but I mean don't taxpayers deserve to know that that don't they deserve to know that? Um, this is not an audit. Not an audit. Um, you're looking at you're you're you're factf finding. You're collecting information. You're not like double-checking.

You're not like taking a sample, a non-stistical, you know, sample like this is I mean what I know what we're talking about because it's like one is hamstrung, the other one is like we got, you know, okay, I won't use the word deep dive anymore or the phrase. Okay, fine. I won't use that. And I disagree with Carla on Doge. Doge is like Doge is like, "Hey, let's see. We're paying for um these newspaper subscriptions. Let's see if they actually read them. Oh, nobody reads them.

Maybe we should cancel those." Like that's what Doge is. Um, but like the budget review commission like I know Luis made the comment like Luis made the comment like well nobody but nobody like you by definition you're an inwardfacing commission. Like there's no there's no applicant coming to talk about budgets with you. Like all you have is inward facing. And so um I just encourage you to remember that's your charge. Um, we know it's not an audit. We're not doing an audit.

Um, I don't think it's requiring work and giving orders when you Okay. So, if you were to say we want to look at um, we want to look at all capital projects and fiscal 26 and we want to do uh, change orders expenditures as a percentage of original budget. everything over X dollars, you know, threshold or or a limitation. Couldn't you couldn't you vote on that and then they could bring that to you and look you could look at one or two? I mean, I think that would be illustrative.

We we did that last year, right? We actually the one time we were allowed to meet with people. We had a meeting where dad and I sat with a group of people. We went over that list and we asked questions about the variances and that led to some of those recommendations. Right. And so that that that procedure shined a light on kind of what happened what happened in the front end and then in the monitoring in the back end, right? Like we learned from that.

And so it's like now we're kind of like this is the next season. It's like we have more capital projects and some of them are going to go over budget. Like it's just going to happen. But um can we what can can we look at a couple maybe learn from it? And so I I really encourage that. Um looking at budget var okay budget commissioner mentioned budget variances that's important but I I think it's actually more important to look at budget trends um ratios and comparisons.

Because then that can that can raise flags. You have an expectation and if something doesn't and you have all of a sudden you see something you know over time as a percentage of total wages in one year goes up like that flags itself and you want to ask and then you then you can make inquiries about that and then present that to us.

like we want to hear from you like in your recommendations like you know it's it's not about like putting anybody on the spot but it's just like we looked into this overtime thing and we think that more you know and the city manager is listening to that and I know that he's doing stuff with the fiscal 26 budget that um you know he's hitting hard on it if I can speak for you. I get a slight nod from you. There we go. Slight nod. So, um I'm excited about this season what you guys do.

Um I agree that with Mr. Stevens I agree about, you know, you are going to have to work within some parameters because we can't get we can't d you know dive deep and you know give commands and give people work but we can ask for reports and we can ask questions and we can look at ratios and then we can you know we can probe a little bit.

No, we're not it's yeah, we're not asking you to save the world, but if you can come up with a handful of, you know, recommendations or or expose a few things for our taxpayers, it can go a long way. It can be a real force multiplier for for uh transparency and for our taxpayers. Thank you, Mayor. And I agree with nearly everything you just said. So, I think that was great input and I I want to make sure that we again are supporting you all and giving you the resources you need.

So, I don't see any other Can can I can I just a few more minutes? Sure. Just I think what this comes down to is what are we going to do and who's going to do it? The who's going to do it might end up being one person so I don't have a problem instead of a whole bunch. What's that? Subcommittee. No, no subcommittee. I have one person. Yeah. Okay. Now, uh can you give me just two minutes to show you something? Can you uh put that one document, the long document that I have?

I'm going to go through this super super fast if you can put it up there. This is a work plan that was sketched together by me and I had one of our members. I had Brad look at it and it kind of showed here's a marching order we could do. It has way more than we would ever do. My thought was if I put this together, I wanted to meet with Sonia and say let's dig through this.

Let's figure out what the timing of when this stuff happens so it's not disruptive to your people and then we we as a group will decide which of these things do we want to take on and then we'll go ahead and do that as our marching orders. Is that are we going to be able to put that up or not? Sure. I don't know who's got that who's it was there were two documents that was just need one minute. Oh, one minute. Okay. What it what I did was I broke it I broke the whole thing into four sections.

General fund enterprise capital and then a sustainability assessment. and it basically went through and said, "Here's the areas that we should be looking at." This group, I think, should figure that out based upon what you're saying. And then it had tasks within there that would be what we would do. A whole bunch of what's in here now is not what it's going to be because there's better ways to do it.

My desire was to maybe go through that with staff and say, "Okay, how do we put this together so that we now each know what we want to do? Dig into the areas we want." you talk about construction, it'll be okay, which are the projects we're going to look at. Let's then meet with someone, look at the cost estimate, see what the pieces are. Is it a contract? Is it an estimate? Is it a model? Is it a tool that's reliable? Has the tool been reliable in the past? And talk to someone.

And my idea was we'd be doing it on the heels of when the numbers are coming together. And it might not even end up in a report because they might just take our suggestions and plug it into the budget. And so anyway, that was I was maybe we don't need to show it, but it it exists. Something exists that I hope we do because I'll tell you right now it's we were kind of struggling to know where to do and right now the current model just has us meeting a few times. Oh, there it is.

Meeting a few times in in a public forum and we're not going to be able to understand anything then. Okay, go to the next page. Okay, that was just the intro with the four areas. Go to the go to the next page. Keep going. I'm going to go through this as fast as I can just to give them a feel for it. No, it's not going to be that easy. Okay. Have to distribute it to council. Well, it's not No. Okay. It's It's not going to work. Uh yeah, go to the next page. Can you go to the next page? Okay.

There. Okay. Part A, general fund. Okay. Revenue review. We're going to have different tasks. We're going to look at trend analysis to look at the inevit things there. Then go to the next one. Fire and police department. Okay. What we're going to do, we're going to meet on the heels of them doing their FTE assessment, talk to them about what they're doing to see if they've considered everything that they can.

Then we're going to go down to see, look at non-personnel categories, and look at trend analysis there. Keep going. Uh then might pick some other ones. Keep going. Uh cost recovery programs, impact fee. We probably won't do that. Those are things that came out of our last year's suggestion. Keep going. Uh keep going. Pension funding. Maybe we'll look at that. Uh and keep going. Let's go to the next section. Now then there was something on enterprise fund.

Okay, should we do something about the uh water? Should we be looking at something for water? What should we be looking at? Keep going. And then it came down to uh uh construction and uh CIP and what we should do a project anyway know that this kind of document existed that said here's a scope. Is this something we need to do as a group to come back to and these people need to agree with it? And then give us a framework. This is my audit background from being with Ernston Young for 36 years.

Let's come up with the plan and then let's execute the plan. So know something like that exists. I really like the plan. I think that's great. Have you shared this with Sonia? Yeah, she's seen it. But then when we talk about how we're going to do this, that's where we run into the problem about open meeting violations. I I'm still not following that. I think some something that maybe is very important here is there's there's a lot more here than can be done in one season.

Okay, this is a multi-year process. it might be worthwhile for for the council to take a look at this and because you each have Barry has some objectives, you have some objectives, you have some objectives. Um go through that and say here's the three things that we want you to really focus on this year and and pick three and then next year we'll pick the next three and if we you know three years from now we'll have nine big things done, you know.

Uh I would I would I would maybe try to do it that way because you have like Barry wants to go a lot of metrics. Okay, we want to go 5%. Well, where do you think that 5% could come from? Which metrics do you think are most important? I think this might help guide that. And you can kind of as a team prioritize that and then come back and and give us and that would help us in terms of getting some guidance. Yeah, we can do whatever you want us to do.

We just kind of need to know what that is and what the parameters are on how we can go about doing it. And I also think that whatever you prioritize, balance that with a discussion with staff to understand that, hey, is this doable? You know, but certainly a 10-page document is not doable in one year. So, well, and I want to stress one thing he said, which is multi-year project.

Because if we're going to ask you to review this whole document, put together priorities, and then make a winnowed down document and a direction to us, then we're looking at already putting the treasurer's office behind for for the budget cycle, right?

I mean, so let's be realistic about reviewing this year's budget and then how you know, let's just look at it long term because I do not want us and I don't think you want to do what we did last cycle, which is a treasurer's office was working overtime to actually put together the budget and serve the BRC and serve the council. and I honestly don't know how they achieved everything they did. So, let's be let's be realistic. That's all I'm asking. Thank you.

And thank you, Mark, for putting that together. If you would circulate that uh to to someone, a staff member, I guess, Sonia, that it was it was at our last meeting. It is on file. It's there. And I just one more thing I want to add. Your staff is really really good. I've met a lot with your key staff, the ones that are sitting there and I've met with some of the people that report to them.

You've got some really good people here and I and as an accountant, I've got a high degree of confidence in the quality of the information that's being generated. Great. That's great feedback. Thank you. Uh Councilwoman McAllen and then Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor. Uh uh Committee Member uh Stevens, I appreciate you taking the time and you and Commissioner Newman uh to create that type of document. what you're suggesting is very similar to what the audit committee does.

They look at the whole city, every single department, but it can't be done in one year. So, it's a cycle just exactly what your suggestion, you know, should be.

And I would say that maybe under the direction of city manager Kaitton and our city treasurer to maybe look at that document, hone it down, and maybe look at a long-term whatever fiveyear out look, something of that nature, but with the parameters of we're looking at these type of things, these four things in these three departments or these three things, you know, like you were saying, the looking at the percentages, the overages, uh, not to use the term deep dive, but you know, those type of things.

Like if you look at a rubric for practical purposes, you create a rubric that you're going to use in the scale or in this schedule over the next three years for this department, this department, and this department and use that rubric and apply it. And it might go super fast in some areas, but less in others.

But it seems very similar to how we actually operate the the audit committee, but it would give you direction and it would uh create the parameters in which you're looking for or rubric for another term. But thank you so much. I I love that idea. if um uh city manager Kaitton and and our city treasurer may be, you know, open to that, they would be able to look at your document, hone it, and um create something that uh is usable. Thank you, Councilman Graham.

Would you like to spend another hour talking about the budget tonight? Thanks for being here. Do it tomorrow. Thank you. I don't see anyone. I know our city treasurer Sonia, go right ahead. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council, and thank you, BRC members. Um, there was a lot of great conversation tonight, and I took a lot of notes, and I just wanted to uh make sure that the direction for staff is clear. I heard that um I heard a lot of different um direction.

Uh for example, I think it sounds like you would like the BRC to look for 5% cuts across the board for the budget. and also look at a lot of trends and ratios and comparisons to other cities.

Maybe select some areas and do some uh specific um maybe not audit might not be the word word or deep dive might not be the word but maybe more um inquiries and reports and also um looking for some efficiencies and maybe um I also heard um that you're interested in taking a look at Commissioner Stevens document and maybe trying to refine that I do want to say that the last uh at the last meeting in October, we re uh revised the budget review commission ordinance to focus them on reviewing the budget.

So, and uh we removed the work plan and the scope of specific items. So, we will bring back to you a um amended ordinance again to add those features back in. Otherwise, the ordinance currently does not um provide for that. it pretty much focuses them on reviewing the budget and not doing these budget topics or you know specific areas of focus and also um so I think I uh would like more direction on that and make sure that we are um um addressing the council's interests. Thank you.

Well, I think you you summarized that really well and I do think uh the ordinance, you know, we need some meat on the bones for for them to be able to do what they what they need to do to be productive. So, I think that's a good idea and that's that's why I didn't support those revisions in the first place. So, I would like to see that um put back together. So, that's that's great. Uh Councilwoman Dascus, thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, I don't think you heard uh unanimous direction from this from the council on a 5% cut. Um, Councilwoman Whitehead said that she was concerned about if we cut some things and then what what is the long-term hurt there. Um, I'm also aware that city manager Kaitton is u working through his staff on on budget cuts and so he has his own thing and so I'm a little bit concerned about if we give so many people different direction. Obviously we we want to have an efficient budget.

Obviously we want to spend the taxpayer dollar well and and be good stewards of the money. And if we can reduce our budget that's a wonderful thing. Um but I don't want to do that. um and step over his toes. And I don't want to do it in a way that is not um a long-term visionary for the city of Scottsdale. So, I think I don't think that's a a direction that we should run.

Now, we we should have an overall goal of seeing if we can reduce reducing where we should if we find redundancies, things like that. Um, but I I do believe that the city manager has a a pretty big initiative going on right now to to address the budget uh reductions. So, Councilwoman Whitehead. Yeah. Uh, thank you. Thank you for bringing that up. Uh, yeah, it's up to the council to direct the city manager on these cuts and then you all to review. So, back to my planning commission.

Um, uh, you know, it's you get what we provide and then you review. You don't go out seeking for. I think that's Anyway, good point. Uh, Councilwoman Dascus. Thanks, Councilman Graham. We're kind of debating now this 5% cut. I don't believe in a 5% cut for the sake of a 5% cut. A lot of times that just may mean we're not spending money on um a capital project that we should be spending money and you we better be spending that money because we tax people. We don't want to just sit there.

It's like are we just going to let money sit in there? Um just for so we can say that check the box that we cut at 5%. So for the cutting for the sake of cutting is not good. However, you probably find 5%. Like yeah. So, um, but I don't want to hold capital projects back for the sake of that. And if we're going to, you have to look at the full picture. So, thank you, mayor. Thank you. I'm sorry. On the on the 5% though, there's a lot of budgets here.

When you say 5%, that's not the total two billion. Is it is it something for operating? There's operating that's like 5600 million. There's enterprise. It's opex. It's opex. Okay. So, the operating piece. Okay. Thank you. And it's finding efficiencies, right, and reducing redundancies and things of that nature. Um, and you know, I I have confidence that you know, this this is a challenge to not you necessarily, but the city manager.

Um, and it sounds like he's already got he's he's already been doing that and identifying those. So, um, you know, I have I have I have confidence in you to do to find some good savings. So, thank you. All right. I don't see anything further. Anybody? All right. Do you have anything for us further? Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks for coming and being so patient with us today. Have a great night. All right. So that concludes our work study session I believe.

Now we're gonna uh move to adjourn this and we're going to move to kick off our five o'clock meeting. Should we do Should we do this tomorrow? Okay. We started at three. Uh there used to be like a six-hour rule when I was on council. Isn't that delightful? All right. So, I'm going to call this meeting to order. Uh I now I'll call the November 17th, 2025 city council regular meeting and work study session to order. City clerk Ben Lane, please. Did I move to adjourn? Did we adjourn? All right.

All those in favor? All right. Uh so, City Clerk Ben Lane, please do our roll call for us. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Lisa Barroski, present. Vice Mayor Adam Quasman. Council members Jan Debos here. Barry Graham here. Kathy Littlefield here. Maryanne McAllen present. And Solange Whitehead here. City Manager Greg Kaitton here. Interimm city attorney Louis Santea present. City treasurer Sony Andrews. Acting city layoff here. And the clerk is present. Thank you mayor. Thank you.

This evening we have Scottsdale Sergeant Eric BS, Officer Jason Leehander, and Officer Katie Alcini, as well as Scottsdale firefighter L. Deadman. If anyone requires their assistance, please let a member of our staff know. Uh for the I'm going to ask Councilman Graham to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Please. Thank you, Mayor. My honor I pledge alce 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 for the invocation, uh, I'll call on Councilwoman Mckllen. Thank you, Mayor. Um, November being Veterans Day. Last week we celebrated uh Veterans Day at our Veterans Memorial out here on the city hall lawn. And we have a very uh active Veterans Commission. And this year, our Veterans Commission did a writing contest for local high school students.

And so instead of a normal invocation, what I'm going to be doing is reading the the poem that won the contest by uh high schooler uh Carly Cox. She goes to Sorro High School and this was um the writing that she did. So if you will just take a moment to listen to the words written by a high school student in honor of our veterans in service. We remember the sunrise in Arizona. We think of the ones who chose to fight. They left everything behind.

With one though in mind, to keep the country kind from the deserts and the valleys, we remember their bravery. They didn't fight for their names or for praise. They did it for the love of their country. Now we stand where they once did and try to honor what they did. We thank them for all they have fought for and for all the pain they witnessed in war. So when the flag is held up high and all the stars in the sky, we will remember the ones who served for us.

Their voices will live no matter what. Thank you, Carly, for the wonderful writing. That was very nice. Thank you. All right. Uh, starting with our executive session announcement. During tonight's meeting, the council may make a motion to recess into executive session.

If in the event we need to obtain legal advice on any applicable item on the agenda, if the council so authorizes, the executive session will be held immediately and will not be open to the public and this meeting would resume following that ex any executive session. Next, I have public comment, uh, which is reserved for Scottsdale citizens, uh, 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, and speakers are limited to three minutes to address the council. If you wish to speak on a non-aggendaized or agendaized topic, please see the city clerk. Uh we have quite a few. Um starting with Steve Sutton and then next we'll have Brandon Donnelly, Dan Isac, uh Patty Badnock, uh Virginia Wogan, Gail Golick, uh Andrew Wman, Laura Schaer, and Michael Schaer. I don't see them. Is it morning yet? almost snooze button.

Member, good evening again and council members. This is just a really informal comment. I've been talking to hundreds of Scottdale residents these last almost three weeks. I am under the distinct impression the council is truly out of touch with how people feel about building a garage at the parking corral. We have about 1700 and something signatures now and there's only from a few places and we now have about 14 volunteers ready to start going all over Scottsdale.

We have a full page ad in the Scottsdale Progress page seven asking questions that need to be answered. This is going to be an issue for the next 12 months regardless of what happens. People are not happy about this. You need to do some polling. You need to find out how what people feel about this. I refuse hundreds of tourists and non-residents who want to sign petition.

I think that there is a distinct lack of understanding of how culturally significant that 16-year-old farmers market is in that location. I think there's also a lack of understanding of the logistics of being able to run the farmers market and that moving them to an L-shaped parking lot on the back side of city hall is going to be very difficult for them.

or as one vendor said to me, "They're just going to make this as hard as possible on us, aren't they?" The fact that you're going to force anybody who's cooking into one small area over here on the north side is going to further complicate the difficulties since you plan to put a shade structure up that the contract says no cooking can occur under. We're going to keep this up.

We are going to constantly be reminding you and bringing more and more signatures to you to let you know you need to find out what's really going on here. And I still would like to know why we have never done a parking study. A parking study that was apparently agreed to by all council members back in February 2020. I did get an answer from somebody.

I got an answer that uh this wasn't done because a lot of members of the staff who apparently are no longer working for the city of Scottsdale pretty much said why waste the money? We know what it's going to say. There's no need for a parking garage in that location. What people are starting to think about is this is a political deal that was made about 18 months ago between the two opposing factions, each holding each other hostage. One wants a garage up north. One wants a garage down here.

Haven't yet figured out why gallery owners on the west side of Scottsdale Road want a garage at the parking corral. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Steve. Brandon Donley, Dan Isaac, Dan Isaac, address on record. Um, a few months ago I explained that I was a conservative and one of the reasons I'm a conservative is I believe the government should not waste money. As a correlary to that, the government should not spend money supporting a private business.

So I was very disappointed that our conservative dominated council approved $125,000 in corporate welfare to support the gallery owners. I am very disappointed with this because we should not be picking one industry and giving them money. Now, don't get me wrong. I am a strong supporter and advocate for the arts. That's why we have Scottsdale Arts. That's why we have the Performing Arts Center. That's why we have public art. But this $125,000 was a gift that benefits gallery owners.

Not only that, but the guidelines for this grant say that the maximum is 75,000. The guidelines for this grant say that an event must be on more than two consecutive days. This violated those guidelines.

I'm also disappointed that three people who directly benefit from the galleries through their campaign contributions in cash and in kind were allowed to vote on this issue particularly Jan who made a big deal in the campaign that she would shut the door on any of this self-deing and she would tighten the ethics of course that was when she was running for office. I would also like to point out that Mr. Pedgeman led a false narrative a couple months ago. Can I have the overhead, please?

Can we rotate that? You want me to rotate that? Okay. Other way. You're you're well aware that I am very good with numbers and I'm also aware of how numbers are manipulated. In this graph, which Mr. Pedman showed and Barry also commented on, would lead one to believe that we have sacrificed visitors in the morning for visitors in the afternoon. But this is a percentage change. And if you want to mislead people, show percentages, not numbers. But we do have the numbers.

And those numbers actually show that the big changes are not correlated to the percentages. A large percentage change in a small number is still a small number. And in fact, the biggest decrease was in hours where retail operations don't operate. 6 am, 7 a.m., 8 am. And most of the art galleries don't even open until 10 or 11. Mr. Mr. Benjamins opens at 11:30. The net increase in visitors actually is positive during his office hours. Sorry, real quick. This chart shows actual visitors.

Point of order. Gentleman's time is expired. We had some technical problems. Just Are you close to done? Yes. 10 seconds. 10 seconds. This chart actually shows that foot traffic in the art district has increased as well as in Scottsdale Fashion Square. The main decrease is actually in the entertainment district. And if we're going to give corporate welfare, it should be who funds our revenues, which is not the arts district. So this is just unnecessary corporate handouts. Thank you, Dan.

Patty Badnock. Good evening. Patty Badno, 40-year resident of Scottsdale. Historic Oldtown Mission. The Historic Oldtown Mission is of historic significance for both the state of Arizona and to our city of Scottsdale. Visitors from all over the world have come to see it. That is a quotation found in Scottsdale Northwest newspaper dated December 7, 18 years ago.

It continues, "Our preservation of this old adobe mission, our first Catholic church, is really important to all of us," says the Scottsdale Progress. So, some of us may disagree with this. I wouldn't go there if I were you. It's pretty clear that the citizens of Scottsdale at large, when told of this garage thing, are not happy with the direction this current majority is taking. A higher regard needs to be respected.

The Hispanic, the Puma, the Yaki Indian families who settled in the Scottsdale area built the Old Adobe Mission in the 1930s as a spiritual sanctuary and community center to honor God and their special saint, Our Lady of Guadalupe. They collected what meager donations they had to buy the supplies. The mission was designed by Robert Evans and it has an architectural resemblance to the mission of San Xavier at Delbar in Tucson, Arizona.

It is constructed of a unique blend of handmade adobe that was composed primarily of native soil and straw. Special masses and gatherings to dedicate the mission have been held in honoring the descendants of these families who built the mission. And some of you may remember the names of those who were held in high regard because they all demonstrated love for restorative interests.

Names like Jose and Francis Burell, Anom Bishop, Francis Young, Joanne Hanley, George and Elizabeth Cavalier, and Don Ber to name some. I didn't fully realize then what an honor it was to have known each and every one of these historic people personally, especially now after having done some history of this most special place called the old adobe mission. Thank you. Thank you, Virginia Wogan. Good evening, madame uh mayor and members of the city council.

My name is Virginia Wogan and I live in Village Grove 3 about 2 miles east of here. Um, the reason I'm here today is to speak to you all regarding an issue that came at up at your last um, city council meeting and it kind of left me scratching my head because the idea was that our city manager and people were going to be looking into building a a memorial with taxpayer monies in the city of Scottsdale for somebody who is a national political person.

I started looking into the memorials that we have in Scottsdale and to my surprise and perhaps to yours. None of them have been funded directly by city of Scottsdale. They have been um dedicated and put up by citizens, some other family member groups. And all of the memorials that we have in this city are dedicated to people who directly impacted the city of Scottsdale, either by its growth, environmental, or improving the lifestyle of the city of Scottsdale. So that's where I wanted to start.

And just with that in mind, if you kind of look at what is really significant to the city of Scottsdale, there are many things. And one of them is the Indian Bend Wash Green Belt. It's an area in Scottsdale that invites all people, not just some, but all people to enjoy the beauty of outdoors, to congregate, either families, individually, or with groups.

Anybody is allowed to go there and use the beautiful parks, walk, bike, use the trails that are there for the 12.9 miles from Shea Boulevard to Tempe Town Lake. And guess what? It's a space that's open to all. Doesn't matter what your background is. Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is because of the fact that I really appreciate that multi-use space. And for those of you who may or may not know, the brainchild of the Indian Ben Wash, Bill Walton, passed away on November 4th, 2025.

And speaking of that, he dedicated his life and everything that he did for this city of Scottsdale. He was on early commissions. He was on the city council. But the craziest thing of all is that he as a landscape architect came up with the idea of the green belt that we all cherish and use instead of having them commissioners put a cement blocks. How ugly would that have been for Scottsdale? And he was speaking in the spirit of Scottsdale and thinking about our citizenry.

40 years later, it's still there. We all enjoy it and we all use it. I would really really appreciate this city council and the city manager to look into dedicating once again a memorial to somebody who spent his time and his life here in Scottsdale for the betterment of our people. A Bill Walton memorial to the Indian Ben Wash would be a fabulous, fabulous use of our resources. Thank you, Gail Goo. Madame Mayor and Councilman and women, thank you um for having me up here again tonight.

Um, I'm here to formally present my citizen position petition which requests that the city council agendaize a public discussion on the city compliance with ARS45-576, Arizona's 100year assured water supply requirement. This petition does not take a position on any specific development or project.

It focuses solely on the city's legal obligation under state law to demonstrate a 100-year assured water supply before approving actions that authorize, advance, or permit residential development in Scottsdale. In the city's official petition response dated November 4th, 2025, Scottsdale acknowledged several key facts. The city does not currently possess documentation identifying the water sources for future residential development.

This number two, the city does not have updated 100year demand modeling or a current water portfolio analysis on file. Number three, the city is relying on a 2013 designation of assured water supply which covered projected needs only through 2025. meaning Scottsdale is now outside its planning horizon. ADWR has not yet approved Scottsdale's new DAWS application. Given these admissions, Scottsdale still currently cannot demonstrate the 100-year assured water supply required under ARS 455-576.

And I want to quote the statute directly so that there's no confusion. ARS 45576A. A plat of subdivision shall not be approved by a city or town unless the director has determined that the subdivision has an assured water supply. ARS45-576H. A city or town shall not approve a plat or permit of the construction of a subdivision unless the an assured water supply has been demonstrated.

In plain language, the latest the water supply must be demonstrated before the city takes actions that enable the move or move residential development forward because Scottsdale's water documentation is outdated, incomplete, outside the planning horizon, and not approved by AWR.

My petition asks that the city council simply agendaize this issue so that the staff can publicly present the current current water supply documentation, the updated 100-year modeling, the identified sources, and Scottsdale's DOWS status with AW ADWR. The public deserves clarity and the city deserves protection from legal exposure. For these reasons, I respectfully request that my petition be placed on a future council agenda for full discussion and possible action. Thank you.

Thank you, Andrew Wman. I don't see him or Laura or Michael Schaefer. Okay, so that concludes our non-aggendaized public comment period. Next, we're going to move on to the meeting minutes approvals. Uh, I'll entertain a motion to approve the special meeting minutes of September 30th, 2025 and executive session meeting minutes of September 30th, 2025. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Okay, moving on to consent agenda items 1 through 18A. Let's see if we have any public speakers.

We do have some speakers on these uh number 12 and 13. And I actually am going to pull uh item number 13, the legislative agenda, so that we can hear a little bit more about that. Anybody else have any questions? Uh Councilwoman Littlefield, I'd like to Item number eight for presentation, please. Anybody else? Sorry, not six. Six. Okay. All right. So, six and 13. So, absent six and 13, I'll entertain a motion to approve consent agenda items 1 through 5 and 7 through 12 and 14 through 18.

So moved. Second. Mayor, I apologize. Can you add 18A? Yeah, 18A. I just saw that. Yeah. All right. All those in favor? Yeah, we're gonna get there. What? Oh, 12. 12. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Christine Burke, thanks for keeping track of me, Dan. Appreciate it. Thank you. U Madame Mayor, uh the rest of the council, uh city manager and the staff and the chief. Uh my name's Christine Burke, uh 8300 block via Dave Ventur, Scottdale.

I'm a resident, a retired homicide detective and sergeant and Scottsdale business owner. And tonight you have the option to accept potential federal and state grants for the DNA backlog reduction uh and the opio opioid forensic training. And I fully support both of those items. That said, I want to have an honest discussion about what KOTUS can do and not do alone in delivering for sexual assault cases for the citizens of Scottdale. And currently we have over 80% of unsolved cases.

And so we obviously need not only federal and state funding, but we need funding within this the city of Scottdale. And we've talked a lot tonight about budget cutting and budget allowing. And at other sessions, we've also talked about how we have the best police department here and we want to have it and meeting standards that I believe it was Councilwoman McAllen said, you know, we don't want to cut money and destroy the services.

So, I want to make sure that the council is aware that we need to bring more of this on and we need to do further because there's other newer technology that needs to be funded that can handle and close 50 to 70% of these cases. So, I'd just like to call the council uh to explore other options and make sure that the police department is fully funded to be top of the line in the nation and have the resources that they need available. Thank you. Terrific. Thank you. All right.

So, we'll look at uh item number six first. Is there someone that can do a presentation? Okay. Good evening, madame mayor, members of the council. Brad Carl with the city's planning department. is uh before I begin, is there any specific questions like answered or just a a presentation on this item? Woman Littlefield, I'd like a presentation, please. Absolutely.

So again, Madame Mayor, members of the council, this evening, an agenda item number six on your agendas for the middle housing text amendment, uh case 5ta 2024. Some background on this text amendment. is a result of state legislation, specifically House Bill 2721, um that is requiring some changes to our zoning code in order to become in compliance. Some background on that.

Obviously, the state grants uh Arizona towns and cities the ability to uh enact local authority and set regulations on lo land use and zoning. HP 2721 was introduced and passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor back in April of 2024. This had a longer uh timeline for enaction. It had to be enacted by January 1st of 2026. And so staff is now uh in front of you this evening to hopefully receive your approval for the changes that are proposed at a text amendment.

The city must comply with this by January 1st, 2026 or uh middle housing as I'll demonstrate later will be allowed in all lots within the within the city uh single hemi residential use without any limitations. So just some background again on those municipalities that are subject to this requirement here in Maricopa County. There are 12 in total. Scottsdale being loan in that northeast valley. And this is because of a size size minimum requirement is 75,000 population or greater.

So Scottsdale is the only one in that northeast portion of the valley that meets that threshold. Um what is middle housing? And so this is a term that's been used quite a bit lately in the development community, but is generally a housing type that contain multiple dwelling units in buildings that are generally of the same size and scale as single family homes.

And so the densities as a result, they range between single family homes at usually one uh residence per lot and uh larger multif family homes uh or larger multif family buildings such as apartments. And so the house bill specifically in the state law defines middle housing as duplexes, triplexes, and forplexes that are generally compatible to single family homes in scale, form, and character. Now, these can be take on many different forms as a result of that.

Uh you could have multiple dwelling units attached together in one building as you can see in the upper right. That might be a stacked triplex or a town home or forplex. But these can also be units that are separate on a lot and individual buildings such as the lower right hand uh portion of the screen. Either of these would classify as middle housing as defined by the state. So what does that state law dictate to the city?

At at bare minimum, we had to allow duplexes, triplexes, and forplexes in all single family lots that are within one mile of the city's central business district and downtown, and allow middle housing on at least 20% of any new residential developments of more than 10 contiguous acres in size. What the city cannot do uh and this was also dictated by the state law is discourage the development of middle housing through any actions or requirements restrict middle housing to less than two floors.

Uh further restrict middle housing to an F or lot coverage of less than five uh or 50%.5 um set any restrictions on middle housing that's more restrictive than the process which we review single family homes in the city. cannot require owner occupancy of any of the units on the property or compliance with commercial building codes. In addition, we cannot require more than one off- streetet parking for each unit within that development.

And important to Scottsdale, we cannot require any uh of these units to contain fire sprinklers. There are some exclusions that are permitted by the state law. Those areas within the vicinity of an airport um are excluded. For Scottsdale, that means area directly adjacent to our Scottsdale airport in the northern part of the city. Areas that are not incorporated obviously we're not cannot take advantage of this.

Any areas that lack sufficient urban services such as uh the ability to pick up solid waste uh capacity on streets or so so forth would be excluded. Areas that are not served by water and sewer are also excluded. And also as I mentioned this only applies to areas that are zoned residential. So any areas that are not residential cannot use this.

Important to note uh the state law does allow HOAs that have private restrictions commonly referred to as CCNRs to restrict the the use of middle housing in their neighborhoods privately. So the affected properties as a result of those exclusions and allowances are shown on the screen here.

Generally, the entire city would be uh available to use these provisions uh based on that second part of that uh requirements that I outlined, which is if you have a property that's over 10 acres in size and you want to use 20% of that for middle housing, you could do so. In addition, that area that's on the blue in blue in the lower part of the screen is that area within within one mile of our Oldtown area, which is in black on the screen.

So any of those properties that are located within the blue on the screen would be uh permitted to do the uh middle housing development if they meet all the requirements and uh other exclusions. And to blow that up a little bit here, you can see on the screen it generally stretches all the way up to McDonald Drive on the northern extent just past Hayden uh to the east to the city's boundary on the west and down to um about Oak I'm sorry, yeah, Oak Street on the southern area.

So what are we proposing? What is the city proposing for the text amendment? Of course, we have to establish new definitions in our zoning code for duplexes, triplexes, forplexes, and the middle housing as a whole. Uh we are also going to establish that new middle housing land use in residential zoning districts. Uh we have to establish qualifications that must be met in order to develop these projects and construct these projects.

Again, demonstrating adequate infrastructure and urban services and the ability for uh utility and zoning compliances. We also are going to review uh establish a review procedure for these developments and objective standards which I'll go forward a little bit here later in presentation.

Those qualifications as I mentioned areas that are near that vicinity um if I go back a few slides here that area within the vicinity that's excluded is that area in red that's the vicinity of the airport Scotta airport that is excluded. There's typic there's currently no residential properties within that area right now.

Um also area had required demonstration again providing urban services such as solid waste collection and transportation access demonstration of adequate water and sewer to the site and review of the utility providers of the proposed development. Um those objective standards as I mentioned buildings cannot exceed two stories in height per our new requirements and in addition they cannot have a f that exceeds.5. We are requiring one off- streetet parking per unit at a minimum.

The density uh per each lot would be again either a duplex, triplex or forplex and that would be determined to pay dependent upon uh the adequacy of urban services. As mentioned before, building height and setbacks will be per the underlying zoning district. Each dwelling unit must have a separate access um prior standards and address landscaping and addressing requirements per our city typical city requirements.

We are making a number of additional text amendments to the code and like we do anytime we open up the zoning code. We want to improve the usability of that code uh make some minor tweaks and correct any errors that might be there. So there's a number of those shown on the screen here uh for your reference. So for timeline as I mentioned this is a result of legislation that would happened in 2024.

So we did initiate this text amendment back in 2024 but again getting to it now as a result of other housing bills that were addressed earlier than this. We had two public outreach uh open house meetings in September planning commission hearings both uh September 24th and October 8th and then tonight we're in front of you for action. As I mentioned again, these provisions must be adopted by the city no later than January 1st, 2026.

So this evening, we're requesting adoption of both an ordinance and resolution to make these text amendment changes uh go on the books, so to say. Um if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer those. Thank you, Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Carr, good presentation. I attended one of your open houses. It's a good open house. Senate bill or excuse me, House Bill 2721 is statemandated density. You know it, I know it, and you know that I know it. Thank you.

Um, are we in your estimation, are we doing the minimum compliance while following the law? Uh, Mayor Bowski, uh, Council Member Graham, I would say that we are meeting all the requirements that are outlined by the state statutes. Yes. All right. Because once it's in, we can never take it back, as you know. Um, I'm really concerned about no neighborhood notice, no public hearing, no appeal, just a staff sign off. It's not transparency. It's eliminating citizen input completely.

Um, is it true that it cuts parking to one space per unit and bans in front yards? Councilman Graham, that is correct. Per the state requirements, the city cannot require more than one space per unit. We're hopeful that obviously people build more, but that's the minimum requirement. Uh, to me that just screams guaranteed street parking chaos. Um, I think it opens the doors for investors to buy and convert single family homes into rental plexes, changing neighborhood character forever.

So, hope we adopt meet the compliance or meet the law, meet the requirements of the law, but don't exceed them. Um, are there any were there any sunsets that were possible by chance or is is this just sort of a in perpetuity type of thing? Councilman Graham, it's in perpetuity right now. I mean, obviously the state could change their requirements at some point in the future, but right now it's it's a a thing that would happen in per in perpetuity. All right.

Well, I'm going to be supporting it, but very reluctantly. Thank you, Mr. Carr. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Mckllen. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, thank you, Brad, for your presentation. Uh, I know how hard you've worked on this and also Erin, your entire staff. um having to work on this. And I just want to reiterate, this is something the city is being forced to do. Similar to what Councilman Graham's saying, the state legislature has really taken this um out of our hands.

I appreciate all the work you've done. I went to both the uh public meetings. I listened to, you know, citizens say how concerned they were. Um, but I know that you've done a very good job at this and I appreciate um all the time you've spent even with the council members uh on our on your own trying to explain to us how this will affect the city.

Uh, and with that, I would like to motion to adopt ordinance number 4690 for the purpose of amending the city of Scott City of Scottsdale zoning ordinance number 455 to codify requirements for middle housing development and adopt resolution number 13507 declaring a as a public record the middle housing tax amendment 5-ta-2024. I'll second that. regrettably. Thank you, Councilwoman Littlefield. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Grant. I just called this up.

I wanted to give the citizens of Scottsdale a chance to understand what was going to happen and what was coming and that this was not done by the city of Scottsdale itself. We are under orders to do this by the state. And I wanted to thank you for all the work that you and your and your staff have done on this um to make it as least infringing on the rights of our citizens as you possibly could. And thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

I don't see any more questions, so let's go ahead and vote on this. Please indicate your vote. Okay. All right. Now we have number 13, consent agenda item 13. Madame Mayor, if as staff is making their way to the podium.

I just wanted to introduce a staff member that some council members may be aware of, but Sarah Sparman, she's our government relations manager and we recently had a retirement and some staffing changes and so uh Miss Sparman has been elevated to government relations manager and I would just uh introduce her to council and let her take the presentation from here. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Great. Congratulations. Thank you. Think good evening uh mayor count uh mayor and uh council members.

My name is Sarah Sparman, government relations manager. In the sake of time, I did prepare a presentation, but if you would prefer to sp specific to that that's a good idea. Um it's the flock license plates, I understand. Or can I get Elmo on, please? I've received a tremendous amount of correspondence email traffic on the flock license plate. So, I want to understand what it is where where we're at in this process. Um, and just ask some questions.

Um certainly I um Chief Leuk is here if you have specific questions on the LPR um program itself or if you have something um about this our public safety section of a our legislative um agenda specifically talks about advancing public safety and criminal justice initiatives that protects residents from crime. leverage technology and upholds the public safety. But I think you are speaking specific to the next one.

Promote the responsible and transparent use of emerging technologies including real-time crime centers, drones as first responders, license plate readers, photo radar, and artificial intelligence. That's exactly right. And it probably would be better if Chief Leuk spoke to this and might even be a city manager. Um I'm Madame Mayor, I'm happy to start out. I just want to clarify before we start the discussion. Is it discussion about our utilization or discussion about the legislative agenda?

If it's the former, I might suggest that feels like a a different workshop discussion on how we use technologies. This sets the legislative agenda moving forward at the state level to defend such things. And if you don't uh want to support that, then it it just gets uh modified, if you will. Well, in particular, just at the security of the data that we're collecting. Uh, so what what is the specific um item that you're going to be advocating for on the license plate raiders?

Is there a bill or that we are expecting or we anticipate some license plate res um license plate reader legislation coming down? At this time, we haven't seen it. We've heard rumblings about it. So in preparation for that some of these um specific policy statements we have our larger core principles that talk about kind of those overarching goals of local control um community um I'm sorry respecting our unique character and culture and supporting local authority.

So that's kind of the overarching and then these smaller polic or policy statements not smaller have a more specific impact on potential legislation that could be coming down the pipeline issues that we know are being discussed currently. Um whether or not actual legislation comes down no. But uh and knowing that we do utilize our real time that we want to be responsible and transparent is what we're encourages encouraging our policy makers to do.

What that looks like specifically, we're not proactively running legislation, but should something come, we want to be able to as long as it falls within responsible and transparent use, um being able to act on that. Okay. Well, so maybe this is a a better item to bring back up, you know, at a later time. And we don't even have any you don't even know if it's there's going to be any legislation, so let's let's leave that. But I do have a couple of speakers, three speakers on this item.

Eric Fowler, Vincent Law, and Marissa Hamilton. I'll start with Eric. All right. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Eric Fowler and I serve as the chair of the Maricopa County Libertarian Party. I'm here about Flock's uh Scottsdale's Flock AI mass surveillance network, a system that this council never voted on, never held a hearing about, and apparently never knew existed.

In three years of public records, there's not a single mention of flock or license plate reader in your agendas or minutes. So, how did we get 60 plus surveillance cameras without Democratic oversight? This isn't just a bad process, it's unconstitutional. A federal judge in Virginia is currently considering a network of 172 flock cameras which likely violate the Fourth Amendment. A plaintiff was tracked 526 times in four months.

A federal appeals court described this kind of comprehensive surveillance like attaching an ankle monitor to every person in the city. Arizona's own Constitution provides even stronger protections. Article 2, Section 8 says, "No person shall be disturbed in his private affairs without authority of law." Where is the authority of law here?

No ordinance, no council vote, no public process, just 60 cameras that appeared overnight tracking every trip to church, every political meeting, and every doctor's visit. The founders wrote the Fourth Amendment specifically to prevent general warrants, where the government surveills everyone instead of targeting suspects. That's exactly what flock cameras do. They photograph every vehicle, creating a permanent searchable database of 99.5% innocent people.

This is the definition of a general warrant. And the company can't be trusted. In Sedona, Flock's representatives told their city council there's no data sharing with federal uh agencies. Only 5 days later, Flock CEO admitted that they'd been sharing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement all along. When citizens there discovered the cameras had been installed without their knowledge, one organizer said it felt like that we were building our own prisons and we were paying for it.

Sedona's vice mayor agreed. A company that lies to us is not a company that we can do business with. The council voted 70 to terminate. Cities that use this technology are getting sued and losing. San Francisco just paid $495,000 when an ALPR led to a woman being held at gunpoint for 20 minutes because a camera misread her license plate. In Aurora, Colorado, they just paid out $1.9 million when a family with children was detained at gunpoint, again due to another ALPR error.

These aren't hypothetical risks. They're actual taxpayer costs. I'm not asking this council to debate whether surveillance is useful. I'm demanding that you terminate this contract immediately just as Sedona did. Mass surveillance of innocent people without warrants, without votes, and without consent isn't a policy option. It's a constitutional violation. Schedule a public hearing to explain how this even happened and ensure that it never happens again. But the cameras need to come down.

Thank you. Thank you. Uh Vincent Law. Hello. All right. Hello, mayor and other uh members of the council. Uh my name is Vincent Law and I am a Scottsdale resident who is also concerned about the potential or actual usage of flock automated license plate reader systems throughout the city. Um, as the speaker before me uh made pretty clear, there are some pretty serious Fourth Amendment considerations, but I'm not going to go into that.

I'm going to speak uh using my experience as a software engineer and go into some of the cyber security risks that flaw cameras pose. Um, you know, I read lots of comments online and people com often say, "Well, you already give a bunch of your data to Google and YouTube and Facebook, so why does this matter?" But the fact of the matter is, um, even when you voluntarily give up your information, Congress has acted at the federal level to give you protections.

For example, when you voluntarily get a driver's license and you submit all your information to the DMV that your people cannot look up use your license plate to look up where you live and this was the result of congressional action. This was because people were looking up license plate numbers, finding out where famous actresses lived or finding out where people with fancy cars lived and robbing them and sometimes killing them. And this led to the Drivers Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

Similarly, when you go to urgent care or you go to a hospital and you voluntarily seek medical aid, there's this thing called HIPPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which imposes serious federal penalties if your doctor or a nurse that they refer you to fail to safeguard your personal medical information.

I actually happen to work for one of these companies and we go through lots of cyber security training, lots of HIPPA training to make sure we are fully compliant with this law. If we don't comply with this law, we can get audited by the department of health and human services. Uh the problem with flock is that you know this AI stuff has come really really fast and congress doesn't act very fast. So I think this has created a huge gap in state laws and federal laws.

Um going on to you know actual issues. Um there was a not too long ago a police officer in Kansas a lieutenant was actually fired for using a flock system to stalk his ex-wife. Specifically, the criminal conviction cited the fact that he stalked his wife at least 200 times and followed her in his own vehicle using data from flock. And here's the thing, this woman lived in Witchah, but this officer did not work for the Witchaw Police Department.

What happened is that she got a hunch that she was being followed. She complained to the local police and that's when some witch officers decided to log log onto flock look at the audit logs and then realize oh wow this guy has looked her up 200 times and we didn't even know about it. So I call on the city council to please investigate the usage of flock. Thank you. Thank you Marissa Hamilton.

Mayor, council members, thank you so much for putting uh taking this off the consent so that we can have discussion on it. Uh the last time I was here, I was uh banned from saying the word road diets. So, it's so nice that I can say it. I'm going to just say it just so road diets. Yes. Um the and so I'm just so thankful that we're able to speak freely here in public comment. Um, I have great concerns about this and I think that your legislative agenda is misguided.

I think that instead of saying that to promote the responsible and transparent use of these license plate readers and photo radar that that's kind of an oxymoron. There is no way to have responsible or transparent use of these devices. I agree with the previous speakers that uh that this software should be gone. Um, I am the co-founder of easyaz.org. We have thousands of members here in Scottsdale that are concerned about this.

I didn't do a call to action on this because I trusted that we'd be able to have open discussion on it and that the council would look further into this. Uh I agree that there should be uh further discussion because I because there isn't a record of the council voting on it. I know it's a problem that you guys have inherited. I would encourage that the only uh activity that your lobbyists do on this at the at the legislature is to drive to have uh these devices be eliminated.

as an example of how they can be used. The last time I came here for public comment, public records show that staff had uh the me worked with the media to do a dossier on me and to identify uh my organization, to identify uh family members, to identify people close to me, to identify some of my comingings and goings. Imagine if you combine that with then the flock data that is available. What would a dossier like that look like?

Now, imagine you're running for office in the future and you have people and staff that are opposed to to any of you running for office for reelection and somehow there's a glitch that that data gets out and now people know everywhere you've been every day, every hour, every moment. These these devices are completely against the Constitution and what the founders ever envisioned us having. They come from the World Economic Forum.

Um when I was sitting down at the legislature during the last session, the Axon lobbyist said that he was the one that was fighting for this. I was able to get the legislature to pull the money for it. Uh and we will continue fighting to stop this because we deserve to have freedom in this country. That's what our founders fought for. And I will be damned if I uh leave this earth not fighting for more liberty uh than what I uh came to this planet with. So we need to keep keep fighting this.

And I would encourage you to take the lead on this. you were all elected to uh in part to fight this agenda and uh and uh Councilwoman Whitehead, the last time I was here, we had uh a thousand comments submitted on the issue that we were fighting. And you said that wasn't enough. It didn't represent all of your citizens. And so we took it as a challenge then to uh educate all the citizens as to what was happening.

And I I'm excited to come back here and see that you're the only person here that was uh opposed to us that time that's still here. And so uh we will continue to educate the citizens and make sure they know what's happening and it is incumbent on your duty to ensure that uh that the constitution is followed here in Scottsdale. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So this is the uh consent agenda item number 13.

So, uh, I'll entertain a motion to approve this and then we'll bring this discussion back at some point in the future. Okay, moving right along. Okay, Councilman Graham. Thank you, Mayor. So, you know, the legislative agenda is not supposed to be controversial. It's kind of how I see it. Um, so I I would think that we could just um on the public safety section, promote the responsible and transparent use of technologies, period, and take away all the other references.

I'm getting some nods from our public safety. They'd probably be okay with that. Just leave it at that. This is not a debate about um what we're doing today. We're not talking about license plate readers, but it's just making this just taking out the controversy. As I was reading through this legislative agenda, I also found something else I might comment on.

Under the water section, we are asking we are asking the state legislature we are lobbying the state legislature to promote policies that encourage water conservation, recycling, and augmentation strategies such as advanced water treatment and reuse while enhancing tools for reliable local water management. I so I'm I you know I'm a big supporter of of our water that's being that's being recharged and put into our irrigation and ponds and stuff like that.

But I'm wondering if my colleagues might want to delete the phrase such as advanced water treatment and reuse. Um it just it kind of feels a little bit like the advanced water purification. So I guess I would make motion basically just to two sections to just to delete a few words in each. And really what I'm doing is just deleting dependent clauses um as exemp as examples. Um again this is a legislative agenda document.

this all we're doing is just we this is what we tell the legis this is this is us lobbing to the legislature and so it should be a document that's as controversial free as controversy free as possible and that as many people can get around it uh middle of the road nuts and bolts so um I'll make a motion to accept it with those two deletions second I have a question. Uh, sure. Councilman Graham, what what are you deleting on the water?

Okay, so if you go to the water, it's a PDF page three, uh, document page five. Um, can we pull it up here? I'm not rewriting it. I'm not adding. I'm not w I'm not injecting any language. Yeah, that's it. That's all the change would do. Yeah, I don't I don't have any objection to that. Uh so, and then did everybody get the first change that I suggested? Adam gave me a or Vice Mayor Quasman says yes. If I can get a nod from public safety that they would be okay.

I'm getting a nod from public safety. They're okay with that. Yeah. And I see the city manager would like to chime in. Yeah. I would prefer to uh give my comments. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Versus a nod on something what I would suggest is very important. So maybe I'll start with the latter one and just give context. I appreciate this is city council's legislative agenda and should you want to modify that we will utilize that in the legislative session.

How I anticipate uh utilizing this as we enter the session as there are bills that are introduced by legislative folks that uh address these items and this gives us a framework to set forward Scottsdale's uh intent initiative so on so forth. Let me give you a specific example and it's a smidge off because it references uh Arizona Department of ADQ as it relates to the water.

So I'm starting with the water one specifically and I would submit that they were drafting regulations in the spring is a department so a bit different than the legislature but allow me a little bit of the latitude in the example that increase our costs significantly if we want to explore the reuse. That is a policy decision for this body or a future body when it comes time. But that decision will have significant financial impacts on the city of Scottsdale should we move forward.

And if we had a framework such as this that gave us guidance, then we can be actively fighting for local management. I just want to point that out in the section above when it states the water authority to manage and plan water resources effectively at the local level. So we want to ensure that we give you folks the elected body the right to do that. This sets that framework. But again then back to the technologies I do want to go back.

It's funny as we had our budget discussion and I heard AI come out of one of the uh budget review commissioners and and the idea of AI and artificial intelligence and technologies.

And I would submit that we have a police department that is on the cutting edge of that and as you will see from tonight with the very small attendance that could be very significant down at the legislature fighting for this technology that we are utilizing today and I would submit they didn't find it in our records request because it's operational. You test the city manager and the chief of police with making this a safe community and that technology has done this.

if you want to strike that latter half. I don't find it to be a significant uh modification, but flock could certainly or license plate reader could certainly come up at the legislature. Again, as we saw from tonight, they're gaining momentum. This allows us to fight for city of Scottsdale's rights at the local level, and someday you could choose to not implement that here at the local level and not be preempted at the state level. Thank you, Madame Mayor. That completes my comments.

Thank you, Councilwoman Whitehead. Mayor, can I respond since since he responded to me? Sure. Okay. I'm sorry, Councilman Graham. I didn't know he I don't think he was responding to you. He's chiming in on the conversation. Well, well, but I made some edits and then he responded to my edits. Okay, that's fine. Go right ahead. Sorry. Um, it's good to see you get a little animated. I hear you. And what I think is that I mean, come on. This is a it's a legislative agenda.

Like, everybody says nobody reads this. They're not even going to read it. Especially the state legislator. You think I don't I don't expect a single state legislator to read this. What I'm saying is that we don't and I want let's have a policy debate about flock readers. supposed to have a policy debate about advanced water purification.

But what I don't want to happen is we put it we sneak it in a legislative agenda and then we come back and we say, "Well, it's already in the legislative agenda that you voted for. It's already there. You voted for this." So, you're contradicting your own legislative agenda that you told the legislature. Um, I agree with you, Mr. city manager that our police are the cutting edge. I mean, everybody's like envious about our police.

Like, they're the f they're on the front lines of technology and adopting, you know, tools to keep us safe. And I hope they keep pushing it. I just don't think that if we delete this dependent clause that this diminishes that advocacy whatsoever. Um, so I I think I want to stick with my changes that I've seem to have gotten nods from public safety that they were okay with.

If public safety was giving me like the cutthroat, you know, I maybe I might feel different, but um I just don't I think we should have a policy debate and vote on it as a council and not kind of like I still think it advocates for the same thing. So those are my comments. Thank you, Mayor. there and there is a motion on the table. Thank you. All right. Uh see the city attorney wants to talk and then if it's go right ahead.

Mayor, member of the councils, I I want to point out one thing about this legislative agenda. It's not just uh something we send to the legislature and say this is what our agenda is. It gives authority to those of us who are registered lobbyists for the um city of Scottsdale to take a position on legislation. That's how we know what our position is based on your blessing through this document. So we're we don't take positions on bills that are not as part of our legislative agenda.

So let's say for the sake of argument um technology was completely removed from this agenda item. Uh then we would not be able to take a position. We wouldn't be able to weigh in on in behalf of the bill or against the bill. So, it's a very helpful document when it comes to people like um Sarah Sparman or who or myself who are are our lobbyists for the city to be able to know exactly what you guys want and what we can take positions on. All right, Councilwoman McCllen. Thank you, Mayor.

I would like to make an alternative motion to accept this item as it was originally. um presented giving us the breath to address agenda items that come in at the legislative level. So I move that we accept the 2026 legislative agenda as presented. Second. All right, let's go ahead and take a vote on the alternate motion. and we we get legislative updates all throughout this session. So, this isn't going to be the last time we talk about this.

So, I don't I'm fine with either of these motions, honestly. I don't I I think that we'll go ahead and take the vote. And All right. So now that motion failed and we're going to go back to Councilman Grahams. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I'm a little uncomfortable about Councilman Graham's motion pertaining to water considering um the data and um this is not a this is something that has been um policy that has been moving forward for decade.

So I would entertain an alternate motion to accept his uh um I guess reducing the word. So, uh, making the public safety, uh, priority more vague, but, um, leaving the water, uh, policy or the priorities as is. Sorry, I'm getting tired. So, was that another alternate motion? That was an alternate motion to uh, accept Councilman Graham's uh, changes on the public safety, but not uh, but leave the water department. um priorities the same. Okay. I don't hear a second. I'll second it.

Point of order. Parliamentarian, can you make a motion, an alternate motion that fails? And don't you have to go back to the original motion? Yes. So, so the so the alternate motion was out of order. Okay. Okay. I stand corrected. Let's vote on Councilman Graham's motion, please. All those in favor. All right, moving right along.

So, I know Kurt Jones has been sitting here a long time tonight, so let's get going with these regular agenda items and then I'm going to be moving making a motion to continue some of these. Yeah. Okay, we'll get there. All right, let's start with item number 19.

This item is a request to adopt ordinance number 4694 and resolution number 13528 for zoning zoning district map amendment to amend the previously approved development plan including amended development standards for floor area ratio on a plus or minus 11.6 6 acre parcel with planned community district zoning with industrial park district as the comparable zoning district. First we have a staff presentation uh from Casey Steini, senior planner. Thank you, Mayor and Council.

Casey Stenkey, senior planner with planning development services here at the city of Scottsdale, presenting case 19 ZN 2004, number two, the Finish Line Auto Club. You see the site location here in the perimeter center uh just west of the 111 freeway north of Princess Drive. And closer in, you can see the existing site conditions. a lot of surface parking surrounding an existing multi-story office building which up until recently was the former headquarters of Fender Guitars.

These existing zoning on this is Industrial Park Plan Community District I1 PCD. Uh note that although this case is coming to you under the nomenclature of a reszoning, we're not actually changing the zoning district. We're just amending the previously approved development plan that was part of a 2004 zoning case. And the general plan has designated future land use here as employment light industrial office.

So the action requested for the council uh as you mentioned mayor is to adopt ordinance 4694 and resolution 13528 for a zoning district map amendment to amend the previously approved development plan including amended development standards for floor area ratio on this roughly 11.6 6 acre site at 17600 North Per with I1 PCD zoning. And that was a a very long worded sentence. So in simple terms, what are they trying to do?

They're simply trying to modify the site layout and the development standards that came as part of that previous 2004 uh development plan. specifically and again in layman's terms taking some of the old anacronistic kind of Belma stands that we don't have anymore removing them and moving into the current modern I1 um standards with the minor exception that they're actually self-imposing a restriction on their floor area ratio which is less than we already afford them.

Uh here's some of the pertinent development and site data. As I mentioned, it's a former office building moving to auto storage and industrial space on a roughly 10 and a half acre site. The building height when it's all said and done is really not going to change. It's kind of a wash. And the parking uh they have a surplus of 50 proposed parking stalls as well as a surplus of open space.

And you can see on the site plan and perhaps the applicant I think has a better version and colored version but if you kind of break the site into two halves. The western half is that larger footprint uh industrial building and on the eastern half you have those uh lower scale one-story around the perimeter of that portion of the site the actual auto storage.

And then there's a larger building in the center which doubles as both auto storage and uh office and leisure space for some of the owners of these condoed units. Uh and with that, uh the applicants request adopting this ordinance and resolution for the zone district map amendment to uh revise the previously approved development plan to the one you see before you. And that's staff's presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. And then we have the applicant.

I don't have any speakers on this item, but let's have Kurt Jones come up from Tiffany and Bosco. Thank you, mayor, members of the city council. Kurt Jones with Tiffany Ambosco. We're at 2525 East Camelback Road in Phoenix, 85 016. Here tonight with Tony Princip, he's the managing partner uh with the Finish Line Auto Club and also Josh Rogers with LG who's going to design and build this site. Um we've been through a long night.

Uh we're here through a sort of a political site plan review process. Uh we're going to be matching the existing I1 standards that are current today. We're going to restrict our F to the old standard. Uh and we're basically not changing any of the zoning. We're just having the site plan reviewed and uh approved. Uh we did work with a key stakeholder on a deed restriction that we uh got approved last week. So uh with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Councilwoman Whitehead, thank you and thank you for your patience tonight. and thanks staff for your patience as well.

Um, so I move to go ahead and approve this Finish Line Auto Club perimeter drive uh 19 CNN 200 2004 number two and adopt ordinance number 4694 and resolution number 13528 for a zoning district map amendment to amend the previously approved development plan including amended development standards for floor ratio uh area ratio on the 11.6 6 acre parcel with planned community district zoning with industrial park district I1 as um the comparable zoning district. Second. Councilwoman Dasquez.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. I'd like to ask the applicant um the church next door, they are currently using the lot and so this will obviously have an impact on them. Can you describe that and what your expectations are? Sure. Mayor and Councilwoman Deboscus, we um we worked with the church throughout this process. We communicated him as as late as this as today. Uh they have a parking agreement with a parcel that's northeast of their parcel.

They also have a parking agreement with the current owner of this parcel. Uh and so they're utilizing that. We're going to honor that as we go through our development review board process and permitting process, which will take probably another year. And then when we build this site, I believe um our uh the client uh Tony has offered uh to utilize the west half front parking area if they still need it at that point. So we've been working with them constantly on this project.

Thank you for doing that. I appreciate it. Thank you. I don't see any other requests to speak. So do we have a second motion and a second? Right. Did Did you have a second? Okay, you did. That's right, Kathy. All right. All those in favor? All right. Moving on to item 20.

This item is a request to adopt resolution 13545 authorizing contract number 2025-181- COS, a revocable license agreement agreement with Farmers Market Support Services LLC for the temporary use of the city's city hall parking lot to hold the weekly Oldtown Scottsdale Farmers Market. Uh here to present for us, Rachel Santana. Mayor Barowski, Vice Mayor, members of the council, thank you very much.

We are here tonight to request your approval for the revocable license agreement for the Oldtown Scottsdale Farmers Market. This agreement would begin uh in effect um October of 2026. We are excited um to have them move closer to the civic center. Um the agreement, the new agreement is very consistent with the old agreement. Um here are just a few bullet points there. But new with this request is we are going to help the farmers market communicate um this move to the public.

Um the farmers market is going to be able to use the um one civic center parking surface parking lot for their patrons and underneath the one civic center for vendor parking. We are going to allow signage in the ride ofway that doesn't a interfere with pedestrian access. Um and also and most importantly there is flexibility to adjust for largecale events in the civic center.

Obviously, we are moving a big operation to a new space and it will from time to time run into other events that are scheduled at the civic center. So, we do have some flexibility to make sure that works well um for both the farmers market and the adjoining events. This is the site plan here. You can see the maroon area is largely their event footprint. Um, and then the farmers market submits this of how their market is going to look. I think there's just one small change.

They are proposing music instead of that little yellow dot in the norththeast corner. They are probably going to have it near what we call the children's fountain. So, this is how they propose their event. And I'd like to thank D.

Logan and Michael Reid and um all of our partners at the farmers market for coming together with us as well as um city staff from a lot of departments, solid waste facilities, police, and then of course Cheryl from my team who has been a wonderful shepherd of this relationship with the farmers market for over a decade, probably closer to two.

So, um, with that, uh, we here is the request to approve the revocable license agreement for the farmers market for temporary use of the city hall parking lot starting October of 2026. All right. Thank you, uh, Councilwoman Whitehead. Well, first of all, I am just thrilled and it just seems like a few months ago the mayor and councilwoman McGawen and I sat down with uh with Rachel and Greg Kaitton with like, oh my gosh, how are we going to do this?

And I think Judy, I think you were in that meeting and of course Deian Mike and it's it's amazing how quick and and you covered it how many different staff departments uh we made changes to a CIP project to make this happen to make this better to make this a step in the right direction even you know regardless of uh the reason for the move.

So, I am going to enthusiastically move uh to adopt resolution authorizing contract number 2025-181- COS, a revocable license agreement with Farmers Market Support Services LLC for the temporary use of the city's city hall parking lot to hold the weekly Old town Scottsdale Farmers Market. And um I just want to say it is this is just core to who we are as a city and it's uh in just I appreciate um D and all your staff for making this bringing this to our city and helping to keep us healthier.

So thank you. And I'll second that motion. And if I may speak ahead Thank you, mayor.

Uh, thank you Rachel, thank you Cheryl, um, and especially D and Michael for being willing to work with the city for the best outcome for all the citizens who were afraid the farmers market was going to leave Scottsdale and effectively all the staff and your team saved the farmers market and kept it in Scottsdale and because you were flexible and willing to learn um, and you were true to your cause like you weren't willing to just say, I mean, you've been you've moved so many times over the years and to trust the city again and to work with us uh to make a better a better opportunity um where they're going to have grass to sit and opportunity for shade and um just a better project a product for the citizens.

So, thank you and I am enthusiastically seconding this. Councilman Graham. No comments. Uh, I'm excited for this and thank you. Councilwoman Littlefield. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I had a question for you, Rachel. I had been talking to a number of staff members about this. I think it's a great idea. I'm very supportive of it.

And but they had said that they were going to be opening up the restrooms here uh in for their use of the patrons and the people who have the the uh market um for their use during the market times. Is that still part of this? It wasn't part of the presentation. And I'm sorry I was trying to hurry in the interest of time, but yes. Uh so the main most of the time public restroom is the public restroom there in the center of the civic center area.

There will be times of course where the civic center is fenced due to events that happens um on average about five times a year, five to six times a year. So when it is fenced and the it's a ticketed event, you know, it'd be very hard to get the patrons and the vendors across uh an entire event. So during those times, we do have the opportunity to simply open the uh city hall restrooms. They're still um obviously city hall is still locked from the other access points, but to use it then.

So, we added it here to this site plan, but that would be the the second option when the first uh restrooms are not available. Okay. Thank you very much. I think that will come in very handy for especially some of the uh children that uh need that and also some of the older people who want to come and shop. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't see any more comments, so let's go ahead and vote on this. Mayor, I apologize. We have two public speakers. Oh, you're right. We do. Sorry about that.

Steve Sutton and Dan Isaac. Three minutes. I have the contract here. Best thing I can say about it is well, there is a contract to keep them here. The second best thing I can say about it is they can give notice with 30 days and cancel the license if it doesn't work out. Uh just want to clarify that I have never said or put into writing that the farmer's market was going to be lost. What I have said is use qualifying words like may be lost.

And the reason why is because I've been talking to the farmers market since June and I know they had concerns about the economic viability of the location you're moving them to. Perhaps those have been resolved. I can tell you that of the hundreds of people I have talked to since June, their customers do not want to go to the farmers market at the city hall parking lot. they prefer to stay where it is now.

There's also a perception that quite a bit of pressure was put on the farmers market by the city to do this. Everything seems kumbaya now, but uh that's not what I've been led to believe for quite some time. For the good of Scottsdale residents enjoy this farmers market. I'm glad they're going to they're going to be here. I hope it works out. I hope it doesn't become an economically unviable situation for them.

Uh it makes no difference to me in my primary goal of protecting the old adobe mission from having this god-awful garage put in front of it. Um, but I am truly sad that uh the market has been pushed out of a place that's been there for 16 years and is a very very emotional topic with our customers. I think you will face consequences for that from the standpoint of uh next year's election. I, like I said, I hope the market does manage to survive here.

But people are concerned and people I'm sure we'll remember how good it was before because I just can't imagine it's going to be as good. The parking situation is going to be a pretty bad and the uh customer flow through the market will not be as nice. Nor will nor will a farmers market a rustic farmers market seem really like a rustic farmers market when it's underneath a bunch of steel and photovotayic cells over half of it. I think it's going to be a pretty strange clash.

Uh a design that even uh Councilman Graham said was not particularly attractive. Anyway, good luck to the farmers market. I hope it works out for you. Thank you, Dan Isaac. Dan Isaac, while I'm glad that there's a landing spot for the farmers market, I think the celebratory mood is disingenuous because there is no need for the farmers market to move.

They're being forced to move because this council is insisting on building a 15 to20 million threestory monstrosity across from the old Adobe mission without a single data point supporting its need. But putting that aside, as I reviewed the staff presentation and the contract, there were two things incredibly absent.

One was any analysis on the impact on the farmers market by for the move and any analysis on whether this is a good deal for the city and your job as council members is definitely to address the latter. As for the first Kathy Littlefield brought up the lack of restrooms in proximity to the new location. Well, I'm glad that there is a solution but it is far less beneficial than the current situation.

Nor has there been any analysis on the expected decrease in foot traffic to the farmers market because it is no longer near retail operations. Nor is there any analysis on the parking available for the patrons of the farmers market at this new location. So it seems that there's no analysis of whether this is even a good spot for the farmers market. More importantly, from the city's perspective, $6,000 a year. Did anybody analyze the cost to the city of having this farmers market?

What is the cost of waste removal? What is the cost of electricity, assuming we're going to be providing it from the solar voltaic cells? What is the cost of public safety staff? What is going to be the cost of the loss of foot traffic for the corell shops and other shops in the old town? because people are not going to necessarily continue their morning coffee and other routines that they have at the current farmers market.

And those retailers will already be negatively impacted for an entire year of construction. So, it's great that we got a place, but there is no analysis that says this is good for the farmers market or good for the city of Scottsdale. That's your job. You should not vote yes unless you know this is good for the city. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, that's the end.

Oh, uh, Councilman Graham, earlier I um pressed the button to talk and then I withdrew my comment, but I remember what I was going to say. I was going to give uh felicitations to um city manager Greg for getting this done. Deal closer. Nice job, city attorney. I believe there may be an error in the agreement. Um it looks like the the agreement um calls for their current agreement to be terminated immediately with the effective date of this agreement.

And I think the the intent was they could continue using the um current location until when um Yeah. So, so um there is an error in the agreement where it uh terminates their current agreement immediately. Uh so if you're going to adopt this agreement, if you could uh make a motion to um keep the I'm sorry. Yeah. I if you could authorize the um city manager with my concurrence to um extend the current agreement um to a date that's mutually acceptable end of the season.

Mayor, I will amend my motion uh to extend the current contract until the end o until a date that's mutually uh acceptable, which happens to be the end of June. And if you could authorize us to make conforming changes, and authorize uh the city manager and city attorney to make the necessary changes. I'll second that. Thank you. Thank you for catching that. We would have fixed it, but thank you. I guess that was definitely one of the first things we discussed in our first meeting.

Okay, I don't see any other comments. We have a motion and a second. Let's go ahead and vote. All right. We have received a Vice Mayor Quasman. Oh, yeah. There we go. Uh, we've received a citizens petition from Gail Golc. Uh, so I'm acknowledging that that uh I think everyone has a copy of this. Yeah. All right. and it's a public discussion uh on water she outlined a couple of times when she spoke earlier today.

Um so we can either direct the city manager to agendaize a petition uh for further discussion, direct the city manager to investigate the matter and prepare a written response uh to the council with a copy to the petitioner or take no action. Anyone have a mayor Yeah. I I move to direct the uh city manager to investigate the matter and prepare a written response to council. All right. I'll second that. Okay. All those in favor? Thank you. All right.

So, next we have and I'd like this to be the last item because it's 9:10. We've been here since 3 and we're going to have to move these last two items to a future agenda if it's all if it pleases the council. Let's do this first. Okay, let's do this. Yeah, let's let's do that. Okay, I'll move to suspend and so we can go straight to boards and commissions. Second. Okay, have at it. I'm going to turn it over to Vice Mayor Clausman for the boards and commissions nominations.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. So, the board of adjustment has one opening. I move uh for u for a future nominate for for future commission member and there are three nominees. An alarm going off. It's somebody has to get up in the morning. um three nominees and I move to suspend the rules and name uh Kenneth Erller, Jenna Moore, and Stephanie Rimmer as nominees to be um to to then move to the uh move to the city manager and the city clerk for in for um uh for the future vote and investigation.

Okay, with that then is that suspend the rules? Is that do we need a vote on that? Yes. Okay. I Okay. Um the building advisory board of appeals has one opening. There's no current advisory boards appeals applications at this time and so we'll be putting that on an on a later agenda. The lost trust fund board has two openings.

Um I move to suspend the rules and and nominate Austin Brooker and Aaron uh Guckle or Gokal, apologize on the name butchering uh to be um to move to the next round with the uh with the city staff. All right. All right. The Neighborhood Advisory Commission has seven openings. Um, one, I apologize. One opening and seven nominees. Apologies. One opening, seven nominees.

I move to suspend the rules and nominate Raphael Barobia, uh, Jane Brena, Katie Coral, Terry Nickerson, Kelly Perez, Ira Scott, and Christopher Smuttle. Uh, uh, I move to nominate them and move them to the next to the next round for city staff. All those in favor? Hi. All right. Resuming the regular agenda. So, we have two we have two remaining items and uh I'd I'm going to move to continue those to a future agenda so we can call it a night. No. No. Oh, they're here. Knock them out.

We need to do the Yeah. Okay. All right. Sorry to keep you here all this time, gentlemen. So, I You're right. Let's get through the Westworld one. Okay. So this is a work study session item uh and it's a presentation discussion and possible direction to staff regarding the Westworld infrastructure master plan including capital project concepts and potential improvements related to access and parking drainage and shade.

Tonight we have Will Loftall, Westworld general manager and Sean Wny from Kimley Horn. Good evening, Mayor Bowski and members of council. Along with Sean Wni of Kimley Horn, I am Will Loftall, general manager of Westworld of Scottsdale. We are here today to present the Westworld infrastructure master plan. In the development of this plan, expertise has been provided by the following organizations.

There have been two engineering and planning design firms, Kimley Horn and Ute Zeers, and two architectural firms, DWL and populace. An infrastructure master plan focuses on the physical development and long-term vision of a site or facility, including site layouts, infrastructure plans, circulation, amenities, and phasing of physical expansion. An infrastructure master plan typically has a time frame of 10 to 20 years.

As you are also aware, Westworld is in the process of completing a strategic plan. This plan will be presented to council by early February. A strategic plan is a complimentary plan to the infrastructure master plan that we are presenting here today. A strategic plan focuses on the organizational direction, goals, and operations of an establishment.

Both of these plans are essential from the standpoint that the infrastructure master plan ensures the facility is built right and the strategic plan ensures that the facility is run right. I will now pass the podium on to Sean Wazny. Shawn will provide an overview of the plan. The plan is segmented into three sections. Section one deals with access, circulation, and parking. Section two deals with drainage and section three will cover shade and climate controlled space.

Sean Mayor and council members, thanks for having us tonight. Um, so really want to go through this rather quickly uh in the interest of time. Purpose of the plan is to evaluate the current venue and provide a a strategy for guiding its long-term development. And in terms of uh the event space at Westworld, as you can see here, we want to have a a flexible multi-use uh event space that's capable of future and event ready for additional events throughout the years.

What you see here is the blue area is mainly the core event area. The yellow is that flexible vendor and parking area. And then the red represents the recreational areas with uh the recently completed sports complexes and then the polo field. So the Westorld Event Center is comprised of two property owners. The first is the BOR that's majority land owner. That's the red dashed area. The yellow area is the city area. That is the represents about roughly 80 acres.

So out of the 386 acres uh the majority is with the B. Westworld is a very v uh versatile venue. It does uh provide several event uh capabilities throughout the years and uh this just representative of the support facilities along with the event spaces in the arenas uh throughout the facility. This is just a quick view of a process that we took. So we've done a lot of uh site investigation, site analysis, met with staff, had several meetings on site.

We worked with the event vendors uh witnessed and operations and tearowns went through a drainage analysis site analysis as well as worked on uh various concepts for feedback from stakeholders. These are some of the events we did get to participate in see setup and tearown. This really helped us get through understand what the uh how the events uh worked. Got input on some of the needs and priorities. Just want to quickly go through some of those findings.

So really one of the first acts was the access and circulation. So one of the main recommendations here is to have the primary access come from Bell between 94th and 98th. This is going to allow us to complement the existing western area access from Puma as well as the eastern access uh from McDall Mountain Ranch Road. uh parking.

We wanted to have a versatile concept that would allow us to have multi- events that occur at the same time, but then also correlate with the uh primary access with the main off of Bell as well as the existing on Puma and Mountain uh Ranch Road as well. Uh in terms of uh RV and and trailer parking for v vendors, we also looked at the area that's just east of Thompson Peak, which is again BOR property opportunities to have uh expand on the RV spaces as well as vendor trailer parking.

And then we also identified uh options for recreational within the basins which also aligns with the parks and recreation master plan. Uh we also looked at a parking access and control system. This would be managing the access points throughout the area as parking gets uh looked at and further developed. Uh again allowing more control from the venue perspective of how the city would operate and provide access and parking.

These are just some quick vendor uh uh renders of some of what that access from Bell would look like as you experience uh coming in from Bell through the site. The other element was uh key findings were the drainage and this is one of the highest priorities and that is currently actually being uh in design now. So the three areas that are looked at in terms of the drainage we looked at the whole drainage of how it works. A lot of the band-aid solutions in the past really just aren't working out.

So, Bajia Drive Channel, that's uh number one that's on the city property there, the the 80 acres as you can see there, that would provide underground uh solutions to help the uh current uh channel which is under uh sized. And then the Westworld core drainage, that's item two. That's really the drainage within the venue area. There's several drainage issues with unsight, so that would improve that. And then three would be the Westworld way channel.

that's along the backside of the property uh near uh Puma access area. Uh this looked at the existing access uh existing indoor and covered space on the property. So what that came out to be was the existing indoor space is about 300,000 square ft. And then there's also about 400,000 square feet of covered space currently within the venue. Uh the study looked at what that would mean in terms of additional opportunities for indoor and covered space as well.

So some of these here were looked at in terms of adding some additional indoor space with expanding on the north hall, looking at a potential convention center north of the north hall and then looking at potential scenarios that would provide covered spaces on the arenas that are there today. Uh Wendell Arena is one of the options that we looked at. So we looked at several uh different opportunities what it would look like what it would mean in terms of viewshed.

One of the uh some of the feedback we got from the stakeholder user groups was what the effect would be in terms of the views of the Mcdow mountains. So we looked at different canopy options and heights so that we could understand what that would mean for that viewshed and that experience. Uh then the feedback. So we went back and met with the stakeholders on multiple times.

We heard really the primary uh feedback that we heard was drainage was the highest prior uh priority, shade was a secondary and then campus connectivity or circulation was third recommendations. So this is the last part of the presentation. Uh we developed this the master plan map here and what this map does is it starts to look at priorities and it recommends uh short-term, midterm and long-term prior uh long-term priorities.

The yellow are those uh midterm, the green are those short terms, and then the blue are the long terms. And some of these uh projects here with the yellow rings and the black rings are projects that are currently underway or have been completed. Um so that's kind of uh has been in the information within your packet and certainly that's that's kind of where we're at tonight. Um so with that, we can open up for any questions. Councilman Graham. Thank you. And I I didn't catch your name.

Is are you Will? Is your name Will? I'm sorry. I'm Sean Wazny with Kimley Horn. Sean Wley. Was Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Wazy. Thanks. Um did you look at whether our major tenants are paying market rates per teny? Yeah. So that's probably something that will could address a little bit better.

But as part of that strategic plan, they are looking at the rates and one of the big challenges is is how do they start to look at uh you know the vendors and how uh rates that they're currently paying and how they can uh kind of sync those up. Do you know how much um as far as our cost cost recovery ratio? How much is going from the general fund to support Westworld operations? I could defer to Will to to speak to that.

Uh we're we're through the mayor uh to councelor Graham at the February presentation. We plan on addressing all of these issues as part of the strategic plan and the questions that you had asked at the last meeting in August of the August 18th. So I had a few more questions. Is this not the time to ask them? I thought you were presenting the the we're presenting the infrastructure master plan today. We'll be presenting the strategic plan in February. Okay.

So, like if I asked about like capital reinvestment into Westworld, would this be a time for that or should we wait? Um, well, this is we're talking about the infrastructure. If if it's specific to the buildings, then that would be today. If it's other elements like equipment and things of that nature, then that we'd want to hold off. What about like um are like vacancy rates for the buildings for the stalls? That'd be February. Okay.

Um will you talk to us about like long-term like turnover for tenants? Absolutely. In February. Sorry. In February, can I ask you about in February? You can ask me anything. Like I was going to ask you I was going to ask you about like average stall and RV vacancy rates and what we're getting there. I was also going to ask you about full-time employees dedicated to Westworld operations and how that compares to other February, right? Yeah, February. I mean, we have 32 full-time employees.

This is on the record, so you can maybe you can remember these questions. Well, we have 32 full-time employees. That's a fact. So, I can go on record. Um, nobody ever showed me that map of the uh facility. I always wondered where the delineation was between uh BOR land and u non BOR or BLM land. No, rec Bureau of Reclamation Bureau of Recreation Bure and State Property City. city, excuse me. Look forward to seeing you in February. As I do you. All right.

So, uh, this does what I heard you tell Councilman Graham is this isn't about operations. We're not dealing with operational issues right now. This is about the physical aspects of the facility. Okay. Well, that looks good. Uh, I don't have any questions then. I'll wait till the next time. Thank you. Thank you very much for uh Council Giving us the opportunity. Councilwoman Littlefield has a question. Thank you. Um very short one-word answer.

Um how many are you planning on building additional stalls for the horse shows and growth potential? We are purchasing some temporary stalls and we are also building new replacing uh all of our permanent stalls. We're actually we're doing two barns right right now this year and then we're we're purchasing another 400 temporary stalls which we anticipate will be here in mid January. Thank you. All right. I don't see any questions. So that's all we have for you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

And uh city treasurer Sonia is uh you're the next item. Is it okay if we push this to a future council meeting? Okay. Yes. because that would be hard to focus on right now. All right. So, move to adjourn. So moved. Thanks. I