Cave Creek approves non-voting Bartlett Dam membership, $200K commitment over four years, 5-2 vote

welcome to the count council meeting for Monday September 16 2024 um we've completed our executive session we're now at the Pledge of Allegiance Mr a has agreed to lead us aliance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all thank you see see some cowboy hats in the room that's always a good sign um some public announcements we'll ask for if the council has any shortly but uh um quite a busy week the last week we had a house fire we had a deceased person found on 32nd Street and we had uh a Wildland fire six miles north up in the Tonto so uh there's a lot of action this past last week um I want to mention that there is an item on the there is an um a proposition on the budget this year it's called prop 479 and in the the chaos of all the propositions that we're likely to see some some areas are getting just page after page that's the one that funds the freeways the light rail all of the arterial roads in town it's the one that has brought the town from when I was a kid where we had no freeways or one freeway to where we can get around the biggest selling point is it decreases the amount of time people spend on the road and it has done that F dramatically so I just uh point that out to everybody uh does council have any public announcements D I was up at Spur cross this morning could see no smoke coming up from the fire I one short thing many of us attended the annual League of Arizona cities and towns conference this year in Phoenix and it was a it was a good four days I believe and valuable to many of us who attended the sessions and met with other dignitaries in the state and so I think that's very beneficial for those of us who are elected officials to um communicate with others around the state in similar positions and to learn from each other and to co-mingle with each other it's uh it's a good opportunity and I appreciate the town sending us with that we'll move to called the public mayor first I want to note for the record that Terry Webb provided written input that's been provided to all of council and our first Speaker tonight is Abraham abay good afternoon I want to first of all congratulate you all uh for the election and uh the elect Mr bunch I want to thank you for the many years of your service I hope that your retirement is well mayor I want to congratulate you for your election and my prayer for you all to the Lord is that he may Grant you through his grace the wisdom for a very very complicated time with many complicated things that are on your plate and that said one of the things that I want to encourage you is the bartl Bartlet water uh wet water uh situation when I've met when I've been in many of these uh meetings one of the things that is quite understood is the supply of wet water being more challenging than many other situations last week the meeting here was just amazing with all the information about the infrastructure but I want to encourage you to consider the water supply before all the other things because otherwise you're putting the cart before the horse and then if you have all the infrastructure and you don't have any water it really doesn't do the town any good so my encouragement to you is please consider all the sources that you can get your hands on with what water thank you thank you then I had a question I have a card from jod May yes uh thank you uh mayor uh mayor and councel um just wanted to give you just a brief um update again about the uh fire we heard a little bit about it tonight um over the weekend um the point buyer that is in the uh New River area um kind of peaked and at one point it looked like spur cross um was actually on fire um that was very concerning the the staff and I met with the Tonto um uh Forest uh commander who was commanding the uh fire resources as well as Daisy Mountain on Friday morning um as it was starting to become a concern to us as well and I'm very pleased that um despite the other fires um and demand for resources around the state for aerial support we were able to get that um on Friday um uh shortly after 12 noon um and that continue through on to Saturday as well um the point here I I just wanted to let um the council know and the public is that um the the staff was working very closely behind the scenes and doing our best to communicate through our website and also through social media um but it was not our incident so it was a tunal forest fire and so as a result we have to defer to the Tonto Forest um and their fire command um for like the public information that we could release as an example they had committed to doing some aerial um support to fight the fire and um we were asked not to share that information because at last minute it could be pulled for some of these other fires that were happening in the valley um but in the end I think um I'm very pleased with the cooperation between um Tonto Forest Daisy Mountain in the town I there's a couple things I just want to really emphasize to the community here though and that is for people to sign up with social media the town's social media sites um you know both both X and Facebook but also importantly our town website these are the sources official sources of information that we put out um the other thing is if we indeed needed to do a um an evacuation one of the best tools that we have currently is using what we call code red it's an app that anybody with an Android or a um uh Apple device can go ahead and download um you can actually do the registration on the website um if you go to our website at Cave Creek a.gov um there's information that directs you to signing up so that you can either get a text announcement or a recorded voice announcement um or an email these are very critical because in the event that we in the future need to um do an evacuation we will do basically draw on a map where that needs to take place people that live in that area who have registered through those various different means um in the end I just wanted to just tell you um we did our best to try to get the information out and do updates we did at least uh two updates um each day from Friday through yesterday so um and we'll continue to update till this fire is extinguished that's all I have mayor council I just wanted to give you that update thank you the action items the consent agenda the first is the approval of the April 15 202 four regular Town council meeting minutes second is the approval of the May 1 2024 special Town Council budget work session minutes the third is the approval of the May 2nd 2024 special Town Council budget work session minutes the fourth is the approval of the May 6th 2024 regular Town council meeting minutes and finally Council disc uh says Council discussion but we're it's on the the consent agenda so if we uh accept that consent agenda it can be p pulled off for discussion if needed but is the action to accept a dedication of easement for a 10-ft wide public utility easement on assessors parcel 26-16 d014 located at 7015 East Continental Mountain Drive Cape Greek Arizona 85331 does anyone on Council wish to pull one of those for discussion okay do we have a motion then to accept the approve consent agenda second all those in favor I I opposed motion carries 70 the general agenda is a council discussion and approval of inter governmental Cooperative purchasing agreement with the lead Contracting agency League of Oregon cities as required by the nppg purchasing Cooperative by authorizing the mayor to execute the agreement on behalf the town and approval to purchase a new freight liner Firewater tanker Tinder with a 3,000 G tank and a 1,000g per minute pump for the town of Cave Creek by authorizing the town man to execute on behalf of the Town a national Cooperative purchasing agreement with Fouts brothers incorporated of milleville Georgia for this vehicle for amount up to $436,500 presented by the uh director of community risk reduction mayor and Council good evening this is a followup to to uh previous Council meetings where you adopted some policies for our purchasing U agreements and so I'm going to be the first one to come before you with the request um when we signed the agreement with the Daisy Mountain Fire Department the original intergovernmental agreement um it was the town's responsibility to do the fire station do the equipment do the fire engine which we've ordered and paid for do the brush truck which we've done and the last large purchase was a fire water tender um initially when we put that budget together um the cost as the cost was $450,000 and in spite of everything else going up um we started looking for water tenders and these water tenders went up dramatically but we were able to find a fire truck manufacturer in Georgia that could meet our specifications for a tender and we actually made a trip to their Factory to check it out and check out their quality of work to check out the actual vehicles and I'm coming back to report that this truck meets all of our specifications for a brand new water tender um for a while I was looking to refurbish water tenders because we didn't think we had enough money in the budget to to purchase them but we found this one and it is available and it can be delivered if you take these actions as requested so um we did the inspection there this this truck fully complies with all the national specifications for new vehicles it's a freight liner with a Cummings Engine Allison Transmission the tanks the lighting it has everything that we require um for the specs when we went out to look for how much this was um the F's vehicle is this vehicle um velocity gave us a demo it's a similar vehicle um their cost was over $500,000 vbg trucks their cost for a truck that we specked out initially with the same equipment on it came out over $600,000 and then when I talked to the different people about what can we get for a refurb which is really not the best option um because those there's reasons people are getting rid of those used trucks and we would have to refurb it and put a lot of money into it um that still came out between $200 and $400,000 so being able to find this vehicle from Fouts they will sell it directly to the town and when it gets here we will um license it and pay the taxes on it this is actual vehicle when we went to the factory they had two of them off the line and another one coming off the line and people lined up to buy their vehicles and and we put in the request to purchase this exact vehicle right here it's a 3,000g tank with a 3,000 gon portable tank with it and with that I'd be happy to answer any questions for you questions Council um I just have one I I I think your presentation showing the Alternatives what the alternative cost I I love that where you show what the options are so when you spend 400 yes sir $36,000 we have some comfort that we're getting a good deal of course a pickup truck cost 100,000 so okay so um at this point no no questions from Council so I guess we are at public comment no requests for this item mayor okay um so we're looking for a motion motion to approve the intergovernmental Cooperative purchasing agreement with the lead Contracting agency lead of Oregon cities as required by the NPP gov purchasing Cooperative by authorizing the mayor to execute the agreement on behalf of the town and approved the purchase of a new freight liner fire water tanker tender with a 3,000 gallon tank and 1,000 gallon per minute pump for the town of Cave Creek by authorizing the town manager to execute on behalf of the Town a national Cooperative purchasing agreement with Fouts brothers incorporated in milleville Georgia for this vehicle for an amount up to $436,500 questions when we're getting our fire engine they were went back last week and did the final inspections and walkth through of all the specs on the engine so I'm expecting it to be here within a month and by purchasing this tender also I'm expecting it hopefully to be here within a month also this is available to us so before the fire station opens at the end of the year we will have both pieces of equipment in town good cynth you had the second so you get the second com thank you I just think it makes a lot of sense to go ahead and and purchase new at good price uh to support the rural needs that we have for the tanker there have been a number of fires in our history where a tanker was certainly necessary so it' be good to have it aboard other Council comments will both these vehicles be um at the open house for the new Fire Station Yes W that me great are we still planning for a nice time nice party absolutely mayor and and what date is that we don't have a a date set yet we're getting really close we're looking either uh the week before Thanksgiving which is really pushing it or the week uh second week of December but it will be before the end of the year good okay Santa Claus and and mayor if I may um I've talked to Mr Ford and we're going to try to as these come in have them out before a council meeting so you can see them so you don't have to wait until the the dedication of the building okay this is a roll call vote sir council member hton I council member Bunch yes council member Driscoll yes council member Maguire yes council member Rose hi vice mayor Royer yes mayor Morris I motion passes 70 so we've got ourselves a tnder mayor and Council thank you very much for all the support you given me over the years as we've put all this together as was mentioned this is the final big piece oh cool thank you that's not a pre-retirement yeah sound like speech speech um my microphone's went off so I'm sorry he's still trying to beat Sean uh item number two is Council discussion approval to war a contract for the 2024 pavement management Plan update to IMS infrastructure Management Services for an amount up to $ 29,43 presented by Tyler can you hear me now with the 2020 pavement management plan prepared by IMS coming to an end tonight I'm here to request authorization for this contract with IMS to conduct an updated survey of all the town's roadways this survey will provide the town with an updated five-year payment management plan and a current assessment of the town's overall pavement condition index with the new metrics provided in this survey we will have an updated information allowing staff to properly identify capital projects ensuring funds are being used efficiently as possible during this survey IMS will drive and survey every single one of our paved roads in the town with their equipment they'll be able to measure cracks runting surface you know um distress and then they'll be able to give us all the information we need to make our new plan and after that I pause for questions question for Council Tyler these are only our roads they're not the privately owned roads correct and so you'll use this information to prioritize where we spend their money on the worst roads some towns I know Scottdale has a um an objective that the whole town I think it was 90 maybe 80 or 90 it's it's higher than we I maybe it's 80 because we have 70 I think is our current standard yes and I think Paradise Valley probably the highest level it's it's very high it's 90 or 95 they call it a level but that's yeah totally and and and we're we're behind the curve on on the roads so uh prioritizing is is essential so just I I'll just kind of chime in a little bit because I'm I'm a little familiar with this as well and and so you've seen this before but what they'll do is the data from the um the survey where they basically drive over with this highly sophisticated um equipment um will go ahead and and get put into a computer module as to your the mayor's point and it will help prioritize then every time we do a street segment any improvements it gets put into the database and it continues over time we maintain that database um and when I say we it's we be doing that under contract with this company and then they will help us continuously figure out the types of Maintenance that we need to uh do to maintain pain the levels that the council has set so it's it's a great it's a great setup it's um IMS is one of the top firms that other cities use most cities don't do this in house they they tend to have firms like this do it so um I I think it's a great great company and it's one that we're going to get some good value out of question will this be an annual contract it's a fiveyear contract well it's it's to give us our fiveyear plan there is an additional $2,000 um program that we can it it comes out to that we can we get a 90day uh trial run if we feel that that program is you know cost effective then we can we can pay $2,000 a year comes out to and that would be under $2,115 120 annually um and that's within house and I would highly recommend it because we are very you know very flat as an organization that the cities that are larger have the staff that they can input what it is is you're inputting the data as you're making the improvements and so it would be for them to continue to do that database um updating and monitoring and then helping give guidance and Direction on prioritizations based on the data that's in the database Madam vice mayor though currently you're capped at 20 29435 with a contract ending next June and if you wish to go farther then we would amend that to provide for these additional funds other questions question um along with this pavement Improvement plan what does the town do in terms of non-paved roads in terms of assessing what's needed is there a separate Improvement plan for that um yeah so as of right now we're doing quarterly maintenance on the roads and then as funding comes we're trying to chip seal unpaid roads um I don't know if we necessarily have a complete plan for it but um as we've gained funding we've done we did two last year um and we're trying to do more okay any other questions uh public comment no input for this item mayor um so we're at this point ready for a motion I'll do it this is a motion to award a contract for 20 2024 pavement management Plan update to IMS infrastructure Management Services for an amount up to $2 29,43 second Tom we need good roads Tyler you're doing a great job uh my thank you my comment is we're way behind the eightball we did not fund the last program we did when we used I don't know if we used these folks or not but we did not fund it and we're way behind and we actually pulled money um out of the reserves this year to try to get ahead of it unfortunately the costs are coming in higher hopefully we can but we need to catch up because if the roads get too bad you got to totally rebuild it so this is not this is a money saving program we're going to save money by this and we're also going to have be able to answer people he says well my Road's in bad shape when he Ando my road um we'll have we'll know where on the PRI system they are so I I I really support this I think it's it's a systematic way to manage the roads uh for uh the lowest cost possible and most efficiency agreed other comments from Council that was hoping that we were going to get some get an option with Tyler on an ebike with a computer Highway yeah there you go I don't know I don't know I think we'd have to go with the old school pedal bike for me I could use the extra exercise um see we did we did public comment didn't we yeah yeah okay we're ready for a vote I think um and it is financial so it'll be a roll call though all right council member Bunch yes council member Driscoll yes council member Maguire yes council member rhs I council member augeron I vice mayor Royer yes mayor Morris I motion passes 70 and we're on to number three which is Council discussion approval an agreement between the town of Cave Creek and Cave Creek Rodeo days Incorporated crd and Arizona nonprofit corporation for reimbursement of cost to construct the Skybox project to the town presented by the development services director welcome Luke thank you mayor members of council uh tonight uh this the next two agenda items are kind of uh inter strictly linked uh the first item for your consideration this evening is an agreement between the Cave Creek Rodeo days organization and the town of Cave Creek uh to reimburse the cost of the next uh forthcoming uh agenda item which is the Skybox rebuild uh as you're aware the Skybox uh met um with resistance from Mother Nature about three years ago and was destroyed by a storm uh the town subsequently received uh Insurance um payback of of approximately $80,000 um however construction costs and everything else would make it nearly impossible to replace that structure in any form uh Cave Creek Rodeo days steep to the plate um had plans commissioned to um rebuild the Sky Box uh with additional seating capacity and and everything else um the during that time the council uh considered and approved the CIP and budget which included $500,000 earmarked for this project specifically uh the town went out to uh solicit bids from different contractors the town received I believe six responses um and I I'll get into that on the next agenda item um however this the price um is approximately $595,000 should Council choose to approve this agreement uh this evening cap Creek Rodeo days has um pledged to pay back via promiser note uh payment schedule totaling $ 445591 on a yearly basis um collected every May 25th uh for the next seven years uh to pay back the town's contribution to the overall project making uh the town whole at the at the end of that period and having the the Improvement made to the rodeo grounds with that I know um Mr Mike poppen wymer and Mr Mike Frederickson of kre rodeo days are here this evening um but if you have any questions at this time I'd be happy to answer those thank you mayor uh questions from Council Luke didn't we receive some insurance money when thatx blew over yes about 880,000 okay so that's going towards this reconstruction that's considered already kind of taken off the top of that overall expense the 595 so if you add up the the seven years that's approximately 515,000 that the town is going to be paid back through Cave Creek Rodeo days with the other 880,000 being that insurance payout to cover the entire cost Mike and Mike I invite you to the to the podium there to to uh any any comments you want to make about this anything you'd like to say hate to pass up an opportunity to talk Mr Mayor the Town Council on behalf of the board of directors of the cap Creek Rodeo days we're excited about this opportunity and it's an opportunity to build that Sky Box capacity is 96 uh our return on investment is about 6 years of course it's longer now since the price went up but we're going to pay back everything that we put into it and trust me Mr Mayor we're going to have a party okay that we're we anticipate the selling having the party for the Town Council as well as a the town staff who works hard for us uh we're excited about it we've already have a lot of inquiries we've already have sponsorship committed for the next three years of $40,000 a year our return on selling the tickets with a 70% capacity is around 990,000 uh per year so you can see the revenue of this Sky Box is going to bring to the Cave Creek Rodeo days fits with our strategic plan financially and that is to put more money into the improvements of the Arena so it's a win-win for for being an asset of uh of the T the town of Cave Creek but us as a group of rodeo we can do more items more events uh so that's what we're excited about this opport to make more Revenue more improvements and more events uh for for the culture of the western Rodeo I could go on more but I'm going to stop there and I appreciate the opportunity and your support and we have our annual meeting tomorrow night K Creek Rodeo I will'll make sure that we hopefully have some good news to share with our uh colleagues well mik I want I want to oh go you go ahead and finish yours and I want to I'm done I just say is there any questions well I I I just like to say how much I appreciate that the rodeo is a signature event and you are a signature organization uh I I just thrilled to death with the performance the financial performance has been amazing the last last few years and it's a wonderful Rodeo so thank you for all your volunteer service to the town and to all of the North Valley you bet thank you we appreciate your support couldn't do it without you thank you mayor may I ask Mr Po and wmer a question do you mean to tell me that Cave Creek Rodeo days is going to outlay $515,000 for a structure that they don't own that belong that'll end up belonging to the town of Cave Creek and we're happy to do it I'll be darn how about we're going to get more we're getting a good return I wanted to make sure everybody understood that because we've lost a lot of money the last three years by not having it there to begin with absolutely yeah good point Ernie who's a board member that's kind of inside well okay but that brings up another question and I'm not sure if this is the right time but Luke are we any closer to getting the title for the property because we're also putting in a lot of money to improve this Arena and hopefully we'll own it one day um vice mayor Roy members of council I believe I don't know if it was part of the maroba County Parks and Recreation director's um uh presentation that he gave to council a few meetings back but um I do know that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors through I don't know what they if they classify that as a resolution uh with the with the board of supervisors but they issued um in writing their desires to have the patent issued on that land um and subsequently dedicate over the the deed effectively of the rodeo grounds to the town of Cave Creek so they have gone full full-blown initiating um acquisition of that as far as a time it's going to be a county agency dealing with a federal agency as you know which may which may take time but it's underway it is underway yes ma'am very well great thanks question probably for Mr Sims the contract letter of agreement specifies interest free repayment is that uh typical of agreements with the nonprofits or other activities that the town participates in you rais a good question I mean your concern is are we giving up an asset and not getting a return and violation of the Constitution given that this is for a public purpose that's why it's you're allowed to spend public money for an effect e economic activity in your town and I think you listen to Ernie I think the rodeo gives you significant revenue and so it's perfectly legitimate if but if this were you know if this were a for-profit not putting any money and and taking all the taxes to themselves I'd have a question but I think it's perfectly fine given that it's a partnership with with with the rodeo they're a nonprofit and they're they're they're agreeing to promote activities in the town so it doesn't violate the constitution thank you a good question and if May um and it is a town asset so they will be dedicating it to us so it will be ours so it's really I think as uh council member Bunch indicated it's like a smoking deal I you don't see too many of these come by Council very often where somebody's willing to pay the full Freight yes it's not all at the you know all at one time Talent is fronting that but the worst thing that can happen is they don't repay it but it's an asset we needed anyways for the arena so it's I think it's a a good thing other questions from Council seeing none there's public comment on this none for this item mayor okay so we're ready for a motion then I bet I could do that I get to vote on it twice we have 11 board members so it's not a problem motion to approve an agreement between the town of Cave Creek and Cave Creek rodo days Incorporated uh ccrd and Arizona nonprofit corporation for reimbursement cost construct the Skybox project to the town for an amount up to $515,000 second okay Ernie you had the yeah like like I said that you know basically um the the reason this is our bylaws are written um the rodeo days bylaws are written to support the facility and um having been having been there when these bylaws were written there was a period of time where we were spending money on on bleachers and that type of things and people some people in town were not happy with us doing that so it behooves the Cave Creek Rodeo days and the town of Cave Creek to to participate in this agreement because it increases the marketability of the rodeo grounds for other events other times of the year uh where we've only got it the rodeo days have only got it for about 10 days and I think maybe we probably need it for two weeks but we can talk about that later um but it's a good deal for both of us who had second Tom two words section signature uh signature location signature ER I do have a question not necessarily related to this I think it but it is are you guys going to put together a plan for how you're going to Market and sorry about that are you guys going to put together a plan to that talks about how are you going to Market this for other kinds of events and get that back to us at some point you can answer there yes see we do havei plan it's under the financial part of it and that's one like L Ernie alluded we went from a board of 9 to 11 because it's a it's a working board and we just need more help to get to these other events we already we have a committee was started for as a a western music festival we also have a a group that with Mike here doing a FFA barel racing through the fact we had 160 barel Racers at the last Rodeo they're just they've been contacting us they've been they want us to put events on no no I I just at some point I'd like you guys to come back to the council I think it' be a good idea and just tell us hey here's here's what we're looking at plus we have a plan on improvements to the arena too no I mean I just think it's since we're jointly investing in these things I think it'd be worthwhile for you guys to come back and say okay here's how you're getting your return on investment okay does that make sense we can do that okay thanks Mike thank you I gotta say no don't lose sight of the fact that the property belongs to the it will belong to the town of Cave Creek and and this organization here is while they may wish to expand their authority over the grounds the grounds do belong to the town the town does book The Grounds through the planning or development services department believe what's her name uh uh our permit SE Tracy wilgus yeah yeah you know so it it really is the the town basically does it our our benefit or the benefit to the town from from cap reak Rodeo days is is the um is the 4-day rodeo that we've got it's it's not I I don't know that we want to be saddled with the management of the of the grounds the rest of the year there may be some issues where we actually say hey we'd like it this this weekend for for an event where we would be a Lessie again as we are with Rodeo now that that's fine i' just like to see what is the use plan whether it comes from the Town Council or whether it comes from jointly from the Town Council and cap Creek Rodeo days just here's kind of the plan for the future here's how we plan on using it so don't care where where it's coming from but I would like to see something like that because we're investing some significant dollars here and I know you guys are too much more okay so uh we don't have any public ask that question so we're we are ready for a vote then and this will be a roll call them all right council member Driscoll yes council member McGuire yes council member roads hi council member augeron hi council member Bunch absolutely vice mayor Royer yes mayor Morris I motion passes 70 and brond to number four Luke um so Council discussion approval authorize town man to enter into the contract with API general contractors for construction of the Cade Creek Memorial Arena in rodeo ground Skybox project for an amount up to $595,000 and authorizing staff to make appropriate fund transfers necessary to implement the project mayor members of council thank you uh this is part two of the previous agenda item um as you were informed during the last agenda item when we looked at the budget considerations for this fiscal year uh we were anticipating a cost to rebuild a Skybox at about $500,000 um at such time that we solicited bids based off the the town approved construction drawings uh we received six actually very uh good firms responded to our request for pricing for propos proposal to construct um going with the lowest qualified uh contractor um is API who is the um the contractor that we're asking Council to consider awarding uh the contract so that uh Town manager uh and town attorney Bill Sims can complete the contract and uh sign it and get the contractor turn loose to construct uh they're anticipating um to be completed with the Sky Box uh by January um there's opportunity to be done sooner um but their their target date their conservative Target date at this point is uh January of 2025 be next rodo yes sir let's hope so we can't afford to pay the 44,000 and then just for uh general knowledge uh the pricing that that was proposed by API uh we put in the we put in this document not to exceed 595,000 the other bids um ranged from that number up into the almost 900,000 so um pretty pretty decent spread across the six so just food for thought on that and uh I'd be happy to answer any questions that that you may have thank you questions okay there's public comment no input for this item mayor okay so we are ready for a motion Ernie you want to make it again again our resident board member absolutely motion to approve authorizing the town manager enter a contract with API general contractors for construction of the Cave Creek Memorial Arena and rodeo ground Skybox project for an amount up to $595,000 and authorizing staff to make appropriate fund transfers necessary to implement the project second thank you okay you have the Motions yeah the the agreement that we just approved before this wouldn't mean anything if we turn this down so we need to move forward and get this going make it CL a much more classy event for the town of Cave Creek uh our thanks to the rodeo committee for getting this other comments um my comment is I want to compliment you on getting six bids uh that I'm going to be highlighting that every project that comes in the future looking for a minimum of three that unless there's something going on but uh uh congratulations on that that makes it comfortable for us to approve something like this when you know that it's been bit out like that so so thank you very much and I this is uh I'm I'm really behind this uh it is your responsibility to market the the non Rodeo week use utilization and now we've got this nice facility we hope to see it used because we don't have we have desert awareness Park and we have spur cross and this is I guess the the third big signature Park and event that we have in town and ought to be used so yes sir okay this is financial council member McGuire yes council member rhs hi council member augeron hi council member Bunch yes council member Driscoll yes vice mayor Royer yes mayor Morris I motion passes 70 and if I'd worn my hat tonight I'd be throwing it up in the air about now um next item is Council discussion approval of fiscal year 2024 budget transfers and ratify contract for interim Financial Services with interim public Management LLC presented by the finance director welcome shering it's on thank you very much good evening mayor and Council so um we're here tonight to ask for approval of some budget transfers and ratification of um contract for interim Financial Services the uh requirements um from an accounting perspective in our annual financial report we would need to disclose what the reasons are for Budget overages and what plans are to address that well the easiest thing to do is just do the transfers that that are needed to be done so right now the town is operating under home rule but that is setting an expenditure limit in total for the town the statutes do say that we need to be able to identify based off of Department how much is being spent so the analysis that we did were looking at by department and there were three departments um plus uh um one of the um special Revenue funds that um had overages because of primarily things that were unforeseen at the time of budget so with um the town manager's office to begin with there was um turnover um as you know that um was not anticipated during the uh time of the budget was prepared there was a compensation study and a benefit study that was done so um the total of those for that variance for the town manager's office is about 63,000 um in order to be able to cover that we're asking to take money from the general fund contingency to cover those for the finance department there was turnover as well um in the finance department and a contract which were uh is also part of this asking for Council to ratify that that contract that originally the scope was thought to be with within the town manager authority to be able to approve that contract it ended up going longer than was anticipated so um we're asking for ratification of that there was um four-year or fiveyear forecast um consultant um that did some work and there was the cost allocation and user fee study um that some of those costs were incurred during fiscal year 24 um and that will be coming to you very soon we have a work session scheduled for going over that user fee study so for the finance department that was over 102,000 there that we're asking to also have covered with contingency monies for the Town Council so again um recruitment for a new town manager was something that wasn't anticipated included at the time of budget and the Consultants that were used for um helping to create the performance metrics that the town would use um was also not anticipated so for town Council that was over 39,000 um that we're asking for a transfer from the general fund contingency the um final one is special Revenue funds so with all the um settlements that are happening um related to opioid um use with the the different agencies in fiscal year 24 there was um 2,900 spent of some of those distributions that we have received so far for um the the opioid um settlement and it was used for wellness and awareness for First Responders and families and there is a a grant fund contingency for any of those outside um funding sources that we're asking to take some of that money to cover that are there any questions no seeing none there is uh public comment no input on this item mayor okay um we're looking for a motion then I'll make the motion y motion to approve fiscal year 2024 budget transfers and to ratify the contract for interim Financial Services with interim public Management LLC second um obviously it's business uh that we need to finalize uh my only comment is while we spent a lot of money on a interim Financial director we're very grateful that you're with us now thank you appreciate that Dusty I don't think we really have a choice on this I think we have to clean up the books so I think this is very supportable other other comments question other comments okay um this is financial council member roads hi council member augeron hi council member Bunch yes council member Driscoll yes council member Maguire yes vice mayor Royer yes mayor Morris I motion passes 70 we're on to number six which just mayor if I could just um say um the plan is that we will be coming to you um probably about quarterly um dur throughout the year instead of at the end of the year I just came on board we're trying to clean all this up but there is a plan in place to be able to bring any of these things like this to you sooner thanks sure next item is Council discussion and approval of a soul Source agreement with Ferguson Waterworks for the purchase of Neptune metering equipment and software for an amount up to $500,000 for the next three years presented by the utilities director thank you mayor and Council and after hearing the last item or item before last where you were uh happy to see uh multiple bids I'm sorry to bring a soul source to you but um so um water meters are actually very play a very critical role in the water system because it does measure the water usage that the customers allows us to build for it and actually moving forward is something that as we change out to our metering technology will hopefully be able to change people's water patterns and out and conserve water so it's very important important that we actually have um good water meters in the system the town is actually standardized on Neptune meters about 2012 there was an evaluation done um in the in the desert Hill system when the town bought the desert Hill system it actually had required staff to manually go and read those meters so starting 2012 and it sort of wrapped up just as I got on board in 2019 they got changed out to a uh the Neptune meters so right now it they work very well it takes us about a day just to read the Neptune meters with our driveby system um so it's been very well uh it takes us almost two days to drive through the uh Cape Creek system and we always seem to have batches of failures every few months so those meters are aging out so one of the reasons that we want to do this is actually to replace the existing meters which we believe are Under reporting and then also the meters themselves actually have a little radio repeater that allows us to do the driveby those are failing also so um council is probably aware that we have the uh Federal grant to help us change out the Cave Creek meter so what happened is we got caught with the fact that a few years ago we asked for some Council Authority uh with Corin main cor main was the distributor of Neptune meters at the time time we asked for $700,000 of authority uh for a 40-year period Well we through the grant coming through uh we've actually expended that so we made our last purchase under that Authority at the end of last fiscal year so we now have our conx um full with meters ready to be installed as part of that project um but we actually still have about 360 meters and the five Gateway sites and the gate Gateway sites are actually the Gateway collector so as we do the upgrade from a driveby metering system to to a Ami called automatic metering infrastructure we will actually have collector antenas that collect the data um that allows us to send to the cloud then actually we can review it daily as well as allowing customers to see things like usage so if they see an alert um so it's a great Improvement but we've used up that Authority with corin mean and just as we were about to come back with an extension uh corin mean elected not to move forward with representing Neptune meters anymore so they went with a different meter manufacturer they um absorbed um two companies uh came together and they decided to let the Neptune meters go away so uh it's actually Ferguson Waterworks is now the approved vendor authorized vendor for Arizona so being an authorized vendor uh that allows them as to buy products and have the products warrantied so we're looking to get authority to make an expenditure of Fergus and Waterworks um the other large agencies uh Chandler goodye and surprise are also Neptune uh based water meters in the valley how they've handled this is actually done similar to us with a soul s justification uh what town attorney told me is for our town code is I can't do a Cooperative purchase off someone else's soulle source so this is our soulle source to allow us to make the purchases moving forward what we're looking to do is get authority to expend up to $500,000 over the next um three years so we have about $250,000 worth of equipment still to buy on the metering upgrade project for Cave Creek and um Council might recall that we started a program in um uh uh Desert Hills starting this year we put $50,000 in to start changing out those meters the meters are just over 10 years old typically they have a 10year lifespan and some of the old meters we want to start changing out as we want to move to the Ami system the original Desert Hills meters are actually an older generation that allows us to do that upgrade at the same time so we figure this will give us enough authority to complete both U both complete the Cave Creek Water nearer conversion and start the conversion in Desert Hills and get a fair Fairly far along before we have to come back and ask for more Authority at this point so um you know we're doing a sole source because Neptune is the author or sorry um puring Waterworks is the authorized vendor you'll see as a part of the the package we included their price sheet so actually the meters themselves Al it didn't say it they're actually are giving us about 25% off all the equipment including the meters himself off of man manufactured suggested retail sales price um they're offering that to all the other Valley CI so we're actually getting um the purchasing power of the other Valley Cities brought together but I can't do a coopertive purchasing because of procurement code off any of the other contracts with Ferguson Water Works is this is our exclusive contract with them with that I can answer any questions have a question so um Sean there is an equality issue with Neptune metering is that the reason I mean I'm curious as to why um why cor main cor and Main D no they merged with another vendor and the other vendor was actually reing census meters so they all eled not to have two competing Brands and actually I think the meter manufacturers don't like that also so core and Main when they absorb the other there's a merger they elected to to become a census meter vendor so that left um Ferguson then picked up the Neptune in the valley so doesn't do the quality just have to do with after merger they actually had two vendors and and they didn't they didn't want to and the meter vendors didn't want them to compete with each other with the same uh supplier in the valley and then secondly you might have already mentioned this but are these smart meters and are is being covered by the grant that we got for Smart Meters um about half of the authority that we have um we will get covered through the grant um so about $250,000 so we still have some meters to buy about 360 meters to buy and the five collector sites which we can put back to the Grant and the grant is 55% um Town funds and 45% federal funds so we will be able to charge that back to the grant okay great so questions uh do you have a uh I mean one of the big uh items here is the actual dollars loss of waters that go to a house that are unmetered because water meters never read high they always read low they wear out and read low because the the turbines don't turn as they wear out as sand goes through them from a water well um do you have a estimate for the the percentage water loss systemwide that this might correct um mayor I believe you know right now we're reporting over a 10% % water loss in our system I believe this will account for five plus percent with these meter change out we'll get yeah I do believe the meters that we've been pulling out because the cave Greek system um a lot of the meters are are getting to be 25 years and older in the system and when we do pull them out um just because of the radio HS failing and we send them off for testing they're usually uh reporting only 90% of the water consumption if that so as we continue the meter change out project what the other thing that this has done to us is the part of the metering change out projects we were trying to do Cooperative purchasing off the old agreements that actually also allowed for the installation of meters underneath the requirements of the Federal grant which is to use the prevailing wages as defined by the um Davis bacon act um we actually have to go to our own solicitation right now but as we get that wrapped up and we start changing the meters out in bulk in Cape Greek we're going to be testing about 10% of the meters as as actually was a requirement for the grant that we do that and we'll actually be able to report back some numbers of on about 10% of the meters as we Chang them out of the 2500 meters in Cave Creek and give you true accurate numbers of where we're at but as we've been pulling them out of the system yeah we've seen a lot of we've had failed meters that are completely not reporting and you know one's reporting less than 90% of the water consumption so this is a this has quite an economic it has a huge economic advantage to the town to the water company water custom and and a fairness because some are not paying their share which means others pay more than their share so it's a fairness issue as well okay other questions okay so we have public comment on this no input for this item mayor okay we're ready for a motion then I will make it motion to uh oops y motion to approve a soul Source agreement with Ferguson Waterworks for the purchase of Neptune water metering equipment and software for an amount up to $500,000 for the next three years second second by Cynthia um this is a key element in our conservation program is it's a fairness it's brings in uh water Revenue uh it's going to help us uh communicate with customers and where water uses is this this is a a golden program and uh so I I've highly support it I think it fits nicely with the information we had on the utility master plan and changes for improvements again in the accurate uh reporting and getting that unaccounted water loss down to a better percent y other comments it's fortuitous that it's 25% off as well so that's huge help yeah we got a sale okay okay this is financial so we'll take it real council member augeron council member Bunch yes council member Driscoll yes council member Maguire yes council member rhs I vice mayor Royer yes mayor Morris I motion passes 70 and we are on to um Council discussion approval of resolution r202 24-12 a resolution of the mayor and Town Council the town of C Creek Maricopa County Arizona approving and authorizing the town to enter into a development agreement with ls and SS properties to share in the cost of upgrading the town's existing zone 9 water booster station to provide fire flows presented by the utilities director thank you mayor and Council and we also have Michelle vanan um on she actually helped draft this development agreement so if we have any specific questions Michelle is available for that also um so just stepping back LS and SS properties actually represents continent Mountain uh States so that is the overall Master developer for that um property and so this is our development agreement with that subdivider okay so continent States is a 13 lot development in the northeast corner of Cave Creek um it's located in our pressure zone 9 and all actually have a map that helps to explain some of this so the existing booster Pump Station can only provide the domestic demands for that pressure zone of um but we have two pumps about 30 gallons a minute each so that's enough to meet the the water demands that the customers have there were not for fire protection so in 2015 the town entered into an original development agreement with um LS and SS development um and that was to had two components um the existing distribution system was mostly 6in lines there were some 8 in lines also but the 6in lines became constriction when the fire flow was required to be 1,000 gallons a minute so you couldn't get that much flow through the 6in line so the town was actually going to um and that 6inch sectional line was actually outside the development so the town took on the burden of actually replacing that 6 inch line and once that was done then the developer was going to require to do a booster station upgrade project to get the Thousand gallons minute of fir flow um and then they were also getting going to um have a reimbursement agreement built into it so they'd get some proportional cost of that back um so two things have changed um with this last master plan the town looked at these more rural areas in the town where there's it's just more residential demands there's no commercial up there uh no businesses and we've said that a prescription of 1,000 gallons a minute is not ideal for these large areas these these outlining areas so 500 gallons per minute is a better flow when you look at that then the distribution system uh you don't need to replace the 6-inch lines uh the the um the existing 6in lines are adequate um so last year last December um close to the expiration of the or agreement um both parties to town and the developer agreed to um terminate the original development agreement but at the same time we also agreed to to work together to actually put a new development agreement in place to help uh address the fire flows in pressure zone 9 and this this graphically shows you what pressure zone 9 is for the town um so our Rockaway Reservoir booster site is actually the site um the reservoir um is up there but we actually have a small booster Pump Station that actually boosts up into the area immediately adjacent to the east um there's a a future waterline Loop that actually came out of the master PL that's something we don't need to do right now but I I wanted to highlight that because our master plan talked about that as a future redundancy reliability Improvement but we don't need to do that right now um but you can see Continental Mountain Estates on the uh East and property so under the old development agreement um one deel one house has built and they were allowed to put in a a fire storage tank and there's another property that's actually met before the termination agement so it's it's working through its development process right now and getting permits but up there we've seen this pressure zone right now is about 23 M or lots that have water meters and there's about 24 when you look at the entire area that that could be served by the the pressure zone so we looked at proportionality and then the fact that you know it's the the need for the fire booster station had two requirements one was the the needs for the town subdivision code requires that before building permits get issued in the subdivision there's supposed to be fire protection available as defin at as at the fire hydrants that wasn't being met that was actually Catalyst of the 2015 development agreement but there's also a need when you look at the the properties that actually outside of continent Mountain States in this area that in pressure zone 9 that did not have fire protection and the town's aware you know one of our biggest risks is actually Wildland Fire Protection so we had a a pressure Zone on the edge of the town that we couldn't protect from so it made sense for us to work together with the developer on the new development agreement and and uh that's what we've put together so um the town actually um there small scope of work to have NCS Engineers look at the design What's um tricky about this site and maybe I'll go back to the beginning slide U this is actually a picture of the booster Pump Station um what you're looking at is I call the tin can it's it's 15 feet below grade so let me take one step back here um you can't see this booster Pump Station because that's actually the above ground electrical equipment the booster pump station is completely below gr at this point so the reservoir itself or Rock away is depressed it's about 15 ft the bottom of that Reservoir is about 15 ft below the natural grade out there so it's a struggle to try and get and to tie into the piping that's part of the thing that's running to the cost up here as well as electrical um it has limited electrical supplies to this site uh we can't get three-phase power out here which is what's necessary when you get into the larger horsepower pumps like it's I think it's a 50 or 45 horsepower pump required to meet the pressure uh and because of the head out here for the elevation but uh NCS did a cost estimate they came back with just under a million dollars 968,000 um dollars with some contingencies built into us I think it's a good cost estimate to design uh design and construct the improvements necessary to get 500 gallons a minute of fire flow up to the area so the town agreed uh with have LS and SS properties provide $350,000 um towards the construction of that project uh if you look at proportionality by Lots it's actually they're they're helping out a little bit more um they're going to put that money into an escor account so the town will actually take the lead on the project that means that I'll be engaging probably coming back with a scopal work for you uh to authorize to have NCS uh is what I'm thinking of doing um since they did the plary design to do the detail design uh and then we will uh reimburse them with the escro monies and then go to Construction in 2026 uh we'll put a new Improvement in the capital Improvement program to cover the construction cost and again we'll draw down from the the developers escoro count and then contribute with the town's fund so it's going to be a jointly funded project um we think it's a it's a win-win for the town uh we can do a future waterline Improvement that's to help the system up there it's not necessary right away and we provide fire service to allow this developer to continue uh developing and then also to provide more so from the town standpoint Fire Protection in our pressure zone 9 so this is I've already gone through some of this uh oh actually that's sorry that's wrong slide got slipped in there so uh right now we have um we're asking Council to authorize the resolution which authorizes the town manager approv count manager to enter into the development agreement without I can answering questions questions seeing none there's public comment on this nothing for this item mayor okay so we're looking for a motion on this one I will make it motion to approve a Source agreement with oops motion to approve resolution uh r202 24-12 resolution the mayor and Town Council of the town of Cape Creek Mar County Arizona approving and authorizing the town to enter into a development agreement with ls and SS properties to share in the cost of upgrading the town's existing zone 9 water booster station to provide fire floats backing okay um it it pains me to pay this much money for anything but uh it's it's necessary to clean up both a that development agreement issue and also to added bonus of having fire flow in that area every time you come before us it reminds me of a Baptist preacher reach down deep into your pockets I'm sorry um I'm being a little bit funny but this is cleaning up an issue that's been lingering out there for a while so I understand it I don't like it but I understand it other comments from Council Michelle I see you've joined us is there something you'd like to add to the equation here thank you for staying up late with us okay so um we're ready for a vote all right council member Bunch yes coun counc member Driscoll yes council member Maguire yes council member rhs hi council member augeron hi vice mayor Royer mayor Morris I motion passes 70 and we are on to number eight the council discussion possible action to direct and authorize a town manager to submit a letter of intent to Salt River Project requesting admission to the Bartlett Dam modification feasibility study steering committee as a non-voting member presented by the utilities director thank you mayor and Council I want to introduce we still have Michelle continued on the line and we actually had Brad Hill who's um you might remember Brad from our presentation on the utility master plan so Brad has actually helped us map out the Water Resource component of the master plan and the town is actually engaged uh with Brad to help move forward to make sure we can map out the town's Water Resources so I think these are the two people that can help answer any more specific questions for you so um get the slides Brian so uh just a few weeks ago the town has a presentation by Salt River Project on the um Bartlett Dam modification feasibility study it's a bit of a mouthful and this is sort of a graphic that shows what they're proposing to do I'll go through a little bit of details and then uh just highlight some pros and cons um that Council should consider in moving forward with this um this on so a little background Salt River Project does manage water on both the salt and verie rivers um so I learned a little bit in their presentation they operate seven reservoirs six on the salt two on the verie uh one on E East Clear Creek the issue is on the verie river the two reservoirs that they have which is Horseshoe Dam and um Bartlett Dam there's a sedimentation issue so they've lost a considerable amount of capacity to store uh water on the verie river and I think as they brought out in their presentation that sadly um in some storm events not too uh long ago they actually had to do releases so the reservoirs are not functioning as they're intended to which is store water um during uh uh high water flow events either through storm water or snow pack runoff and allow that to be tapered out the valley um so um this is an issue overall for the Water Resources so um what they're trying to do is to actually regain the capacity uh that's been lost over 40% of the capacity horseshoe Dam has been filled up they looked at things like dry it to dredge that material out to regain that capacity um and what they concluded in an earlier study that it's the best opportunities is actually to raise Bartlet Dam and effectively let horseshoe uh um go away horseshoe Dam's drainage area will go away and be recaptured by um Bartlet Dam and raising that structure so uh the one option they moving forward with would actually create uh 305,000 additional acre feet of what they're calling new verie space and nvs capacity that's that's capacity it's over and above what they're going to get from the Horseshoe Dam that's partly just on the the logistics of creating a dam structure and how that can impact the town is that while we are not part of the Salt River Project and when um you know I've worked in other jurisdictions where we uh they were considered on projects so the project lands and this map helps explain that the the the blue hatched area is considered the on Project lands that's the project that's the property within the Met Phoenix Metro area that can get direct direct deliveries of Salt River Project water either salt or ver river water can get deliveries to so typically um we have access to the call the the cap Canal as you can see that bisex set and I've highlighted that in the yellow you see little Cave Creek at the top end there so righty Jason depart L Dam ironically um but we have no way of getting that water into our system by joining into a project like this um what happens is uh even though we're off project um this gives us access to some of the storage capacity of the verie river water so it's something new it's a new water supply that we have not historically had of access to and again my prior experien is if if you're off project you're not Salt River Project water this is a way for us to get into that uh Watershed uh directly east of the town so um they they completed a a review of the sedimentation how to recover that sedimentation and they the the recommendation was to move forward with a project um to raise the Bartlet Dam um to U so what's happening is a feasibility study it's ongoing right now and uh their Salt River Project 22 Municipal tribal and agricultural partners working together with under uh with the Bureau of Reclamation so the federal government through the Bureau of Reclamation are are part of the project and they're moving a feasibility study that in in is basically doing a a design development uh 30% design um because that allows you to do a cost estimate and also allows you to do an environmental assessment um this is creating a new impoundment area so there's obviously a lot of environmental things to consider so once that report is put together which right now it's on scheduled will be completed sometime in 2027 then that'll be submitted to the Federal ederal government and that all met the requirements for the federal government's NEPA process National Environmental Protection Agency um not AG act um requirements for getting Federal funding so effectively they're feeding into a project to allow the federal government to help fund this and why would you need the federal government's help is partly this the cost um I have another slide that mentions that so at this point um the estimate for the cost is has risen to the point that's about 1.2 million2 billion dollar to do this project so in the feasibility study there's what's called a steering committee that's made up of the different project members and in this within the steering committee there's voting and non- voting members um we were told in the presentation by SRP staff that there's a small window for us um to join the steering committee um we tonight if uh there's a draft of the letter of intent that we would send in to SRP who's chairing the steering committee and then we would then provide some additional information so the timing is perfect because we have the master plan complete completed and we can uh show the need for the town and why what water we do need and at November 15th the steering committee members would vote to authorize the town to uh be uh added to it just last year I think there was a couple other members added so some of the members have been on board since this project started in 20120 there's been a few others been added along the process so um and there's two options in front of us right now um there's the non voting member sry says no voting should non voting members and what SRP pointed that out is while they have the steering committee who who meet and can vote on things the non- voting members are just more participating on the side they actually have been my understanding have been participating in things like the water allocation there was a subcommittee uh that all the members were voted on to and to be a non- voting member is about 200 or they pointed out at this point is $28,000 um and I I caution that could rise a little bit because if there's additional change orders as they go through this feasibility study that um those change orders will be wrapped into the project cost and distributed among sing ERS but what they've told us is uh um if we get elected and to go that route we have to make a $90,000 payment November F uh right after the November 15th meeting uh and then we have another payment of $30,000 in May of 2025 this current fiscal year and then we have two other payments of $444,000 each in May of 26 and 27 and that would be complet in the project and then again that could rise a little bit more if we wanted to be a voting member on the steering committee that cost Rises to $628,000 is the current estimate it would follow a similar uh cost schedule that they're showing here you want Oh 682 apologize for that um so what are the issues involved in this uh after the presentation you know uh couple of things jumped out at me is um if you look back at the uh early version of the feasibility report in 2021 they were estimating uh between different options between 700 860 million for construction uh staff shared with me and I think they mentioned it the presentation but they shared with me that right now the current cost us is $1.2 billion for the project so the ultimate cost we're not sure of and we still were a few years away before even funding so will the will that rise and I'm not sure if they built in contingencies into the uh how much contingency they built into the current a cost estimat they're not sure of how funding will occur again the request is going to go to the federal government to fund it they're not sure if it'll be um the expect expectation is about half of the project will be funded by the federal government but then as far as the payment for the the members whether that'll have to be an upfront or be payment incrementally uh during construction or something like the what happened with the ca central Arizona project the cap Canal the federal government funded that and then we repay that as a member and having a subcontractor we actually have a capital cost that we help pay off The Debt Service on that so we're not sure which mechanism will occur that's an unknown and the biggest unknown for the the town is right now it's uh they I think they mentioned 2020 2032 to 33 would be the quickest schedule they could see this happening more realistic it's going be probably mid 2030s that this would actually happened and as we brought up in the master plan um discussion is the town has an issue of what's going to happen with the central Arizona project which is our main water supply after at the end of 2026 when there's a reallocation and then whether the state and then subsequently the central project then come back to as a subcontractor will be reduced so this won't help us meet that time frame but it is something in Water Resources you have to have a long-term perspective the other uh um issue is the variability in the in the verie river flows um so this is not going to add to our new water our water portfolio to allow for new development what this can be used for is to shore up our existing central Arizona project supplies and the way it was explained in the presentation just quickly recap is historically um and there's been shortages on the Colorado River the salt and verie River have not had the same shortages so effectively if there's there's Cuts uh temporary Cuts in the Colorado River supplies we could look at the SRP water through the verie river water as a backup to that to bridge that but we can't use it for new development um the other issue with that is that uh we're told us if we ask for a, acre feet um we actually have to ask for uh and pay for 3.5 times that because of the variability so we would be paying for proportional share of uh uh three uh 3,500 acre feet if we wanted to get a th000 variable because of the variability and the flows on there and that's just part of what they've built into their project and that's what all the other participants are looking at having to face um also physical access to the water I bring it back to that other map is you know SRP comes in and we do not have direct deliveries from SRP Canal system right now as part of that presentation they mentioned uh what's called the skiff project uh which allows water So currently water from central Arizona project can get into the SRP Canal system but you can't do the reciprocal you can't get SRP water into the cap system without a booster Pump Station which is what they're working on there's a project to do that we don't need to join into that right now um SB staff said that there's some time on that one uh but we need to figure out the mechanism you know if we if we go up down this path um you know physically how do we get access to it and even if we got access via sending water into Central project we can't take it out at our booster station which is Upstream of that so we then have to work with agreements with Downstream users um to do water exchanges and that was brought up in the presentation and something we'd have to work our way through and most there's a good number of the participants in the project are having to work through that and to be honest we actually uh reached out to the City of Phoenix about the idea of could we uh give um uh some of our water to there they actually have I believe it's three treatment plants on the can uh SRP Canal system so could we do a water Exchange another IG with Phoenix that's something we'd have to work through so we have a few years to deal with that uh and and getting that done and also right now there's uh you know it's a funding issue also this was not put into the the current capital uh program so this would be using current general fund reserves to make the first payments in the subsequent 26 and 27 payments we could build those into the capital program we have limited staff resources um you know I've got a good team uh we actually have you know we brought on um Brad and Michelle's helping is out but there's a lot of things going on as you can see from when we brought the master plan forward that we're trying to move forward and there's other projects that we're trying to work on to give us actual access to wet water our focus in the last year or so has been really on how do we get wet water into the system and that's things like working on the Cave Creek existing Wells can they be brought online can they be used to augment our our poble water supplies um or can they uh help us uh augment the um our um our uh our irrigation deliveries to ran show Manana and then we can get some beneficial use out of the of of our other water supply some other way which we're talking about an exchange a water exchange with effel with Phoenix so that's another you know there's a lot of a lot of issues um and I don't want to say it's a complete negative um but there's I want to make sure that council's aware of all the issues again I I really thank SRP staff for coming out and giving that presentation to us um we probably should have asked them to do that presentation a few years ago to council so there's an opportunity here and then when we look at Water Resources you have to have that longterm perspective but can this town afford to do everything which includes you know something that in the future um you know I'm not sure if all the participants will continue with the project once the final costs come through and how much allocation they're going to get so that was a question that um SRP staff when I I approached them they're they're not sure again at this point this is joining on in the feasibility study so the town's responsibility ends at that submitt of that study to the federal government for construction funding at that point there'll have to be another uh um agreement to continue with construction because that'll have to all be outlined as I mentioned we're not sure of how construction will occur how fund how funding will actually have to be submitted so there's some unknowns but this gets us at least a seat at the table have that discussion um overall it's a nice good project there's some issues for the town to overcome to get access to this water and it does help show up our water supply but it does not add to our water supply which you know again with the variability of water is we have to weigh that off the pros and cons and with that we did make uh well I wanted to give Council an author recommendation is that staff was thinking that it may be good practice for the town to be a non voting Menor uh non voting member to issue the letter of intent and then hopefully the steering committee still has to vote Us in so we have um November 15th but we have the all the documentation to provide that and I think we have a really compelling case on why we'd want to join on but there are a lot of still unknown on this project and that that does make me a little nervous so with that I can open up to discussion if Brad or Michelle want to um chime in on expand on what I I brought up so and I'll open it up to councel answer question uh Michelle do you have anything you'd like to add I don't I think this is a question of whether you um want to allocate you know limited resources to this project versus potential other projects and I do think there are potential other projects to consider so I would leave that decision to you Brad how about you mayor and Council no I think Sean did an excellent presentation of the pros and cons and the details of the project and Michelle just kind of reiterated what some of the questions or or some of the recommendations that we were going to share with you is given your limited funding are you interested focusing long-term shortterm or both okay questions from Council Sean do you remember the spread sheet where they showed us the one on a on a particular year where there was a a surplus of water in the Colorado River and and a negative on the verting and then POS do you remember seeing that spreadsheet when they did the presentation yeah mayor and council member yeah I don't remember it oh it was actually it was a graph one of the graphs that they had shown I mean how how reliable is that well Brad you've probably worked with this more but I I believe just historically I'm not sure how far back the records go is that again the the salt and verie um have have the the the droughts have been opposite of that the Colorado River and again we're not getting access to the Salt River this is just giving us access to the verie River Basin so of the two basins which have been more reliable we get access to one with this Pro I asked the SRP guys that what they said is it it depends on the weather patterns so if the jet stream pulls South the Verde River and the the Salt River get more rain if the jet stream pulls North then the Colorado River gets more rain other questions Tom um Mr Mayor um one of the things I like that you do is you keep us AB breast of our relationship with the valley you do it with mag if there is issues uh year ago you mentioned me that you had observed a strong focus with the mag meetings of trying to get people out of their cars and into other forms of transportation and so forth uh this evening it was a good catch that you did and the rest of us didn't about encouraging people to support the proposition on the November ballot that maintains the sales tax from Maricopa County residents that pays for everything from the expanded freeway right down the the street here on curre highway going north to Flagstaff to all the free freeway ramps and so forth so over time I've observed that you provide a good reminder of our relationship maybe a small puddle but we're part of a larger political and policy ecosystem here in the valley when the SRP presentation was made to me it was like the Willy want a Golden Ticket it was like an opportunity for us to be somebody now this is the last item on the agenda and it's actually been written to where we can't even support a voting membership I guess because the recommendations is for a non- voting membership youed you've spent the presentation time looking at your feet not looking at the council so I know you're walking a a very care careful line here but and I'm not a water expert but it just seems as if the potential benefits to this agenda item and this proposal was regionalism SRP has been in water since they recovered the Hokum canals years ago and our status as a regional hopefully voting participant but I guess worst case non- voting participant provides more than water it provides a place at a table that we often don't get a chance for uh before Mayor Bob and and mayor uh bunch I sat at the mag Regional Council and we sat at the kids table we were between the saltare Maricopa inding and kre and buy and tson and Guadalupe it was the same table but we were at the far end where they had to go like this to see us and I don't think size or resources sometimes is the only consideration I think increasingly in this state and the mayor has reminded this as well to us with legislation being considered to do away zoning that the league had to fight this year we have to participate on a regional basis we have to be seen we have to be heard in our numbers there is strength not everybody is the state of Maricopa and the state of Phoenix and there are alliances but all policy and politics is based on relationships and those relationships like the vice mayor said earlier are strengthened and facilitated by attending the league of cities and towns conference I I know it's a crapshoot perhaps that term has been used but I think the potential value for a small town at this moment in time where it's our very last opportunity and our twin next door has done it I can't imagine why this is not something that we would not give really serious consideration to and not for today or for tomorrow I don't think everybody wants to go toilet to tap I think we'd like to have the opportunity of being part of a regional water collection and distribution system and the project that was meant of putting the water back in and putting it back in the capap it may look rude Goldberg but it's genius and as we all know in Arizona and I'm just saying it to be funny which it's not but you know whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting but it would be a very serious shame for this little Community that's been here longer than most others back to 1876 for a settlement to not take advantage this evening of this opportunity to be in the presence of water planers with the capap and SRP and the big boys at the table the big girls at the table so I got a bad feeling about this it feels like it's going downhill before it's even had a chance to uh to really test its value for the community and I just think especially if you're going to go for non voting that is a very modest request for money and as they explained to us last time we don't have to sign a 30-year agreement we can separate ourselves as we get further down the road if it looks like it's not a good investment I think turning away in the big beginning is shortsighted doesn't serve the community's potential well I'm not pro growth and pro exponential subdivisions up here but wet water and paper water are two different things and everybody who knows who lives here knows that and this could be wet water and I just think for the small amount of money and we keep putting it in the bank to earn interest this is an operational defensible expense so that's just my opinion Mr Mayor thank you are there other questions Dusty I kind of agree I I think uh if you have the choice of being able to vote on your future or standing by and watching as other people vote on your future that's not a comfortable position to be in so my preference honestly would be to amend what our draft motion is here to to go for the for the voting membership I I just we're talking 400 $400,000 difference we're really looking at questions for well why wouldn't why wouldn't we want to do there you go why wouldn't we want to do that why wouldn't we want to pay the extra $400,000 I mean it's not like we don't have money in the bank and it's not like we don't have a massive budget that we approved and you are the Lion Share of it but why wouldn't we want a voting share mayor council member um I don't know how much exra value we'd get at is once we get entered into the the committee as even as a non- voting member will be part of the group so um I'm not sure the extra value we would get out of being a voting member and sitting on the steering committee um which is about two-thirds of the members are part of that steering committee there are several members that are not part of that Carefree is one of them but there's some larger ones I believe um I think it was Bucky was one of the non- voting members I mistaken so I'm not sure the extra value we'd get over that extra $400,000 and I'll be honest I'd like to spend $400,000 on rehab one of our wells but um you know long term is that a good thing I don't I don't see the extra value we'd get out of being a um a voting member of the saring committee at this point I think brought up Brad did you Brad or Michelle do you want to take a crack at that question why why would you go from a up to the voting membership from the the lower level you have any thoughts on that no I'll I'll ask Brad oh there you go that's so thank you yeah mayor and Council I really think the policy question in front of you as it relates to that is funding funding today are you are you interested in putting those dollars today or Sean mentioned will you when staff comes back to you in a year because we know the town's going to have a challenge meeting the shortages uh potentially coming on the Colorado River in the next two years and where do you want to put those doll particular those either dollars to join or dollars to to upgrade to a voting membership I think that's really the question is will you have the the financial resources to do both and that's really the question I know you asked specifically whether voting or not um I you know I I'm kind of more aligned with Sean uh the Big Boys around the table and Sean and I have worked with one of those uh jurisdictions uh they kind of drive the conversation so being at the table as one of the council member mentioned uh you know is a good idea in terms of providing long-term resiliency to your water supplies U I'm not sure the value for the dollar extra uh knowing how much uh what's going to be coming in front of you City Council in the near future uh uh in terms of Shoring up additional water supplies and preparation for capap shortage so in preparation for the capap shortage is kind of a follow on how much how much uh water does $400,000 buy how many acre feet um if I'll take this one none because that's just the study that's just the first payment to get in the room asking if we allocate money to this an additional $400,000 how much water are we not able to buy on the market well I I don't think they can answer that question not knowing our our finances but well we have to we have to have kind of an idea how much an acre foot of water cost I mean that that is kind of that's a great question and unfortunately there's not really a water store that has a price tag so it kind of depends on where you get the water and what infrastructure it takes to get it to you if the closest thing I can think of to sort of going to the water store and what $400,000 would buy would be if you were to buy storage credits on the open market which you don't have physical access to but you might someday figure that out you would be able to get um maybe 670 credits today for that $400,000 which would be 670 acre feet which would cover a Year's worth of shortage potentially I mean depending on the shortage too that's an unknown I don't know I it hasn't changed my mind I still thinking we're better off being a voting member mayor if I mayor if I may yeah so um the utilities director and and Michelle and I were in an internal meeting with um SRP before we brought this before the council and had them um present to the council and it was pretty clear in listening to them because we had questions about what is really the difference between the two uh you know the non- voting and the voting member status and it's not to me it's the value isn't there and I think we've heard that the big boys are going to be sitting at the table and and a lot of the decisions were coming kind of late to the party and so we're not going to probably be able to influence a lot other than what we're going to be seeking as part of this uh Consortium which is getting so much in the way of acre feet um allocated to us so my my thing is um Sean what is the cost for like one wh we're looking at the vermes well what does that cost to to do a rehab of that well if we don't have to redo the casing and we can just put new pump and motor in we could probably do that for under you know a couple ,000 to start off if we have to drill a new casing that's when it it can get up to uh8 $800,000 to a million dollars that's what we're trying to value my point in bringing that up is that showing real dollars we know we're going to have to bring Wells online to kind of get us through this this kind of inum period um what can you realistically expect out of that well for the 200,000 like how many acre feet or such in the case of Rish well you know we actually have an ability to pump that up to I think it's it was 300 gallons per minute but we actually are three we're limited to 78 acre feet out of that well so we so it's how how many 78 78 acre feet is what we're limited to in inform each for the permit um the right well which is at the plant site actually does not have a a um a permit limit to it is actually drilled prior to the groundwater management act so it actually is unlimited my fear there is how much water we're going to get out of that before we get into water quity issue so we also have I'm all for the wells I mean I definitely need it but one of the things we have to be careful with with the wells is we still have a good what 400 homes on Wells so we're going to be limited in how much water we can draw I mean I I agree with you we need to draw it out but that's that's a short-term fix because if you take a look at the ad adwr website and you go to the three Wells they they measure you know routinely uh we're down somewhere between 15 and and 35% from where we were 10 years ago so groundwater is also going to be an issue so we get that for a short period of time but then we might have screwed some of our other residents and then we have to put in more infrastructure to take care of them so I it's kind of a zero sum game so I I don't know what the answer is but it just seems like to me the $400,000 is is kind of a no-brainer personal opinion okay questions down this end of the table yeah uh Cynthia uh yes Sean a question for you if we did use 12,000 from the general fund for this fiscal year uh to move forward on this project would that uh negate uh the ability to come back and ask for additional funding from the general fund for any of the well related project projects that you anticipate for this fiscal year uh mayor council member I'll always come back and ask for money is whether you guys give it to me I say that jokingly but um you know the additional $120,000 to pay for it this year because we didn't identify it because I I don't see anywhere we could move money within the operational fund and the the current capital fund actually a lot of it's already been expended we have issues like there's um money set aside to do the uh um water treatment plant improvements because that's tied to our permit to do that so I don't see where we could move stuff around to free up another $120,000 if you look at our CIP it looks huge that's largely the City of Phoenix interconnect which is already under contract so um yeah well that's why we're working to come back and to uh quantify what we need to do with each of the wells what that could be like get down to construction cost estim and then bring that forward you know we have a short window here with the capital program for next year to bring that back to you as far as whether that will impact us right now I don't think it would that's why I I um do think it may be useful for us to have a seat at the table um this is a longterm Like Water Resources is um we have a long long-term perspective so is this something as we bring the wells back online does the wells help us out for 10 years then knowing that we can back stop that with SRP water in the future maybe that's an opportunity for us to look at a long-term perspective on our water portfolio Tom I think there's a great value in participating with other municipalities uh but Sean would you uh talk to us a little bit about the participation we could do with Phoenix uh without this project M council members so um right now the town does have um an IGA in place with Phoenix to uh divert treat and deliver our C up to up to a th000 gallons a minute or 1.4 million gallons a day of of our cap Supply so that's about half of our CIP allocation we've had some discussions I think favorable discussions with them with the idea of a of an effluent um exchange with them uh what that means is U as I bring forward every every quarter um there's there's a imbalanced in our deliveries of water to Ranch minana which is our largest single water customers and the contractual obligations up there so um part of that is that when they need the water the lease which is in the winter time is when we prod Mo effent and we're still producing backwashed water from our treatment plant so it typically we overflow the lake system so that is VAR between 80 and 50 to 80 acre feet a year um we can get control over that by a connection to the City of Phoenix and doing a water exchange with the city of Phoenix from our effluent to their sewer system and that's they were looking at that and they said yes that makes sense to them that they're willing to partner with us to do that connection there's some physical improvements required but we can make that connection and get control over that delivery mechanism to Ranch Chim minana and then we can could look at if we could bring some wells online if they're viable for a few years even then that actually we could means we could send more effluent to Phoenix and actually get an exchange of water so I think and that could be leveraged through the city of Phoenix interconnect the town has spent so much money on that interconnect site I'd like to try and leverage that as much as we can I know there's physical restrictions in their distribution system getting water up here but the more water we can work with them on the other thing that we can do with Phoenix right now is actually recharged uh we have access to three of their recharge Wells so but that's going to cost us money that that is about a 100 times more expensive than recharging with central Arizona project but we can actually recharge with them and get them to withdraw that water for us so we could start banking for the next two years to put water into the ground that we can work with Phoenix to bring that back out so I I think leveraging the relationships with Phoenix is a good thing and again that's why we approach the subject if we were to go down the path with SRP as staff if you know could we work with you on an IGA extension to um allow uh instead of us having to work with the the um the skiff project and work with Downstream users can we just work with SRP to come up with a a a divert treat deliver from an SRP uh distribution system up to the to the town which be a little bit more costly because we're the more booster stations fall but they were agreeable to that also so um I think we've got a good relationship and I like to build on that that adjacent facility with with Phoenix uh see you've not had a question yet Katherine well I've just been listening uh but both at the other meeting with SRP and then tonight and I think the bottom line is that um these are unprecedented times and that we have to take actions that we might not normally have taken otherwise um it's a very high-risk opportunity um with probably a low chance of return given the fact that the ver River hasn't had excess water in you know forever um but uh I don't really think we have a choice uh between the high dollar at the table membership I absolutely am not in favor of that we're not even at that level yet um once they get to the construction portion of it maybe then the discussions will actually be meaningful about allocations uh but until then I think it's only prudent that we listen to The Experts uh both our water attorney and Brad who's an expert and has been working as a water resource manager for decades as well as Sean uh to to be a non-member and I'm willing to go that to that link um Sean my turn back to the slide with the issues on it there we go that look that that bottom statement down there you know I I have great fear we don't have the the staff to handle all the things we're doing uh with the interconnect project the wells the uh reclaimed water the ranch Manana situation uh on it the fact that we have to rebuild our water treatment plant uh you know that the issues go on and on and on and we're putting all the meters in I mean you can uh uh we're rebuilding the whole system from to one that can reliably support the population that we have in this town um I I don't see the funding but I see the the ability to manage this uh the SRP project with all the other things and we don't have a problem 15 years from now we got a problem two years from now and we have to focus with laser we have to like a laser on the issues in two years which is the Wells the recycle the water meters the ranch Manana on and on and on politic issues we're we're doing we spent more time on the Barta Dam in public in the meetings here but 99% it's like an iceberg most of the work going on is for two years from now U and this is additional work on on top of that with which will tend to defocus us um I think staff has got to be able to say that we can take care of the two-year issue before we even consider moving uh to an issue that's 15 years away for what is essentially floodwater that's that's what this ISS floodwater that requires Logistics it requires relationships it requires the whole um SRP system to kind of rethink storage you've got to have storage because it's there one year and then it's not for five years and what do people drink in those four years in between so uh this is a very high risk but can the staff pull off all this stuff I I don't worry about the funding this is only 200,000 bucks um and and we get to see the next card I I don't worry about that but can do we have the resources to balance all these balls in here I'm looking at the Town [Laughter] manager so it's a very good question and and there's a number of things that as you know we've been behind on for instance our you know integrated utility master plan um should have come to you before but because of just workload that staff has and and being able to keep up with the day-to-day and and doing the proper planning it takes a lot of time and resources and we don't have the Staffing Resources so um so that's a very good point that the mayor is bringing up um my my take on this is um there is risk with it and it's not very clear um this is just a back stop or backup for our current um CIP allocation um there's going to be some years when we probably have more water in good years than what we what than what we can do with it so it's going to have to be stored and then there's going to be years where we don't get even probably a fraction of of of our allocation through this there's a lot of unknowns we don't know what the cost is truly going to be um we don't know how it's going to be um allocated to the different members that are part of this um Consortium um we don't know what the feds are going to do so I mean there's there's a lot of um questions I think it's an ingenious idea and SRP what really impresses me is srp's been around for you know well over a hundred years and they've had some really good experience in um developing and managing these types of projects um and working collaboratively with the federal government so um this is truly a a policy question I think Mary your point though about the amount of effort and and resources and all the things that we have in the near term those do concern me because um you know we got to get something going on with rancha Manana because right now we're we're giving them too much in the way of Water Resources um you know as far as the um treated effluent and there there's other ways other things that as Sean mentioned we might be able to to uh work out arrangements with Phoenix so I think we're talking about a lot of things in the near term and this is definitely probably 15 years out and and again I think it it's risky but the risk is really probably 18 months to two years into it and in which case we may just decide at that point just to walk away um because the construction cost may be really scary and it may be the feds um from what we're understanding the feds may be um taking at least 50% of that water and so but they are also paying for 50% of the cost um so there's a lot of unknowns so again this has been couched tonight as a policy question I know a lot of you are looking for us to provide you factual information that can help you make this important decision but I think the way it's been presented tonight with pros and cons and the issues and concerns and other unknowns um it's it's the best we could do at this point time I'm sorry this not typically how we do our staff level work but it's the best we can do with the information we have at this time other questions from Council um I imagine there's yes there is public comment on this so we'll open up public Jody Powers I learned more from Sean um last week about water issues in Cave Creek than I ever dreamt I would know I'm very impressed very impressed with everything that I've learned I have all these notes I have this many notes from last week um and Cynthia welcome thank you I'm very glad you're on board also my name is jod Powers I live at 4192 North Old Stage Road which is Morning Star and spur cross and after attending the meeting um last week and learning all about our needs that we have there is a gamble in doing the Salt River Project piece of this there's nothing is nothing is certain in any of it though from what I'm what I'm assuming so why wouldn't I guess they be more I'm not a gambler I'll tell you that first but it would be worth a gamble perhaps that we had another option because uh it's my understanding that we're one of the few T towns that get 90% of our water from capap and what happens if there's a gamble there and something happens and we don't get they've already said they're cutting it back right yeah so we understand uh with the reallocation going to happen redistribution on the um Central Colorado River suppli um host 2026 so going into calendar year 2027 we expect cuts to impact Arizona which will then come back to us as a subcontractor on the Colorado River oh so that's a gamble making sure that they're going to be able to supply us so I and several of my neighbors um would like for you to vote for joining the um membership of the Bartlett Lake Dam Expansion Project thank you thank you thank you David Phelps hi everybody David Phelps here Cave Creek resident seems like it's been a long time since I got to speak to you guys um I wrote down here a timeline you know this issue really wasn't a town issue until April 4th of this year that's when we started talking about it we had somebody at a Council debate introduction Jim grub brought this issue to the head and mayor you responded to it week or so later Ernie wrote to one of the Town tabloids about how this had been stalled out by Ernie and a town manager in 2017 I believe and that Ernie's opinion at that time was is that this was a very high-risk low return gamble that it was akin to buying lottery tickets and that if it came up again you'd still say no so I'm not expecting any support from Ernie to them and I know the mayor wasn't enthusiastically supportive of it during the election cycle and I didn't get the impression that Tom Maguire was I did get the impression that Cynthia might vote for something like this if it made sense for the future and Katherine you're all about capap and capap representative said this is cheap insurance so that tells me that if capap is saying this is cheap insurance or this is good insurance how could we afford not to be part of it and so I'm on board with council member rhs I thank you for bringing this back the way you did I thank the mayor for allowing the discussion to be had and uh councilman member augeron as well and I'm really hoping there's four votes but I'm also really hoping that there's four votes for a seat at the table because when you look at who's not at the table who's not at the table is city of Avendale they have the TB te uh Canal Tucson Electric uh Canal down there and they're converting a lot of farmland inter residential in Avendale the city of Buckeye is at the table uh many conserv uh many uh water districts are at the table the Carefree water company is not at the table but they have producing Wells and they have enough producing Wells to bridge themselves for the cutbacks that are coming on the capap they're in very good shape they have four connections to the city of Scottdale four happen to be up there on the high side with a couple of them up on Puma where the water can you know kind of be pushed with the gravity excuse me city of El Mirage they're not at the table got to help them I just don't know how we can afford to not take a shot spend the extra 400 bucks I mean we just the issue before this that Shawn presented we came up with another $600,000 on a deal that we did back when that developer came to the town and wanted to develop his subdivision and we offered to run a water line over to there so to give him firef flow back then and the bill came due just like it always does it started out being a $500,000 expense and by the time it got to us it was more there's nothing no big surprise to that I would say that uh we would be doing ourselves a big favor to get a seat at the table we want to be part of the skiff the skiff gives us the ability as our as a town to take the water uh as it's coming out of the SRP system and put it back into the capap system that means we our relationship builing that we need to do as well with the other members who are a part of this the 22 members is less dependent so we have more independence by being part of the skiff what we're going to want to do if we become part of this and become part of the skiff is it opens our world up to bigger relationships that maybe we use the skiff at times maybe we front water to other communities when we have abundance because the capap is Flowing right I mean I look at the chance that we took with the ni water and I stood and I said yes let's do that $225,000 and how many years did we get to do that one uh no we still actually have na mayor can I ask you're gonna get the Marshall on you anytime now I'm trying to learn as I go here uh I do I do have another question for sea if you would indulge me on that I would really like to know uh when when you say we're putting the the City of Phoenix when we're putting our treated water into their sewer do you mean we're putting it into the sewer that they're going to then process from there that was a thought because we actually talked about making a connection to the ReUse system but there's several issues with us our reuse water comingling with their reuse water so they they suggested we uh put effluent into their their sewer system that then we can get a water exchange as they process that so they're going to treat our treated sewage water is what you're saying yeah okay but it becomes a water res me thank you David Like This brilliant link that we could make from the logistics move would be is instead of growing our sewer like we show in the master plan we could just sell our sewer to the City of Phoenix for recharge okay thank you just another cont just another idea all right thanks guys council member elect fredman well that sounds like a nice title so Joe fredman 40020 North 71st Street I've been watching this water thing for a lot of years this is um yeah I mean if it was to happen if you had that crystal ball it'd be great but is it going to happen I mean was this a rush job in my opinion we just put it on the docket like in the last less than two months and all of a sudden did you guys have enough time to evaluate this properly if you would have gone with two or three years like somebody else said that we should have had when it should have been introduced maybe now you'd have enough time but I'm I'm just kind of uh thinking that um in all of these other towns that you mentioned our big cities Phoenix Scottsdale they have lots of money you know we don't have a lot of money um I think this is a risk and I'm just saying that you know I'm not on the council right now but that's just my feeling um does it make sense to take a risk to throw the dice down did we uh throw the dice down and what was it 2 5 when we bought the water company that put us into debt $66 million we're finally starting to pay off I mean I don't know if I I'll just say if I had a vote on this thing right now with this being a rush job and everything we have other things we have to be concerned with I'd vote against it that concludes the public input Okay so we've um we're ready then for a motion I will make the motion uh Tom you start to talk I go this is a motion to direct and authorize the town manager to submit a letter of intent to the Salt River Project requesting admission to the Bartlett Dam modification feasibility study steering committee as a nonvoting member second okay you have the motion you have to vote for you have to make a motion for a positive in order to bring bring it up and uh that's what it sounded like but I have a great deal of concern about this um capap can put water into the SRP system it's not clear that SRP could put water into the capap system the capap system is taking water from the Colorado River it's relatively uniform it's a relatively constant source with this capap with this SRP water you've got coming down from less control the situation the graphic that you showed before had a red line on it can you go back to that graphic I don't know if you can do that that the graphic showed the Watershed yes okay yes I think it's the second or third slide third or fourth slide Brian and I'm very if you look at the red lines on there I'm very concerned that between Bartlett Reservoir and by the time you get down to the uh skiff uh which would be the end of the red line and also from Saro Lake you've got uh water that they really can't control the uh quality of that water and uh capap is pretty careful about what they put into their system so I think that's why we've seen capap give water to SRP and SRP has not given water to capap because I think that the standards uh the chance is a little bit different I think capap really tries to control what they're doing uh I I think that we need wet water now and and we need water that we can depend on and uh by my calculations this would might go until 2040 before we could see this because when do government projects uh end on time when are they Within budget uh I think you know if you look historically I think there's a real chance there I'm very concerned about what's happening in the uh Watershed of Bartlett Reservoir you've got towns up there like Cottonwood Camp verie uh Chino Valley Prescot Valley Sedona these are not in the active management area so what that means is that those towns can take out water from the groundwater without the limits that we would have here so as those communities are growing I think that's going to affect the amount of water that goes into baret reservoir and it can only decrease that amount of water so the and also if we look at climate change I think that the the the trend is pretty clear that uh it is reducing the amount of water that is going from watersheds into these reservoirs so I'm I'm very concerned about this and the whole idea of you know maybe it can be there uh for one year and yet I look at Bartlett Reservoir and most of the time now it it seems to be half full or less so you know can you get water if it might not be available that will be a part of the analysis that they'll do I'm sure but it really concerns me thank you you the second C yes I think at this point we still have more questions than answers uh about uh if we should and how we could enter into this process but at least it does put the town of Cave Creek in the position for a potential new Water Resource option and um it's it's not uh certainly um srp's fault that we're late to the table in the discussion you know that's on the town for considering this option as we go forward I think think A lot's been said about the value of developing relationships with other jurisdictions and that's important um to keep in mind you know we don't have to invent in fact we can't reinvent the water will but we could certainly jump on the water wagon and participate with other jurisdictions that have more experience and are looking to create new options um for the entire region um other [Music] comments um I just just like to clarify that the board member from central Arizona project who was at the SRP presentation uh is one of 15 elected board members on Cap's board she came representing herself her opinion was her own she did not come with a formal letter from the capap board president advocating this that cap Creek participate that's true good good because um assuming that somebody else might have thought that she was representing the organization she is not uh she is representing herself I agree with um secondly if we have a shortage of Staff who are able to attend uh the the meetings at SRP I would volunteer to attend I think if board members of our council is eligible to represent Cave Creek and we don't have the staff who are able to attend I'm happy to be that person go ahead Ernie yeah take it nothing is certain and certainly nothing is sure uh this feels very much like do something even if it's wrong I don't think you can rely on the Watershed to to deliver the water and as such I uh will not be i' I'd rather see the the finances go to something that we know can work like the uh the um connection from the sewer plant to the City of Phoenix and trading trading bord pho able water as opposed to uh to U taking a crapshoot for something that's 15 years out it doesn't make sense to me our general plan shows that we're going to grow to about 15,000 people by 2035 where's that water coming if it's not coming from here good well the the people that come in subdivisions have to bring their own water so we I mean we're problem is water not in 15 years especially uh this is flood water this is and it takes an incredible number of different things to bring it in and you cannot build a single house on water like this it just will not support it because it's not not reliable um there is a crisis coming and it's it's not in the news yet you see little bits here and there but uh once uh the Colorado River is cut back in 2027 um that is when we start to reallocate what's left and our town is on the tip of that sphere I think Michelle uh used that term at one point because we are the town that's most dependent on Colorado U riverwater um and that means that we have to have part of our solution is probably going to be political um we frankly uh have to be seen as being very aggressive at finding Water Supplies if if we're going to have credibility um with the political reallocation that occurs at that time this this kind of checks that box um this is the entirely secondary to the next two years uh we could do or not do this project and it would have no effect we're not going to build a single house off this water um because it's unreliable um it would be a another source of water in our portfolio but it would take an incredible amount of storage Logistics getting it from one system to the other system but I think we can do those things I'm not afraid of that at all I think that is something because I think that the when the crisis hits I think all the communities are going to be looking to work together to find Solutions and we've had outstanding success with working with Phoenix uh and we have more more projects that we're looking at them right now where it's other connection over in the Desert Hills area or the sewer water or the U the interconnect project which by the way is probably where this water would come in for those who thought it you think it's not necessary um I agree it's going to be double the cost and twice the time they going to be lawsuits it's going to be environmental lawsuits it's going to be Eagle nesting area it's going to be historical areas it's going to be flooding additional so I mean it just has a lot of things to it and having said all those things that against it I want to see another card um it's $200,000 and uh I uh for the for the non-voting I I cannot support the voting membership because I don't think there is any rational benefit that anyone stated from having that and uh and that's for water that you can't build a single house with so I I want to be in there long enough to see what happens and to do our political work and if it turns out uh to be something that that works and we can do all the um the long shot comes through then we have some water that makes our town water system more reliable but it doesn't make it bigger that's that's uh that's a parent to me so um I'm I'm going to vote for the $200,000 with Proviso that uh there's a good chance the entire project dies there's a good chance that it's too expensive for us or other people there just a lot of things out there uh but um I I'm I am absolutely unafraid of the funding issue we have got to borrow money to um for two reasons one is fairness that that the people today should not be developing all the water resources for the people tomorrow every they need to spread those payments out so that everybody pays their fair share and I forgot my second reason well because we don't have the money because that because if you uh if you borrow a million dollars it takes $70,000 a year to cover that the that payment and I'd rather have the $70,000 on on my water bill and my neighbor's water bill than I would the million dollars all at once so I'm I'm going to big advocate of U of of putting all of our water projects that we can that we come up with the ones that make sense into into bonding um has everybody had a chance to comment now yeah okay I think we're uh I think we're ready for a vote then council member Driscoll yes council member McGuire no council member rhs I council member aug I council member Bunch no vice mayor Royer yes mayor Morris I okay passes five to two and and I I just want to say that I I I think that there's plenty of reasons to justify the no votes I I was right there too so okay um that concludes our business T not I believe so thank you for coming as meeting jour