Prescott Valley Navigates Fiscal Accountability Debate, Election Venue Controversy, and Major Development Impact Fee Increases

[music] Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] Regular Town Council meeting May 28th, 2026. Call to order. Clerk, please call the RO. Council member Lopez, present. Council member Kio, present. Council member Frey. Council member Greer, here. Council member Schumacher, present. Vice Mayor Searcher, here.

Mayor Puda, here. We have a quorum. Thank you, ma'am. At this time, I'd like to welcome down Pastor Lloyd Murphy, Firm Foundation Church, for our invocation and pledge of allegiance. Please stand if you can. Let's pray. Father in heaven, how we thank you for this community in which we live. We thank you for the freedoms that we enjoy in this land. And this week, we pause and we remember those who have paid the ultimate price for that freedom that we enjoy.

We thank you for them and we pray for their loved ones. And as we think of them, we pray for our brave men and women who are serving even now in harm's way, protecting our nation and our freedoms. We thank you also for our police and our first responders who protect us and serve us right here at home. And Father, we thank you for these public servants before us. And we thank you for the labor and the time that they invest in our community.

We pray a blessing on them and their family as they attend to this good work. And we pray now for this meeting tonight that you would give wisdom and discernment that you would give a sense of justice and equity and that you would do good to our community through it. That everything that would be done with integrity and dignity and we pray it all in Jesus name. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with justice for all. Thank you, sir. Now, item three. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda as presented? So moved. Have a second. I'll second. Clerk, please call the vote. Council member Schumacher. Yes. And Mayor Puran. Yes. That passes. Mayor, next up, call the public clerk. Do we have anyone? Uh, Elijah Snider. Is there Elijah Snider here? Going once?

No one else. Mayor, thank you, ma'am. Moving on to item five, council communications. Start to my right. Councilwoman talk about Wolftock. Thank you, Mayor. Uh mayor reminded me that Wolfstock is this Saturday uh here at the Civic Center. Uh it starts at 9:00 a.m. Um it's our basically it's an annual event. It's just a great uh great time uh to come on out uh especially if you're looking to adopt a dog. So hopefully we'll see you there. Thanks, sir. Councilman. Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I just wanted to first of all, thank you, mayor, for allowing me to miss last week's council meeting. I was in Washington, DC at police week. Um, we will be getting a full report from the officer that did um attend police week with me. Also, I was able to meet with um Congressman Paul Gosar, which was very interesting. and we talked all about water and what we're going to be doing here in rural Arizona and also in southern Arizona. So, thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Davidson, Mr.

Mayor, members of the council, two things. Uh, the registration for the household hazardous waste program is open and that closes on June 26th. Uh this is a program that we started last year for the residents of Prescuit Valley. If they have hazardous materials, paints, other types of things that should not be disposed of in landfills. Um this program will literally come to u the resident's home, pick it up, and safely dispose of it.

But it does require an advanced registration and that closes again June 26. Uh residents can call neighborhood services or visit the town's website to be able to obtain the registration for that. And one other thing is we do are hosting a memorial service for the K9 K9 Mac that uh suddenly died. Uh that's going to be next week here in these chambers, June 3rd at 4 p.m. It is open to the public for those that would like to pay their respects to the K9. Thank you, sir. Next up, consent agenda.

All matters listed under consent agenda are considered routine by the town council and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items. If discussion is desired, that item will be removed from the consent agenda and will be considered separately. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to remove 7 C and 7D from the uh consent agenda and discuss them separately. All right, let's do 7 C 7D. What questions or comments, sir, do you have for staff that are not in the council packet?

Uh 7 C Um, we have hired this, this is for Mad House Water Management. Uh, we have hired this consultant to find solutions to our dire water problem. Prescat Valley has been in a severe water overdraft and out of compliance as long as there has been an active management area in the last century. We blew past the stated goal of being in safe yield by 2025. We must have them mad outline what steps are necessary for our town to reach safe yield.

This is essential for the long-term survival of Prescat Valley. Without that, I believe that this study is just feel-good window dressing. So, is it just a statement or any questions for staff? Uh I think that we need to um discuss as a council if we want to go forward with uh requesting them to uh cover how we can get to safe yield what we would have to do. There are a number of different goals and steps that they've outlined for different levels of of water savings.

and the but the the the key one the most important one is to reach safe yield and that's not covered in this study. Miss Lind, do you just want to comment on anything before uh I would actually point out that um this is this [clears throat] water conservation planning is a tool in the chest to perhaps in time become uh in conformance with safe yield. it will not completely solve the problem. There are a number of different things we need to do for that.

Um, having them come up with solutions for us to reach Safe Field is beyond the scope of their current contract. Anything else, sir? Well, um, I think that, uh, you know, I've spoke I've spoken my opinion on it. I I don't think that it's worthwhile unless we have that included in it. But uh anyway, and then I have item 7D if you want to. You can hit 70D as well. On item 7D, agreement with Matrix New World Engineering.

Um it says here the town of Prescuit Valley's commitment to treated wastewater affluent recharge has been well documented uh through the vision 2024 plan where one of the water and land stewardship goals is to recharge 100% of available effluent in accordance with town standards. In advancement of that commitment, the town is proposing to expand its current effluent recharge capabilities.

The related project will serve to expand the footprint of the wastewater effluent recharge facility and thereby increase infiltration of this water resource into the aquifer. Um we already don't discharge 100% of our effluent water into the aquifer. A significant portion goes to irrigation at the Stone Ridge Golf Course and Mountain Valley Park. Additionally, town effluent has significant peass contamination which I believe we should not uh introduce into our drinking water aquifer.

In 2007, Prescuit Valley sold 2,724 acre feet of water rights. That's 887,615,400 gallons of our effluent water rights to Water Asset Management LLC, a New York City-based investment company. As a result, we no longer have the ability to control certificates of assured water supply. All of this needs to be openly discussed rather than swept in uh with the consent agenda passage. Thank you. Anything you wish to comment on that, Miss Lond?

Uh the objective of this particular project is simply to extend the extent of the recharge facility uh to areas that are already uh seeing effluent. So we send effluent to Mountain Valley Park. That would be the end point that we are going to be using as the start of this recharge facility. So we are not exposing new parts of the aquifer to PAS. It's already been exposed there.

Um yeah, I mean this is this yes this does actually increase the number of potential uh recharge credits we can earn each year uh and expand out the portfolio. when when it comes time to discuss the implications of having an expanded recharge portfolio for um to to expand our sale to water asset management. Um we can certainly discuss that in greater detail.

Um, however, we are capped essentially right now at 1,600 acre feet and I'm not comfortable with uh fulfilling more of that contract that we have with water asset management at this point. And just one more time, you have a degree in like water hydrarology or something. I do. Okay. Just checking. I'll just take a motion to approve 7 C and 7D separate. We'll do 7 C first. Mayor, motion to approve 7 C, please. Mr.

Mayor, make a motion to approve amendment number one to the professional services agreement with Modest Water Management, Inc. for Water Conservation Master Planning in the amount of $89,873. I second. Cler, please hold vote. Mayor, that passes 6 to1. Thank you. Um I'm just going to do items. Get approve a motion to approve 7 A, 7 B, 7D, 7E, 7F in one motion, please. Mayor, I'll make a motion to approve all items under consent agenda with the exception of 7C by electronic vote. I'll second.

Please call vote. That passes 6 to1. Thank you, ma'am. Next up, old business town code chapter 13 zoning update. Second reading. Britney, are you here? I see you. Council, will you any questions or comments for staff prior to reading? Seeing none, I apologize for you having to come all the way up.

Ordinance number 2026979, an ordinance of the mayor and common council of the town of Presca Valley, a municipal corporation of Arizona, amending chapter 13 zoning to allow for additional flexibility and to conform to current and prior town practices making a conforming amendment to chapter 14 subdivisions and other land projects. Providing that all other chapters, articles and sections of the town code not hearing, repeal or amended shall remain in full force in effect.

Providing that if any provision in this ordinance is held in valid by a court of competent jurisdiction, the remaining provision shall not be effective shall continue in full force in effect. And providing that this ordinance shall be effective 30 days after its passage and approval according to law. Court shall this pass. Mayor, that passes unanimously. Thanks, ma'am. Next up, extension 2023 commercial economic development policies. Kur, welcome, mayor, council.

I'm here to ask you for an extension and an expansion of the uh grocery uh sales tax um relief for attracting new business. Uh if you could pull up the map for me. Uh you have the map in front of you. We made one change to this map um after your packet was given to you and it's the very top up there. You'll see that piece of state land and that smaller piece that's right across viewpoint there. Um were the only additions but everything in magenta is what we're looking to expand.

Um as Prescuit Valley grows, we need another grocery store desperately. And so we're trying to give as many opportunities as we can to the people of Prescat Valley and for these grocerers to come in and expand. Um they will do it based on land availability and what I call skin in the game. And this is what skin in the game means. Being able to contribute at least a small portion to their development of grocery store. It's uh it's welld deserved. Um and they will do fantastic with that.

That gets that puts us in the forefront of economic development for recruiting new business. We have several on the line right now and this just extends that addition. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I just want to clarify. It's not uh sales tax. No, it's I'm sorry. Construction construction sales tax. Construction sales tax. So, it's on the construction. Mr. I just I don't have a question.

I just think we need to provide you with all the tools possible in the tool bag to attract a grocery store. I don't think there's a single person in this room that would disagree that we need another grocery store, perhaps even a couple in the Presca Valley area. So, I wish you all the luck. I hope this can help and I'm confident that in the next 12 months we'll be able to snag something with with your help. Absolutely. I think we are too. Other questions or comments for staff?

Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion. Mayor, I'll make a motion to authorize the mayor to sign resolution number 2026-2454 extending the existing business and industry intensive incentive program through June 30th, 2030. Second, please vote. Mayor, that passes unanimously. This one has a second motion. Let's get a second motion, please. Mr.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to authorize the mayor to sign resolution number 2026-2455 extending the existing grocery store supermarkets incentive program through June 30th, 2030 by electronic vote. Second clerk, please call the vote. Mayor, that passes unanimously. Thank you, ma'am. Next up, 2026 primary and general election update. I believe Miss Burchill is here. Welcome down. Welcome. Good evening, council. How y'all doing? Thank [clears throat] you for having me.

So, we are going to give you an update on everything elections because we are in it now. Okay. So, every time I um start anything with elections, especially since I haven't probably spoken to many of you before, I always make sure that everybody understands who does what. So, I'm taking this chance just right now while you have me here to kind of educate everybody here in the audience and online also of who does what with elections. Am I pointing this at a certain place?

arrow right there it goes. Okay. So, in Arizona, we have a separation of duties. A lot of times, because I am the elected official, people come to me and say, "Hey, Michelle, what's going on with the count or what what are you counting? Where's the tabulation?" Um, in Arizona, the recorder is responsible for early voting. That means the 27 days leading up to election day.

Uh, I'm responsible for voter roles, voter role maintenance, dropboxes, emergency voting, in-person early voting, signature verification and special assistance boards for anybody that may need help with um casting a ballot. Election day falls under the board of supervisors who actually appoints the elections director. So, candidate filings, um, vote centers, poll workers, ballot creation, all falls under the elections director.

And then, of course, actually, um, putting out the results on election night and the days after, depending on how many late early ballots we have, 2026 election dates. So, the primary election was moved from August to July 21st. So, our first day of early voting will be 27 days before the election. Um, I'd like to show this uh graph because a lot of people assume, you know, about 30 60 days before is all it takes to actually start an election. We're actually planning 210 days in advance.

So, we have been planning this since last year, getting prepared. Our UOA voters will be the first ones to receive a ballot and that is going to come on June 6th. that is our military and overseas voters. And then from there, we will start with our early voters. Um 80% of Arizona pretty much votes early by mail. And then um from there, we will lead up to election day.

If you want to know anything about elections in Yavapai County, please come to Yavapai County to make sure that you are getting the accurate information. A [clears throat] lot of people don't know that um counties actually run the election. So what you hear in another county, say our neighbors in Maricopa or Cookanino or Mojave, will not be the same as what is done and how it's administered in Yavapai County.

So you want to make sure when you are getting information that you're coming to the source. Uh you could get a lot of great information from yavapivotes.gov, gov including some voter education to how to check your registration. Please do that before the cutoff, how to vote your ballot because you would be shocked at how many people vote their ballots wrong. So all of those things lead up to bottlenecks when it comes time to actually get into tabulating ballots.

These were our current quarterly statistics from April. So we had 176,000 voters that were active at the time of the April 1st um quarterly cutoff. In 2020 we had 165,000. So we are growing fairly quickly. Um this number will change um usually by the week. We have an average of about 300 movers a week in Yavapai County. So at any given time people are moving, coming in and out and this number is changing.

Um different things that you can find that we want you to know about is election day vote setter weight times. We will have several locations which I'll go over um in a future slide about uh Yav Yavapai County in total but specifically uh Prescat Valley. But if you are headed to a voting location on election day, you can actually check to see what the wait time is. We don't want lines. So, if you can decide to go a mile down the road and skip the lines, we definitely recommend it.

And as far as the tabulation schedule, that's what everybody's interested in. You can watch us tabulate ballots online. We will put the schedule of the expected times that we will be in the room where you can visually watch what we are doing um ahead of the actual um election. Um, one thing we did change this year is we revamped our voting instructions.

Uh, I actually had um created a voter integrity committee with um leaders of our Democrat and Republican parties and we included some independents and formally had the Libertarian Party involved. But we worked together as a bipartisan group and created an easier um example for how to vote your ballot.

and we are really waiting to see kind of what the response is because we have thousands and thousands of people that call us to ask us a question that's actually on their voter instructions that are in with their ballots. So, we're hoping that maybe this helps with that and maybe gives a little bit more of an ease to the voters. Another thing we changed this year was u actually last year uh was where your voter signature is.

We saw a lot um sometimes over a hundred um rejected ballots because people did not sign their ballots. Uh so we actually took all of the um uh different examples from all the other counties and worked together again in a bipartisan group to redesign our affidavit envelopes. Um last year city of prescuit and jurisdictional elections we actually saw a 50% reduction in uh rejected ballots just by this new design. So this is something that people will see different this year.

Um it saves time in processing the ballots and um it's one less person handling live ballots because we're no longer using a poll tab. Um, everybody, please track your ballot. Especially if you are a vote bymail ballot um or if you vote by mail, we want to make sure that you trust but verify. You can sign up at my.arizona.vote and you can actually make sure that you are able to see that your ballot has been received by my office.

And when your status says received, that means it's in my possession in the building. Once it says accepted, that means it's been tabulated and accepted into the ballot count. So, we want people to make sure that you are double-checking our work. If you mail your ballot in early and it gets up to election day and you haven't seen that it shows received, you can absolutely still go vote on election day because that means we have quarantined those late early ballots.

you can vote your election day ballot and we will actually destroy the um one that's potentially in the mail chain at that point. Uh current dropboxes, we have 19 drop boxes in Yavapai County. Uh the one of the most popular is right here um in this parking lot in um the city hall between there and the police parking lot. Uh, Prescuit Valley is the second mostus dropbox. It's the largest dropbox we have also. Um, so anybody can drop off their ballot at any of these locations.

They will officially be open the day that early voting starts and they will be closed promptly at 700 p.m. on election night. A lot of people ask me about Dropbox security, so I always make sure to give everybody my perspective. Every time you mail a ballot back to me, even if you lived right down the street on Fair Street, your ballot is leaving Yavapai County, going down to Phoenix for processing, and then coming back up.

So that means your postal carriers, the truck drivers, the people down at the regional facilities, the truck drivers bringing them up, the postal carriers receiving them back. All of those people are touching your voted ballot. Um all of that takes time as well. Usually after each election cycle I will see hundreds of ballots come in late after the cutoff. In 2020 we received a ballot from 2012. So I am not exaggerating when I say we've seen some late ballots.

So in my personal perspective after seeing what I've seen in the process I highly recommend you choose to use a secure Dropbox. This reduces the chain of custody. It goes from your hands to my background checked oath of office bipartisan teams that pick up these um ballots from these dropboxes. Each one has fire suppressors. We have motion detected night vision solar power cameras on them. We use um two separate keys that are unique to each box and unique to Yavapai County.

Um our bolts are not exposed. We do not tell people when we're picking up um ballots from a dropbox. We don't want a bad actor to know when we have something in there and when we don't. Um if you do choose to use the mail, please mail it back early because again it does take time and if it gets lost in the shuffle somewhere, you have time to track that and hopefully remedy it. So here's some Prescat Valley statistics. So right now 2026 we show active voters at 33,938. In 2024 we had 31,542.

So we are growing here in Prescat Valley. We have 3,700 inactive voters. What that means is these are voters that were registered in Prescat Valley, but we've sent them, say, a 90-day notice or some sort of election mail, and we've been notified by the post office that they no longer live at that address. When you're inactive, you sit kind of dormant on the rolls for two election cycles. We will not mail them a ballot.

we will not mail them any more election mail until they remedy whatever is going on with their um voter registration. Um out of the 33,000 or almost 34,000 voters, 26,438 get a ballot by mail. So a large amount of Yavapai count or I keep saying Yavapai County, large amount of Prescat Valley actually chooses to vote by mail, 78%. um Yuokava voters. We have 19 registered Yuokava voters in Prescat Valley and we have 20 federal only voters.

Federal only voters mean it's somebody that's probably recently moved here has not given us their proof of citizenship. This happens because usually people that move say from California are not required to show their proof of citizenship to register to vote. In Arizona you are. So you show up at my office and say yes, I can't wait to vote. and we say, "Well, sorry. We don't have your information yet." And they get put on the federal only list until they bring that information in.

Um 2024 general election. This is where I really want to bring up some um pretty firm statistics for you. Our Prescuit Valley in-person voters, we had 4,090 of them for the general election of 2024 that came here right next door to this building. 37% were not Prescat Valley voters. 37% were our neighboring um Yavapai County, Dwey, Spring Valley, Mayor, anybody that maybe is coming up from Black Canyon City or Chino or anywhere else in this area.

So, out of the 4,000, over 1500 were not Prescuit Valley voters. Um during the primary, we only had 405 voters, so it was very quiet. And we thought, okay, this is pretty easy. We were in a smaller area, but when the general came in 4,000, that's what we have to plan for. Everything we do is about trying to predict voter behavior, and you can see that jump from that four months difference. 400 to 4,000 was a big jump.

So, everything we do is looking at historical data and making our decisions on how we plan futures um depending on how our voters um behave. Um, on election day, we had 3,96 election day voters at the multiple locations throughout Prescat Valley and 19,000 plus voters returned their ballots to the Prescat Valley Dropbox and saved over $14,000 in postage just for that one election.

throughout the entire um 2020 2024 election cycle, we saved over $100,000 that stayed in Yavapai County instead of putting it towards the USPS by people using a Dropbox. Um and then it goes back to 2022. We had 335 um for the primary and 96 for the general um considerations. So, I'm sure some of you, I assume, are aware with why we are changing location, but I haven't talked to all of you. You're probably seeing things online. So, please um allow me a minute to elaborate.

when I am choosing an early voting location. Um 16-542 of the EPM uh or statute says the recorder may choose an early voting location that I deem as necessary. We've always had early voting at my office in Prescuit and then also my office in Cottonwood. Um, we are at a point now where our county has grown so much that we are kind of bursting at the seams.

In 2022, we came and worked with your wonderful town clerk um to work out some sort of an arrangement because Prescuit Valley is where the growth is happening now as far as people coming into the area and you are a solid half an hour closer than anybody coming south of us from having to drive deep into Prescuit to choose to vote early. Um, so I'm looking for places that are available for 27 days plus the time it takes me to set up and go away, right, to take it down.

So really, I'm looking at 30 days. So any location has to give me full access to that spot for 30 days, but not just once, twice. And in a presidential year, potentially three times when we have a PPE. So, every time I'm doing this, I'm going to prioritize a location that could give me both the primary and general because it's not good practice to move voting locations in the middle of an election cycle. We will already see people show up here that aren't going to get the memo that we've moved.

So, we will work with Fatima to make sure that we have plenty of signage here to um let voters know where our new locations are. um space. We are looking at where can we accommodate the most polling booths possible to be prepared for those large surges of voters. Security. We need to make sure that we have a spot to have our equipment secure and that there's limited access to anybody that's not an election worker. Additional things we look for is clear views, um line of sight.

Um we're having to watch what's happening outside of the voting location due to electioneering. um ADA, parking, um cost, are there bathrooms, is there access to water and utilities? All of that is going into our decision- making. And I highlighted very clearly, one thing that does not go into my decision-making is what is potentially going to be on a ballot. Ballot language does not influence the selection of a voting location.

Politics should not and will not be considered when I am making these decisions. Um, there was some community suggestions about using the library. Um, we have the crystal room, I believe it's called, upstairs. Can't do that. If anybody's seen what was going on in 2024, we're going to have either lines going up the stairs where you're going to have somebody fall or we're going to have overuse of the elevator and if the elevator goes out, what do I do with my ADA people?

Um, people had recommended your police training room. Police aren't even really allowed to be within the 75 ft limit because some people feel police are intimidating. Some people are uncomfortable with seeing somebody in uniform. I don't know why, but that's a thing we have to consider. Um, a few people said, "Well, let's just use the um 2024 space." Um, I'm going to get to that in a moment.

But one thing that is in the new EPM, the election procedures manual that was signed by the governor um in December of 2025, there is a line mitigation plan that is required for us to um make efforts to make sure we try to keep voting lines within a half an hour.

Anybody that voted in the general at the early voting location right here next door saw that we had over an hour wait if not longer because I was here working those lines doing everything I could to mitigate the chaos that was happening. Um schools um a lot of people talk about schools. I personally have seen the ugly side of elections. Unfortunately I'm seeing it right now as I'm standing here. I personally do not prefer to use schools when schools are in session.

Uh we've seen a lot of things happen to our kids in schools these days. The schools are a lot more locked down and I prefer it that way. When you're seeing electioneering and you're people you're seeing people outside arguing and you're seeing police being called because people are not getting along and the ugliness that comes along with politics. I really would pre prefer that not to be around the kids because unfortunately it it gets ugly.

Okay, so going to the past in 2022, our first time we had a voting location with y'all was on the kind of second floor or I guess what is it considered the third floor, middle floor? Third floor, looks like the second floor of the Presca Valley Town location. Um, didn't work out very well. We had a lot of security concerns because you had people coming in from multiple entrances. People were walking behind people voting their ballots, looking at the PII on the back of our screens.

Um it was disruptive to town, you know, activities. Uh we had a lot of people complaining about the um walking up the stairs. They didn't realize that there was a ramp on the other side. So it just the feedback we got from not only the um election workers but the community, we decided that wasn't a good location. Our second location was actually next door at the parks and wreck kind of big lobby area. That was our preferred space.

It was a larger space that allowed for more polling booths, but we did receive complaints from the um voters about the lighting because you have that big open, you know, area um with all the windows. Um it allowed for easier line management, but it was disruptive to other town business. And we know there was a lot of scheduled community activities where we were kind of overtaking that area that you know you'd see students and other kids and people come into.

The third location was what we were placed into um during your renovation. Um it was a very very small room and the amount of odors that we saw ended up being really bad. The line was doubling through the hallway into this room out the side all the way down to the parking lot. We were having ADA people that couldn't get inside. We had to literally move people out of the way. We had people asking to sit down because it was getting really hot in the hallways.

Um people outside were freezing because it was just chaos and there was nowhere for us to put any extra um voting booths. It it's we use the analogy of a restaurant. you can only fit so many tables inside. And when you have a two-page ballot, which we expect to see this November again, um we're going to actually expect these people to be potentially voting 45 minutes to an hour. We can't kick somebody out of a booth because there's 200 people behind them waiting.

You literally have to allow those people that time. So that location, we were actually really nervous that we were going to get stuck back in that location. And then um when we talked to the um town clerk in I believe it was January, we realized, oh no, this isn't going to work. So let me just clear the air. You as the town did not not offer us a space. You could off only offer us a space that we don't feel is adequate for the volume of voters that are coming and that are expected.

So I just want to make that clear because it seems like there might have been some confusion about that as well. Um, so the early voting location is going to be at 3001 North Main Street. We wanted to find something close enough to this location as we could because we know voters are going to show up here and then get told to go to another location.

Um, we have to look for again that parking, the ADA accessibility, the line of sight, the ability to use this location for both the primary and general election. We will be replacing locks to make sure that it's only our people inside of this area. We will have clear visibility on where to vote and um we will have election observers from the political parties there making sure everything is kosher and ready to go and um we will have full access to this site.

So I want to address a few things if you'll please indulge me. Um, again, potential ballot language does not influence the selection of a voting location. I received quite a few um complaints from some members of our community telling me that they're concerned um about the conflict of interest at the voting location I selected.

Um, one of the big things that they feel I should have known was that the place that offered us a free location, I should have known that they were behind some sort of an ordinance issue that was approved here with the town council. I am responsible for um approving the uh signatures on petitions. When we receive petitions from any municipality, my office is checking those signatures to make sure that the voter is a qualified elector for whatever the petition is.

The petitions that we received for the town of Prescat Valley um are specific to two referendums. Neither of these referendum languages, which I have on the screen here, mention anything about the um location that I'm using. They don't mention anything about the company that generously offered this location when I called out looking for a place. So, there's nothing in there that I saw that would have made me consider there is a conflict of interest.

I have not seen what the future ballot language is going to be. I assume it's going to be very close to what we see on the screen here and likely will not mention the company um in the ballot language. I would hope not. The other thing that people seem to have a concern with was that there are two packs or political action committees registered in that same building s the same as Arizona dermatology and it looks like some other places in the same building.

Um, just to be clear, this was actually voted on and approved April 1st and it looks like from the information that I received from a concerned constituent that these packs were developed after that location was selected. I have never been involved in a political action committee. I don't see those filings. The only reason I saw this is because somebody from the community sent it to me. But again, this was not based on ballot language, referendums, political action packs, none of that.

This was based on the convenience of our voters. Clear as can be. My job here is to make sure everybody gets access to the ballot. It is not to get involved in the politics, whether it's this jurisdiction, countywide, statewide, or whatever it is. Um, electioneering is unlawful. We will be strictly enforcing electioneering. So, if anybody is outside talking to voters, um, talking about candidates or issues within that 75 ft limit, we will handle it accordingly.

Um, the security will be restricted and we signed a lease to take over that uh, facility during those time frames. So, nobody will be allowed inside those doors while I have access to that building. Um, conflict of interest. Um, again, there is no law that states we cannot have a voting location somewhere where something has to do with language on a ballot.

If that was the case with the arguments being made, I think that same case would have been made if I was using your facility because the referendums are specific to a zoning approval that you all did. So, I can't do that because it's going to be a trickle effect, right? Every time a county issue is on the ballot, I would not be able to use my locations. Every time a jurisdiction has council persons on the ballot, I can't use those locations. It's a trickle down effect.

Every time a school is having a bond override, we wouldn't be able to use those locations. So, it's something that we don't want to set a precedence that something like this is starting to have an effect because we will not see any voting locations moving forward and it can really um have a negative impact on our voters abil abilities to cast a ballot.

Um, if you are uncomfortable using the optional voting location that we selected and you would prefer to use a school or a church, there's plenty of them for you to use. The 2026 primary locations are going to be Liberty Traditional right down the street from here. Also, uh, the Church of Jesus Christ and Latterday Saints on Pongghorn and Canyon Bible Church. And then in the general election, we will be back at Finley Toyota.

We couldn't get Finley for the um primary because of that date change that the governor signed signed. So um again, we have plenty of options for our voters. And as we saw in the previous slide, 78% of Prescat Valley voters actually vote by mail. So um I just wanted to make sure everybody knows we are giving you plenty of options. If you choose not to use one, there are many more available.

If you want to vote in person at one of my other locations, you can come to um Fair Street, 1015 Fair Street, or you can go to 106 Sixth Street in Cottonwood. The Fair Street location, as you can see that line, that's about what it looked like uh right outside this building in 2024. We are growing. This is a temporary solution to a larger problem.

At some point in the future, we are hoping to find a consolidated elections building that is in a convenient location in this tri- city area where we can make a mass super center. Um, but specifically somewhere to accommodate everybody in this general um, region to come and vote at our office where the magic happens. Um, transparency.

If you're uncomfortable with the process, if you have questions about the process, you can come to our office on Fair Street on the second floor and actually see what we do. This is what we're dealing with. It's getting tight. This is a lot of ballots. It's a lot of people in these areas. But you can also watch us at yavapai votes.gov/elections and um future considerations. We ranked 14 out of 15 out of the counties. is Yavapai County 14 out of 15 to the state.

Um, as far as numbers of full-time staff per registered voter, we don't have any room left to get more people to help us. Um, we expect to see long larger ballots. Longer ballots mean longer lines. Again, we are hopefully going to find a long-term solution with that election space. But in the meantime, what I want everybody to see here is that this is a thankless job. This is not an easy job. This has been the hardest job I've ever done. And I tried to plan for everything.

This situation, whatever this conflict was that people want to say was not a part of my plan. It was not something that I had expected. But I will tell you that I will do my job whatever that is in whatever way it is and I will make sure that we have integrity with this election. And that is all. Any questions? Thank you. Council, we have any questions for Miss Burchill? Um I I just want a clarification.

The um the site by the library, the preferred one, did that have the lines that you were talking about or it just said lighting? The site, you mean the second one that I said was our preferred? Yes, we were told we can't use that area because there's already already other um planned activities that are scheduled in that area that we didn't want to disrupt. Then what was offered up to you this time? The same room, the small room in number three. I misunderstood.

I thought you had the preferred room. No. Go ahead, sir. Um, Michelle, I just wanted to thank you for your excellent presentation. I know there was probably a lot of work went into that and a lot of effort and uh uh unfortunately you've been through a lot of angst on this situation. Um, but but uh what I see is that you you've made a very good faith effort and uh I think that most of the people I've spoken to in the community agree that uh overall you're doing a very good job. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Burchchell. I just want to thank you for your professionalism and hopefully there's not a single person in this room doubts her ability to do the job with the Yay elections.

I just want to say that you managed to debunk about 20 I'd say conspiracy theories that were shooting around social media in about 15 minutes and if people would have just reached out had a conversation civil one or maybe scheduled a meeting not through threats or anything like that to you and your family which is completely unacceptable. I just want to just say thank you on behalf of the town. You do an amazing job and uh I wish you the best. I appreciate it. Thank you guys.

Next up, item 9B, Chamber of Commerce appropriation agreement renewal. Good to go. Okay. Good afternoon. For the record, I am Diana Sto, economic development coordinator for the town of Prescat Valley. What I, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, what I am presenting to you today is information for consideration of the Chamber of Commerce appropriation agreement um with the town of Presca Valley.

The purpose of this agreement is to continue the town's partnership with the chamber in support of our visitor center, business engagement, and initiatives that contribute to the town's overall economic health and quality of life. The town and the chamber have maintained a long-standing relationship that have served as that have served as key community partners since 1990.

This agreement formalizes the continuation of that partnership while clearly defining expectations, services, and accountability and measures moving forward. This agreement aligns with the town's strategic plan priorities related to economic development, tourism enhancement, and community prosperity.

The partnership supports the goals of encouraging a strong and local economy, supporting business retention and expansion, promoting Prescat Valley as a destination for visitors and future investment, and enhancing the quality of life through community and business engagement. This agreement further supports the town's vision of maintaining a businessfriendly environment that contributes long-term economic sustainability. Are we frozen? Frozen. I will continue with the bullet points.

Scope of services. Under the proposed agreement, the chamber will provide services that include business outreach and engagement, community and networking event support. Thank you. Visitor and relocation information services. contribute to the town's communication initiatives, tourism support, and destination branding, and collaboration on business advocacy efforts, accountability, and oversight. This agreement establishes clear deliverables, service expectations, and reporting requirements.

Oversight components include defined performance expectations, regular reporting requirements, tracking of services and outcomes, and ongoing coordination between town staff and chamber leadership. These measures are intended to ensure that the partnership continues to deliver measurable value to the community and remains aligned with the town's strategic objectives. Compensation structure. The proposed agreement is a three-year partnership frame uh framework at $125,000 per year.

99,500 is allocated to the visitor center operation. The remaining funds support our many community engagement efforts such as PB Days, Valley of Lights, Shop Local 365, Restaurant Week, and among many other events that this chamber supports us. The add in addition, the town further supports the chamber during these signature events with traffic control, public safety, and roadside maintenance. The proposed $125,000 agreement does not reflect an increase.

In fact, it remains level for the past several consecutive budget cycles. Staff recommendation would be to approve the proposal agreement with the Prescat Valley Chamber of Commerce. And if you have any questions for me, I'm available to answer them before I introduce Steve Betti, CEO and president of the Chamber of Commerce. Council, we have questions for staff. Welcome, sir. Thank you, Diana. Mr. Mr.

Mayor, vice mayor, town council members and staff on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce and my team who is here tonight, uh Relle Skavaric, who's sitting way in the back. She's our membership service director and Tiffany Talbot who puts on all these wonderful events, especially most recently PB Days. And we're a small team of three people, but we get we might be small, but we're mighty. And [clears throat] my board of directors are here tonight as well, Mr. Brett Dah, Mr.

Ronnie Jenkins and Miss Lucy Lea. We appreciate the long-standing partnership with the town of Presca Valley in support of our local business. And that's what we're here about tonight, supporting our local business. Some new initiatives we're undertaking this year is taking over the shop local program from the town. Year-long program to promote local businesses.

We're going to be engaging in our business owners by doing what we call business walks, partner partnering with our board of directors and Mr. Davidson as well. We'll be doing some certain touch points throughout the course of the year by checking in, stopping in our local local shops and local businesses, see how are they doing and what can we do to help them. This is a team effort. It's a group effort and we're proud to help and be a part of it.

As Diane alluded to, the uh dollar amount, I know people fixate on that, has not changed in several business cycles, and I got to be honest with you, it does get more expensive each year to maintain these these events, especially the lights on lights. Uh LED lighting is not cheap. It's pretty expensive. But we're committed to putting on a good show, putting on good events for our our neighbors and our partners.

And one other thing we're also undertaking this year is we're going to expand our hours in the visitor center. We're going to include weekend hours from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Having spent the past 20 years in this marketplace in the in the tourism destination, we I know for a fact that that is a high demand time period to uh touch and connect with uh business traers in general coming out from the Phoenix marketplace to beat the heat because why would you not want to be in Prescuit Valley in the summertime, right? So, we'll be expanding those hours to include weekends to better serve our future and potential customers. Any questions I can answer at this point in time?

We have questions or comments for the chamber. Thank you. I just want to say Diana that I see working with the chamber, you look at other communities throughout Arizona, a lot of them operate in a silo where you'll have chamber of commerce doing something by themselves, not interacting much with the town. You have the schools working by themselves. Here in Presca Valley, we take that team effort where we're all working to try to benefit each other. Mr. doll.

I'm sure you'll agree with that that the town we're trying to do good things. We're working with the businesses. I see Leon shaking his head saying that this is something that we do as a community to make things better for everybody. And I think as we work as a team is the best way of doing it and bringing the chamber on as a team member and not just as a silo place that we give 125 grand to and just hope they do a good job. They work together with our staff and good things happen.

There's so much I talk to talk to my wife. [laughter] Thank thank you very much for that. The chamber has been an excellent partner and while we have created some new initiatives in economic development over the past couple of years, the chamber is willing to take those on. So it gives us a bandwidth to come up with more creative initiatives and uh continue to um give that value that quality of life that that we're known for. Right. That's what it's all about. Thank you, ma'am.

With no other questions, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve renewal of the Chamber of Commerce appropriation agreement in the amount of $125,000 per year for fiscal years 2026, 27, 2027, and through 28, and 28 through 29 by electronic vote. I'll second call vote, mayor. That passes unanimously. Thank you, ma'am. Next up, development impact fee update. Mr. Judy, welcome. Mayor and council, I know you just approved the chamber contract.

Is this a good time to bring up my idea for the Valley of Frights, a Halloween display? I keep plugging that. One of these years, we'll we'll do it. We're here tonight to talk about development impact fees. The town assesses development impact fees, or what we sometimes refer to as DIFFs, on all new residential, multifamily, commercial, industrial uses.

Now, these fees are intended to ensure that development pays their proportionate share of of infrastructure costs for adding adding capacity but maintaining our existing levels of service in the town. So, we assess fees in four different categories including police, streets, parks, and the library. The library fee will actually be going away at some point. We assessed it back when this building was initially constructed to pay for for most of the costs.

But once that debt service has been completed and any general fund advances are repaid, then that fee will will actually go away. So some examples of how impact fee funds have been used in the past. On the park side, we actually constructed Bob Edwards Park using development impact fees. The pickle ball courts and the lighting at Analopee Park were were constructed using impact fees.

On the street side, we constructed the flea free flow rights on Glassford in 89A as well as Bron Ranch Parkway and Analopee Meadows. The improvements to Sunset Drive, which we enjoy, we used impact fee funds for that project. And we are partially using some funds for the existing Glassford Hill Road expansion project, the police uh station expansion. the last time that we expanded the police station, we are using impact fee funds to pay for the debt service on that facility.

So, statute requires that we update the fees every 5 years. We last updated them in 2022. So, we're a little bit ahead of that 5-year deadline. There's a couple of reasons why we're doing that. One, we we received a $9.9 million uh funding allocation from the states to widen Glassford Hill Road. We weren't anticipating that the last time we completed the study.

Also, the infrastructure agreement we approved with for the Viewpoint subdivision, we agreed to update our fees this year to help offset the costs for the widening of Viewpoint Drive. Historically, we have presented uh there's actually three documents that you'll be considering over the coming months. There's lots of acronyms here. One is called the land use assumptions. We call that the LUA. The other is the infrastructure improvement plan or the IIP. and then the actual report itself.

Historically, we've done the LUA and the IP separate and [clears throat] then released the impact fee fund report later, but people are always curious how adoption of one report impacts the ultimate fee schedule. The state law actually requires that we cons we contract with a third party consultant to conduct the study for us. So, we've contracted with Rafelis to do that for us.

Uh, with that, I'd like to introduce Todd Cristiano from RA Telus to walk us through what he has been doing over the past several months. Council is not being asked to take any action tonight. This is just an introduction to the reports as well as the future timeline. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Welcome. [clears throat] Uh, good evening, mayor, uh, council members.

My name is Todd Cristiano with Rafelis and um tonight's presentation is a review of the work that we've been uh going over with Ryan and staff regarding the development impact fees. He's covered quite a bit of the presentation for me already, so that's a good thing. Um uh quick agenda. We'll just go over the legislative thing portion a bit. Um talk about the methodologies we used and we'll dive into more of the details of the different fees for uh police, streets, and parks and trails.

We have a fee comparison at the end too for both residential and a couple of example commercial and uh and industrial entities. Um as Ryan mentioned uh there is an Arizona Arizona revised statute that sets forth the requirements for doing for developing development impact fees. It doesn't necessarily tell you exactly how to calculate but there are some guard rails in which we need to work uh under and we've done that and there's here's a couple of example of bullets here.

This is not the exhaustive list that's in the statute, but just to give you an idea that um we need to make sure that growth is paying their proportionate share of new development. Uh like Ryan mentioned, we have a couple of documents. We have the land use um assumptions or LUA contains a number of things that we need to set forth that are assumptions based on developing the impact fee.

uh we have our infrastructure improvement plans which talks about the existing conditions the deficiencies and the future capital required and just provides all that information so that it goes into the development impact fee and finally the DI or development impact fee report is simply all the calculations and takes all those assumptions and things and shows how we've calculated it and parses it out between the residential and the non-residential uh development types.

Uh we're going to be be before you a number of times over the course of this uh process. Uh there's a number of steps here and a lot of touch points with council. Um one of the statutory requirements is that this process can take no no less than 225 days. We are calculating it out about 260 just based on the planning of of council minutes and meetings and when we have to have the documents ready to go. So we'll be definitely coming back to you uh with this information again.

So there'll be time to talk and ask questions about our fees and getting to more of the details. Um so a few changes um from the last study and I'll tell you that in our last study we did in 2022 a lot of the assumptions uh really based on growth and growth was a lot high projected to be a lot higher around 2%. In this next goound the population projection has projected to go down to about 1.15%. And that's based on information we used from the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity.

They provided that information for us. And so as a result of the reduction in growth or population um and with inflation in construction prices and infrastructure costs have gone up, we're going to see some increases to the fees. Just kind of a spoiler alert, there are increases to the fees across the board and it is a function of that.

There are some other nuance things with streets that I'll get into in just a moment, but you can see here that we're going to be adding about 6,500 uh portions of population over the next 10 years. And I have some comparisons to what we did in 2022, if I can find it here. Um I think I have it here. Um population, let's see. Uh actually, I don't have that number, but it's this is much lower than it was in the last 10-year projection we had.

Uh we're projecting to add 3,000 unit housing units and about 1,300 jobs. The jobs and square footage are linked together. We use that to help develop the fees for the non-residential development commercial because there was a relationship between square footage and and number of jobs. So those are our projections over the next 10 years. I would say that they were almost double in many areas there during the 2022 study.

Uh let's talk about streets and we're looking at a number of projects that are uh going forward over the next 10 years and Ryan can provide some details if there's some questions regarding some specific projects there. Um some assumptions here we're looking at just a growth related portion of projects over the next 10 years. Um your current infrastructure that is part of the equation we have about 60.5 lane miles of arterials.

Those are the major streets not the small neighborhood collector streets just those main um arterials there. Um right now a key uh assumption and indicator for our calculations is 2.8 lane miles per 10,000 vehicle miles traveled. And that's just a level of service that we have to maintain. We cannot develop fees that increase the level of service across any of those fees. Uh if you want to increase the level of service from where it is today, you need to have other funds to do that.

Be it grants, property tax, revenue, sales tax, whatever the case may be. And again, we are only looking at the city portion or the town portion of growth related arterials. We're not looking anything going outside the town's uh um um boundaries. Uh here are some of the projects that we're looking at. A total of the growth funded costs in that red box is $14.9 million worth of growth the growth related portion of those projects.

So those projects do include some repair and replacement and upkeep, but there is a growth portion to it or oversizing if you will on a number of those projects. and we're adding about 10 additional lane miles there. Okay, so here's the fee schedule, proposed and current fee schedule for streets. Uh if you look over at the fourth column, you can see the change there. So residential is projected to go up to $2,124 and you can see the increases there for the others.

Now non-residentials based on a per square footage basis. Um so doesn't really tell you how much somebody's bill fee is going to go up here. This tells you the increase in the unit cost. The one thing I want to stress here is though that this is the maximum supportable fee. So council has the option to adopt nothing the same pertain the same fee or adopt a portion. So it just gives you a range of options when coming down to the adoption and um of these final fees.

So I just wanted to point that out. Uh police and again we're in a similar situation. There's an increase there. Um, we're looking at the gross share, our service demand, uh, allocation. This question comes up quite a bit when we're doing fees, like, well, how do you split things out between, uh, residential and non-residential?

We look at a functional population and that simply looks at um, it's a demand allocation factor that we can use to assess what kind of demand is the residents going to place on these facilities or police requirements versus non-residential.

And it looks at the population within the city, the population commuting outside the city, visitors coming in, the number of jobs, number of people working, and a lot of those things that kind of all goes into the into the pot in terms of helping us determine how we're going to allocate those costs for the police facilities between residential and non-residential. Um, we have a current inventory of 100 vehicles and the average cost is $97,000. That's kind of a level service item there.

Um, and we also were looking at the inventory of police headquarters. So really buildings and vehicles are the two components that make up the police fee. And the average cost per square foot is approximately $32 per square foot. We um when we look at our infrastructure improvement plan, we can say our show that our net growth cost is about $2.5 million over the uh 10-year period. And in order for us to get to that, um we have these fees here.

Again, on the last column there, we see about a $270 increase in residential and about 255 for multif family and then about a zero change for industrial and some increases for uh office and retail restaurants. So, a similar story uh to streets, it's just increase in cost uh a decrease in the population growth are attributing to that. parks and trails. Uh I feel like I'm repeating this the same thing.

Um we're looking at the uh number of facilities that are going to be serving over the next 10 years. Um again, the functional population here is a little bit different because obviously a lot of non-residential development doesn't really use the parks as much as a residential or population does, but there is there is that activity by non-residential entities that might use the park for some reason or another. you think about a daycare, they might take the kids over to the park.

There might be a a garage show or I'm sorry, a car show or something that's going on sponsored by a company, that sort of thing. Uh so there is there is a little bit of a functional allocation or cost allocation to the non-residential um uh portion for parks. Uh we have about 181 acres and the average cost per acre we were estimating at $287,000. Uh the level of service here we have about 85,737 linear feet of improvements. Um and the average cost per linear foot is about $80 per linear foot.

And those numbers come from working with Ryan and just estimating based on what was done last time and scaling that and looking at uh what the construction cost index have been and um to develop those current prices for the development of the fees. Um there was one methodology change that we from the 2022 study.

Um uh we did update the um the cost per linear foot um to $80 per linear foot from a lower number which is $53 uh prior this the $80 per per linear foot based on a specific project cost um same level of service. So, we used that value instead. And um uh that helped drive the uh one of the charges on or part of the fee up for parks and wreck. Whoops.

And um when we did that, I think that better reflects the unit cost because we had some actual costs that we were able to use based on some uh documents from the town. Um so here are these uh various uh projects we have over the next 10 years for both parks and trails. You can say it's about um $287,000 cost per acre and cost per lander foot about $790 roughly per square foot based on these projects here. And again, uh here's our table versus the maximum supportable versus the current fee.

And again, uh increases across the board for each one of these development fee areas. Um so we looked at a comparison here of or a total of the each fee area here for parks and trails, police, streets. We've added library and even though that will be going away, we total that up and that column is for single families 93 uh $9,343 compared to the current fee which does also include library of $6,133.

a change of about $3,200 and so on and so forth with the the rest of the fees for um residential and the non-residential categories. Let's look at a fee comparison. Um obviously with the changes we're seeing with these initial changes we're seeing in the calculations, we're going to see a change in where Prescat Valley uh fits within the community u for similar development. Right now, the current fee for Prescuit for all the components here, we're kind of in the middle.

The proposed takes us far to the right there. But I want to caution you that this is a one data point. Um, many of these other communities might be in the process of updating their fees. Um, they just might have different infrastructure. Plus, when we look at these fees too, this is the non-utility fees. It doesn't include the water and wastewater impact fees, which could be significantly different between the town and other areas as well.

So that could change the positioning of where uh Prescott would fall in the whole continuum of these different communities. And this is for a residential three-bedroom, 2,000 foot dwelling, which is we considered the average for a comparison here. Um a couple of non-residential examples here. Um a hotel room, 112 rooms, 65,500 ft. We're more in the middle there as compared to the residential.

Again, you know, we still have the water and sewer impact fees or development impact fees to consider when putting that whole piece together there. Grocery store 20,000 square feet again kind of in a similar area there as well. You see the magnitude of the difference in change there. Um so next steps uh there's another public hearing August uh 13 and we'll be getting some feedback I think from development and those who are reviewing the report that's now currently published.

And um again, there's some other meetings, touch points with council here on the 24th, again on October 8th uh and November 11th. So, a lot of time for uh feedback, comments, and for us to uh go back and look at some additional information if needed during this process. We're hoping for implementation January 26, 2027. So, that completes my presentation. Be happy to answer uh any questions. Thank you, sir. Any questions or comments? See none sir will welcome you back. Thank you very much.

Miss Bliss, you want to I'm sorry. Selena, can you hold on one moment? We're going to do something a little kind of flip it a little bit. We'll just jump to 9F. Get this off the charts so you guys can leave. So let's do recommendation of series 12 restaurant liquor license for Salt and Pepper. Mayor and members of council, the liquor license application submitted by Salt and Pepper Cafe is for a new series 12 restaurant liquor license for the business located at 2970 Park Avenue.

All public notice requirements have been completed in accordance with state law. Notice of the application was properly posted at the business location and no written objections were received. Um, therefore, staff recommends that the town council forward a recommendation of approval for this application. Thank you, [clears throat] ma'am. This is a public hearing which I'll open up now. Is there anyone out in the audience that wishes to speak about this item directly? It's up to you, sir. Yes.

I I see the applicant is here, so I'll welcome up. If you want to say a few words, Leon, introduce who you have here, and then I'll close the public hearing. Good evening, mayor and council members. We just wanted to come by, say hello. Sold and pepper wanted to say hello to everybody. I also wanted to say uh to biggy to piggyback on what the mayor said. The way you guys conduct yourself with the chamber for small business in the community. We have other businesses in other municipalities.

Nothing reflects like this. So, it's a pleasure to do business here. We're excited to come down to PV. We feel like we fit in here. It's like where we're supposed to be. So, thank you. And we're glad that you chose Prescat Valley. I got tired of driving into Prescuit to visit Salt and Pepper. And I I will say I got interviewed by Pepper at Fries one day and she asked me if I was a waffle guy or a pancake guy. And I took a lot of heat for being a pancake guy.

And I just want I want you to know that a lot of people reached out [laughter] and and it wasn't apparently a popular choice. So, but I'm sticking by it. The lemon pancakes over at Salt and Pepper are topnotch. Thank you. I'll close the public here. Council, we have any questions or comments about liquor license? I also want to say thank you for choosing Prescat Valley. I'm looking forward to um having a meal there. Cler, please call the vote.

Well, mayor, I'll make a motion to recommend approval of the series 12 liquor license on behalf of Salt and Pepper located at 2970 Park Avenue, Prescuit Valley to the Arizona Department of Liquor License and Control. I second. Now, cler please call the vote. Mayor, that passes unanimously. Thank you, ma'am. Now, Miss Morris, you're up. ID resolution number 2026 2448, tenative town budget adoption. Thank you. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, members of council.

Um, just to set the stage, we do to have two items on the agenda this afternoon related to the budget. First, the approval a request for approval of the tenative budget, which would set the maximum limit for the fiscical year 27 budget. Um what you have before you in the packet are the official forms and they show that the proposed budget is 222.5 million. If you compare that to last year 221.5 million we do have a slight increase.

Um and one thing I want to mention about the budget is that we are structurally balanced. Ongoing revenues do exceed ongoing expenses. And we also show our total resources, which is revenues plus savings of 279 million compared to the $222 million proposed budget. That does also include the first year of the capital improvement program, which is the second item that we'll bring for you tonight as well.

We're asking for an approval of a 10-year plan, the first year being included in the budget, which totals about $74 million. Just a reminder that the capital improvement plan is how we prioritize critical infrastructure and plan for long-term planning. Um, with that, we don't have a lot of major changes from our study session or our um, individual briefings, but we have prepared two short presentations if the council would like me to go over those. If you council, will you see the presentations?

Yes, ma'am. Go for it. Okay. Thank you. The first one is the proposed fiscal year 27 tenative budget. Um, with all budget conversations, we always want to focus on our duty to our residents and our citizens, which is to deliver exceptional service to enhance our quality of life. Again, as I mentioned previously, we are structurally balanced. The state law does require us to balance the budget where total resources exceed total expenses.

We go above and beyond that and make sure that we're structurally balanced so that ongoing revenues support ongoing expenses. Our theme this year was to make sure that we use what we have wisely. So we weren't looking to have increased revenues. We help we held our revenue estimations flat and we also held our expenditures flat except for some of those items which were related to safety or risk.

Some of the items that we do have tentatively approved in the tenative budget include some changes to personnel. These are driven again by either compliance, safety or other crucial items. Um many of these are paid for by either a reallocation of dollars or by special revenues or enterprise funds. This um is how we graphically show schedule A which was one of the required forms from the state. And so what we show here is that our general resources exceed our general expenditures.

And then you can see this the same with special revenues, capital projects, enterprise funds. And then this year we have a new internal service fund which is related to our self-insured program. This graphically shows you revenues versus expenses. So this doesn't have that strategic use of savings, but it does show that we continue to um focus on our our savings account for strategic items. This is a representation of schedule D.

And so what the state requires us to do is show you how we're transferring funds between the different um type of funds. So you can see that the general um fund does have transfers in of $5 million but transfers out of nine. Um those are strategic items.

One of them related to establishing a replacement fund for things like parks and amenities, um, computers, network environments type stuff, which is about five million, and then also 3 million to fund the claims reserve for our self- insurance plan. And then you can see the other items there. This is our general fund revenue picture.

What you can see is that the general fund remains pretty stable with local um taxes and and government intergovernmental revenues representing the largest piece or 91%. This shows you our expenses by department. One thing that I do want to point out is that the um the scale is different from each side. So we have the smaller departments versus the larger departments.

And again, the departments were focused on saying within their um current fiscal year 26 expenditure allocation and that's what you see here. This is our full-time um and FTE equivalent. So it shows you that a large portion 85% of our personal co personnel costs are driven by the general fund. And then it shows you our equivalent count. So about again 85% coming from the general fund. This again is just to remind you that we are fiscally conservative and community-minded.

And so this graph shows you that in all of our forecasted years in this 5-year timeline shows that our revenues do exceed our expenditures for ongoing revenues and ongoing expenses. This is the fund balance. So in the years that we have more revenues than expenses, we have what we call a surplus or what you can think of as your savings account. So from 2017 to what we forecast through 2026, you can see that we've grown that over time.

Um we do plan to end fiscal year 26 with a large surplus to to increased revenues and then conservative expenditures. And so we forecast that somewhere between seven and eight million. Um, as we talked at the budget retreat and the budget study session, we do plan to use that for ongoing cost for the following year rather than depend on ongoing revenues. It's a more conservative approach. So, it shows that uptick, but then we are using that for those strategic items that we looked at.

And then you can see that it levels out. And here are our next steps. So we do have um two public hearings and then the final budget request adoption and with that this is the tenative budget. Thank you ma'am. Council we have any additional staffs or any additional questions for staff. Um I I followed up with Gilbert today because I had a couple questions. um like the the Persian project um we're going to be removing that from the budget since we're not moving forward with that project.

So that's a 704,000 um that will be removed as vice mayor. That's correct. I also asked inquired about the um oh the um the the humane society there there was something in the budget about creating our very own for um a little over 2 million and that's not going to be in the budget. That's correct. Um Mayor Mice mayor council member Keale that was actually removed from the original um request.

So, we do have a presentation on the capital improvement, but um in order not to give you a full book, we that still does include some of those projects that were denied. And so, the um animal control center or the humane society at 2.3 was removed. Okay.

And my thought was I also see a lot of um money going to the Glford Hill um development and engineering to um to construct um the Glford Dels Park um per the the plan that was submitted um to include like the trails, parks, farmers market, ropes course, disc golf um and I was thinking that maybe we could reallocate that money towards um a general plan update.

Um I don't I don't know that um that everybody's on board with um doing the Glastford Hill project and and it hasn't gone to a vote of the uh council. So, I just thought maybe we could um you know, rather than moving forward with the engineering and construction funding for Glastford Hill at this time, I would support reallocating those funds toward updating the general plan and beginning the process of identifying community members to assist with that effort.

The wildlife foundation guide that we recently reviewed recommends updating the general plan and doing so would complement the ongoing parks and recreation master plan as well as the fain park and historical preservation plan. Um I don't know if anybody is willing to you know put that into the um the budget for our next discussion. Mr. Mayor, council members, council member Kell, if I could just clarify.

Um, the only thing being recommended in this budget for Glassford Dells is trail development. So, building trails, which was one of the top priorities indicated by residents through the various surveys. And then it's doing some engineering work on what's called the Southgate parking lot, which is over by Home Depot. So, those are the only two items that are included in next year's budget.

Then maybe maybe we could update that because it says um these these amenities hold strong potential to bring in new tourism opportunities through the construction of trails, park amenities, farmers mark market, ropes course, disc golf course and connected open space and it's at a cost of 1.29 million. So that's the description for the overall project, but what is being put before the council is only trail development, which is roughly a hundred some thousand.

And then there's an engineering piece which is another 125,000 I believe 150,000. I see 250 for 2027 and 122 for you're looking at the total capital the outline years for that. So that would that again would have to be approved or reviewed by council at each each fiscal year. Okay. Again, I think that we ought to be doing an update on our general plan. It is outdated and it was kind of rushed through the last time. Councilman, thank you.

Um this evening as we discuss the upcoming town budget which is approaching a4 billion dollars uh although our finance department has done an excellent job of projecting income revenue streams balancing the books and leaving us with reserve money we don't have any formal process of oversight by the council what I mean by this is that we look carefully at the money coming in and going out but we don't look effectively and efficiently at the how the taxpayers's money is being spent, what we're getting for our money.

For a few examples, are we getting our money's worth from all these expensive consultants that we frequently hire? Why are our town employees driving around in costly gasg guzzling Ford F-150s, mostly empty, when hybrid Ford Mavericks are available, which get approximately 30 to 40% better fuel economy and cost tens of thousands of dollars less per unit?

Why is our police department using gasg guzzling Taho and Explorers when official pursuit rated hybrid Ford Explorers that have been tested for and and certified for pursuit are available which get get roughly 30 to 40% better fuel economy at a time of $5 per gallon gasoline? Are we getting worthwhile results from our storm water initiative that has increased everyone's water bills? Why are our ball field stadium lights on when nobody is using them, including even during a snowstorm?

There are just a few, these are just a few areas. And my intention is to illustrate governmental waste, not to pick on certain departments. This is in no way an attack on the folks who prepare our budget. They are doing a great job. No, this is meant as a wake-up call to the town council that we are not doing our fiduciary duty to the town's people and the taxpayers if we don't carefully scrutinize the return on investment that we make on every major item. We can we can and must do better.

As part of the solution, I am offering my services as an automotive expert and consult gratus to the town's people. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Like to also remind council that our job is we set policy. We trust in our town management and the department heads to go about every daily activities. We also have a program here at the town called OpenGV where any resident can go online. You can click on it and you can see how much we're spending on copy paper if you want.

And I'd also I want to say that we've also added what $8 million if we continue to our surplus, meaning that we are going to have $8 million more dollars in our rainy day fund than the year before. That seems like a pretty good job of doing books. So, I appreciate your work, ma'am. I'll entertain a motion to approve the budget as is. If it doesn't go, then we can revisit it.

Mayor, I'll make make a motion to authorize the mayor to sign resolution number 2026-2448 approving the tenative budget fiscal year 2627 and giving notice of public hearing June 25th, 2026. I'll second. Mayor, that passes 5 to2. Thank you, ma'am. Next up, 9E capital improvement plan. Do you have anything to add for this ma'am?

We do have a short presentation um but it just really summarizes the amount of the 10-year plan which is about $481 million again with the first year included in the capital plan of $74 million. I do want to mention that annually we look at the pro the plan and so these items might be in the plan but every year it's up to council's discretion on making those changes.

The reason that we do the 10-year capital plan again is to prioritize those critical infrastructure and then asset preservation for our current investments and then to align those projects with our financial capacity. So this is allows us to take that longer strategic look at how we're managing the town for our residents services. Um these slides you probably are very familiar with and how that's funded.

So we have a number of different items that we use to fund the projects um related to the last presentation on the development impact fees that should be ready around January. And so for the next budget season, you'll see some out reallocation of funding sources based on what's approved in that plan. Um again, this shows you that um 10-year plan. So it shows you five years plus the outy years together. And then the next one shows you our current funding.

Um there is a lot of provisional funding for seeking grants or grants, loans, forgivable loans, that type of thing. Um and then again, what's included in the first year budget is year one. Anything different than we were presented at study session two weeks ago? No, we did move some of the phasing around, but the same projects, but we pushed a couple things out. Thank you. Any questions or comments for Miss Morris? M.

Morris, I do want to say before we call the vote, this will be your last budget with us. You're moving on and I just want to say that it has been a pleasure working with you. You are a true budget machine, I would say, and you do a great job and the town was better for you being here. So, I wish you all the luck in the future. Thank you so much. I have enjoyed supporting an amazing community.

You will still see me here and I've appreciated the guidance and support and and still hope to support the community any way I can. Thank you. That being said, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to adopt the fiscal year 2027 through 2036 capital improvement program and accompanying capital improvement financial plan as long as a long range planning document to guide future capital investment and infrastructure planning efforts.

subject to annual budget appropriation and future council approval by electronic vote. I'll second vote. Mayor, that passes 621. Thank you, ma'am. Anything else for the good of the order? Seeing none, I'm going to adjourn. We're going to give it about five minute break and we'll start back up with the ever exciting CFD budget.