Tempe tackles $21 million tax loss, 400 fraudulent sober living operators bilking vulnerable populations

did [Music] did hello mayor mayor mayor mayor Woods May Woods yeah I'm trying to get Mayor Woods's attention May wood the first time yes may Woods can we do a moment of silence hold on I can't hear you hold on okay can we get can we you a moment of silence or Justice ion yeah I was going to say I think when we start in 3 minutes Council we can absolutely do that to get it on the record thank you you're welcome yes she be a tax yet thank you so much and um SE repres salon's not on is she not yet okay she did indicate she was joining okay yeah she T yesterday okay sounds good there sign R they soltion I knew you might have thought that too I know you well scary uh Jason uh everything good or okay all right TR to keep everything on time all right uh good morning everyone welcome to the Tempe city council and arizota state legislators joint meeting this morning here at the ASU Fulton Center thank you so much Arizona State University for hosting us here in this beautiful conference room just want to before we get started uh we were talking right before we began uh councelor barj was talking about we just heard of the passing of Justice Sandra Dale Conor and uh Council Hajj was talking that she would like to do a moment of silence in honor of Justice Sandra de o Conor before we get started with today's official business so we can just do a quick moment of silence thank you so much everyone really appreciate it all right we're going to do get to item number two here welcome and introductions this first of all I want to thank each and every one of you for attending this morning uh we're fortunate obviously to be able to have options to get together both in person as well as virtually to be able to connect prior to this year's legislative session we all know uh that session starts during the second week of January so this meeting with our state legisl legislators is critically important to make sure we're discussing shared priorities and we're hearing from one another before session begins uh we also know that the work of being an elected official is very challenging but we know that this work is well worth the effort in order to represent all of our residents and constituents uh we do I would tell uh Senator FC and I know you're here actually let's before we even get started let's just do the quick round of introduction so I know we have folks here in the room and folks online let me start here to my left with our Senate minority leader great thanks I am mity Epstein I am the Senate minority leader and the senator for district C Ali Chandler and TP thank you so much uh mayor Cory wood City of Tempe council member arene chin City of Tempe council member Doran Garett City of Tempe let me also then take the elected officials online then I'm going to kind of go around the room just so people online know who's in the room uh let me start first with uh council member Hajj hi council member Haj city of TP and thank you so much representative Travers hi everyone uh representative Travers uh ld12 uh South temp West Chandler I was you sounds good and is uh representative Salman on yet I don't believe so uh let's just do a quick round around the room here just to make sure once again that for the folks who are online they know who's here uh let me go ahead and start with our city manager good morning everyone and rosan chy city manager good morning everyone Tom Dunson Chief Deputy city manager uh Tim bur Department of Community Health Services director Burke Deputy city manager and let me go to the back wall here as well Donald or name ASU go ASU Ariana um city of St George city of T Jason wolf city of T um sorry I going to go to you madam City attorney thank you mayor uh Sonia Blain temp City attorney good morning wiell holes City of Tempe director strategic management and Innovation David lucer temp resident um candidate for city council and Veterans Advocate thank you shner Warner City attemp government relations director San Dada city of tempea city of temp clerk Chavez City of Tempe chief of staff and Ty we go to the back wall Ty Lee City of Tempe Jared moris City of Tempe alen nalo City of Tempe it sounds good I and I know we've got several other folks on the phone but I'll make sure just to we keep the meeting moving we'll get back to the agenda but you can see obviously the faces up there I know Chris had an talking about the Brady Bunch earlier so make sure we can actually use that reference in this room um so I just want to just say once again to our state legislators I know to you know Senator repin uh you know we obviously very much value the partnership we have with you here at the city of tempy and appreciate the work you do uh not just simply during the legislative session but also outside of the legislative session as well um we also want to make sure that and we do know this you representa the Travers and all the folks who represent the city of T we know that you very much acknowledge the important work that we do as local elected officials here at the city of tempy and we appreciate the responsiveness that you show to all of us as well as each and every one of our res so we want to make sure we can continue to collaborate with you on ideas of care and interest so we really want to make sure that we always have these touchbased conversations before the session starts because as we know our lives are crazy and we know starting that second week of January things get very crazy down to the state capital for quite a few months so we really value your time and uh you making the time to be here with us this morning so we've got a few things we're going to be talking about today um the silver living uh fraud crisis I know that Council gar has worked very hard on this issue of course uh having a conversation about the impact of the elimination of residential rental tax which I know will start at the beginning of 2025 but still that is a major hit to the general fund budget of the city of Tempi so we'll get more into that and then we want to make sure that we have a chance to open it up to each and every one of this room to talk about what priorities might leave to this upcoming legislative session so with that said I will now turn it over to Tim Burch here who's our community health and human services director who's going to be providing the presentation on sober living fraud for us thank you mayor and good morning members of council and our esteemed State leaders both in the room and online uh Tim bur director of Community Health and Human Services I want to touch on an issue today about the crisis we're having around the explosion of fraudulent Sober Living homes and I'll try to lean on that word fraudulent as much as possible we do have good actors who are great Partners who are delivering much needed mental health and subst ofuse treatment to individuals in our community um next slide please uh the goal here is to give you a little bit of a primer without being exhaustive or remediative for folks who already know the issue uh but this is not something that while it feels like it exploded overnight happen overnight uh as early as 2019 uh Senator holey as well as other tribal leaders began to identify an issue with uh amongst the tribal community of individuals being uh Gone Missing quite frankly um and uh assumed kidnapped in some situations and found were turned up several States over and so living homes being operated here as far away as New Mexico um we know that access began looking into some regular billing um later that year uh in 2020 uh our friends on in goody year began to see an explosion they had up over 70 homes being operated uh they've been able to bring that down remediated to under 20 with local uh ordinances and things that have their disposal we definitely know that that is still significant for their Community I'm surprised even begin to see this out in 2022 um what we know is this really came to a head in May of this year uh and we're thankful for the governor who launched a you know a taskforce and Statewide initiative put Solari on the clock to help individuals stand up 211 option seven and I'll say 211 option 7 several times again because if you your neighbors or anyone you come across being impacted by this issue of being defrauded and not treated properly by uh a detox provider calling 211 option s is how to get that reported and how that individual can get the help that they actually need uh we got griefed shortly after that in June as to the scope and nature of the problem and and we begin at the direction of council and thank you to the championship again of councilwoman garlett and and being president at all of our meetings uh not just from the task force but through her committee as well um and we launched our internal living crisis uh task force uh we have met monthly we have gone through a targeted event Readiness Forum that included all of our internal systems that touch this issue and we're actually getting ready to make recommendations to uh and finalize those here in the coming coming month next slide so the scope of the problem uh really looks like this what we know is over 400 plus uh vendors have been suspended and terminated those are ones that have been identified uh through the Arizona Healthcare cost contain system um over 168 unique providers have been supported through the 211 option 7 line to access this data points are as of last Friday um over 6,200 unique individual identified uh victims of this 50% are not tribally affiliated and I put that point up there to say this began as uh a targeted event against individuals um in the tribal Nations um the providers are uh astute and they are uh able to switch their modes of operation very quickly so they figured out that there's not a check anyone can identify and try to sign up for the endent health plan option uh there's not a lot of safeg guards against identifying someone truly being a member of travel Nation before that enrollment happens so they have been pulling individuals off the streets signing them up under that plan and fraudulently building for services under that plan so as much as half of the fraudulent billing uh won't even be to provide services to the individuals uh for which that plan was identified uh we know that as much as $650 million uh in fraudulent billing happened last justco year uh there was a starling statistic stown out by Senator hot at her event back in June and I just hang on that over the lifespan of this it could be as high as $2 billion dollar and I think about the the the amount of good that could be done with that kind of money what we do know is that Arizona's attorney general and the FBI um are investigating our local tpd is active in that and again public uh shout to Commander Dian Hill and and Kim mcoy and the police department and and efforts they've done a partner in on those investigations next slide that's the scope the size of problem looks a little different and the shape of problem looks a little bit different uh depending on which jurisdiction in there two primary models of operation here you have a licensed Outpatient Treatment Clinic um that has has partnered up with a housing provider um those housing providers and a lot of communities are occupying many many many residential housing uh units in some situations in Mesa I believe one provider came in and took 20 to 40 units out of one subdivision um it looks a little different for a more urban uh space contained City like city of timy what we've seen is individuals partner with individuals who are running hotels and motels we have the collocation of dozens of individual ual and families upwards of as many as 200 at one facility um who are being housed and getting paid via kickbacks from that Outpatient Treatment Center provider I guess really important to understand is the actual housing piece is not paid for by access it is over billing by the treatment provider and then those under the table or Kickback payments to the housing uh provider and that makes it a little hard for us to investigate and track down as well treatment of housing are not typically collocated where they are we do have some enforcement authorities who our code because you're not allowed to kind of operate in a residential or sober living housing you're not able to provide medical treatment and that's our code enforcement team has has been intervening on some of those but that's a fewer Environ between between situation what we do know is these housing providers also limit restrict the movements of their clients um often uh busing them to and from the treatment facilities and that's the only Transportation they'll provide them um and imagine if you are from a nation of North as far away as New Mexico you're in a city you don't know you you don't know the address you don't know the city and the only time you get to leave is When someone tells you you can leave that's the level of restrictive movement we've seen uh for some of those individuals we've also seen other more dubious methods such as giving alcohol and drugs to individuals um to help restrict their movement in a way that plays on their addiction instead of treating it uh uh so both of those things are a part and parcel of this um our task force we convened we look at communication coordinating response internally identifying our gaps and solutions and again moving on to making recommendations next next slide I touched a little bit on this we we've convened monthly we focus in we brought in our Community Partners thank you to uh Council Metta uh who paved the way and help me make sure that we had all the title one coordinators from our temp uh School District Partners at the table listening to them they're hearing directly from affected families um Communications team um we talked about reporting attracting and enforcement and again we had what we call a Target event Readiness for him which really is bringing everybody to the table to touch this issue in the city of temp from a departmental standpoint learning what they can do what they can't do where do the Gap how we overcome those things uh and a thank you to Emergency Management for running that process um it was a new approach but we thought this is a crisis much like a national disaster let's treat it with that level of of investment next slide so out of that comes recommendations now we'll make recommendations uh to our Council uh where we have scope and capacity but because the nature of this meeting gives us an opportunity to talk to our our state officials um we wanted to uh Echo some of the recommendations that we've seen formulated from our partners at the Arizona Department of Health Services who have been at multiple meetings side by side multiple Community Forums on this issue I mean we know that there are some key identified things that need that would help from the state level uh one is to eliminate loopholes uh right now if a uh provider is under investigation they can uh sell their company do a change of ownership form to one of their uh partners and the enforcement activity does not follow them on record this new partner who was sitting next to them the whole time gets to start fresh so closing some of those loopholes U inspection loopholes we know that if someone first of all some of these Sober Living homes were not being inspected until month 11 of their 12th month cycle so they had a full 11 months of ability to defraud and harm uh clients we know that the department of health services has started doing a first 30 days of operation inspection so we're thankful for that we also know that these folks are astute in doing the initial Dog and Pony um and if they pass that initial inspection they're not they don't have to be reinspected for 24 months so closing that time frame or reinspection would certainly be helpful um fees the state legislate the state statute limits Fe to $500 per incident we know just for minimal bed cost you can build up to $261 a day per CL per you know PM PM rate per member per uh per day um we know that some of these Riders are billing over a thousand plus dollars a day per client on fraudulent services so $500 fine is does not disuade them um one of the recommendations also is those fines and fiend can just roll from year to year it does not impact licensing so the suggestion that those fees have to be paid before our license can be reissued um certainly would help at least recapture some of that damage uh monitoring for non-compliance uh there like said there are strong ethical providers our community to provide a great service to our clients who need it so we're not so sure that all the seor enforcement should fall on their backs if there's a way to uh put a lean for enforcement activity onto the fraudulent provider that will certainly help uh help keep the cost down for for our good parners um as well as uh knowing who the providers in your community are um you have can go to Arizona care check and find out where the behavior health uh homes are as well as licensed out patient treatment centers but Sober Living homes those that information is not shared only law enforcement and Zoning officials can get that information uh so from a Health and Human Services standpoint when we're dealing with a client who's been impacted it takes a bit of time and a workr for us to be able to find out even who this individual is living with and and uh so certainly we like like that be publicly shared as well which requires legislative change and of course I would not be a department head if I didn't stand before you all talk about money and people um what we know is um our partners at Arizon department of health services are still working off paper for a lot of these processes which requires double entry into multiple systems Arizona care check if the information there that requires sometimes triple entry uh which gives you opportunity for human era along the way as well so just bringing them into more modern Electronics format to help create some efficiencies for them as well and use the limited staff they had and um and the people part of that is we know and talking to our partners uh as this need has exploded their Staffing model is flat um over the last six to seven years um so enforcement does require people and we recognize that but we uh just want to stand with them since theyve stood with us in this process and and say that uh we believe that that money invested in systems and people for oversight enforcement quality assurance um would be money well invested on behalf of our most fragile and vulnerable uh citizens in the city of Tempi and those are the people who have mental health and subance abuse issues they work working desperately to house but we need safe ethical places in order to be able to house them and then have those Supportive Services um so that uh certainly uh wraps my uh small presentation uh if you have any questions or things that I can answer I'd be willing to to thank you Tim great presentation anyone uh and let me see if I can also then skip back to the screen and make sure that there are no hands going up online as well uh but first of all I'll go any questions in the room Senator Epstein yes please sure so does the city have any local ways to either enforce or investigate or otherwise improve the situation from a local standpoint uh you want me to take that or do you want me to no go ahead okay um so there are there are local uh tools that can be used um such as uh City of Surprise has effectively used a general business license that is not a tool we yet possessed in city of temp so there are local things um if there is direct harm or violence um this being done to the are these clients of certainly law enforcement tppd has been phenomenal um it's our own internal security fors actually that that brought a lot of this uh uh to our light uh just watching how people are being treated that were coming in our library system that identifi some of these issues so again shop to them so the really awareness but from an enforcement standpoint um we don't have a licensing or enforcement Authority around um individ these types of entities so we're a little bit Limited in what we can do only if they break codes or zoning regulations uh are we able to at this point stand in that city manager thank you Senator Epstein for that great question that's been one of the challenges when we started this internal working group is recognizing that relationships are imperative because legally we don't have um the jurisdiction to do things as we wish and I was wondering if council member gardland can talk about some of the partnership she's helped great with um the tribal community and the state agencies from the enforcement side that shot we met with yeah so um at the very beginning of this I will I will say give a shout out again to our security service if you see something say something they did they saw something that was unusual they contacted another one of our security guards um that works at City Hall who was an um police officer at the Navajo Nation and um through them kind of we were able to figure out that we were actually having so really be issues in the City of Tempe and I think our Outreach then was with the Navajo Nation it was with the bureau with v Indian fair Indian Affairs that we were able to get some more information about what's happening and how how it's working in Tempe also you know reaching out to the tribal communities around us I mean it's really important for us to get some more information we did go to um helped set up um a big conference it was going to actually be at the um in a small conference room but when people started hearing about Senator haali coming in and talking about um perspective from the Navajo Nation perspective and what the nations are doing it end up being a really huge meeting and we ended up having enough to move it to the capital what's great about what she's going to be doing is this upcoming um legis session she's going to be bringing up some items that will be able to close some of those Loops hopefully and bring more awareness um to the population about what's happening um with these sober living facilities and I think what's really important for us to be able to share with our community um across the state is if you see something say something because some of the issues that we have we can't um they're they're happening in neighborhoods they're taking homes renting homes and keeping people inside those homes and again we can't enter private properties unless there's an issue there so we are looking what what can we can do to make some changes here in the city of tenpe um Senator haali is looking at what she can do um for the state um it's it's a horrible situation and um it's it has really affected a lot of travel communities but it's not just the travel communities that are being affected if I may just follow to that the if you see something if you say something is apparently we heard a report from access just this week and that is a lot of how much of this has been reported the frosters have reported because somebody reported them um there seems to a little bit of a bias towards reporting homes that have a a portion of color U clientele so we need all of our folks who are helping to enforce this to be abundantly aware of the reports are not balanced and that as you've mentioned there's a lot of really good operators out there that are getting caught in the net of turn off the money which is what access had to do and we want to be just aware of what's going on as I'm sure tempy is very aware probably more so than many others so question actually um Madam Senor are we allowed to take questions for members of the public or do it just have to be between us I wanted to ask you before okay um you you absolutely can but the the problem will be in how we how we respond we may not be able to respond so we can certainly take the comments in okay I just wanted to make sure Mr luer in his hand up but I wanted to ask you before I turn to him so thank you so yes you can and oh then actually let me go to council member hodj first then I will come back so so I just want to add that um it's a big Avenue that people are missing is the school districts because that's how I got involved is because they contacted me directly from the school district because the kids were coming to school and they were eating out of the garbage and taking food and um they were getting their lunch money taken away and they weren't they were stacking trying to stack food in their backpacks and stuff so um another when we talk to our communities we also need to also make sure we involve the education system in it because kids have a they have the best story to tell and they're very honest when they tell their story so just just for us to remember that um we need to connect with the school districts also that's good thank you Council still Lu question are there ordinances that um you know can be um enacted to help resolve some of these problems that okay to be answered mam City attorney or well we we we absolutely can I mean we can't provide any legal advice here but we can certainly can talk about items that are under consideration okay Sal good um who'd like to take that Tim or mam city manager anyone okay um uh thank you thank you mayor Woods uh we know again I mentioned the the scalpel that City of Surprise used uh around a general business license let them uh quickly identify homes that were operating a commercial business out of a residential facility and then be able to say you don't have a business license you're exceeding your license and use that Tool uh to be able to uh certainly Wrangle their problem uh down to much one this is much more manageable so we've heard about that tool um right now our zoning RS really are focusing on uh uh making sure that reputable providers are are licensed correctly so they're not focused on catching the uh outlying bad actor so you you Mak sure that if you are providing services at a facility that's done in certain ways you meet a a sanatorium or Hospital type of licensure um so perhaps uh modernization on on some of those classifications that have been around for a while uh are things that we've seen in other jurisdictions I'll just leave it there to reflect on what we've seen work in other jurisdictions thank you thank you for the question as well appreciate it anyone else any further comments or questions on this item I'm sure the city of surprise is not watching but I just want to say that it was very very helpful with this um working with the city of surprise and Tiffany cop specifically um who I was able to get to come to our meeting to talk to us she's and I was um at a Valley Metro meeting yesterday and was sitting next to another council member from a different city and we were talking about sober living and they're going to be talking to Tiffany cop is gonna be going out there too but they being able to share their information and not recreating the wheel and some of the things that we're doing is has allowed us to jump start and move farther ahead than we would have been if we would have started started where they were so we just really want to say thank you so much to the city of surprise thank you anyone else further comments on this item right seeing none Tim thank you for the presentation really appreciate it I did I have my hand up I just want to ask one quick question oh sorry we've gone yes please um Tim I don't know if this I don't know if I can remember this but have we decided to do like to our neighborhoods maybe have like a a tour a listening tour so they know like our um like uh like our HOAs and our our neighborhood presidents um information to look to look for to look at and check out and maybe pass that along to all the Neighbors in that direction I'm not sure if I had asked that question before or not to councilman he uh no ma'am uh but that is a good suggestion and we will definitely take that to the committee that meets next week and put that in the pipeline thank you coun um I uh just to say that I also invited the we serve the real estate um East Valley real estate agencies to come to our meeting so that they are aware of what's happening so they can talk to the real estate agents so it's there there are other eyes and boots on the ground in there and so anything we can do council member p is exactly right to be able to pull in more people is great so sounds good all right any other questions on item number three all right seeing none we will move on then to item 4A which is the impact of rental tax elimination on our city budget I will Ser to our chief Deputy city manager and CFO Tom Dunson thank you mayor good morning um mayor council members um St state legislators um I'll keep this pretty brief um one of our five priorities at the city of CHP is maintaining Financial stability it's what is able to drive our programs our police our fire some of the things that Mr bur was talking about so it it's very important to us that we are able to um maintain our stability so we're able to deliver these services and also maintain our triaa rating which has other important consequences um as you know one of our priorities is to basically um maintain our Revenue sources um it's to keep um anything from happening for our taxable activities um and this is a perfect example of that the um elimination of the um residential rental and um so again we will watch it closely this is a result of Senate Bill 1131 that was actually signed into law this past August so it's it's just a few months old um and what we are doing but the nature of the problem is what we are doing preliminarily to address this issue couple takeway on this slide is that we estimate that we will be losing about 9% of our sales tax that sales tax covers three funds it covers our general fund which is our main operating fund Transit and arts and culture um the scope of the problem as the mayor talked about it begins this UPC or in January 2025 is is really the effective date of this so basically the impact is about half of this fiscal year we're going to be budgeting in um this upcoming spring with the full impact being felt in fiscal 26 full impact at this point is about 21 million um we'll continue to look at that um a lot of that is contingent on how our growth in Tempe happens and as you know our growth in Tempe we do a lot of multifam there is a lot of residential rental activity in here so that is revenue that we would lose so this is a recurring issue this is not not a onetime problem this is a recurring loss of Revenue um beginning in fiscal 25 um and forward next slide so here just as a is a real quick look at our revenues and each of the funds that is impacted and you can see that um general fund Transit fund AR and culture the same three funds on the prior slides um and I can tell you the most significant impacts are felt by two of the three the general fund and the transit fund the um general fund we will have to address the issue immediately um we um try to maintain our fund balance but we don't want to sit on a significant fund balance so that 13 million 14 million in our general fund um is an impact and our Transit fund I'll just I'll just speak a minute to that um it is a there's a little bit more fund balance in our Transit fund but it's a bigger percentage of our revenues um so I've been talking to our engineering and transportation staff we'll be bringing forward recommendations to the Council on how we will adjust our spending within that fund but it is a significant impact to our Transit fund arts and culture luckily it's a relatively um evolving service level so we're able to to kind of um adapt our services early in other words we're not a we can we can hedge against adding more services than we can afford so it's a little bit more manageable in our arts and culture fund but again the two biggest funds general fund Transit funds um are the ones that are impacted and and I will go as far as saying it'll be a central theme um in this upcoming budget process on how we're going to deal with this next slide so we presented this slide in our November long range forecast at the November 2nd work study session um and this B basically is analysis of our savings our general fund fund balance the slide on the left is what our fund balance would look like had this legislation noted um in short um we would be fine we would be able to adapt our service levels to our Revenue sources and still maintain our fund balance the the U Box on the right is really where we're at today if we do nothing what this slide says is we will spend through our policy fund balance in two years so what that tells us is we need to address this um issue immediately and decisively and it's going to be a recurring um impact to our our expenditures take questions yes great thanks so in the state we have a budget stabilization fund do you have such a fund separate in the state or is your balance basically your stabilization Fund in in the city yeah mayor mayor council um Senator Epstein this really is our stabilization our stabilization is our unassigned fund balance that is our stabilization and that's the fund we can go to um if we want to make immediate adjustments right if we want to make immediate adjustments but again we can only spend that money once and so um um a recurring problem with a one-time balance um something has to get on the expenditure side and um and for everybody in this room I I do want to do a special thanks to Senator Epstein um very dialed in on this issue um actually met with staff and um and and a sincere appreciation and thank you for myself um next slide so what can we do um talk with Senator Epstein just a little bit before this meeting and at this point um we are developing strategies in the city manager's office um one nice thing and really a silver lining with this issue is I was directed by our city manager to get this message out early um I can tell you our council is dialed in on this issue and and understands the depth of this issue so we're working on what can we do to ensure we adjust our expenditures adjust our spending down um by that by that um at least in the general fund 1415 million a year in November at the at the forecast when we present the work study session um we presented this as a structural deficit of about 15 million so structural deficit we'll have to look at the expenditure side so um for or reduce them um or we can prioritize or eliminate Services it's really pretty simple the the the answer at this point is on the expenditure Side Of The Ledger um and so we'll look at that we'll develop a plan we'll get in front of Council in this upcoming um budget cycle to determine how we are going to adjust and one of the things that we have to keep in mind is the services does this impact our services absolutely imp acts our services we are not able to adjust to increasing demands we had a great presentation by Tim Burch um of we absolutely have a demand for services so this really competes against that um but we have to address this issue um and we will and um with that I next slide be happy to answer any questions thank you so much and let's go ahead and switch back to the screen so I can see if anyone's asking questions online but just uh Tom want say thank you for the presentation but I I appreciate the um city manager you know you you and uh and Rosa the ability to talk about this early on because I think that's one of the concerns that many times we hear this in public of like well wait a minute like why you know why did you lose the residential rental tax there's sometimes this confusion about these things and many times when I'm following things online and some of the concerns that our resent raised there's a lot of concern about hey can we add this or we can we do more of this you know we had a very tragic accident last week where a car got ripped in half and one of the things I saw from a sort of chatter standpoint online was a lot of Resident saying well you hey how do we get more police officers out there doing traffic safety and enforcing I don't see enough people writing tickets and things of that nature we are exploring ways to talk about doing that and I know mam city manager you talked last night about implementing you know a traffic safety task force and the meetings that are happening internally to try to get some of those things more into control when it comes to Street raising and things of that nature but these are the things that do become a challenge when you lose $15 million in the beginning of 2025 when people want you to add more services more services equates to more people doing more work and so I think that part of this is trying to do the best that we can to freeze things if at all possible to ensure that our residents aren't seeing massive service reductions to the services that they frankly have come to expect and and we obviously all feel deserve but at the same time uh letting them understand that this is not something that the city of teny brought on itself uh and if we're talking about freezing things or even potentially at some point doing some Productions once again this is something that happened to us it's not something that was through any kind of bad fiscal management that we were practicing here at the City of Tempe so I appreciate the fact that we're telling residents about this but it's also I think partially it is sort of an educational effort that I'm glad we are proactively engaging in um counc richin thank you mayor um first of all I I always appreciate uh Mr in your calm levelheaded approach to any situation and with the city manager how you make things work and how you uh calm all of us and you are proactive in educating us which then helps us to educate our residents and other stakeholders but I turn to Senator Epstein and and I absolutely appreciate your support in helping St and educate however if I may um I cannot underscore enough why this hurts us as a community and I need for you to continue to partner with us to amplify that voice because it hurts current Services it hurts current uh issues as Mr Burch shared that's only one of the many issues as as you are fully aware that we're trying to combat in our communities and it also impacts any of our emerging issues and challenges you know in every conversation we have about okay what can we do you know what we are in a deficit when it comes to that and I I implored you to continue working with us to avoid situations or to rectify this type of situation and I want to say very quickly too um and thank you I I I wanted to say too I know that you know this was this came about and I sit on the um marope Association of government's Transportation policy committee and I know one of the challenges in this situation just from a context standpoint was there was a this was part of a deal in terms of getting proposition 400e across the FSH line which was critically important um you know it's something that is not just simply from my perspective our Transportation uh future but it was also our Economic Development future as a region and so you know I know that there were a lot of there was a lot of negotiation that had to take place to get to this point and and frankly my concern just speaking very candidly is that our our previous governor had something on the agenda where the there was the support of all the Mayors Republicans and Democrats was there to get prop 400d a clean bill across the finish line and it was vetoed with without any notice whatsoever without any explanation to the Mayors or to any of the cities and so you know we ended up when Governor Hobs came in having to work on this and there unfortunately then began to be sort of a harder line that was played in terms of some of the negotiations so we we understand why this took place and understand why prop 400e really is critical um but I agree with Council M chin you know whatever we can do to ensure that uh you know we don't you know that future Cuts like this don't take don't take place is obviously critically important we appreciate your partnership and you working with our city staff to you know just do whatever we can to continue to work together on those items CC um I just going to say along the the lines of what my colleagues were just saying is um the understanding or or hearing about the possibility of the removing of the food tax also which would be another $8 million um hit on our general um fund so um just again just what we can do to partner together or support each other to um really keep that from happening or or what could you we I mean it's just another hit that that would probably but I heard 2026 is when that one would come about I think so just want to mention but yes please absolutely so thank you that what I need is to hear some specifics and I I know it's painful to give specific examples of things that will be cut because you don't want to cut any of them but I have taken to what people were talking about the res residential rental tax and removing it and they'd say but you know it's it's so aggressive to have to tax people who are renting as though there was no such thing as luxury apartments that are rented so it's it was rhetoric on their part that I just began to counter with child care you know if you want to cut rental tax you're cutting child care it's one of the crucial crucial services that cities provide and if not Child Care fine parks and libraries well that's another place that kids go after school so it it hits our families in our homes in our every single day life when you cut this Revenue because our unfortunately I'm very fed up with my Republican colleagues who have been budgeting with their eyes closed and not looking at they want to cut they want taxes to be lower well yes we all want taxes to be lower but we want basic Services provided to families to help them grow and some of these basic services are what help a young family grow into very prosperous family that then contributes more so later on that's our social contract with each other and cities are the place where that social contract is carried out so very well you're you're right there delivering that child care providing that Park turning the lights on for the soccer practice for the Youth team that's what makes our quality of life so important and we try to express that to my colleagues and I when say they're going to make cuts and and they don't seem to see a connection or they just don't value these things so my final word is yes I will help you bring these out and we all have to help families understand the things they use every day are being provided by a city they the city picked up your trash the city moves the sewer the water through the sewers these invisible things your city is providing them and when you cut Revenue to your city that's what you're cutting so we will continue to do that and I all our tee city council members are really wonderful at Outreach I appreciate that we have to keep that up so that people know and eventually maybe the word will get to my Republican colleagues if they refuse to see it perhaps they can hear it uh that city services matter and that they are the things that families use and rely on every single day so thank you for your work we'll let's keep being creative and see what we come up with absolutely and and look this um make sure I'm saying this too you know we know that you have been a champion for the City of Tempe and for all of our interests and we appreciate the close partnership and you know though this was a very very difficult situation that you were all put into that frankly you should have never been in in the first place so we just appreciate your continued partnership and how much you know yourself and representative the Traverse have continued to always work with us we always can get a hold of you and you've always been you know fighting for the city of Temp and frankly all of our nearly 200,000 residents down at the state capital so I wanted to say very personally thank you for your effort and for the continued work with us oh oh coun Raj I'm sorry thank you yes I was just for Senator epy when you have when there's a chance for us to come down there and maybe speak um please let us know so we can be an advocate I I don't mind going to the capital and speaking I've done it lots of times on education I don't mind doing it um I just want to be a part a great partner to you on that side because I understand how hard it is when you have to convince other people so um if you do have any any chances that um we can go down there as a you know as council members and and you know kind of plead our story um just let us know thank you we'll do this here questions um my comment is not accusatory but it is more analytical I guess uh and and it seems to me that this is a huge legislative problem and so the solutions largely have to come from the from the from the legislature and so um you know are there any uh tactics or strategies that you might be able to uh address that would you know help bring those solutions to fruition I I was thinking one just as you know I think to a point you made Senator Epstein and Council Rad's just made I think that whatever we can do from a partnership standpoint you know when it comes to if there's the ability for us to go down to the state capital times if there's things where you need assistance and say it would be helpful if council members or constituents were able to come raise their voices in support or against certain kinds of harmful legislation so that as you talked about when there are when you have colleagues who are not understanding the real human impact of of what some of these Cuts actually mean that they actually do that we can come down and talk about this many dollars equates to this specific program or or forces us to not be ble to hire this many police officers or firefighters or things of that nature where it doesn't allow for us to add additional Human Services for the unsheltered who need help on our streets so I think that the ability for us to partner and maybe go down uh and kind of give very direct examples as both you and council member hod talked about might be very helpful in swaying some of these folks who are looking at the at these things as just numbers but as you talked about not really understanding the human impact that these Cuts actually have on real people yes counc let see um I'm not sure you are aware this Senator and there's a on our website you can sign up for a legislative tab that if you would like to be called as a resident if there is an issue that's going up that affects the City of Tempe you can go you will be shot an email that says okay here's what it is um we'd love you to show up on this date and time I'm not sure if you're aware of that I I haven't looked at it in a while which so I mean maybe that's something we need to make sure that we put and maybe in our um in our tempy newsletter that goes out with our mail just reminding people if you were interested in um knowing what's going on legislature if you have an opportunity to be able to speak up and have your voices heard that might be something that we might want to do and remind people of thank you uh represented the Travers you your hand up as well I do um and and you know thank you for the opportunity to talk and uh you know I I I listen to everybody and your your comments and suggestions um are one wonderful and I I know our made in Earnest but we also have to have a moment of pragmatism here and um they don't care um the my colleagues across the aisle understand the impact it was going to have and they didn't care so yes it's helpful to come down but this next legislative session you will not change any minds but it's good to have it on the record it's good for people and our constituents to know that we are fighting for this but you know please be um also very realistic that and I'm I'm I'm very happy to say it they they just don't care they they knew the implications and they knew the impact and they did it anyway and they used it for leverage and they played with it and if that's how they want to be that's fine but um it you know every all this sort of rhetoric is is Welling good and mity and Patty and I we all voted no we all fought very hard but at the end of the day they honestly just don't care so continue to engage but also be very realistic about the impact that we're going to have right now thank you C pin thank you mayor um thank you for that comment and I always appreciate and I think anyone who has worked with me knows my favorite level setting approach is I preface everything with let me manage your expectations so I appreciate that um and for that reason I think we continue to State our case right it becomes more important than ever I I've learned in a leadership position where you have to make often tough decisions uh and as the mayor pointed out it was complex and there were uh there were there was politics involved and I get that at the same time as a leader it is our responsibility to think about the unint ended consequences of the decisions we make that's why we have to balance and take the input all of the data that we can get to reach the best decision possible for as many people as possible this was a classic example of a decision that had all of those challenging elements and I don't believe the right decision was made and whatever we can do to to continue the I don't want to call it a battle but to continue to represent those voices of those that are impacted because the unintended consequences I understand the rhetoric that was uh used to validate this decision but uh and it was stated that it would help a certain segment of the population a smaller segment of the population what it ended up doing was affecting a broad swath of all of our communities it impacts everyone Parks Services current challenges and emerging challenges and services so that needs to be pointed out and we need to keep saying it over and over where decisions are made I was G say and I really appreciate that point I know one of the things I I know that uh Senator Epstein and I know representative Travers and I talked about uh and I know we all we share this perspective is that one of the issues with the residential rental tax and as you talk about rhetoric is that the right the way it was being presented um by you know by the other party was that it was um you know why would the city of Tempi or any other the 90 cities and towns in the state of Arizona tax rentals uh you know that's a regressive tax on people but the challenge would have been that a lot of us would have been uh you know we all talked about this would have been more in favor if we knew that repealing the residential rental tax actually passed on the savings to the person who's actually renting but the fact of the matter is that's not what it did and so it it it doesn't end up actually end up being a relief on renters in our community and giving them the ability to save to eventually enter into the home ownership it just becomes more money that the person who's the landlord has the ability to get put in their own pocket because they can charge Market rents and and pocket more and that was something that we all talked about during the time so so right I agree it's one of those things where unfortunately there are people who are pushing rhetoric that that that while it sounds good at the 30,000 foot level when you actually start digging into the details that we all did during the session we all recognize they were clearly there were logical fallacies of there so coun and then Senator Epstein um also um thank you Senator um um excuse me I'm so sorry thank you um for your comments and I just want to say maybe as council members we can mobilize together if we um senator epy maybe you could give us a list of the the the Senators that we have to um to you know to persuade more maybe we can go to the council members in that area because they got to be voted in and I think if we help educate communities on it they will press on it so we can maybe press on our colleagues to help us out a little bit more by you know pushing it say save our schools did something similar to that and it was uh it was wasn't successful but it was successful on its own because it made people it highlight you know things that people weren't even aware of and I was just thinking maybe if you uh work with us to give us some maybe some areas that we need to go to our colleagues and say hey this is affecting you let's you know let's us have a conversation to see how we can help in that area too um it was just it's just a suggestion and even on your side too sen um um representative Travers maybe you can give us on who we need to talk to on your your um in in that in the house too so we can have that conversation with some of our council members our colleagues around the state too a great idea intergovermental communication always helps in this case for city council members from One City to talk to another and helps a great deal I do also want to share that you know I'm recognizing that cities will need every drop of Revenue that is des deserve and one of the places that I'm working on is there's a it comes sales tax revenue in particular as you know sales tax comes into the state and then it's reapportioned back out to all the cities and there's a piece of that that is impacted by this grants for infrastructure for advanced manufacturing that is right now the way the law was written because the law was written only for Intel wonderful advanced Manufacturing Company in our community a sort of a grant for them to help build their infrastructure the law is written only for them now we have at least three coming up on four now we're adding amcore it's also Advanced manufacturing tsnc LG they're all advanced manufacturing they all could apply for this really cool funding this that Intel got Intel in the city of Chandler got that actually if we do that it will take more and more away from all all the other cities sales tax portion so I'm working on that tax law there are about three people in the state who understand it and I feel like I'm I'm one of them and that's a weird thing because I'm supposed to be a generalist but nonetheless um we it's it's that kind of thing that we all need to be on the lookout for helping each other this is very much City Revenue but I'm trying to fix that along the way with fixing it so that it is a law that applies to many companies not just one and that's something that happens with far too many of our state laws our law is written for one company and that's what happened with this one we're going to fix it so that uh again you don't need to lose another million dollars inadvertently so thank you thank you all right anyone else any further comments or right sounds good Tom thank you for the presentation appreciate it all right next up item five here state legislative priorities state legislators I guess um Senator Epstein representative Travers I'll kind of I'll turn to you things that we should know about going forward okay well for the our our priorities for the caucus as a whole I can speak to that and then I just told you a little bit about one of my priorities accountability is always a priority for me um and especially in when it comes to making taxes more Equitable because right now they're very Progressive but for the caucus it is the Democratic caucus um housing schools and water remain three of our biggest priorities and that's why we I created the housing schools and water work groups along with our house and Senate leadership teams and we have people who've been meeting about every other week or so on those topics to come up with legislation that will help people to get more affordable homes starter homes and work in partnership with our cities on the solutions so that we can see more things like citas where they would work out great and that missing Middle where it can work out we're also looking at a possibility that um the best way I can explain this is if you've ever had a neighbor or anybody who says you know that vacant lot over at these Corners that should be housing why isn't that housing or that Plaza that all the businesses have left except two why isn't that housing well there are really good reasons that our city folks really understand in terms of the sewer the infrastructure of roads and so many other things isn't meant for housing so we want to try to work with cities to come up with some incentives to help ease that so that if you have a spot that could wow that'd be perfect for multi- housing Let's Help the cities do that let's see if the state can help make that happen in a way that is um just fetting tax laot but B bottom line is you know that we want to help that feeling everybody thinks it's so obvious that should be multihousing that's a great spot for it let's do that so we want to open that pathway uh schools you know an awful lot at schools gets fixed when you have enough money because people need to be paid for their work and that's the bottom line on schools I was very interested to hear some of the Solutions are that if there was a traffic collision then people will say why don't we have more police to help with traffic to prevent problems and prevent street racing that is dangerous and so on the same thing is true for bullying in schools if we just have more teachers in the hallways if we have enough teachers that we have teachers we can spare to be in the hallways during passing time bullying is reduced so there's so many things that we can help in our schools if we just fund them correctly and right now we're facing a $300 million cut because last year we plugged the budget with onetime money that money isn't there in addition to our $450 million deficit overall so the state has some budget work to do once again as last year making sure our K12 schools are funded at least to stay even with inflation because we should be able to buy the same number of pencils this year as last year is what I will be speaking up for and it's kind of a shame that that's what I am fighting tooth and nail just to keep us at that level of funding um and then water the governor has a water task force and Arizona has a long tradition of Governors helping convem the many many people who should help us come up with our water solutions one of the things that's coming out of there is you're probably aware that TB is in an AMA and uh active management area meaning that when you build a home in Tempe you required to assure a 100 Years of water conveniently the City of Tempe has you covered so you're good but if you were outside of a city then you would still as the Builder have to provide a 100 years assured supply of water unless you build that house or to be rented and then you can just let it run out of water in two years it doesn't matter so that is a silly loophole in the law and we want to address that because you know renters do deserve water too in addition to homeowners deserving water um and but the the serious thing about it I I choke about renters deserving water but uh the serious thing is if we continue to allow developers to build land build on land and expand and call it housing and because it's rented there's no water supply eventually that is no longer going to be available for renting if there's no water there you can't you can't live there so it's not the solution the solution is to make sure we have water and housing together and that we're managing them so that's water um we are also going to make sure that we have a complete agenda with closing uh gun violence prevention where we'd like to close loopholes on uh purchasing weapons uh Firearms specifically and domestic violence we want to make sure that a domestic violence abuser has to do something with their guns other than keep them uh abortion access we believe that the abortion access initiative is going in the right direction we want to support that and then equal rights and Workforce I've I started the day talking about child care and I'm going to end the day talking about child care we really can and should do a much better job of helping our young families to support child care both is it available is it where is it we have a cliff coming up because of the uh pandemic funding that was there for child care specifically is going away and we're I'm quite concerned that we could lose a whole lot of child care providers so never mind being able to afford it we just don't have the providers for it so we again need to have our eyes open to what's coming up and to listen to our families about what they need and child care is a Workforce problem to help people get a job keep a job and grow into a career busy busy times ahead sounds good thank you um let me go uh representative the Travers do you think you'd like to add us well um yes and yes but yeah but no but yes but no um and apologies for not being on camera um it's been a it's been a rough it was a rough night with my girls in a rough morning and if you see it you can't unsee it so you'll just have to take my um so I'm starting very early conversations with the prison that's closing to see if we can do something in terms of adaptive reuse to try to to try to help uh establish some s sort of support services for our homeless Community um there's a a project in Colorado that I talked about at the veterans caucus called Fort lion there's another one uh up in northern Arizona called uh Fort Whipple uh that kind of addresses the homelessness with integrated support services and I had already spoken to sort of Department of Housing about this concept of adaptive reuse there's another project in Colorado that is also taking an old prison and is uh adaptive reuse into such a facility that I've just mentioned uh those are incredibly preliminary conversations but they've been sort of out there in The Ether before so we'll see kind of where we get with that uh again to reiterate with Mitsy um as a member of the governor's water policy Council will be introducing legislation that closes the Wildcat development loophole and the um Bill to rent Loop loophole as well as some substantial groundwater uh rural groundwater um issues that need to be addressed of course with Gail Griffin in the um in the hot seat as Committee Member they're not going to go anywhere but we're looking at options on what we can do through executive action um until such time we are able to pass substantive uh water protections throughout the state um I'm running a duty to report which removes the clergy uh exemption from mandatory reporting of any abuse of a um any sexual abuse of a minor uh I ran it last year I ran it I'm running it again this year it's gaining some traction and we're trying to to work the bill to see how far we can take it uh Chris May approached me I don't know how much of you looked at the the news recently a couple of weeks ago she announced that um she was running a red flag law which she's asked me to go ahead and run and we're working on that now and what it does is it's very narrow and very Niche and what it does is it expands an already existing order of protection uh to include K through 12 and universities and there'll be more on that later uh once the language get gets finalized and we go ahead and and put it out I'm running my franchise bill again which was supported by the Tempe chamber um again I don't think it will get anywhere because the international franchise Association has spent a lot of time and a lot of money uh bringing in people from Washington DC to kill the bill and they've engaged uh one of our representatives from ld4 uh to be their shill and so that's it's not for lack of trying but we'll get in it protects small business owners from predatory um private Equity Funds that purchase franchises and then put undue burdens and change of contracts on uh small business owners and I'll I'll run some more some other smaller water bills Watershed protections that again won't get heard but uh we'll we'll keep uh fighting a good fight so that's kind of what's on the cards for me right now as well as you know trying to support our Democratic priorities that Senator M Epstein just noted sounds good thank you so much council members any comments or questions for Senate ref or represent TR thank you appreciate it that brings us item number six legislative Partnerships uh I know we've got a list here of our 2024 State Legislative principles obviously we're not going to go go through all of these one by one but just wanted to see if the council members have any comments or questions or anything that they'd like to emphasiz on this list or we can skip back to other P just make sure I can see the the hands on the screen as well thank you yeah I I don't have anything directly I mean this kind of really clearly outlines from you know my perspective things that i' I'd like done and I know we all come down as a council would agree upon what our principles are going to looks like the upcoming years so I have nothing further to add on this but we okay all right well hearing nothing else is here are there any final comments before we questions comments before we get Jour for today hearing none once again just wanted to thank our legislators for for your partnership and working hand in hand with the city of tempy we really appreciate it and thank you each and every one of you for being here as well and thank you to the public for watching at home uh we are adjourned at 9:39 a.m.

thank you so much everyone a little