Scottsdale Council Approves $8.25M Water Deal and STR Enforcement Tool as Public Challenges AWS Compliance Transparency

Good afternoon. I'd like to call the June 23rd, 2026 City Council special meeting to order. City Clerk Ben Lane, may I please have a roll call. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Lisa Barowski, present. Vice Mayor Marian McCallen, present. Council members Jan Debasquez here. Barry Graham, Adam Quasman, Kathy Littlefield, and Solange Whitehead here. City Manager Greg Kaitton here. City attorney Louis Centa here. And the clerk is present. Thank you, mayor. Thank you very much.

And this this afternoon, we have board commissions and task force interviews and appointments. And uh this is an opportunity for the council to interview each board and commission nominee and uh go ahead and make appointments at the conclusion of those interviews. And I'd like to uh turn this over to Vice Mayor McCallen to proceed. Thank you, Mayor. Um the city of Scottsdale is city council is responsible for establishing city policies and enacting laws in support of those policies.

The council relies on volunteer citizen-based boards and commissions to research issues and make recommendations in support of the council's mission and goals. The information and recommendations provided by city council appointed advisory boards is valuable is a valuable tool in helping council members in their deliberations. This afternoon, the city council will be appointing Scottsdale residents interested in serving on various boards and commissions.

I want to thank all the individuals and their willingness to volunteer their time in service to this community. Following the set of interviews, we will vote on an appointment for the board or commission. As I call your name, please approach the podium, which will be on this side, and briefly cover the following um questions. For the record, you'll state your name, your address, and how long you've lived in Scottsdale.

You'll tell us a little bit about your education, your employment, or your volunteer experience, which relates to the board of the commission that you're applying for, and what the top issue facing this border commission is. Please limit your comments to two minutes. We'll have a timer uh listed up there so you can see where you're at um in your presentation. So our first uh uh commission is the um building advisory board of appeals and there is one opening.

The building advisory board of appeals has the jurisdiction to recommend that minor variances in electrical plumbing and mechanical application of building code be granted in alternative construction methods or materials be allowed. There is one vacancy and one nominee. That nominee is James Mayor. Um, James Meer. Thank you very much. Um, James Meyer. Uh, my address is 18245 North Puma Road, Scottsdale, Arizona 85255.

I've lived in Scottsdale for probably like 10 years and I personally think that the issues facing this are substitution of uh products. Um we're here in Scottsdale to preserve the beauty and everything and it kind of gives construction a bad name when people maybe go a different route and substitute products for inferior products to maybe make deals or something along those lines.

And I think that to preserve the beauty that is Scottsdale, um, there can't be these substitutions without someone overseeing them. And I'm really fast. So, you're welcome, guys. And are there any questions for Mr. Meyer? I apologize for pronouncing your name incorrectly. Any questions? That's okay. Okay. Uh, per council rules, since there is one single nominee, I motion to forego individual voting and appointment by affirmation. Thank you. He's very quick, too. Um, all those in favor say I.

Or do we have to do a roll call vote? No, we can. I Okay, excellent. Thank you, Mr. Meyer. You are appointed. Thank you. Our next um committee is the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee and we have one opening. The Citizens Bond Oversight Committee shall receive reports on the city's progress on implementing the B the bond program, review any proposed budget changes to the program, and provide such comments to the city council with respect to the bond program as the committee deems appropriate.

There is one vacancy and three nominees. The nominees are Brandon Alised, Katherine Wills, and Joe Dubois, whose term expires in June, but he is eligible for reappoint. So, we will start with um Joe Dubois. Well, uh, as an attorney, I often say I can't say my name in two minutes, but I'll I'll do the best I can. Uh, Mayor Baroski and members of the city council, my name is Joe Dubo, and I've been a resident of Scottsdale since 2018. I live in the Trune Villages area of North Scottsdale.

Since becoming a resident of Scottsdale, I've been I've successfully completed the Scottsdale government uh, 101. And more recently, last month, I completed the Scottsdale Citizens Police Academy. I do believe that my business and professional experiences offer significant qualifications for successful service on the committee. I'm currently completing my initial three-year term as a member of the committee.

And during my tenure, I've served as its vice chair and as the chair of the committee and uh I was recently selected in February by my colleagues to serve a second term as uh chair, a position which I currently hold. I'm a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Upon graduation from the academy, I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army and then later joined the Army Rangers.

As a small unit combat leader, I was recognized with the award of the Army Commenation Medal, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, and two Bronze Star Awards among others. After the Army, my legal career afforded me the opportunity to concentrate on civil litigation matters and a particular relevance to this committee. I dealt with questions, controversies, and litigation surrounding public works projects. I've also had significant experiences in civic and business affairs.

For example, I serve two terms as the CFO for the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce with responsibility for preparing and managing the annual budget for the chamber representing some,200 business members. I was also elected to serve two separate terms as the chairman of the board of the chamber.

Lastly, uh my sense of the most significant issue facing the committee moving forward is to successfully navigate the challenges presented by the current inflationary environment as it impacts the 2019 bond funds authorization and the many inquiries from our fellow citizens that we receive on that issue. In closing, I just want to thank you for your attention and consideration of my application for this committee and I'll take any questions of the party. Any questions? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Dubo.

Right after each other too funny. Okay. Next. Councilman Barry Graham is here. Oh, okay. And let's sorry to interrupt, Vice Mayor, and let the record reflect that Councilwoman Littlefield has also joined us. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, next is, and I'm sure I may be pronouncing this name wrong, so I'll just say it up front. Alice Brandon say, "Good afternoon. My name is Brandon Elsa." Oh, it's backwards. Yeah, it's phonetic. Yeah, I've lived in Scottdale for 5 years.

I'm at the address 8547 East Via Deos Libros in McCormack Ranch. I plan to build my life there, my career, my family. Uh the projects funded through this bond program are projects that my family and I will see and use for decades. That's why I'm interested in serving on this board. Professionally, I serve as a chief financial officer for a local cabinet supplier. We do both residential and commercial projects. My professional background also includes commercial banking and real estate.

I believe those experiences align closely with the mission of this committee. Every day I work on managing budgets, monitoring project costs, and analyzing variances. Just as importantly, I regularly translate complex financial data into clear, actionable insights for decision makers like you. If appointed, my goal would be to provide thoughtful, independent oversight while working collaboratively with city staff, fellow committee members, and the council.

I believe residents deserve a clear understanding of how bond dollars are being spent, how projects are progressing, and what challenges or opportunities may lie ahead. The top issue facing this committee is ensuring the 2019 bond program delivers on the promises made to Scottsdale voters. With a $319 million investment across 58 projects, residents deserve a clear understanding of what has been completed, what remains to be done, and how public funds are being managed along the way.

I care deeply about Scottsdale's future because this is my community. The decisions made today will shape our city for years to come, and I would be honored to contribute my financial experience and analytical perspective to help ensure these projects deliver value for Scottsdale residents. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Brandon. Any questions for Brandon? Okay. Thank you so much. Our next I know I've got this one right. Katherine Wills. Catherine. Right.

Good afternoon, mayor and council members. My name is Kathy Wills. I'm a native of Scottsdale, so I've lived here for 55 years. Um, I currently live at 9595 East Jennen Drive, where I've been for 26 years. Um, thank you for the opportunity to be considered for the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. Um, I have spent almost 35 years in banking and I'm currently the managing director for Arizona's private banking group at Midfirst Bank.

and my career has centered on financial analysis, risk assessment, accountability, client advising, and stewardship of significant financial resources. Every day, I work with complex financial decisions, evaluate long-term impacts, and help ensure sound and responsible outcomes. In addition to my professional experience, I've served on numerous nonprofit and community boards where I've been responsible for governance, oversight, budgeting, and strategic planning.

And these experiences have reinforced the importance for me of transparency, asking thoughtful questions, and ensuring public funds are used as intended. I also teach a financial literacy class to a nonprofit in Phoenix. Um, I understand there is a quite highly qualified incumbent uh serving as chair who's reapplied, and I appreciate the experience and continuity that long-term volunteers bring to our city.

Um, so my purpose today is not to diminish that service, but rather to express my interest in contributing should the council believe my background could add value now or in the future. Um, if selected, I would bring an independent perspective, strong financial acumen, and a commitment to serving the residents of our great city uh, with integrity and diligence. So, thank you for your consideration and for your service to our community. Thank you, Kathy. Any questions for Kathy? Okay.

Then at this time I will entertain a vote for the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. Each council member may vote for one nominee and I will start with Councilman Clausman. Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor. I just want to say that these three nominees are outstanding. If you are not chosen today, please reapply. This is the type of caliber all three of you are 100% wonderful. Okay?

This is um the type of caliber that Scottsdale is able to produce and this is exactly why we've been so successful as a city. So please please do not be disheartened today if you do not get um if you do not get chosen. And then one other thing, Mr. Dubo, we live in a world where not enough people appreciate what a bronze star is and what and having a um having a West Point uh education means.

Um, and I really think that we need to make sure that that those not only on this dis but everybody in the community understands what what it is that you have done and what you are. And with that, I will vote for Mr. Deo and Councilwoman Whitehead. Uh, Joe Deoce, a couple more positions open later this year and you're already in the hat, so don't even worry. And I agree that we have some very qualified candidates always. So glad to have you here. Mayor, it's a tough one.

I I would like to vote for all three of you. Uh but I'm going to vote for Kathy Wells having nothing to do with the other two candidates. Excellent presentations. Councilwoman Littlefield. Uh I will vote for Joe Duboce, but I think all three are excellent. I hope they keep their names in the hat for future. Thank you. Uh Councilman Graham, can you hear me? Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Vice Mayor, Mr. Dubo, thank you. Thank you. And Councilwoman Dascus, I will echo the comments already made.

Thank you so much for your service to our country and to our city. Uh we have wonderful, wonderfully qualified candidates. I hope you all stay on. Joe Deoce. Okay. And the vice mayor will uh vote also for Joe Duboce. So Mr. Duboce, you are reappointed. And again, thank you all. And uh like Councilwoman um Whitehead said, there will be three openings we believe in this uh specific commission. So your names will stay in. So please come back. Thank you.

Okay, moving on to the next Historic Preservation Commission. We have one opening. The Historic Preservation Commission advises the planning commission and city council on all matters concerning historic and archaeological preservation.

The commission focuses to implement the ordinance process for identifying Scottsdale's historical, archaeological, and cultural resources, promote an awareness of them for future generations, and to recommend programs to achieve community goals for their preservation and conservation. Special special qualifications.

As outlined in the Scottsdale City Code, each member shall have demonstrated a special interest, knowledge, or experience in at least one of the following: building construction, history, architectural history, real estate, historic preservation, law, or other historic preservation related field. There is one vacancy and one nominee. The nominee is John Duncan. Did I get your name right, Mr. Duncan? You sure did. Thank you. I'm John Andrew Duncan, but go by Andy.

So, you got twothirds of it right. That's good. Um, I live at 4834 North Miller Road, 85251. I'm a graduate of the School of Architecture in Austin, Texas. I've been an architect most recently and have worked in the profession since 1982. I've been here in Scottsdale for the last four years and have worked on various building types and most recently worked with a developer here in Scottsdale who's working on a project close to Papago.

I've engaged with some of the planning commission members here at the city because I work also as an architectural advisor to our homeowners association for um the little community just north and east of here which is called Villa Mterrey. I've uh enjoyed living there and I really have been quite surprised at the prowess of the city of Scottsdale. I wish I could read what Miss McCallen's note said because I couldn't have put it so eloquently.

But I have a strong interest in architecture, strong interest in planning and a very strong interest in archaeology and I respect whatever has been done and hopefully I can support the commission, the historical commission in their endeavors. I've attended some of their meetings only to be turned away because there wasn't a meeting. So, I know if I do get voted in, I won't have to work too hard because there aren't very many meetings.

Um, I don't know what's facing the, you know, the top issues are, but I look forward to learning if I am that fortunate. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Are there any questions for Andy? Okay. Um, that being said, per council rules, there's only one single nominee. I motion to forego individual voting and appointment through affirmation. It's been motioned and seconded. All those in favor? I. Excellent. You are appointed, Andy. Thank you for um for applying. Okay. The loss trust fund board.

There is one opening required by state statute. The lost trust fund board makes recommendations to city council regarding the administration of the lost trust fund. The trustee shall meet at least once a year and submit a report to the city council regarding the status of the trust fund. The report shall also include recommendations to the trustee that the trustees deem necessary. Special qualifications as specified in Scottsdale city code.

The city council shall appoint five joint trustees of whom no more than one shall be a member of the city council and no more than one trustee may be a city employee. There is one vacancy and one nominee. Edie Dunning is applying and she is participating electronically. Miss Dundy. Miss Dunning. Yes, I'm here. Thank you very much. Okay. You're apologize. I could not be there today. Okay. Thank you. Uh first of all, good afternoon, mayor and council members. My name is Edie Dunning.

My address is 12145 East Gold Dust Avenue in Scottsdale. I am celebrating 20 years residing and working in Scottsdale. And as far as experience in education, I've been in the insurance industry for over 40 years and everything from claim risk control, underwriting, and most recently the senior vice president over middle market for the Mountain West region for travelers insurance before retiring just two years ago. So my responsibilities are and or were uh large commercial.

I also had technology excess umbrella and public sector. So, I'm very familiar with the risk management and the exposures and uh all of what goes into underwriting cities. Uh I have several professional designations that I've earned throughout my career including my MBA and I've also been involved in several volunteer opportunities including a few HOAs, some nonprofits in both Arizona and in Utah where we we do split some of our time in the summer.

uh some of the top issues that are facing the board and what I see are the increasing risk factors the city is exposed to as we grow. So in my view the largest issue the city's facing it's protecting the city.

So amongst the growth that's happening, the increased complexity of a growing population and infrastructure in Scottsdale and the importance of being proactive in case managing and balancing cost and benefits um in the insurance market as we all know regardless of whether we're looking at individuals or or public sector, but the premiums continue to increase.

So the importance of balancing that and the self- retention with the cost and of all of these nuclear verdicts that we're now seeing being handed down really needs to be evaluated carefully by the risk manager by the actuaries and the commission.

So the areas that I bring expertise there are carrier knowledge and the marketplace that we're in, the cycles that we go through, expertise in the risk management uh in cities and municipalities as well as being on boards for nonprofit and profit organizations and also understanding adequate funding from a governance perspective in order to achieve the risk and reward.

I'm not as familiar with the health and benefits, but I will tell you I'm extremely impressed in how the city promotes wellness and preventative care with the high cost today of the care of employees and I just want to thank you for this opportunity to be considered for this board for our wonderful city. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Dunning. Do we have any questions for Miss Dunning? Anyone? Okay.

Per the council rules, since there is one single nominee, I motion to forego individual voting and appointment through affirmation. It's been first and seconded. All those in favor say I. Okay, Miss Dunning, welcome to the lost trust fund board. You have been appointed. Thank you. Okay. And with that, um this concludes our appointment process for today. I would like to thank all of the nominees and uh for their interest.

Please uh keep your names in the hatter for uh upcoming openings and we are just very fortunate to have such um involved citizens and people who want to continue to keep Scottsdale the great city it is. um a staff member will contact the individuals who have been appointed this evening and provide them with the information and next steps regarding their appointment.

The city of Scottsdale is uh again grateful for this opportunity to have met all of you and we look forward to those of you who weren't appointed to your opportunity to serve in the future. Mayor, thank you very much. Uh with that, I will move to adjourn and congratulations to all the appointees. Any opposition? All right, we're done. Good afternoon. I'd like to call the June 23rd, 2026 city council regular meeting and work study session to order. City clerk Ben Lane.

Treasurer Sonia Andrews here. Acting city otter here. And the clerk is present. Thank you, mayor. Thank you so much. Uh this evening we have Scottsdale police officers Kim Savage, Kyle Shoollock, and Ray Wilburn as way as well as Scottsdale firefighters Logan Darling and Marcela Engam if anyone requires their assistance. And I think I saw some PD canines over there. Did I do we have PD canines? Yeah, two, right? Three. Wow. Well, welcome. We're lucky to have you.

Uh, for the pledge of allegiance, I'd like to call on Councilwoman Kathy Littlefields. Thank you. And for the invocation, I will turn it over to Vice Mayor McCllen. Thank you, Mayor. Um, at this time, I just ask you to bow your head for a moment of silence. Thank you. Thank you for the mayor's report. I am pleased to announce the recognition of digital kindness week here in Scottsdale.

uh which was brought forward as an idea at our la last council meeting by a Scottsdale student whose leadership inspired this proclamation. And so it is my honor I hope he's here. Do I see him? Oh, there he is. Okay. All right. There we go. Uh, it's my honor to recognize Vars Verun, a 12-year-old Scottsdale student who is wise beyond his years clearly, who brought forward a concern affecting many young people and many grown-ups for that matter.

The growing impact of cyber bullying on students uh well-being. Rather than simply identifying the problem, VAR developed a solution. It's entitled Shield. S H I E L D and and which is an initiative he created to promote safer and more positive online interactions. It stands for strong help in every level of digital life.

It encourages students to stay calm, report harmful behavior, block bullies, engage with kindness, document ongoing issues, and disconnect when necessary and appropriate in order to protect their mental health. Through this initiative, VR is empowering his peers and helping foster a culture of digital responsibility and respect in our community. Please join me in welcoming Vars as we present the digital kindness proclamation, kindness week, excuse me, proclamation.

And uh I just want to compliment bars for, you know, taking the lead on something so significant. And with that, I'll invite V down and my council colleagues to come share uh in the presentation. All right. Thank you very much, Bar again, for being here. Next, we have uh let's see, we have pres a few presentations. First, we'll start with a pres presentation from Chief Tom Shannon and Police Chief Joe Leuk on how canines Oh, that's why they're all here. I knew that. Yeah. Two and two together.

canines are utilized in apprehension, detection, search and rescue, investigation, and other areas. So, can't wait to hear more about this gentleman. Welcome. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and members of council. We're we're going to invite the stars of the showdown, though. First, these are just some of your city K-9 partners representing uh both police, fire, and parks and wreck initiatives. So, um, next slide.

It's my great honor to talk to you a little bit about, um, how dogs are being used inside the city. Um, I'll do just a couple, uh, slides for you and then Chief Luke will take over the rest. Next slide. So, um, SOSAR stands for Scott, City of Scottsdale Search and Rescue. Um, we realized that one of the gaps that existed in our capabilities to search in our open spaces was the use of canines to help find people, whether they be alive or deceased.

And so we uh we took embarked on a an adventure, if you will, that I just can't say enough about the two handlers, Hayden and Chris. Would you wave? There you go. There's our two uh Sosar handlers. Um, these folks got certified in eight months, which is absolutely incredible. Um, obviously, uh, the real talent is in their K9 partners because really the dogs are just doing what they know how to do.

And what we learn to do is communicate with them, uh, and and and help them, uh, understand what what it is we want them to find and then reward them for that. Uh, next slide. Within the SAR concept, we're using all sorts of tools, canines being just one of them. Uh we're obviously using drones to do reconnaissance work and even provide uh radios and water and uh gear sometimes to uh victims who might find themselves in a in a in a bad spot.

We're currently using mountain bikes and ebikes to access uh victims out on the trail system route and open spaces more quickly. And our folks are uh trained at the National uh Association of Search and Rescue Technicians SARTK 2 level, which is uh a very high level of credentiing.

And what that means is that they're uh they can they're they're able to operate in austere conditions in a variety of different environments, whether that be mountainous terrain, flat terrain, open spaces, and so it fits exactly what Scottsdale uh requires, which is a very diverse open space category. There's only one way to really describe what they do and that is show you. So if you'll turn your attention towards the screen, we'll go to the next slide. Next slide.

So Chris, I believe that that's probably almost real time, huh? About 3 minutes. This is 45 acres in three minutes. That was Leon that did that search. And it's just simply amazing to watch these uh dogs work. They just they they are uh God-given talent. And then the communication that we go through in terms of of uh learning how to communicate with them as to what we're looking for whether it be uh human remain scent or live scent in a variety of environments is just simply amazing.

So the last thing I'll say before turning it over to Chief Luduk is that is that our our goal is to have uh redundant capabilities. Right now we have five uh K9 teams and uh uh four of them are live uh scent K9 teams and one is a human remains team. Two dogs are being trained now in human remains and that would provide us an equal distribution of live and human remains detection.

Sadly some of our our finds uh uh don't turn out well but it's nevertheless uh very important for us to uh find those folks uh where they may be lost. And so we use uh these dogs as well as all those other tools we sh shared with you in the SAR world uh to make sure that there's closure for all citizens and visitors in Scottsdale. Um I will stop talking now. We'll certainly be happy to uh entertain questions, but I'll turn it over to my partner and Chief Leuk. No questions. Thank you, Chief.

Uh, Madame Mayor, council members, it is my pleasure to be able to come and tell you a little bit about our operations as it pertains to K9 Kines's. They're truly uh man's best friend and we have a partnership with them that allows us to do things in the public safety space that we would be unable to do without them. So, I'll go quickly and tell you kind of the different disciplines we have here, but I will uh introduce the our our pups here today. We have Farley.

It was her birthday the day before yesterday. yesterday. Yesterday she turned 21 in human years. So, we had a little party at the station. She's 3 years old. Uh we have the OG Rocket, uh one of our crisis dogs. We have PO, search and rescue dog. Cash, uh um explosive detection dog. And then Booker, and he's one of the patrol dogs with us today. And in an amazing team of handlers that support them, or they support each other really.

So, we have 14 dogs total, uh, separated into multiple disciplines, and I'll go into each one in a little bit of detail. Um, but they they're between patrol uh specific detection dogs, uh, park ranger, search and rescue that Chief Shannon talked about, and then we have our crisis response K9's, one uh, that's just assigned to our police crisis intervention, uh, unit, and then also four that are in the schools, which has been uh, really a great success for us in our schools lately.

Let's start by laying the foundation of training, certification, and care. Um, these dogs are very well cared for. they they actually be eat a better diet than I do. Uh most of the time the handlers are trained and amazing at providing care uh for them in the in the way of uh diet and exercise and training. Um training certification is also taken very seriously. There are yearly certifications for these dogs.

Whether you're a patrol dog or a search and rescue dog or even a crisis dog, they have to certify every single year to make sure that they are reaching the metrics. Nobody's failed yet though. That would be very sad. Uh they're all doing very very well as far as that's concerned. So let's talk about patrol K9 teams. Uh Booker uh and Sergeant Pit um is an example of that.

They are our most versatile dog and the oldest uh that we've had on the force uh since uh the beginning actually since the 1970s, late 1970s. One of the first K9 handlers we had was actually a Chicago PD K9 handler that came down and worked for Scottsdale. But they do multiple things. One of the the major things that they do is do area searches and building searches.

So, they're not only trained to search uh for bad folks or bad actors, but they're also trained to apprehend them and they're also trained in scent detection for some of them are trained in narcotics and some of them are trained in explosive detection. Not both because it's very specific. We don't want to get those two things confused ever. So, some have that specialty and others uh have a different specialty.

Um they train every Wednesday uh in both just regular canine handling but also in SWAT uh applications and so they'll be training with our SWAT team. Um very well-trained dogs, very high energy, but when they get these dogs home to the family, they're like puppies. Uh and they just kind of melt in with the family, but they're very specific. They know when they're at work, they get excited about it. And you can see the high energy here for them.

uh they uh keep officers very safe because they sometimes go in the buildings that we don't have to go in to search for for folks and then let us know that they're in there. Their detection special, like I said, some are narcotics detective or detection uh canines. Um they are especially trained to search for cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin. If you remember when marijuana was legalized, we had to actually convert all of our narcotics detection to actual narcotics and take marijuana off the table.

And so that was quite quite a process for us to do. Um they uh support school campus searches only at an administrative uh administrator's request. And there's kind of a misnome. They just don't go up to people looking for narcotics. You know, I I see as we go into the special events, some people start walking backwards, but uh they actually are trained uh for narcotics to search vehicles and parcels or packages. Um so that's what they concentrate on. explosive detection.

Uh they're really uh also trained for high levels of explosives down to the minute trace of explosives. So if you even had let's say a bullet uh in a bag, they'll hit on that uh because they're their noses are are so well uh tuned that they can they can tell and then they see the explosives, they don't dig at it, they don't cause excitement, they just sit down and that's what we want them to do around explosives. So uh a lot of training there.

This is a dog, a new dog that we got busy, uh, funded by the Secret Service, US Secret Service, one of our federal partners, and it was the first electronics dog that we ever got. So, um, we bring this dog to search warrants to find where people may have secreted cell phones or electronics that may have evidence on them. The fun fact about Bizzy is she's actually trained to stiff out just the the glue that holds the components together on little pieces of electronics, which is pretty amazing.

Uh, and we have tried to styy her ability to find something. She finds something every single time. So, she's pretty amazing with that. Um, our SPD crisis canines, I like to call them care canines more than anything. Uh, they have been a That's me swearing in one of them, uh, Fender. Um, they deescalate situations. When you see a care canine come into a room, you can just see everybody's energy level go right down to that. Uh, so they're used in that way.

We have four deployed uh in schools and then we have one like I said with the crisis unit that goes around to some of the most volatile situations and they calm it down. They deescalate. They also do a lot of uh employee work. They go to they go around to the different workstations and they're great stress relievers. I never thought I'd have a back a bag of dog biscuits on my desk, but there they are and they all know it. So I I get a lot of visits as well.

Um but they've been a great uh addition to our team. And with that, that's the presentation. If you have any questions, be happy to answer. Thank you. That's wonderful. Uh, Council Councilwoman Quasman, I just want to say very uh very quickly that it has been the the the pride of my uh my term here is that I could tell my kids that I got to meet the Paw Patrol at the city council. So, thank you for all you do, both both search and rescue and police. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor McCallen.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh, first I want to comment uh I believe it was Tom DC and the dog was Arco because my husband's next door neighbor his whole childhood. Uh, so I heard a lot of stories about Arco. Um, but my question is for uh, Chief Shannon. Uh, could you just elaborate a little bit? So there's someone lost in the preserve, right? And your guys, the technical rescue go out, but maybe they can't find them. How do you guys interact? I I think that that would be really interesting to know.

I mean, we see, you know, the picture, but how does it happen like through 911 call on? Uh, Mayor Barowski, Vice Mayor, thank you for the question. That's a great question. So, it really is an orchestrated affair. Um, a call for service might come out, lost or missing uh party in in the preserve. Um, it is a unified command approach from the get-go.

uh both P police and fire will essentially wait to start the process until we are together because obviously PD has an an infinite amount of intelligence capability and fire folks know that trail system like the back of their hand and what will happen then is we'll get a sense of the factual reliability that the person is out on the trail system. um everything from technology pings to last seen to all of the things that you might expect.

And then we assemble a plan and there's an actual uh cadence to that. There are forward operating uh uh personnel that will go out to do specific uh clearing searches. The drones are are sent out. The real-time crime center and uh the autonomous drone is employed. uh when uh when appropriate, we use our helicopter partners uh from both the Phoenix Fire Department and uh Maroba County Sheriff as needed.

And we what we will do is we'll start to use whatever technology is available to us to either heat sense or or otherwise visually identify the person. When that doesn't when that's unsuccessful, there's also a simultaneous call out for the dogs as well as ground capable uh uh search parties and we start to assemble those assets in the event that we're going to have to now start to clear acre by acre the area.

The best example I can give you is we had a a rescue oh it seems like about three weeks ago uh where a party was um out on the trail system and actually it was the intelligence of our of our um one of our battalion chiefs who knew precisely by the picture that the person had taken and sent their family where about where they were because they recognized the trail system that well. And so they they uh assembled a a search uh group which included the very people in this room.

Uh they went out with both dogs and uh ebikes and they essentially went to the area and found the person quite quickly. So what you do is you hit it with everything you've got in a sequential uh form. People might think, well, what goes first? Um the dogs are used as much to clear an area where we where we know they're not. So we don't have to search there as much as they are to actually find the person. So we use it to rule out as much as rule in. And but we have to use them precisely.

This time of year it's it's very difficult to use these uh dogs for any prolonged period of time. And there's times when we just won't because it's just too darn hot. But otherwise, we have to manage them. Leon, the dog you saw on the video, he will run until he drops. And so Chris has to be very, very conscientious about that.

So it is a very orchestrated very uh uh um synchronous uh event but it's done in a in a unified command approach so that all communications are going through that command process and everybody knows uh what's going on related to that missing party or person. We do obviously bring the human remains folks along in the event that we're going to this is going to go from a recovery to excuse me from a fine to a recovery.

Um but uh that you usually have a little bit more time in that regard, but that hopefully that explains kind of the the rhythm of this. No, appreciate it. Thank you both of you. Uh Councilwoman Dascus, thank you Madame Mayor. Um at our last uh council committee meeting on public safety, we brought the the Kosar um and introduced the canines to the community that way. And I just thought that was so special that um police and fire are working together on that um project.

And so I just really wanted to recognize your your joint effort. So thank you very much. Um one of my favorite social media posts is the cat April Fool's Day. Um your team, Chief Leuk, has so much fun with these dogs. Um, I believe that uh your PIO told me the video of the dogs going through the gift wrap made it onto Good Morning America, it became so viral. So, excellent work. Thank you for sharing these wonderful canines with us tonight. Thank you, Councilman Graham. Mayor, thank you.

Uh, Chief Luke, Chief Shannon, thank you for presenting us. And this is just, you know, this is more than a presentation for us. This is for the entire public. this is an sort of an introduction to the public or um umformational for the public to know what they do and what they do for us. So, I really appreciate that. And you know, as Councilman Quasman said, this is about as close to Paw Patrol. My boys love Paw Patrol. I mean, if they were here right now, they'd be rolling.

I think they'd be rolling. I mean, I don't know if you I don't know if you'd let him do that, but um yeah, I just I was kind of thinking though, like what it maybe um not too, you know, the sort of other side of it, but what how long what age does a dog like this retire? I'm just kind of curious about what what are the Medicare years for a for a K9 look like before they can get a pension? Yeah. What's the pension like?

Uh, Madame Mayor and Councilman Graham, uh, on average, the useful life of a service dog, like a patrol dog, is about seven, six to seven years. And it really just depends on multitude of factors, health being one of them. Um, at that point, um, the handler can actually choose to, uh, take the dog in as a family pet, and I I can't think of one handler that hasn't done that yet. Uh, so then they get to live their retirement years with the family and the handler that they started with.

They just don't get to go to work. But we've had uh dogs uh stay working up into eight years and as little as four to five depending on on what the health issues are. Um some of the crisis dogs a little bit longer uh eight nine years uh of time before they actually retire and again they usually go to the handler. Um as far as the search and rescue dogs I'm probably thinking about that sevenyear mark. What I'm just curious what um who bears those costs?

Is it totally on the handler or is there a program or shared cost when you when a dog reaches when a dog retires? Yeah. Um, Sergeant Pit. Yeah. I just if you s if you speaking to the mic, not for my benefit, but for you know the people the multitudes that are streaming this online right now. Yeah. Thank you, council. Um, there are programs that are out there, but typically the cost will fall on the handler once the dog is retired. So vet bills and food, we take those costs.

Um really expensive items. There are are programs out there called Pause for a Cause is one of them. Um that will pick up about $2,000 a year. It's something that we can apply for as as handlers with retirement. So that yeah, that was kind of my other question is what partnerships or with foundations or you know when these dogs re when these dogs reach uh retirement and so what was that again? Just you can repeat that.

Um it's I believe it's called Pause for a Cause um or something very similar to that. Oikica, which is our state can organization, the Arizona Law Enforcement Cannon Association, which some of the members of Scottsdale PD are on the board for. Um we are looking at some donor opportunities coming up to be able to provide uh retirement benefits to retired handlers across the state.

So right now, Alica has right around 375 members that we're hoping to to be able to give some of those opportunities to. Yeah, I would just imagine that there would be people that would want to help with that type of thing. And I don't know what kind of groups are out there and maybe what that might look like. I'm sure there would be a long list of people that would actually want to take one of these in.

I mean, these would probably be the most excellent trained like, you know, top-notch dogs and so the handlers get first dibs. But um it would just um I think it'd mean a lot to a lot of people just to maybe know not today but down the road to know a little more about what kind of options are available for people to to help them in their retirement. So thank you for the explanation. Yes, sir. Councilwoman Littlefield. Thank you, Mayor. Um I just had a quick question.

And I know I went to um a new police station that was opening up and they had some dogs there um kind of on display sitting in the trucks and stuff like that. There's also some some dogs um that stay at home and are kind of um loving dogs to people who are in crisis, who are hurting, who have lost someone, especially children. Do you still have those dogs available too for help especially with the kids? Yeah, we do.

And that really falls under our our crisis dogs that are assigned to our police crisis intervention services. They will bring them uh they do visits all the time to those in crisis or those that need kind of that uh special lift. So they're constantly out in the community doing those things. Uh so how many dogs like that do you have?

We have one assigned to the crisis unit, but we do have four additional that are assigned to the school, but during the summer they actually take on uh that role in the community as well. Time permitting. Thank you. Thank you every all of you for being here. Great presentation. Great to learn more about the program. I have a question for you about the um the crisis or support uh part of the patrol.

I visited Sarro probably a year ago and it was just it was so nice to see it was the golden doodle that was in the picture and then there was a black I don't know what you call the black doodle but um really labradoodle. That's what I think it was. really really it just seems like such a nice fit for the you know a high school like that.

And you mentioned that you have those dogs available site dogs available uh based on administration's request and do we are we open is that program open to all Scottsdale schools? It it is and the goal is to uh staff all the schools with uh crisis K9 eventually uh cost permitting. Um, as far as the what I mentioned about the administrator is the actual patrol dogs that are searching for narcotics or explosives, they only go on school campuses when the administrator requests them to.

So that's delineation where the crisis dogs that are assigned to the school, it's just where they report to work. And uh to your point, the connection uh between the children and the dogs and then the relationship that's built between the officers then and the children is just immeasurable. So yeah, that that really struck me too because you've got uh you know sworn officers on campus that's good relationship builder. So that's that's wonderful. Really appreciate you all being here. Thank you.

Madame Mayor and uh members of council, if you'd like to come down and take a photo, we'd sure might be your last kiss. Thank you. I wish we had treats. Yeah, they'll never get a real They'll never get a real close to All right. Hate to break up the party. So, I'm going to read some announcements here. Tonight, uh during the meeting, we might uh the council may make a motion to recess into executive session. Thank you again for being here. Those are going to be beautiful pictures.

Um which would be to obtain legal advice on any applicable item on the agenda. If authorized by council, the executive session will be held immediately and will not be open to the public and this public meeting would resume immediately following. As a reminder, this is new. Uh neither council members or members of the public are permitted to engage in electioneering during tonight's council meeting. So, that's a new addition.

Uh, next we have the meeting minute approvals and I will uh look for a motion to approve regular and work study session meeting minutes of May 5th, 2026. Special meeting minutes of May 19, 2026. Executive session meeting minutes of May 19, 2026 and regular and work study meeting minutes of May 19, 2026. I'll second Adams or Councilman Quasman's motion. All right. Uh, please indicate your vote. Next, we have uh consent agenda items 1 through 25A.

And uh I'm not sure if any other members of the council have questions or wish to have an item removed, but I would like to ask for a brief presentation uh after the consent agenda items are voted on on items number 13 and 23, which I think are of special interest to the community. So let's see here. Vice Mayor McCallen, I was also going to ask for 23. So perfect. Councilwoman Whitehead. Yeah, those two. I was going to comment on them. I wasn't going to pull them, but that's fine.

Which item was that? Uh 13 and 23. And we'll hold that until after we take a vote on the remain. Oh, we need to hear from the speakers first. Let's see who we got here. Uh I'm going to wait to ask Betty Janick to come up because that not yet because we're going to vote on this real quick. then you can come up and talk about 13. Uh yes, I'll take a motion to approve, let's see, consent agenda items 1 through 12 and 14 through 22 and then 25 and 25a. Uh so moved. Second. I pulled it. All right.

Please indicate your vote. Mayor, I'm sorry. Can you add uh 24 to that list? Oh, did you say 24? I thought I said 24. I'm sorry. Uh adding 24. Do you want me to say it over? Okay. I thought you said 24. There we go. All right. Who are we going to hear from? It's Tyra. I hope I'm saying that right. Tyra, I've tried a number of times. She's our interim uh water director and she's going to talk to us about item number 13. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. It's Tira. Tira. Yeah, we're gonna get it.

I'm gonna get it on the cake. You're gonna get it. It looks like Thyra and I actually know someone named Thyra. So that's it's definitely Tira. Yes. Swedish. I believe you. Swedish. Thank you. All right. So, I'm here to talk to um mayor, members of council about um resolution number 13696, the long-term storage credit acquisition. Next slide, please. So, the background on this is long-term storage credits are generated under Arizona's underground water storage savings and replenishment program.

Credits represent a savings account of water and are a cure key tool to enhance drought resil resilience and demonstrate compliance with the assured water supply designation requirements. The city desires to purchase 15,000 long-term storage credits from Viddler Water Company, now part of Dr. Horton, for a price of 8.25 million. purchase would increase Scottsdale's long-term storage credit holdings to just under 300,000 acre feet. Next slide.

This is the location of the of the source and it's right in the same area that the IWDS is willing to turn out to the cap. Next slide. So, the the long-term storage credit purchase contract requests is to adopt resolution number 13696 authorizing contract number two COS with Vidler Water Company in the amount of 8.25 million for the purchase of 15,000 acre feet of long-term storage credits in the Harlequa Valley.

The city man the second part of the resolution is to for the city manager or designate to execute any other documents and take such other actions as necessary to carry out the intent of this resolution. And the third part is a fiscal year 2627 capital appropriation contingency fund transfer from the water capital improvement plan of 8.25 million to a newly created capital project to be titled long-term storage credit purchase. And at our last slide or holder and I'm happy to answer any question.

Can you go back to that number that adding this acquisition to our existing long-term uh storage credits? What that number was 292,000? Right. It's the the very last bullet. Yeah. We're right there. Yeah. So, it it increases our storage holdings to 292,690 acre feet. So, right under 300,000 acre feet. Can you put that in perspective in terms of how what duration if we had, you know, zero other sources? What what's the duration of years that we have available with that?

Well, we would have other pumping. So, it wouldn't just be this. We wouldn't just be on long-term storage credits. So, it's kind of complicated. So, it would be but it would definitely give us the period of time we would need to find other sources and just an extra like savings account somewhere else besides the water that we have within the Phoenix and Tucson AMAs. And what is our anticipated or expectation uh where we would start to draw on that water if you know? It it really depends.

We have a bunch of different operational um scenarios. So, and depending on what our cuts were and how long those cuts would be for um if we would have further cuts. So, it's really this really big differential equation. It's not as linear as people like. And last question, I don't recall if we talked about this previously, but in terms of the 8.25 25 million.

Uh is there are there conditions in the purchase agreement whereby if we were unable to get approved through uh the cap transport or there was some you know prohibition in terms of the treatment and transfer are do we have you know some out of the contract if we can't transport the water?

I'm not concerned about transporting the water at this location because we have that turnout that's already we're and going through the NEPA process to so like that's really not a concern I have about being able to transport it or the treatment of the water. We we have a pretty good handle on that. So, but it's not currently approved. The transport of the water, it would be part of the NEPA process that we're going through for the IW. Yes. Right. Same location. Okay.

And just to be just big picture, has anyone been approved to transport um to a municipality on the CAP or at this specific location? CAP. Well, there's other there's other wheeling agreements with other cities have that with with CAP. So, there are one approved. Okay. So, we could start transporting it right away after we built the infrastructure. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. I don't know if anyone else has any questions.

Councilwoman Littlefield, this is probably a silly question, but could you go back to the slide that uh showed the uh resolution number? You have 13696 on our um calendar here. I have 13702. Are those one and the same or I I want to make sure I know what resolution we're approving. It is 13702. This isn't correct on this slide. I apologize for that. Okay. Thank you. All right. Before uh Councilwoman Whitehead, yeah, I was going to call. Do you not want to say anything? Okay. Okay.

Let's have uh Betty Janick come to the microphone. Thank you. Hello. My name is Betty Janick. My address is on file. And good evening, mayor and city council members. Um, I have the same numbers. Uh, they're great. The Arizona Department of Water recently made ma made water from Harpu Hala Reservoir, which is about 60 miles away, available for purchase for long-term water credits at a very favorable rate of $550 per acre.

And Scottsdale, as we said, is going to buy 8.25 25 million worth 15,000 acres and it would provide about six months worth of water for all of Scottsdale um because we use about 30,000 acre feet a year. Now there is one big problem and this is what the experts are saying not Betty Janick. Okay. And the big problem is you have to get the water 60 miles from Harpua to Scottdale. And yes the cap goes right through Harpua. But the water from Harpua has arsenic and nitrate and those are both poisons.

And when those poisons are in the water, you cannot put them in the cap, you've got to get rid of them, which means you need to build a facility nearby to cleanse that water. And that is time consuming and expensive. And then the other option is um construct a separate cross valley 60-mi pipeline for delivery to Scottsdale Water Campus for treatment and distribution. Both options are extremely expensive. I see no money in the budget for that and financing for water projects is difficult.

And again, this is what the experts are saying, not Betty Janick. Either process would take about two and a half to five years before actual water delivery to the city of Scottsdale.

Now, while this purchase will help round out our water portfolio, and these credits can be sold or traded, and they do appreciate in value, it's not a replacement for advanced water purification, pure water, which could be available in the same amount of time as outlined in the 2025 2030 CIP and abruptly removed from the 25 26 27 budget. It's very significant that pure water is a renewable resource. It keeps giving and giving and giving because water is recyclable. It is not like cara we buy it.

It is one and done. So, what I'm asking is if you've got the time and money to start buying water credits, I think it's time that we start working on pure water, stop putting up artificial barriers, and start working on what appears to be one of the most solid and resilient ways to get water for Scottsdale. Thank you. Thank you, Betty. Uh, Councilwoman Whitehead. Thank you, Councilwoman Betty Janick. We uh did a lot of water work when you were up here.

Uh yeah, I just want to stress that I you know, I hope this is something that we're all going to support, but it is important to know that it is I think as uh former councilwoman Janick just said, it's one and done. Groundwater is not renewable. And so and the amount is a good buffer because the cuts that we may get are more significant than was even planned when the council approved our water strategic plan in 2024.

These are not the and you know there's I always talk about we need immediate medium long-term water solutions. This is medium. This is not immediate. And I'm not aware unless I'm not up to date that there's any uh Harkahala wheeling agreements, but I could be wrong. Maybe that's been settled. So yeah, two and a half to five years and one and done. And what we need to be doing is looking at forever water as well, even though I certainly support the supplemental amount of one-time water.

Thank you, Councilman Graham. Thank you, mayor. One of the or the the presenter said that the Carson I think it was carcinogenics and arsenic. I think she said that in the harquala harquella uh basin would be a limiting factor for transport. Is that is that an accurate statement? Um, mayor, members of council, Councilman Grim, um, we do not have concerns about this particular well location for additional treatment.

Are other municipalities and water users buying water from this area because they want to do the same thing? Yes, but there's lots of different areas there. So, it's not just this one, this particular location. Yeah, we've we've vetted those. We're feel fairly confident. Okay. In what we're seeing there, but there's, you know, that valley is a really big valley. It's huge, isn't it? You can't really, it's not always apples and oranges when you're looking at it and comparing against other cities.

It's hard because you don't really understand their whole background either. And it's possible that, you know, the commodity market shift. I mean, this we could buy this and the value could go up. Correct. Thank you. Thank you, Tara. Oh, Councilman Clausman. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I just want to reiterate what um council member Graham said because just to be very clear, is there arsenic that is poisonous that would go into the water into the cap from the specific purchase location that we are talking about today? Mayor, members of councilman and council um Councilman um Quasman, we are not concerned about this particular location. That could change as we go through, but we we do treat for arsenic here.

Um, we do it is a natural occurring source and and that really depends exactly where that well is. I mean, we have some wells that we treat in Scottsdale for arsenic because of their location and we have other ones that never the arsenic never comes in. It is it is a concern in Arizona but um at this particular billocation it is not a concern.

If the if it becomes a concern in terms of your final um inspections of the water, is that going is that going to uh um uh would that deter you from making any final purchase agreements? I mean, perhaps. Can you elaborate just a little bit more than perhaps? Sorry. We No, no.

I I want to the reason why I'm saying this is because a ve a a a I respect um council member Janick tremendously and I want to make sure she spoke with with with confidence and with authority and I want to make sure that that people are not scared if there is or if there is a serious concern they have a right to know about a serious concern and if there isn't a concern because the city has ample a uh ample uh ability to uh test the quality of the water understand that this is a portfolio that this is a holistic portfolio that the people are not being led astray to something that is a potentially not true and and b uh um if there is an a real problem that there are mechanisms in place to protect the health and safety of the residents.

Okay. Mayor, um members of council, um Councilman Quasman, at this location, there's been a lot of research the city's done in part of the IWS, um bringing the water in the turnout. So, there's been cons a considerable amount of study. We are not concerned about arsenic at this location. I do believe that other cities that are pursuing water in this same valley do have concerns with arsenic about the location of where their wells are. They're not near these wells.

So, we're not concerned about arsenic here at this location. Okay. And then I just have want to go back to my other questions. Um, it maybe this is for the city manager if you you don't have this available, but does the contract allow if we have any I I know you said you're not concerned about it, but we're we're going to be voting on $8.25 25 million to fund a contract for water that will be transferred transported to Scottsdale. So that's our expectation.

If for whatever reason our expectation is not realized does this contract if there's a reason either whether it's CA the cap or whether it's ADWR or ADQ whatever the case might be because there's a lot of moving parts. Do we have a provision that we are um we're we can get out of the contract if there's no ability to transfer it? I don't think that's going to happen. I agree with you.

But it's a contract and none of this has been approved and I think we should in an abundance of caut caution be um protecting ourselves in the event for whatever reason again that any of the agencies that are involved in this uh say no to this idea. So please, madam, madame mayor, as as my colleague is looking that up in the agreement, I believe it's important to add to the context particularly to the exchange that was recently had.

If the audience hadn't read the agenda packet, then it may you're only getting a piece of the entire picture. So I think the other part of the picture that we are need to articulate is that this is in addition to an existing groundwater right in the Harkahala Valley in partnership with two golf courses and that is a groundwater right uh to the tune of 3,800 acre feet on an annual basis on a on an annual basis.

Uh and so then there is significant infrastructure that is needed in order to convey that water right to get it to Scottsdale. That is a significant infrastructure cost which could and can include treatment and environmental assessment is being completed that was referenced earlier. That infrastructure will be used in combination with this acquisition. If it were just the standalone 15,000 acre feet 60 miles west of here, what does that how how does that help us?

Well, it's the infrastructure for the other water right in conjunction with this that really brings it to our customers here in in Scottsdale. And so, uh the golf courses uh in partnership with us are required to put in that infrastructure. significant testing has been uh conducted to date. And specifically to your question, mayor, uh about really the timing of that, we look to break ground in the fall of 2027 and have approximately 18 to 24month construction cycle.

And other acquisitions in the Harkah Valley know that we're first uh to get the permit. We've been standing in line for years. We've had that groundwater asset for nearly 8 to 10 years and so not new uh to that uh situation but really the combination uh serves uh the the customers in this regard. Thank you madam mayor and I'll turn it over to the city uh attorney. Thank you Greg. I think that's good you know relevant background and for consideration for sure.

But with respect to this question about the you know about the guarantee of being able to transport it I mean to me before you if the answer is yes I'll stop talking but if it's if it's no I would think that this company Vidler professionals know you know they're very experienced in what's going to happen and what what the moving parts are and what you know what the approvals are going to look like and I would believe that they would agree with Tira about uh you know the likelihood of this not being an issue, not being a concern.

And the likelihood is we'll get approved. So why wouldn't we just have that in the contract that if for any reason we can't get approved, we're not stuck with $8.25 million worth of water in the Harkila Valley. Mayor and members of the city council, the um seller is agreeing to um transfer um good and marketable title to the water in question. Um so it is a contract and some portions of it could be im ambiguous. There is some risk obviously to to this contract.

Um but as the city manager has explained, we do have the we we are going to build treatment um facilities near this water because this water is next to our existing water. Is it not sir? It is. And just to state for the record that the arsenic does not exceed the standards uh in the heart. Thank you, madam. Okay. So was that a no? We don't have a provision that allows to cancel the contract if we can't tr transport the water within a certain time frame. Not what you're specifically asking.

No, but they've agreed to um transfer good and marketable title to this water. So that's uh not a black and white answer, but it it would indicate that they've agreed to transfer something that could be used and sold. But the specific provision you're asking for, no, it's not in there. But we can all agree the water lives there and would be, you know, difficult if not impossible to get to Scottsdale if we didn't get these approvals that, as Greg pointed out, have been in the works for years.

So, um, there is risk. There is risk. Yeah. So I I mean personally I would rather uh go back to Vidler and say look you're sophisticated and educated in this process and they would have the same level of confidence that you would have and that we would have in our water department. So I'd like to make a motion. Did you want to speak Vice Mayor Mallen? Excuse me. I was just going to make a motion. Okay. So I'd like to make a motion um to approve Let me get the exact language.

If someone can pop that up. Resolution 13 here. 13702, right? Correct. Well, it's it's correct in our in our agenda packet. It's 7 it's 13702. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

approving long-term storage credits purchase contract with the single amendment that there's a there's a balance of risk a sharing of risk uh and if we can't get the approvals from the necessary agencies I believe there are three there might only be two um that we can't that we don't have we don't have an agreement and we don't aren't stuck with So that's my motion. Anybody? So I do have a question. I mean I think that does sound reasonable. I think this is an interesting discussion.

I mean is this um does I guess I'm asking both our city attorney and city manager their thoughts on this motion. And I will say that contractually we usually like to have an out. So, mayor and members of the city council, our our preference um because it goes into detail in this what this contract does and does not do and um I would prefer that we go into an executive session and you receive legal advice on it. I'd support that. I mean, I don't know that we have to go into an executive session.

Um, city attorney, can you answer this question in in an open meeting that uh do you believe they'll refuse to uh modify the agreement such that we're not indemnified, but we're released in the event that we can't transport this water to Scottsdale? It seems pretty simple.

I can't speak for them, but my suspicion is they will reject these changes because there's right now there's a balance of risk and um they have a specific provision regarding the um basically buyer beware in terms of the regulatory approvals but at the same time they are guar they are saying they will sell us um and transfer marketable title to this water. All right, Councilman Clausman. So, I just want to be very just break up the two questions that we have.

It's about it's about transferability and safety, right? I think safety is off the off the table because I think everybody can agree um that safety is off the table. the arsenic issue if there's a treatment facility that's close by and I see just let the record show that I see council former council member Janick nodding her head uh viferously to that. So this is now just transferability. Okay. So safety is off the table. Scottsdale's not going to feed the people poisoned water. Okay. Right.

Everybody okay with that? Good. All right. So now we're at now we're at transfer uh transportability and transportability of any type of of uh water resource is a um it it just it's definitionally not going to weigh on the b on the burden of the property owner at any given time. This is just like any mine or any type of this is no different than a mine. This is no different than a forestry, right?

And the um the uh the fact of the matter is is that the market will solve this problem by definition. I think then that's the clue that that Luis has been saying over and over again. It's transferable title. If the title cannot be moved and you're stuck with it, it's you could make a contract claim that this title was a bad title. And so you have innately um you have innately uh created a system.

And remember this is for and again it's just to I'm not saying anybody that anything that people on this at this dis doesn't know is that this is a water portfolio. We have a water portfolio issue. We don't have a water issue. We have a water portfolio issue. And so we are purchasing uh water like we are having a retirement stock portfolio. And so we want to make sure that our resources are diversified, make sure that our availability is there.

um if in terms of a somewhat of a liquidity, no pun intended, but um but also to make sure that it is uh that it is uh um uh uh created as a holistic concept. And so the the idea here is that while the in a worst case scenario, the market for water still exists and there are other regions that still have a demand for it, which is why there is a bidding system right now that for that water, which is why we're making an offer for the water, right?

And so I I want to be I I just want to say as we're as we're discussing this in open forum here that there are everybody wants a sure thing, but but there are market incentives here at play that will still be at play if it's not right for Scottsdale on the worst case on the worst day. But let but let me be very clear.

Everybody knows, the entire the states know, the western states know, the state of Arizona knows, and the feds know that with coming cap reductions, there's going to be regulatory changes made to to cushion state cushion communities that are uh not close to water sources. Um, and so I I'm going to go ahead and and support this without the amendment. And and that's that's why. Councilwoman Whitehead. Um yeah, I I guess I am going to agree um with Councilman Quasman on this.

Uh it is the transport's going to happen. We do have our investments in Harkahawa there. It's coming our way. So it's just not coming our way quick enough as far as I'm concerned. And once again, it is one and done. So, I will make a motion to adopt resolution number 13702 authorizing contract number 2026- uh 112- COS with Fiddler Water Company, Inc. in the amount of 8,250,000 for the purchase of 15,000 acre feet of long-term storage credits in the Harka Valley.

Uh number two, the city manager or designate execute any other documents and take other actions as necessary to carry out the intent of this of this resolution. And three, a fiscal year 2627 capital appropriation contingency transfer from water capital improvement plan of 8,250,000 to a newly created capital project to be titled long-term storage credits and purchase. Um, and I do want to thank the mayor though for bringing up this concern. Second the motion. Councilman Graham. Mayor, thank you.

Um, I think what we just saw here tonight was just a bunch of water grandstanding. I wish it was just take out the pomp and circumstance. And I was very appreciative of Councilman Quasman's uh what I consider to be reality fact anchored comments about what we're doing here for our water security and protecting our water portfolio. Um the comments about it's just stoking fears about carcinogenics, arsenic. We heard from the water experts. we as we're following the data.

So, I just this I believe this should have just passed on consent, but we had to you had to go through the grandstanding and um I'm thankful that uh cooler heads prevailed tonight and I'm going to be voting on the motion. Thank you. Thank you. Well, Councilman Graham, when you're looking to spend $8.25 to $5 million worth of taxpayer money. I think uh they're entitled to a brief presentation and a discussion on very important questions.

Um I remain concerned about I I can't even tell if we asked for for this provision to be included with some sort of a you know uh confirmation that this would be transportable. It's one thing and I totally disagree. I'm sorry. Uh, Vice Mayor, excuse me, Councilman Quasman. We've had our opportunity to do due diligence. So, I don't there's I I think there's little to no claim if it becomes non-tra transportable because everyone knows right now it's not transportable.

So, to go back and and make a claim against that um for for you know providing us legal title, right, transfer of title to the water, I think would be a fool's errand. But nonetheless, um, given the guarantees, uh, if you will, of our city, uh, attorney and our interim water director and our city manager, I'll support it. Um, like I said, I I don't think I do think we'll eventually get there, but we don't know the answer to that.

So, I think we should be protecting our our our residents and our taxpayers uh, a lot more um, strongly, if you will. And uh with that, I I understand this is going to pass based based on everyone that spoke about it and I'll let Councilman Graham have another turn here. Thank you, Mayor. I uh I agree with uh a lot of those comments. I uh I would say go back and look at the record as far as reviewing uh scrutinizing taxpayer funds.

This $8 million this council has put through on consent items that were bigger than that. So there's an inconsistency there. And this is a sub this is a subject we've all studied. This has been had a full packet publicly disclosed for more than uh more than a full business week. And this is a very serious topic that we've all had internal conversations with staff about to fortify our water security. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Uh but I'm glad that the public got to hear this.

So, um, Councilwoman Littlefield, thank you, Mayor. I'm just being picky here. Um, but I'd ask like to ask the, um, either the water department lady or the the city manager. Um, what is the correct U resolution number for this if we want to to do a a pass on it, a vote on it? Motions on the table, mayor. Okay. It is it is correct up here on the screen. 13702. Okay. Thank you. All right. I don't see any further discussion. Let's go ahead and vote. Thank you very much for the presentation.

Appreciate it. Okay. The next one was the event center definition code amendment uh ordinance number 4719. And you're going to talk about it. All right. You didn't have to get up. Okay. I'm kidding. Good to see you at the podium. Um, mayor, members of council, thank you for this opportunity to talk about proposed ordinance 4719. Uh, what this ordinance does, it creates a definition of what an event center is as to short-term vacation rentals.

Uh, currently both state law and city code prohibit the use of short-term vacation rentals as event centers, but there was no definition. And now, if the council uh passes this ordinance, there will now be a definition, and it will make it um easier for our police and code enforcement personnel to enforce um the use of short-term vacation rentals as event centers. And let me go back a little bit and just tell you um where this comes from.

We do have a um uh basically a short-term vacation rental group that looks at ways to um better enforce our short-term vacation rental ordinances. And this was identified as a GAP and that's why we're bringing it forward to you. And in fact, um the city of Scottsdale is actually known for its effectiveness in enforcing uh the short-term vacation rental uh laws against um local operators that act in a bad way.

Um now, as you all know, the state has um put a lot of barriers, but we're always working to figure out ways to to uh better enforce uh the ordinances. Um with that, I'll take any questions. Thank you very much. uh city attorney and I I really just wanted to bring this forward because I think it's such a great idea to codify this um because it's happening so frequently.

We get a lot of complaints about it and we can keep track of it a little bit easier and I commend the uh Chief Leuk I know he's still here in the audience for bringing this forward. Thank you very much and uh I'm all for it. So, Vice Mayor Mckllen, thank you Mayor. Um I too wanted it pulled. We had discussed it earlier. I had reached out to our city attorney.

Um it's it's really important that the residents know that at any time where we can sink our teeth into uh laws that will help um our residents uh with the bad actors in short-term rentals that we do it. and um so often we're we're telling the residents we can't do anything about that because the state law prohibits our our municipal law.

So with this opportunity, I I applaud the both of you, Chief Leuk and our city attorney for bringing this forward because it it is one more tool in our tool belt to say to the residents, hey, we are working on your behalf. So I'm so excited. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, uh Councilwoman Whitehead. Uh, so I just want to call out our city attorney. Eight years ago, it was just it was just painful. I remember some of those community meetings we went to.

I mean, it the state has been relentlessly against giving us the authority we deserve and our residents deserve. But with what limited authority we have, um, our city attorney has been writing ordinances, the strictest ordinances in the state and, um, enforcing those ordinances.

So, it's not just having the police force, but we have to prosecute if there's, you know, there's a lot of work to um make bad actors pay and our both police department and our city attorney's office have been doing that and with great results and this is uh this is really huge. So, our complaints have come way down because of the ordinances we adopted before this one. But the people who are getting harassed by uh people who have found a loopholes because the event center was not defined.

I mean their lives are being ruined. And um I know that um that our city attorney met with one of those residents maybe a week or two ago and she called me up. She's practically crying. She just feels hopeful for the first time. So this is affecting real people and I am just thrilled and you know again you're just a creative guy.

You got limited resources and we got a problem or limited authority and we got a real problem and you've been really good at finding a way to u make things as good as they can be. So thank you so much. Thank you Councilman Clausman. Yes. Hi. Thank you. Um thank you Madam Mayor. I just want to make sure that um everybody know that we have a um in the definition we want to make sure on just on a liberty issue that uh and an and let's call it a wedding afterparty.

I just want to I just want to hey let's get together. We had the formal wedding. I'd like to have people over at my house. You know the the father-in-law comes into town and has that. Is that going to be affected in this mayor and members of the council? No. Because I'm I'm assuming you're talking about your a normal residence, right? Correct. This is only applicable to short-term vacation rentals. That's what I'm saying.

But if it's if it is in a short-term vacation rental, so you're going to have a your father-in-law comes into town, again, your father-in-law comes into town for the wedding, right? He gets a short-term rental and he says, "I'd like to have the family over to my house after the after the celebration of the afternoon wedding." Would that um be subject to this uh to this law, to this ordinance? No.

No, it would not be because if it's an incidental uh use that's normal to a residence, it would not be. So that's basically you're talking about commercial type activities. That's right. That's right. I just wanted to make sure that everybody heard that and it was clear about that.

This is not so we we're when we're crafting this type of ordinance that the regulatory regime is not meant to punish the families or the individuals on one-off uh uh wonderful you know anniversary gettogethers or family gettogethers that might occur. This is very this is structured um structured liberty and structured order so that uh to protect residents and communities. Thank you. Thank you. And finally, Councilman Graham. Mayor, thank you.

Luis, I I like this precedent you're setting coming to the podium. Thank you. You might be setting an example for your counterparts. Um maybe I should have stayed seated then. I'm I'm just kidding. Um thank you for doing this definition. I you know how I feel about this. Doesn't go far enough. I wish you could go farther. I wish you could take the hammer and drop it farther. Um, short-term rentals are uh just have destroyed many of our neighborhoods, many of our streets.

There are harm and threat to quality of life at any on on every street. And the um the issue, as you know, is really concentrated, especially in 85257, 51, and 50, probably where something like three4s of the short-term rentals in Scottsdale are concentrated. And um I think that those residents in particular are going to be pleased with this. So what are we doing as far as um education or promotion um to the public as far as hey, we just passed this.

This is a tool you can use to report unruly short-term rentals. Like is there are we doing anything is any plan to kind of, you know, get out the word? We we will work with our communications folk to put out the word. The effective date of this ordinance is 30 days from um today. So we do have some time to do that and we regularly put updates on our our website regarding the the different STR type issues. Thank you, Luis. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Uh go right ahead. Uh thank you, mayor.

Um, I move to adopt ordinance number 4719 amending chapter 18 article 1 section 18-2 of the Scott revised code by adding a definition uh for event center. Second the motion. All right, let's go ahead and take a vote. Moving on to the regular agenda. Next we have item 26 and that is fiscal year property tax levies and we have Scott Selene budget director coming to the podium. Thank you madame mayor members of the city council.

Very happy to be here to present the final property tax uh levy and rate adoption. Jumping right in. We did a public hearing and initial presentation of the property tax rates and levies on the 9th and tonight we are asking the council to do a final adoption. The property taxes that we are proposing for fiscal year 2627 is a total of 89.8 cents per $100 of assessed value.

And this reflects the motion that was made and adopted at the last meeting to forego the statutoily permitted 2% increase for fiscal year 2627. Uh there are two components to the city's property taxes. The first is the primary property tax which predominantly goes to the general fund. There is a small portion that goes to the risk management fund for tort settlements and then the second component is the uh secondary property tax is to uh generate debt service for voter approved bonds.

The primary property tax rate will decrease by about 3.7%. The secondary property tax will increase by just under one percentage point. And then combined it is 89.8 cents per $100, which is a 1.5% decrease compared to the current year's rate of 91.2. This slide shows the city property taxes on a residential owner occupied home with the median limited property value in the city u both with and without the uh 2% adjustment.

Uh had the 2% increase been applied, the city property taxes uh would have been $37,9.76. And then with the 2% adjustment removed, that uh that property taxes on a similar home would be $37,587. Um again, we included the proposed city property taxes for um for many of our surrounding cities. You can see that our property tax rate is at the lower end of the range. And I believe that brings me to the end. This is the action that we are requesting of the council tonight to adopt ordinance uh 4714.

And uh with that, I'd be happy to stand for any questions. Thank you. And we do have some public comments. Uh Joe, I think it's Joe Jennick. Is that someone? Mayor, that's for non-aggendaized comment. And Mr. Janick is donating his time to Dan Isaac. Okay. So, not for this one. Uh, we do have Dan Isac speaking at this one. Dan Isaac, address on record. Um, thank you, Mayor. Uh, I fully support what Barry suggested at the last meeting that we don't automatically increase the rate.

Um, but I want to correct some of the many false statements he made about it. Um, and since he talked about grandstanding on the last item, uh, I think this is a perfect opportunity to discuss that. First of all, he said, even if it's only $5, why not do it? Well, you're an accountant, Barry. 245,000 residents, $800,000. That's $3 per resident. So, you're off by 60%. More importantly, we have 40 to 50,000 residents who don't own their home. They rent.

I don't believe a landlord is going to decrease the rent by 30 cents a month because of this. And the property tax applies to businesses, not just residences. Therefore, the true impact on Scottsdale is tiny. But I support not automatically increasing taxes. But I'd like to understand, and I need the the overhead, please, where his concern with our tax dollars was over the past two years.

So, we had the Scottsdale Road project which we lost $30 million of federal funding plus $2 million of federal funding. And yes, we got some regional funding back, but that doesn't make up for it. Different fiscal years and we lost funding for this year's projects because we have to use it for the Scottsdale road project to make the road less safe. And it also increased the cost by $5 million because of the new design and new construction costs.

We also have the road repaving over the past two years where we're making the same mistakes that we made in 2015 and 2016. We're doing cosmetic changes instead of actual structural changes. So, we are spending $80 million of taxpayer money on something that's not longasting. The Oldtown parking structure. Yes, we need more parking in Oldtown, but not at that location. We had no proof of that that was where it was needed. That's another $20 million plus $10 million of bond interest.

We also have $2 million for the solar shade parking for city employees. That not only is not going to return because there was an error in the city manager's analysis because they forgot to discount the savings um the of utilities in the future. But it also ruins the aesthetics of ka the ka. And then of course we have the Crossman Quasman crosswalk which is costing um $600,000. And again that's supposed to be about safety for children and elderly.

But we're not discussing crosswalks for any of our many parks such as Chapperel Park or the dog park at McDonald or Scottsdale Ranch Park where we have hundreds of people crossing on a daily basis. Nor do we have crosswalks at all of our senior citizen residences. So it's not about safety. It's a pet project. So that's $149,500,000 that this council, Barry, Jan, Adam, and Kathy have wasted. But bravo, you're saving us $800,000. I think you should stand up and take a bow. Thank you, Dan.

Uh, okay. That is the last speaker and so I will go ahead and make a motion to uh approve. Let's see here. Adopt ordinance 4714 assessing the uh fiscal year 2627 primary and secondary property tax levies and fixing the primary and secondary property tax rates. Second. Okay. I don't see any other speakers. So, we will go ahead and vote. Okay, moving on. Item number 27, uh, fiscal year 2627, municipal street light improvement district property tax.

And I see Anna Hanthorne, assistant city treasurer, will be presenting. All right. Good evening, mayor, members of the city council. This action is to review the fisc year 2627 municipal streetlight improvement district property tax levy. This is a two-step process required by state law. On June 9th, we had the public hearing and a presentation. And then tonight uh is the adoption of the property tax levies. Just to remind you, um, the tax levy amount is 642,566.

It's an average of $18.92 per lot. The uh ordinance is for uh 4715 and the action item is to approve the 2627 streetlight improvement property tax levy by district in accordance with Arizona revised statutes. That concludes my presentation and I can answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much, Vice Mayor McCllen. Uh, yes. I move that we adopt ordinance 4715 assessing the fiscal year 20627 municipal street light improvement district property tax levy. Second.

I don't see any speakers on this, so let's go ahead and take a vote. Thank you for your presentation. Okay, moving on to public comment, uh, which is reserved for Scottsdale citizens, business owners, and property owners to comment on non-aggendaized items that are within the council's jurisdiction. Uh, no official council action can be taken on such items, and speakers are limited to three minutes each. And I have three speakers.

Uh Joe Janick who's dedicating time to Dan Isac and uh so he won't be speaking but and Gail Golak. I don't I don't see Gail though. Go ahead. Oh, there there she is. Go ahead. You're No, you're first. Dan Dan Isaac's address still on record. Um, before any points of order, our charter officers are within the purview of the city council, their pay, their performance, and their employment. I'm here to discuss our charter officers.

I'm not here to discuss our city manager who's inexperienced, unqualified, and overpaid. I'm actually here to discuss our city attorney. You are aware that I filed an ethics complaint against Kathy Littlefield because I believe there was a conflict of interest on axon votes because of a direct family member being the head of TAS which had an economic benefit from any axon vote. I filed this claim. It was sent to the city attorney.

The city attorney appropriately as as he's supposed to do in this case, finds an outside person to do an initial review to see whether it's worthy of going to a full panel. He did so. After a couple backs and for back and forths with the outside investigator, he found that there was a conflict of interest. But then he gave Kathy Littlefield an opportunity to respond. Kathy responded with two very disappointing responses.

The one was, "I didn't file timely, so it doesn't matter." Now, I don't think an elected official should try to get away from a ethics violation by claiming that the ethics filing was untimely. And by the way, her facts were wrong. It was timely, but it didn't matter because the outside investigator said it didn't matter. Even if he was off by a few days, it should go forward.

The second issue, she said, "Well, I relied on our city attorney's guidance that there was no conflict of interest." Now, that guidance was oral and given at November 17th, there were many votes before November 17th. I respond, "Well, here's why I have an issue with our city attorney.

Even if he didn't have the foresight to understand that his opinion would become important in this case and removed himself at the beginning, the moment Kathy used it as an excuse, he should have recused himself from all interaction on this. He should have put somebody else in his office to be responsible for it. Not only did he not do that, he moved from being a conduit of information to being a gatekeeper of information.

I responded to Cathy's response with facts and details that an investigator should have sent it to Mr. Santo to our city attorney and I heard nothing. I asked did you send it? His response was the judge didn't ask for it and I said I would be disappointed if you've moved from being a conduit to a gatekeeper. He was not pleased with that statement. told me that I was ignorant of the process.

I followed up a couple days later and he said, "The judge doesn't want it." I asked for a copy of how it was communicated with the judge. It did not say that it was a response to Kathy. It did not list any of the information. It just said, "Do you want more information from Dan Isaac?" So, of course, he said, "No, that level of gatekeeping is inappropriate." That was only three minutes. You didn't give me extra time. You're right. I didn't. Uh, what do you need? A minute more? One minute.

Okay, perfect. In my response to Kathy's response, I pointed out that if I rely on a CPA, but the IRS doesn't like the guidance of the CPA, I still owe taxes, interest, and penalty. If I work for a corporation and our council does not tells me that something's not a crime, but the attorney general says it's a crime, I still go to jail. So her reliance on an oral opinion was inappropriate and her comments about my not being timely were inappropriate.

Now I will leave it to the residents of Scottsdale to determine whether there was a conflict of interest and whether she violated ethics. But not only did our city attorney not remove himself from this process, he then documented his opinion after six months of time had transpired, writing it in such a way that gives Kathy an get out of jail free card. That is unacceptable.

So I will leave it to you to determine whether this should be investigated and whether there should be a different process in place when our city attorney is conflicted because he has a personal and professional role in the ethics. Thank you. Uh Gail Golick Gail Goo L3 state committeeman Scottsdale Arizona. Mayor and Council, for months and prior to the approval of the Exxon development, I have been asking a simple question.

How does Scottsdale determine that major development approvals remain within the limits of the city designation of assured water supply? To be clear, I'm not arguing that developments such as Axon require their own designation of assured water supply. Arizona law allows developments within Scottsdale service area to rely on the city's designation. However, I recently received a written response from the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

In that response, Colin Wagenstall, manager of the Assured and Adequate Water Supply Program, stated, quote, "During the application review period, a designated provider may continue to approve new plants and develop commitments within the service area, provided that the current committed and two-year projected demand does not exceed the volume of water authorized by this designation." End quote.

This statement confirms that development approvals are conditioned upon current demand, committed demand, and projected demand remaining within the limits of the Scottsdale. I've also provided two pages from Scottsdale DAW's modification application to the clerk for distribution. Those pages show that the Scottsdale demand projections include multifamily growth and that development specific water use values are used for certain large developments.

I have heard it suggested that apartment developments may be treated differently. However, ADWR's standard is not based on whether a project contains apartments, offices, hotels, commercial uses, or a combination of all of them. ADWR states that the current demand, committed demand, and projected demand must remain within the limits of Scottsdale's laws.

Therefore, regardless of how a project is recategorized, its projected water demand should be accounted for somewhere within the Scottsdale demand calculations. The Axon development brought this issue to light because the city has repeatedly stated that it possesses no record demonstrating how that projected water demand was incorporated into Scottsdale's current demand, committed demand, or projected demand calculations. My request is straightforward.

If no analysis exists demonstrating how major development approvals are incorporated into Scottsdale's DAW's compliance calculations, then a respectfully request that the city establish a process to perform and document those analysis and make them available to the council before approvals are granted. With respect to Axon, I request that the city perform perform a water analysis now and publicly disclose the results.

If an analysis de demonstrates compliance with the law, then the issue is resolved. If it does not, the city can determine what corrective action is appropriate. But ultimately, this is not about Axon. It's about transparency, accountability, and ensuring that Scottsdale has the documented process to verify DAW's compliance for all major developments before approvals are granted. Thank you. Thank you, Gail. All right, that concludes uh public comment on non-aggendaized items.

So, moving right along, we have a mayor and council. Oh, there's no citizens petitions tonight. So, moving on to item 29 and at the request of Vice Mayor McCallen who's added this for consideration. I'll let you take it from here. Thank you, Mayor. Um, this item uh is to actually uh request that the city manager um or uh responsible charter investigate the possibility of having a memorial to fallen city employees.

We do have a memorial to fallen police officers while on the line of duty and pull um firefighters and that's located at the headquarters on Indian School in Granite Reef Road. But we do not have a memorial that memorializes um employees who work for the city of Scots who have died in the line of duty. Um an example would be someone who worked in the preserve who had died on a heart attack while working in the preserve.

We've had um a transportation worker a few years back, might about a decade ago, that um died in the line of duty while working um in the streets department. So things of that nature. And it was brought to my attention um I was having this discussion with our city attorney because recently a member of our staff at Westworld had passed away and then a citizen had asked for memorial um through the parks department for a different person.

And so we started to talk about how um we look at this because everybody right away says, "Okay, let's memorialize the police officers and the firefighters with good reason, but we also have employees who work everyday jobs who donate and dedicate and may die in the line of duty and we should recognize that." So that's why I brought it forward. um all of the major cities. Uh Phoenix has a very large um uh memorial to their employees uh who have died in the line of duty.

And this is just to look at the possibility. So um I'm asking for your support on this so we can uh God willing um no one dies in the line of duty but memorialize those who do. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman Whitehead. Yeah, I support that. I think that's a fabulous idea. So yeah, I would support having it agendaized. Is that all right? I don't see any other speakers. So let's go ahead and take a vote on this item. And you're agendaizing a discussion, right? Yeah. Okay. Got it. Okay.

And I just want to thank the city attorney Luis. Um he had brought this forward over a decade ago. Um and then this discussion came up again and thank you because I think the employees will really value it and feel valued. All right. Thank you very much. So moving on to work study session. Uh this is an opportunity for the council to uh discuss in a less formal setting specific topics at length uh with each other and city staff.

and they provide an opportunity for staff to receive direction from council uh during the public open meeting pro process. So the first we have two presentations work session presentations uh and discussion items tonight. First one is Scottsdale airport master plan uh Rick Wabiski WPSki sorry aviation director to present uh tonight's work study session is for presentation discussion and possible direction to staff regarding the Scottsdale airport master plan. Welcome.

Thank you mayor members of city council. We're excited to uh be here this evening to get your input and present to you our airport master plan. We've actually been working on this for going on 20 months now. This started back in October of 2024 when we kicked the project off.

Um we have worked closely with our neighbors in the community to get their input on the project with stakeholders around the airport, business owners within the air park and on the airport um to get their input on putting this project together. together and we're excited to get now your input this evening.

Uh our primary consultant on this project has been Kaufman and Associates who's also our uh airport planning consultant and uh we have Patrick Taylor here this evening with Kaufman to present the airport master plan to you. So uh looking forward to hear from Patrick here and getting your input. Thanks Rick. Again, Patrick Taylor with Kaufman Associates. I'm a principal with Kaufman Associates.

We are a national airport planning consulting firm and that's all we do is the planning uh and we work with a number of engineers including the engineers out at the airport to implement those projects. So, as Rick said, for the last uh 18 months we 18 20 months, we've been in uh a master plan process. So, I'm going to cover a few items.

first the process uh and then we'll go through a little bit of the findings and then we'll go into the airport economic benefit analysis that was uh tied to the master plan and in fact uh we have a subconsultant from Kimley Horn Georgia right here who is going to talk about the uh results of her analysis on the economic benefits and then we'll wrap up and discuss the next steps uh just to kind of identify what the purpose of a master plan is for an airport. So, this is an FAA funded document.

It's a visioning document for the next 20 years. Uh, it is intended to address any changes in local or national aviation trends. And in the aviation industry, changes can happen quickly and they can be dramatic such as recessions or terrorist attacks. Things like that can make dramatic changes to airports all across the country. uh we're really trying to address airport and FAA priorities.

So as I mentioned this study and master plans for airports across the country uh are heavily funded up to 90 plus% by the FAA. So the output uh of these studies is a list of projects that the FAA might potentially participate in. So large capital projects uh that can be expensive for the local communities to undertake themselves. Uh other elements is to define on airport land uses. Um we're also looking to the FA to approve two very specific elements of a master plan.

One is the aviation demand forecast. What might you expect in the future and what should you plan for? As well as a set of technical drawings that depict the existing and the potential future condition of the airport. That's referred to as the airport layout plan or the ALP. There's other benefits too of doing a master plan. Increasing uh stakeholder awareness, public awareness. Uh in fact, I recognize several people uh on the DAS right now that came to some of our open house meetings.

So, I appreciate that. Um but it also leads to open communication with the FAA so that you can the airport can be in a position to accept grant funding uh at a moment's notice. And of course, I mentioned Georgia will be talking about the economic benefit analysis. just to kind of give you an idea of the timeline. So, as Rick mentioned, we started back late in 2024. Uh, and basically a master plan is a structured study process that is detailed.

It's outlined by FAA guidance how you pursue uh how you develop a master plan for an airport. So, phase one is an initiation and a kickoff. uh we had we assembled with uh the airport's help a group of airport stakeholders that we call a planning advisory committee. This group we presented to periodically in fact four times during the process draft working papers of the process to that point. So the first phase included those forecasts of aviation demand.

I'll talk a little bit about more about that. And then we translated those into potential future facility needs which is that phase two. And then that uh then leads directly into a recommended development concept which goes on that technical drawing the airport layout plan that the FAA will ultimately approve. So we're at that last stage. In fact, today's date is on there. We're in the local approval process and we still have to send those technical drawings to the FAA.

Public involvement is a huge piece of a planning study like this. So a multi-pronged approach. Uh so first we had I mentioned that planning advisory committee so a group of of technical stakeholders. We conducted four of those meetings. We had four openhouse uh public information workshops. Uh we presented to the airport advisory uh committee a couple of times and frankly this meeting here also counts as a public uh interaction as well. So we've had human interaction.

We've had an ongoing live project website with all of the draft documents and communications available for anybody to go to. Uh and it's still up right now. Uh just a little bit of education maybe. Um most folks don't really realize that there are over 20,000 aviation facilities in the country. The FAA classifies those. uh about 3,300 are included in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems. Those 3,300 airports are all eligible for FAA grant funding for capital projects.

About 400 of them are commercial service airports. About 3,000 of them are general aviation airports. Scott Scottsdale is a general aviation airport. General aviation airports are further classified in those four or five categories that you see there. The top one being a national airport. There's only 122 of them in the whole country out of the 20,000 aviation facilities in the country and Scottsdale is one of those.

Frankly, Scottsdale is one of the most important general aviation airports in the country, and I've worked at many, many of them. And almost to a tea, when I'm when I tell people I work at Scottsdale or have worked for Scottsdale, they want to know all about it because Scottsdale has a great reputation nationally uh for for the for what they've done in terms of running an airport. I might also note there's another 264 of those 20,000 airports that are classified as reliever airports.

So they're the intent of a reliever airport is to draw general aviation traffic away from commercial service airports which are more congested. So they're supposed to be kind of superersized general aviation airports able to accommodate all general aviation aircraft, not commercial service planes, just general aviation planes. So Scottsdale is a national general aviation reliever airport. Just for some familiarity, uh this is the footprint of the airport and you can uh see the runway there.

It's 8,250 ft long. That's a really good length that can accommodate nearly all if not all of the general aviation aircraft that are in production today. So, it's a it's a really good footprint. Parallel taxiways on both side of that runway. So, there's uh the ability to move airplanes around there efficiently. Uh, another feature uh that I I would highlight is you can see these colored areas.

So, these are all areas that are not on airport property, but there are taxi lanes leading to them that provide additional accommodation for aviation uses. This is a really special feature. It's called through the fence activity, and Scottsdale is the positive poster child for this type of access to an airport.

other airports across the country regularly call Rick or Kelly asking how do you do that so so effectively so it's really a positive way to accommodate the demand and there's a lot of demand uh for aviation services here briefly to summarize the aviation demand forecast there's basically these three elements so one is based aircraft so a plane that lives at the airport uh so we have projections of growth in that category I'll go to the right side. The other one is operations.

So we have projections of operational growth that lends to capacity. And the middle one is actually something new for the fairly new for this airport. And that is implainments. And what an implainment is is a paying per paying passenger boarding a plane here and departing. And that's really important because one of the FA funding matrix is the number of implainments that you have. So charter people, people who take a charter flight are considered an implainment by the FAA.

So the airport has recently begun capturing those and it's translating into significant funding opportunities, entitlement, actual real money, not things they have to compete for u in the future. And I'll talk a little bit more about those funding opportunities in a minute.

One thing that's a little different about Scottsdale, uh, and I want to just point this out for a minute, is the design standards, so the safety design standards around a runway system are based upon what's called a critical aircraft. A critical aircraft is a plane or a family of similar type planes that account for 500 annual operations. An operation being a landing, that's one. A takeoff, that's one. So you can see two stars up here.

So the star in yellow is the FAA identified critical aircraft and the star in blue is the operational critical aircraft. So there's a bit of a disconnect here. We have more than 500 operations by these larger business jets. So like large Gulfream planes uh which is the blue star. Uh however the certain elements of the runway and the taxiway system do not meet the FAA standard today. There are solutions for that.

What what I'm trying to communicate is that the FAA approved that D2 category, slightly smaller but still large business jet. Uh and the airport should meet all the design standards associated with that. Where it can, it should also meet the design standards for that slightly larger uh business jet, which is that group three business jet, the one in blue.

So when we're looking at this from a planning perspective, we're trying to um meet all of the design standards from the FA to the best of our ability within providing an acceptable level of of safety. And I'll describe some of that in a second. So when we go through the master plan process, these bullets are are basic were basically the focus of this master plan. So the first is the runway the taxiway separation. The standard is 400 feet. 250 ft is what exists today.

You can see there's an asterisk there. That's because the FAA has approved a modification to standard. So the 250 ft is acceptable. It provides an acceptable level of safety. That's on record since 2019. The runway object free area is exactly what it sounds like, an area surrounding the runway that shouldn't have any penetrating objects. Uh that too is uh subject to a modification of standard which provides an acceptable level of safety. The runway safety area.

another area a little tighter to the runway has to be clear of of ruts and things, but there's no modifications allowed for that. So, you some people may not be aware of this, but the runway, which I mentioned was 8,250 ft long. It depends on the direction you're taking off. If you're going one direction, it's a little bit shorter. And if you're taking off in a different direction, it's a little bit shorter.

And the reason why is because you have to provide a thousand feet beyond the runway end for that runway safety area. So we're kind of in a constrained environment. Uh I think the way I would say it is the runway system at Scottsdale is maximized within its current footprint which is a good thing. Um there's there's other elements those declared distances I mentioned that uh you know the runway is declared shorter in certain directions.

The hold line location is is uh a little closer to the runway than would be standard. Frankly, if I was building this airport runway system in a green space, it would look a lot different than it does today. U we also examine the uh taxi way to taxi lane separation standards and have a solution for that. Some taxiway geometry and a couple of points I want to kind of land on here.

I got a couple of sides is slides is the runway weight bearing capacity and the introduction of kind of the next generation of business jets general aviation aircraft that are already coming to the airport. So I mentioned those modifications to standard these are important for the operation of the airport. Uh one that exists is the standard for runway to taxiway separation is 400 feet it's at 250 ft.

Uh the analysis done previously and reconfirmed in this study shows that that provides the acceptable level of safety that the FAA wants and they have signed off on that modification standard. Same with the runway object free area. So that should be a,000 ft long beyond the runway ends and 800 feet wide and it is modified to a to different dimensions also providing an acceptable level of safety.

And there's a third one which doesn't apply anymore but is still in existence just because the FAA standards have changed. So let me talk about the runway weight bearing capacity. This is kind of an important one for this airport. Again, Scottsdale airport being one of the flagship national general aviation airports in the country. It should be designed as a reliever airport to accommodate all general aviation traffic. And right now it can't quite.

And that's because the runway weight bearing capacity is about 75,000 pounds. But there are many operations by aircraft over 100,000 pounds. And they're allowed to do that with prior permission. They just have to call the airport. There are also a number of slightly larger business jets coming online right now like the Gulfream 700, 800, and the Global 7500. They're just a little bit over a 100,000 pounds.

So from a planning perspective, as a as an airport planner, what I would say and what we're recommending in the plan is that when the opportunity arises to increase the weight bearing capacity of the runway to accommodate the planes that are already operating there, I mentioned there's 1,700 operations by aircraft above 75,000 pounds already, that you should pursue that. So you'll see in our capital program uh at some point 2030 35 some some range in there.

The runway would be due for a reconstruction and when that project happens, it should be this the pavement strength should be increased. So this is just an overview of kind of the recommended development concept. I mentioned the runway system is already maximized. So you don't see a whole lot of changes to the runway system. There's a few taxiway changes. Those are the little things in red. Those are some taxiway connectors to kind of meet the most recent FA design standards.

There's a couple of little yellow blocks. Those are potential hanger locations. There's only three shown on here. You know, this is a very mature facility. Um I think some of the opportunity might see in the near future would be redevelopment of some older hangers. So, you could see that coming down the line. You also see some green areas on here. So, these are in the in the business park.

Uh basically, It's a map of if these properties become available and the airport has an opportunity to acquire them, we would recommend that because the more that the airport can control in terms of the activity on the airfield, the better. Um, but I can also tell you these are very expensive. So the if it's available then you should be a you should try and pursue those. This is a really important map.

So about every three years, the entire runway pavement system uh is assessed in a visual inspection that results in a pavement condition index. What we're seeing here are greens and yellows and it's really good. Uh this airport has done a phenomenal job of maintaining their pavements, which is a requirement under FA grant assurances, but you can see, you know, there's some yellows which probably will need some attention before the greens.

And so this helps us in kind of prioritizing future projects. So this is an exhibit of the phasing program. This is what we see possibly happening over the next five years. Uh and really what again what we're seeing here is a lot of pavement projects, pavement rehabilitation, pavement reconstruction primarily because those are the things the FA loves to pay for and can pay for.

One thing the FA can't pay for is revenue producing facilities like a fuel farm or a parking garage, things like that, but they love to keep the pavements up up to speed. This is uh longer term projects, so excuse me, kind of years six through 20 uh within the plan. These are much more fluid. I mean, we try to capture everything because that technical drawing that ALP has to capture any project that the FAA might consider funding for.

Um, but one of the projects in here is a complete reconstruction of the runway, like I said, in the kind of early 2030s type of time frame. All right, I'm not going to hang out on this for very long. So, I I'll tell you what's on here only because I can I can't even see it myself, but all of the projects are listed in pri priority order.

This is the first five years and it shows a cost estimate for each project and it shows a potential funding breakdown with FA being the primary funer, the state matching a portion of that uh and then the local responsibility which ends up being about four and a half%. I might just point out that AOT also funds uh airport projects on their own and not always in conjunction with FA funding. So that's another source where funding can come from.

In total, there's about $300 million in potential projects over the next 20 years for the airport. None of these are guaranteed for funding from the FAA. However, it is in the FA's interest to help airports maintain their pavements. So all of these are justified, just not funded as of yet. So I might just mention some of the funding sources. This is my second the last slide and then we'll get to the good news which is the economic benefit study.

The primary funding source, one of the primary funding sources from the FA is the airport improvement program. So this is uh funded through all the taxes that you pay for your airline ticket. So this is essentially a user tax. So your airline ticket uh taxes go to funding the entire airport system projects across the country. The first dash is entitlements. So for years and years and years, Scottsdale was entitled to about $150,000 a year from the FAA for capital projects.

That is changing and that's changing because of the entitlements that are coming from the passenger employments that are now being counted. Uh and those those numbers are growing significantly. This year the minimum will be about 1.3 million. So it's a lot more than 150,000. And then over the 20 years with the forecast, it's about two million a year. So, it's a significant help to the airport for funding capital projects. There's other pieces within the AIP that this airport is eligible for.

Uh, so it's not just the passenger employments that helps fund projects here. The IGA uh act, which is kind of wrapping up right now, but Scottsdale airport took advantage of funding there. And then there's state AOT funding elements, including matching FAA grants or funding projects on their own. And then of course local revenues or or bonding or or leaseold financing. There's other local kind of ways to fund projects.

And with that I'm going to turn it over to Georgia to talk about the economic impact. Good evening everyone. Georgia Twiold with Kimley Horn. I'm an aviation planner focusing primarily on um aviation economic benefits studies or benefit analysis and state aviation system plans. I'm going to start our conversation today just by giving an overview of what was included in the economic benefit analysis.

So the top box there some icons indicating the activity sources that were evaluated as a part of this study. We looked at airport administration. So that's really the staff and expenditures associated directly with the airport sponsor employees at the Scottsdale airport. We also looked at aviation related airport tenants.

So these are the businesses that are located on airport property as well as any capital expenditures or construction related expenses either those pursued by the airport sponsor or by the business tenants. Those are what we consider our onair impacts. And then we also looked at off-air airport impact. So that is our visitor spending. So when visitors from outside of the Scottsdale region visit through the Scottsdale airport and spend money in the community, they're generating economic activity.

We capture that within the study. And then we also looked at aviation related businesses that are associated with the air park as well. We collect information from these sources through a number of different ways. Primarily, it was through surveying. So, myself and our team visited the Scottsdale airport over two days for a site visit. We worked closely with Kelly and Rick to identify all of the businesses that we were required to visit in person.

And we went around and visited each of them as best we could. Some were not available at the time of the visit. So of course we followed up by phone or email. The intention behind these visits was to understand the number of employees working at each of these businesses and collect other information from them like their capital improvement information.

And then for visitor spending, we collect the or we estimate the number of visitors based on operations data that was derived through the master plan process and then some visitor spending impacts using other local resources and tourism bureau data. So no um visitor exact visitor passenger surveying for that activity. Once we collect all that information that essentially identifies our direct impact. So that is the impact that is occurring specifically and directly because of airport activity.

We then use an input output modeling program IMPL plan. Implan is a proprietary software that is a sort of FAA um recognized and recommended input output model that allows us to identify our indirect and our induced impact. So this is essentially how the initial spending from our direct impacts moves throughout the economy. So when we're looking at our indirect impacts, that is the purchase of goods and services um from other Scottsdale area businesses.

And then our induced is our income respending essentially when employees of the airport or other activities are spending their wages in the community. That leads us to our total impacts. We express those as well as the direct and multiplier impacts using three key measures. Jobs, payroll, and output. Jobs of course is the number of people employed by headcount. Payroll is the payroll and any wages and benefits associated with that.

And then output is essentially your total economic impact um from those activities. So that's just an overview of the process here. And the next slide is presenting the results for the study. I should have mentioned this was a base year of 2024. So that was when we collected the information. You can see here we've looking at the impacts by jobs, payroll, and output. These are all total impacts. So we're thinking about our direct, indirect, and induced um impacts all sort of on this slide here.

So you can see that the most significant sort of component is through our visitor spending. that is the largest chunk of our jobs. Um however we're seeing the highest sort of impact from payroll from our onair airport activities. So again the on airport is the airport administration tenants and capital expenditures and then we see our airport as our biggest sort of output producer or total impact there.

All total, when we look at all of the activities that we evaluated combined, over 5,000 jobs within the Scottsdale region are attributed to airport activity, whether that is directly or through the multiplier impacts. This supports more than $392 million in payroll. And when rounded, you have a total economic output of $1.1 billion associated with the Scottsdale airport. We also included a future economic impact analysis. I don't have a slide for this.

This was essentially a forecasting exercise to estimate what the impacts of the airport may be in 2035. We used findings from the master plan, particularly from the forecasting exercise to identify some of those numbers. And just briefly, the findings from that show that in 2035, it could be estimated that the airport is supporting more than 9,600 jobs with an estimated payroll of 703 million and a total economic output of 1.9 billion.

So again, that is very much a forecasting exercise, but wanted to include that information during today's presentation as well. And I believe that leads us to our sort of wrap up um and Q&A. Thank you, Georgia. Um so the next step uh in our process of finalizing the master plan is at some point uh airport will come back to council for approval of the master plan and then we'll submit those technical drawings the airport layout plan to the FAA.

That takes a little while could could be three, four or five months. Uh but then after that we'll put a bow on it and uh finalize the document. So I guess if we have any questions I'd be happy to take them. Yes. Thank you. Uh I see Vice Mayor McCallen has a question or a comment. Yeah, just a quick question. You had said that the pavement index um needs to be increased in order to have heavier planes.

Those heavier planes, I'm imagining, will bring more people on them, which turns to more dollars. Is this correct? I think the more dollars is true. Okay. Um, not necessarily more people unless there's more frequency because the number of seats on this next generation of planes is about the same as what exists today. Okay. Thank you. I don't see any other questions. So, great job. Thank you very much. look forward to seeing the uh final agenda proposal. Okay. Thank you. All right.

Uh moving on to our second presentation, we have Kevin Burke, economic development and tourism senior director, who will be presenting on the Oldtown Scottsdale annual marketing plan. Thank you, honorable mayor, members of the council. Appreciate the time this evening to talk about what we have been doing to market and advertise Oldtown as the destination. Here we go. Uh agenda for our presentation this evening. I want to first describe the in-house pilot.

As members of the council aware, in 2025, there was a request for proposals that was conducted by the city to find a new marketing agency to take on Old Oldtown Marketing on our behalf. That did not result in an approved contract. And so, uh, we have been working on this in-house marketing program since it was initiated by the city manager in December of 2025.

What I hope to do today is describe our pilot program, how we've performed, and why we as staff recommend continuing with the in-house marketing program for 2627. So, we'll talk through the in-house pilot, uh how we've performed during this last six-month period, and then dive into some of the details of the proposed plan, which is the objectives, the framework. We'll talk through the proposed budget, as well as uh go over the public involvement leading up to and of course going forward as well.

So, the in-house pilot, as I mentioned, we've been working uh as a team in-house since January of this year. Uh for essentially at least the last 10 years, the city has contracted for Oldtown Marketing. So, we have had a firm or multiple firms under contract to perform all of these functions of marketing, advertising, and public relations specifically for the Oldtown destination. So this transition period required us to do a couple of things.

The first of which was to identify in-house resources to try to uh replicate and extend that work that was previously being performed under contract. So we have at city manager direction put together a really great team of uh multiple departments.

So my teams in economic development and tourism as well as members of the communications team as well as uh members of the IT department and the city manager's office staff have come together bringing different skills and abilities to bear to uh put the in-house program together and to implement it over the past couple of months. The city manager allocated a total budget for the six-month period of $1 million.

The uh goal that was given to our team was to spend most of that 85% of it on direct advertising which was a significant shift from uh how the program was operating um under the contract previously. And so uh that was a significant change. What didn't change is really the target audience. And so Scottsdale has always positioned itself as a market for luxury travelers. And what we're focusing on here are inmarket luxury travelers. And I want to make a distinction there.

We have with our partners experience Scottsdale a very significant destination marketing program. We are working internationally and across the country to bring luxury travelers to Scottsdale as a destination. Their job as our contractor at Experience Scotsdale is to get people here to Scottsdale and the in-house marketing program takes over after that. So when we say in market, we mean those people who have decided to choose Scottsdale as their destination.

Once they're here, we want to get them to Oldtown. And so that's been the focus of our efforts is reaching those people who are already in or near Scottsdale, but getting them to Oldtown uh and patronizing our businesses and other venues. So that is the target audience, inmarket luxury travelers. And over the course of the past six months, we've run a number of campaigns to target that audience. So, I've listed just a few here, but we have been running an arts and culture campaign.

We ran a significant p campaign over the period of spring training. Uh, we've run dining and food and beverage campaigns, and we're currently uh still wrapping up our June campaign, which hopefully everybody has seen uh some of over the last couple of weeks. This is just again to highlight some of the campaigns that the team has worked on over the past couple of months. So, I mentioned the arts and culture campaign.

Arts and culture is one of the key drivers, one of the key experiences that we're selling in Oldtown. And so, we would consider this to be something of an evergreen campaign. And we'll talk more about those campaigns in the plan for the um year period going forward. We've also had a lot of emphasis on dining, food and beverage. Uh we have, as you all know, a ton of really amazing restaurants, food and beverage opportunities in Oldtown.

So that is something that we are continuously wanting to uh put out there, market and advertise to bring people to those destinations. And then uh wanted to highlight the experience passport which I think was a really uh new and innovative thing that we did for Oldtown just over the past couple of months. We created a passport program uh in partnership with about 52 of our OldTown merchants and hotel years.

We created like an actual physical passport booklet uh and we provided stamps to those participating businesses. So, we've had hundreds of people come through and actually pick up those passports and we encourage them to go out and try things that they may not have otherwise uh run into in Oldtown by way of like trying to get those stamps on the passport. So, a couple of examples of campaigns that we have run uh that'll inform the plan for a number of campaigns that we'll run in the next year.

So, let me switch gears and talk about how we did. This is a screenshot. I have two screenshots from our online dashboard. So the team and I mentioned our partnership with the IT department is working to stand up a real time performance dashboard that is available to the public and continuously updated so that we uh as staff can track the performance of our campaigns as well as members of the public and decision makers.

This specifically is showing visibility sorry we call it visibility for oldtown where we're really tracking our impressions. So digital marketing metrics here, 13.9 million. This is as of just two weeks ago. 13.9 million what we call impressions. So that's the number of digital ads that have been served to distinct individuals. Um we're also going to be tracking our website visits. And then uh excuse me, we're also going to be tracking visitation.

And I think that the council is familiar with some of the tools we have to do that. We have Placer AI at our disposal and we're continuing as staff to educate ourselves and do a better job of using those tools and conducting data analytics because they're really powerful. So what we end up uh what we're wanting to track is overall visitation, dwell time, uh unique visitors, total trips into downtown. And we think that that's a metric for us that we actually can then tie to sales tax data.

So, we've been working very closely with the treasures office. Thank you to the city treasur for helping us reformat the way that we collect and report on sales tax data within Oldtown and Fashion Square area. We have very recently uh entered into contract for a new tool that will help us tie the Placer location data directly to the sales tax data.

And so that is one of the ways where on the dashboard we want to be able to report out and say very clearly what are the direct economic impacts of the advertising and marketing efforts that we're undertaking for Oldtown. I should point out that the creation of this new program was a significant undertaking for the tourism and events team. Something that we had contracted out we've brought in house using existing staff resources.

And so a shout out to that team, a few of whom are present today, Angelica Sapulo, Tony Alba, a couple of key members of the team as well as some from other departments who have full-time jobs and are also engaged in this effort. One of the things we learned though is we've got incredible skill sets in the city across different departments and so everybody has brought a little piece of that to bear here and I think has really resulted in a great team.

So, we really think that the program is worth continuing and we would like to establish a new cadence for bringing these items uh for bringing this in-house marketing effort to council. So, here at the very uh end of this fiscal year, we're bringing forward this plan for fiscal year 26 27 and we would like to get into a cadence of bringing annual marketing plan to council to set the stage for our work for that next year.

So, we've prepared this fiscal year 2627 uh draft Oldtown annual marketing plan, which we'll go into a little bit here. Uh we set some very clear objectives in the plan. And so, this is the backbone of the document. I hope that everyone finds these to be mutually agreeable. We think they are the baseline for what we want to achieve, which is we want to increase in market visitation, right? More people in Oldtown. We want to increase taxable sales.

And the way we think about that is actually twofold. We want to increase taxable sales for our merchants and as a result we want to increase sales tax revenue to the city as well. And then through our marketing efforts we want to strengthen our destination identity. Scottsdale has an incredible brand. Oldtown is an incredible brand. And so what we have as our goal is through our marketing efforts putting the word out to actually make that brand stronger and stronger over time.

Let's talk about our excuse me strategic framework. So in the plan this is uh sort of how we approach the problem of marketing to Oldtown. What are we selling right? What we're selling we believe are experiences. So we're leading with experiences retail food and beverage arts and culture southwest heritage. All of the events that we have downtown each of these are experiences.

And there are specific people, types of people, what we'll call archetypes or personas that are attracted to those types of experiences. So from experiences, we then look at personas, which is who are the people that we're attracting to Oldtown. And then we tailor campaigns to target those specific personas for those specific experiences. And then the last line there is tactics. So how that is the how we're doing it. And each of our campaigns will employ a number of different tactics.

For example, we have paid digital media, social media, our email marketing, um website, and activations just as a few. So, the plan um provides quite a bit of detail on the different types of campaigns as well as a very long list of tactics, but it's a mixand match approach, right? So, we don't use every single tactic for every type of campaign, just like we don't run every type of campaign targeted, every type of persona. I can give you an example.

So, arts and culture, I mentioned at the top, we think of this as like an evergreen campaign. Like, we always want to be advertising arts and culture as a part of what makes the Oldtown experience so great and so unique. So, we would run uh arts and culture campaigns, say targeted luxury travelers or like indulgent individuals, like some subset of all of the personas that we believe are interested in Oldtown. And then we would have a campaign connected by art, right?

And the connected by art campaign would employ a number of tactics. So, paid digital media, social media, um out of home marketing, which could be uh and maybe some of you have seen this, we've been using the digital kiosks at Fashion Square. There's 22 of them, and we've been putting paid ads on those, which we think have been really effective for us. Uh email marketing and then activations.

And so the artwalk is an opportunity for us to partner with the businesses to activate the space downtown uh in Oldtown as a part of that campaign. Just as an example of how we think through the strategic framework for each of the campaigns that we're going to run over the course of the year. Speaking of the calendar for the year, so I mentioned we have evergreen campaigns and then we have campaigns that are more specifically targeted at a place and time.

So this is just a a illustrative example in the document. It's a little more dry. It's actually a big table right now, but we'll be working to spruce that up. Internally, the way we think about it is with these overlapping campaigns. So this example for February where we would be running an arts and culture campaign in the middle of February, but that would actually overlap with our spring training campaign. So we're not just doing one thing at a time, right?

We're running our evergreen campaigns like food and beverage and arts and culture year round. And then we layer on top of those or in addition to those some of our event and specific campaigns with spring training being I think a good example of that. Let us talk about the budget. So the mayor and council have recently approved the budget for fiscal year 2627. Within that budget is allocated $2.5 million for the entirety of the fiscal year for this in-house marketing program.

Uh, as with the pilot program, our intention is to spend the vast majority of those dollars on direct advertising. And so, if you look at our line for direct advertising of 1.6 and then in addition to that, the $200,000 for the matching marketing program, we're thinking uh we intend to spend uh that's about 75 76% of the overall budget which is dedicated directly to advertising. Um, let me touch on the matching marketing program.

That is our partnership with the downtown merchants and business owners. So, many of our downtown businesses do their own marketing and advertising. We respect that and we want to use city dollars to leverage what they're doing. So, through the matching marketing program, they can apply to the city uh for matching grant dollars. We will match dollar for dollar up to $5,000 for individual businesses and up to $20,000 for groups of businesses to conduct and extend their marketing efforts.

I mentioned some of the events and activations and so we want to ensure that we have budgets set aside to do a bunch of those throughout the course of the year. It's an opportunity again for us to work directly with business owners, groups of business owners to do things that generate a ton of activity and buzz. uh create, you know, a lot of activity on social media that's going to generate activity and bring more people to downtown. Uh and then contracted creative, I want to touch on that.

These are our specialized support services. So I mentioned that we are able to do I'll say most of this work with our existing resources inhouse. Uh we do though have the need for some contracted creative services. So content development and design, uh video production and programs, uh you know, photography, some of these things we can use outside support for over the course of the year.

And really that is to ensure that we're executing our campaigns at the highest possible level that the community deserves. So we've allocated a couple of hund $300,000 specifically for contracted creative throughout the course of the year. So I mentioned public involvement. We have internally been working on this plan for the past few months. We did in May conduct two stakeholder meetings.

So on May 21st and on May 29th, we had meetings at the community design center where we had a really great conversation with a bunch of uh merchants and other stakeholders to get feedback on our very early draft of the plan. Uh those comments and that feedback was incorporated into the draft that's before you today. We did not present to the tourism development commission on the 16th. They did not have a quorum.

We met this morning and so the TDC has reviewed the plan as well and of course the work study session this evening. Our intent is to receive feedback from mayor and council tonight uh incorporate any changes as necessary into a final version of the plan and then bring that forward for mayor council consideration at the July 1st meeting. Uh our public engagement won't stop with the adoption of the plan.

So we are planning for the official roll out of the marketing plan at the August merchant mixer which we do quarterly. Uh I mentioned also the public dashboard which will go live. It will be available for the public on a real-time basis.

Uh and then we would continue to do quarterly updates to keep the merchants and the business owners involved as well as I mentioned the activations which we see happening throughout the year and is our opportunity to get feedback from them and partner with those businesses to u extend our marketing and advertising efforts as deep as we can into Oldtown and work with those businesses to support them.

That is um the plan in a nutshell and so I would appreciate any comments, questions that you have. Thank you Kevin. Uh I get asked a lot especially with the mayor's oldtown task force uh more recently about where what what is the money being spent on.

I know that you talked about impressions which you know abstractly you know describes it's hard to point to an impression right and show it to somebody but um where would uh where should I direct them to go find for example your advertising board your your the ideas that you're communicating out and um I guess you call it a a visioning board of of what you're doing with advertising Thank you for the question, honorable mayor. I appreciate that.

It's interesting because so much of our advertising is not targeted at our constituents, right? And that is by design. So most of the advertising dollars have been spent on digital advertising. And that digital advertising is very specifically targeted, typically geoenced to about 22 high-end luxury hotel properties in Scottsdale and the surrounding area. And so for the most part, nobody in this room is getting those ads, right?

So if I understand the question correctly, it's how can we see those ads because our stakeholders are not actually the ones that we're targeting those ads to. And we have not to date uh put all of the creative content behind those ads in a like single place that is publicly accessible, but it's certainly something that we can consider doing. Yeah, I think that'd be great. that'd be helpful just to, you know, actually see what it is that we're pushing out.

Um, and then the second thing is, uh, I hear a lot of feedback from business owners in Oldtown that sales are down, way down. Um, and so are you are you interfacing with the individuals? I'm sure you hear from people too about their revenue being down considerably. Are you bringing those voices in to your teams? You know, I know we're you're doing the Oldtown Merchant Mixer.

I see one in August, but um how are you tapping into that uh and getting kind of feedback from the actual uh indivi, you know, affected businesses? Certainly, we have heard, thank you, mayor, honorable mayor. Sure. Certainly, we have heard those uh types of comments from many businesses and honestly the other side of the story from others, right? So, what we really want to focus on is providing factual data through the dashboard.

And that's why we're working with the treasur's office to provide really uh clear sales tax reporting data for Oldtown that is digestible for people and can provide ground truth because a lot of what we hear frankly is anecdote, right? And so while we're not able to have conversations at like the level of individual businesses, right, we don't have access to that data specifically, we have access to that sales tax data in the aggregate.

And what we intend to do through the dashboard is track that data month over month over time. And when I I heard you're working on that or I know you're working on that. I think that's a great idea to separate out the Oldtown sales revenue data from, you know, overall sales revenue. So when will that be available?

Uh we have on the dashboard today preliminary sales tax data provided by the treasur's office that has not yet been incorporated into the dashboard as the sort of real time data update that we would like it to be. So that's the goal that we'll be working on over the next I would say month to six weeks. Okay. Thank you. I'll pass it along to Vice Mayor Mckllen. Thank you, Mayor. Calm down. Okay. Yes, we'll go with the public comment.

Uh, and by the way, the chair can decide to when to take the public comment. So, I'm going to call on Vice Mayor Maryanne Mckllen. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, Kevin, thank you for your presentation. I do have a question. Um, it says $1.6 million direct marketing. Very vague. Is do you have a little more information for us, please? Yes, Vice Mayor. Thank you. So when we say direct marketing, we are primarily talking about digital ads, right?

So most of our effort, we're not putting uh billboards on the 101, right? We do some what we refer to as out of home advertising. I mentioned like signage that we've put up in a couple of places. Um mostly so far it's been those digital ad spaces in fashion square, but most of this is digital advertising that our target audience is consuming primarily on mobile devices. Thank you.

I don't see any other uh requests or for questions, so I'll move forward with Bob Pedman, followed by Rachel White, French Thompson, Andrew Cessich. Good evening, council member. Council member's name is Bob Pedant. Addresses on record. I just want to put this $2.5 million in perspective. I got involved with Scottdale politics and items, let's just say, uh, in 2015. Back then the budget was about $150,000 and then the city hired an ad agency. Maybe they boosted it to 200,000.

It went pretty much around that amount until 2022 when the council approved the 5% of bet tax to to go to Oldtown Destination Marketing. And then after that, for the next two years, a lot of that money was siphoned out for other stuff besides uh Oldtown Marketing. But this $2.5 million is unprecedented. I'm very happy that our city manager, Greg Kaitton, has actually put this huge amount of money up and his staff. So, the amount of money is huge. The $1.6 million is also huge.

About $300,000 goes towards basically creative efforts. So, we have $1.6 million. How do we spend that money effectively? That becomes a question. Now I have to say though that the real story on the street is that qualified visitation has plummeted. Let me put this up. You've seen this. You have seen this graph before. This is upside down. Okay. This was presented at the TDC. I put the circles on and the arrows couple years ago. It clearly shows that daytime traffic has plummeted.

I got nothing against the nighttime traffic going up, by the way. I'm just pointing out that daytime has plummeted. And to add insult to injury from that amount of people that's left, the qualified portion of that has plummeted. So, it's a double whammy. Now, I hear that, oh, you know, some people have a great experience, some people had their best year. As you all know, I'm part of the mayor's task force for Oldtown.

And what I hear from all these people that are participating, they all say the same thing. Qualified foot traffic has plummeted. So it's not Bob and French and a bunch of people complaining. It's across the board. And um in the meantime, if you if you look at the data that the city puts out, there's always an increase. Oh, we're up 9% or up 9%.

Well, if all this increase is happening, then where's the disconnect between the merchants who say, you know, they don't see qualified people and the city says, "Hey, the number is up." And then it's like, well, there both sides to that. There's no no saying things are down and there's always exceptions. People have their best year. Now the report correctly points out that well actually the report has six personas. Luxury travel is one of them and then the other personas.

For example, the report correctly connects the luxury travelers with with the arts district arts and culture. That's all true but we need metrics to we need KPIs to track all of this. We need to develop a baseline where we are now and then let's say 6 months from now see if if the advertising moves the needle in the right direction. That's the whole thing. If it can move it in the right direction to bring qualified visitation to downtown, the program is a success.

And um the placer AI data needs to be also we need to get just get more information out of it. you know, the age range and all of that because when I see that visitation is up but the experience of the merchants is different, that's where it's all going. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. And thank you for being such a great participant in the task force. Really appreciate it. Next, we have Rachel White, uh, French Thompson. Madame Mayor, city council, thank you for being having me here.

Fridge Thompson, my uh address is on record. Also, I'm um extremely happy that the city is doing this marketing. I'm I'm glad that they put this stuff together. I'm glad that they're putting more more money into it. Um the city of Scottsdale is really a luxury mark destination and and it should always be marketed that way. um a senior partner at the Mckenzian company made a report to LBMH, which is the largest luxury retailer in the world.

And that report basically said, "It's time now for brands to really start to talk about the over 50 shopper." Those are what Bob's talking about. That's what I've been talking about. In this report, in the United States, people 55 and older hold 72% of the population's wealth in 19 in 2024. That's a McKenzie report. And that share is increasing each year. In the western economies, it's the over 50 customer that really controls the purse strings. That's where the wealth is concentrated.

And frankly, it's also the segment that's often funding some of the purchases by the younger generations. So the luxury destinations should be demote devoting more attention to the demographic that they've been neglected in recent years, the so-called silver generation. So with the city doing the marketing for Oldtown, more of the dollars will be going directly to the marketing and not to salary and profit for companies like that.

This is all this money is basically going for what we're really trying to do advertising and marketing the Oldtown merchants. And I like this dashboard idea. I think this is a good thing.

If in that dashboard, if they're seeing out the breakouts of the demographics, what the city's marketing to and what are the demographics that are people are actually showing up because the people on the street are looking at the people and go, "Well, these people don't buy anything from us, so why are they here?" you know, we're we're marketing and bringing in people that don't buy from us. Doesn't do any good for the sales tax.

So, we'd like to be able to see who's actually coming, but also who are the ones that it's being targeted to. So, I'd love to see all of that stuff on the dashboard. One of the other things I'd really like to see in marketing of the city, I would really love to see the city marketing together to bring businesses to Oldtown Scottsdale, instead of it just being independent individual landlords have to do all the work to try to get tenants.

if the city was working with them and other cities do this to bring tenants and go market to outside markets to bring these people to Scottsdale, you know, we're a great destination, but but they might not even know, hey, we would love to have your business come here. So, I think that's really good. And there's one other thing that the city really needs to fix. The left hand doesn't have the information the right hand.

The business tax license department will not share the information on how to contact every business in Oldtown Scottsdale. That needs to change. You need to be able to have the left hand know who's in Oldtown Scottsdale, what the business owner's names are, how to contact them. So, when you have an event, you can't even contact every single business on the street because you don't have that information. The license department says it's an invasion of privacy.

The city has the information, the city wants to use it. If the city has the information, how is this an invasion of privacy when the city has that information? Anyway, I would love to see that happen. And thank you. Thank you, French. Uh, Andrew Ces, am I saying that right? Yes. Good evening, mayor and city council members. Uh, thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Andrew Cisik address on record.

I've had the privilege of living Scottsdale for over 30 years, which is why I felt compelled to share an observation I believe is important for Scottsdale's future. I began studying how Scottsdale was investing in its future. I read the proposed marketing plan, reviewed the budget, and I kept coming with one question. Does this strategy prepare OldTtown for the future of destination marketing or does it simply optimize for the past?

Now, using readily available metrics, I pulled this Scottell's current destination. Is that upside down? I pulled up Scottsdale's current destination analytics across several web property for the past few years. And this graph actually answered all my question. This isn't just a a decline in website traffic. This is a pivot in the internet. The marketing plan does an excellent job describing how to market Oldtown.

What it doesn't address is how Oldtown Scottdale will compete in an era where travelers are no longer searching websites. They're asking AI. Yesterday's KPI was website traffic, visitor traffic. Today's key KPI is visitor intelligence. And this is not a criticism at the plan or the current web properties. Not at all. It's an acknowledgement that the market has changed and has changed faster than any of us expected. Google and SEO stopped being the primary way people are discovering destinations.

AI has rapidly become the front door. So just imagine giving experience Scottdale new level of intelligence. Not just how many people visited Oldtown, but why they came, why they searched, what experiences mattered the most, what influenced their decisions. These aren't visitors. These become ambassadors. Attribution isn't about who's proving or who deserves the credit. It's about what actually works. So, every future marketing dollar becomes effective.

Lastly, every time someone asks AI where to shop, where to stay, what experienced in Scottsdale, this conversation creates intelligence. Intelligence that should be the property of the city of Scottsdale. Today, you purchase those reports for visitors. Tomorrow, Scots should own the intelligence that understands those visitors. The value of tourism, excuse me, the valuable the valuable tourism asset of the next decade will not be a website. It will be proprietary visitor intelligence.

I believe Scots has an opportunity right now not just to lead tourism but redefine it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Uh that concludes the public speakers on this item and guess we're going to have you come back Kevin. Councilman Graham. Mayor, thank you. Really appreciate all the public comments that we heard tonight. I I agree with nearly everything I heard.

Um, I hope that maybe you took that um, you received that information and um, I'll kind of reiterate some of the things I like to hear. Uh, I'll just start out.

I mean, you know, we kind of were doing this because the council requested this and I I appreciate that and you the there were just a lot of problems with the prior uh you know tourism to tourism plan and so um this is one of those things that kind of this council is going through and and working on and um we've got more things to do like that but this is one of those and it's and it's just incredibly important and I think that we prioritize this more than a lot of things we wanted to do elsewhere in the city because we see and we hear about the drop in qualified visitation to our old town.

You know, I like the idea. I think I've asked the city treasurer for before about breakouts of sales tax and I think I've heard you can't get that breakout or what it is and so I'm not going to put you on the spot, but maybe we can look at it by zip code or something like that. I mean, do you want to just say because that got brought up, do you want to just say something briefly about the possibility?

I mean what I would like to see what I think a lot of us would like to see is like what are the sales collections in this in this geoence in this in this perimeter. Yeah. Uh thank you mayor council members. Uh we do have that capability that they're we're working on to automate it. Until we're able to automate it. a manual process for us to actually identify all the sales tax businesses in a um per like a perimeter or right radius. We can do that.

It's just a very uh tedious manual process right now until we're able to automate it. Okay. So maybe um maybe that can be you know something on the horizon that can be incorporated because that can be that you know that can be that canary in the coal mine as far as where things are trending and uh it's just I mean I don't know how else to say I just trying to put it really simply.

It's about getting qualified foot traffic to our old town and we're all kind of grappling with that, frustrated with that. Um, there's stakeholders down there. We're bringing more parking down there. We're I mean, I I have notes here I wanted to talk about, but I'm not going to do it.

I mean, just the years we spent on the Oldtown Marketing, what we we didn't, it feels like to me we got nothing and all we were doing in large part was just promoting the the late night party vibe and that just doesn't get us in the qualified direction that we want to go. Kevin, who would you um what would who cities would you say are our competitor, our competition? Honorable mayor, Council Member Graham, that's a fantastic question.

So when you think about our competitive set, Scottsdale as a whole, right, has one competitive set and then Oldtown as a destination perhaps is a different competitive set. So I would think about uh Oldtown as one of the premier destinations within our region, right? Because we're focused on inmarket visitation. So that is to say, it's not the whole universe of travelers.

It's the travelers that have already decided to come to Scottsdale and the Phoenix metropolitan area that we're trying to reach. And in that sense, we're competing against uh the entertainment district in Glendale, right? We're competing against resort and hotel properties that are, you know, outside of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. We're competing against downtown Phoenix, right? Um those are sort of the largest ones that come immediately.

So, and on that you're answering from your residents, like valley residents who are competing against. Is that what you're saying? Those are inmarket visitors, right? I mean, like like the Glendale entertainment. I mean, I don't know if that's really what Scottsdale residents think about, you know, certainly not Scottsdale residents. I would completely agree with you.

We're talking about so uh people who are not, you know, Arizona residents or maybe international travelers, they're coming to the Phoenix metropolitan area. So once they're here, where are they going to go? Right? And so yes, some of them because of the, you know, large scale events that happen in just for the example, right, like the Glendale Entertainment District, we also want them to come here. And I could give you the example of some of the strategies we intend to employ.

But see, that's kind of what I'm saying is that it's it's not it's not volume isn't the sole metric. Yeah. You know, because I mean I mean, you've heard the, you know, phrase good can drive out bad. I mean, bad can drive out good. And so it's it's not this is not solely a volume pursuit and in fact it's the it's the right you know it's the qualified visitors. Um what cities would you in your mind as you sort of lead this process or do you think we're competing against?

Honorable mayor council member Graham. So I would redirect the question because so much of what we're doing is really focused on the people who have already decided to come to Scottsdale. If you think about that from a slightly different perspective, so experience Scottsdale is taxed by the city with overall marketing, right? And that competitive set I think is pretty well defined in a lot of their marketing plans, right?

In that sense, Scottsdale is competing against other luxury destinations, not just nationally, but internationally. But what we're actually considering here is not advertising to like the entire globe, right? We're advertising to really we'll just say specifically 22 hotels in Scottdale and Paradise. Let me ask you this way. Do would I mean do you see more going towards like Palm Springs or like lo or like Las Vegas? Short answer, honorable mayor, Council Member Graham, I don't know.

I'm not quite sure on that. I mean like that to me is kind of a kind of a softball. Councilman Graham, let me help my colleague out here. Um, honorable mayor and councilman Graham, I I think the important point is that uh what the the traveler that experienced Scottdale is marketing to because they have over 20 million and then we is very important and as Mr.

Burke referenced they're uh going national and international and bringing people here and then we're really capturing the people that have already selected Scottsdale or the Scottsdale region. I would say I might submit to an an a direct answer because we I want to give you a direct answer uh to our broader efforts.

This is marketing, but what I would think about are holistic efforts to Oldtown, which includes infrastructure improvements, the mix of what's going on in Oldtown uh in the Denver, Colorado area, Cherry Creek, uh the Cherry Creek area is a model that I think uh many could look to again in the broader more than just the marketing piece. Okay, I'll wrap up my comments quickly.

I just I I guess I was just every city's unique and I it's not like well this we're like this we want to be like this city. We don't like we're obviously we think that we're you know we're one of a kind. Um but but it just kind of it's just kind of I mean and I get what you're saying about well the person's here and we want to sort of bring him in. Um, but it's kind of how we think about ourselves. Uh, that kind of, you know, knowing what you're doing is knowing where you're going.

You know, those kind of, you know, sort of benol phrases, but they kind of there is kind of some truth to that. Councilman Grant, if I may add to that, please just a little bit addition. I I think what's key to the in market, the way we're serving them up, and just as an illustration for that. So, what happens is people are in one of the 22 resorts. I think that's really key. So, who's staying in those resorts, right?

That's already that elevated market of that of that resort facility and then their close proximity and googling where should I eat something like that. certainly appreciate. I I think our AI commenter left um and Earn Media is a big part of of AI, but and then they and then we serve them up w with that. And so they're at a they're at an exclusive resort destination, so they already meet some of our criteria, all of our criteria quite frankly.

And then what happens is emphasizing we're not doing the billboards. It's data driven. So we're tracking it and following it. And that's then as soon as we get that stood up, which we are, then we're pushing that out to be transparent. I get I mean, you know, it that's a good answer. Uh I mean I I would kind of, you know, tilt us may prefer more Palm Springs in Las Vegas. Agreed.

You know, for if it were me, um does this document the answer I probably know, but this in one of the prior versions of this tourism plan, it had literally zoning. You talked about zoning benchmarks and how it wanted to reszone Oldtown. There's no nothing like that going to be in the new plan. Is that correct, honorable mayor? Council Graham, no. This is a denovo document. So, it's not an iteration of anything that's previously been produced by the city.

And no, we don't have any intention of using our marketing efforts to pursue zoning changes. That because that actually happened that that that actually happened that and that almost became what we passed. um remember that. Yeah. Uh so I just think the city needs to establish a baseline for what the current visitation uh traveler you know profile is and tracking KPIs like Mr.

Feedgman said to see if marketing is what is how marketing is doing for luxury visitors whether that's the dashboard or some other manner. I I think I do I think dashboards are a little bit overblown because it's like okay I lo you know but but people I mean I think that's sort of a way of saying they want the information in one one manner. Um and I just appreciate what you're doing Mr. Burke as far as the outreach.

You're meeting with people you're doing stakeholder meetings and um I think you're it seems to me like you're listening to them. Um, and so I'm excited about the product that you're going to put forward to the city council that the going to be open for all the public to see. Um, I encourage you to keep collaborating with them, especially a lot of the speakers and the audience here.

Um, I look around before us and I see people that that not only do they care deeply about Oldtown Scottdale, but they've poured their livelihoods, they've poured their time, um, and their future is tied to the success of Oldtown's future. And so, um, it's one of those, you know, rising, uh, rising tide kind of comments, raising all boats. So, thank you, Mayor. Councilwoman Dasquez. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Taking a look at the April 2026 experience Scottsdale monthly report.

Um, I think it's interesting to note that they are reporting hotel occupancy and averaged a daily revenue are up. So, for the year 2026, year-over-year, they're up 3.7% on occupancy and they're up 5.6% um on average daily revenue. Um, they're showing that spending is up um pretty significantly year-over-year.

uh for the first part of 2026, the first quarter, um they're reporting that uh 43% of the spending is retail, 29% of it is in restaurants with a year-over-year increase of 10.9% in spending. So, um some of these numbers are in conflict with some of the uh information that we're hearing from our merchants. And so I'm wondering about so we it sounds like we have more people coming and they're spending more money but they're not necessarily spending money in Oldtown.

So when we take a look at the report it talks about arts and culture attractions musical instrument museum accounts for 35% of the trips. That's not Scottsdale. Uh Museum of the West is 11% of the trips. Um nothing about Scottsdale Arts. Um, and so I think some of this spending is going outside of Scottsdale. Um, Westworld, city event facilities, Westworld is 58%. Um, the Scottsdale Sports Complex is 22%. Hiking, Camelback Mountain is 68%. McDonald's Sonor and Preserve is 24%.

Again, Phoenix over Scottsdale. Uh, Oldtown, this is where I think it gets interesting. The Northwest Quadrant accounts for 45% of trips. the southeast quadrant uh 36% and the northeast quadrant at 28%. So I'm wondering if some of this disconnect is are we really driving people to these places in Scottsdale? Are we driving them where we want to want to drive them? Um and then we're getting uh this data from experience Scottsdale.

So, there's a couple of ways to think about this, and this might cause more work for our treasurer's office, but uh we might want to be able to um on a more specific basis look at Oldtown and see where is the new sales tax revenue coming from. I think that's a a great way to measure the efficacy of the um of the impact of your work. Um so, if we could see though more specifically within Oldtown, where is that impact?

Um because there seems to be a question of we have more people but they're not coming or they're not spending their money in Oldtown. So how do we get them to spend their money in Oldtown? Um and then the other portion of that is maybe we would like to see different or more metrics that we could utilize for our own impact studies from Experience Scottsdale. We do have uh the contract is coming up in 2027 for experienced Scottsdale.

Maybe this is an opportunity internally for us to think about, you know, what are some good metrics? Do we have the metrics today that we need from Experience Scottsdale? This is an opportunity for you to maybe fine-tune this program, but also Experience Scottsdale's program so that we can work together and utilize each other's data for even greater leverage. So, those are my comments. Thank you very much. I appreciate your work on this. Thank you. Okay. I don't see any other Oh, sorry.

Go ahead, Kathy. Councilwoman Littlefield, pardon me. Yeah. Uh I I just had a kind of a thought. I I know we've been doing a lot of research. We've been doing a lot of work to try to find what's going on in Oldtown. What can we do to stimulate marketing and stuff like that? Maybe we're just not offering what people want to buy anymore. Maybe the market itself has changed.

And I'm wondering is are we doing any research on what kind of art, what kind of sculpture, what kind of classes for the kids, what what are we offering or not offering that people would come to the downtown in order to get. Maybe our market has changed and we haven't changed with that market. That's just a thought. Thank you. I'm not an art person, so it's off the top of my head, but thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.

I don't see any other questions, so thank you very much for the presentation. All right, that concludes the uh presentations or the work study presentations. And so I will shift to council member updates or presentation. Anybody? I don't see anybody. Let's see. Councilwoman Dascus, very excited for Scottsdale 75 on Thursday. 75 years of this wonderful city. So, congratulations to you all. Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday. All right. Sorry, I got one. Councilman Graham. Mayor, thank you.

U What time and when is that uh Scottdale 75? I think it's at 9:00 a.m. out here at Scottdale Stadium. Scottsdale Stadium like just right here fieldhouse. I also want to um remind people that we're doing a Westworld on July 1st which is uh or July 4th which is a Saturday this year. Uh Westworld event. So fireworks kids families activities um and I hope to see you there. Thank you, Mayor. Councilwoman Whitehead. So, I know Councilman Graham meant to say composting, too. Yay.

July 4th at Westworld. Thank you. All right, we are concluded and I'll move to adjourn. Thank you everyone for being here.