Prescott approves $311.5M budget, new hillside standards, and developer infrastructure charter amendments amid mayoral scrutiny of major capital outlays

Hi everyone, this is Mayor Prom Lois Furworth and this is another episode of in case you missed it regarding our council meetings last week of June 23rd. The biggest thing that we accomplished last week was to finalize our budget and approve our budget. As we had discussed at the last, in case you missed it, our budget is a $311.5 million. That is a 2.6% increase over previous year.

Again, some of that is because of cost of living adjustments that have been happening and also because of the major expenditures that are underway coming up in this coming fiscal year regarding public safety and the capital that we're beginning to build. So, with that, the um the council did approve the overall budget. Um there were a couple of items though that I think are worth discussing further.

The first one was we did approve the property tax levy that had been discussed at our last meeting as well. That is a 1.9% increase from the previous property tax levy the council passed three years ago. Again, part of the reason of us doing that is because um our income coming from the state through the state legislature. There's been lots of attacks from the state legislature about some of the revenues of the cities and towns. The residential rental tax had been eliminated.

That was a pretty big hit to our city budget. And the food tax has been under attack for quite a while. So, this was a small but important step that the council decided to take. In total, when you look at your property tax bill, the city of Prescuit is about 4.7% of your tax bill for city residents. And that includes all of your basic city services and including all of the public safety services in a relatively economic fashion compared to many other cities and towns in the area.

the size of the property tax increase depending on the limited property value of homes. For a $100,000 limited property value home, it's an increase of million limited property value home. And again, that's not market value. That is the way the county values your home and applies taxes against it. But for a million-doll property home, that's a $4.50 increase per year.

so small but important as we make sure that we are protecting basic city services um and protecting our quality of life here in the city of Prescuit. The other thing that we discussed that I think was really important was the authorized expenditure listing. The staff had put together a multi-page uh list of items that they wanted for the council to just authorize now and approve.

and th that means those items wouldn't have to be brought forward again to council and the public over the course of the next year. Um both Mayor Rooine and I uh individually pulled a similar but different items. Mayor Rousin's big concern was the property and evidence facility. As we're looking at the property that had been secured, it we're going to spend about $8 million of taxpayers money moving dirt and putting in retaining walls.

and she has questions and concerns and so th we have definitely pulled those that item that we'll be able to talk it further this coming year as well as her concern about any expenditures going on with the Gateway Park where she really would like given it's now protected open space a light touch on the land and not talking about things like parking lots, children's playgrounds.

And then finally, she pulled an item related to a sewer pump station that's going in right near the corner of Prescat Lakes Parkway and Highway 89. Her concern there is that that sewer pump station is being spent because of a major single owner who's developing a section and she felt like that was something that we needed to talk more about uh versus just authorized that the taxpayers would um be covering that bill. So, more to come on those items.

I pulled a whole lot of items off of the expenditure list. Pretty much anything to do with public safety tax initiative um as well as other big items that I thought were strategic that the public um or even small dollar items that I still thought the public had a right to know what was going on. I believe that our council agendas drive a lot of the news that's going on in this community, which is how you find out about what's going on.

And so by us pulling these items um we will be able to have those be on it future agendas. You'll be able to weigh in um and the council will be able to understand more before we approve line items in the budget. So uh overall we um we did pass the overall AAL with the items uh removed as approved in the package. you'll see that being a uh a piece of paper that has a lot of gold pulled pulling things out.

The only thing that um c the staff did make a suggestion and I agreed to amend my motion um was in this area of solid waste. Right now in solid waste we are running about a million dollars underwater in that enterprise fund and we've had a lot of increases in in the cost of hauling and the costs of landfill. And so we have uh directed staff to come back with a a plan. Um they have already put it on a future agenda.

We'll be talking about that um coming up at multiple council meetings and uh looking at how do we end up approving uh a plan that isn't underwater for our solid waste division. Um, so you'll see notices out already as of this week about the solid weights, the potential of some minor rate increases so that we can cover the hauling costs in an enterprise fund. They have to be um self-sufficient. Um, we can't be supplementing them with general fund money as a as a uh policy.

So, more to come on how that is, but I did pull the solid waste items off of uh removing them from the AAL so that we could continue to haul trash while we're doing this work over the next few weeks and months. Okay. So, in other news that we did at the council meeting, we did send forward three more charter proposals that will be on your November ballot. The first one was a correction of some language related to a discussion we had at the last meeting and this is in regards to our city judge.

We did reaffirm that they will be in the attorney licensed in good standing with the state of Arizona and they shall serve as a report to the council for a defined term. We have aligned our proposal with the state in terms of the term is a two-year term and that we do expect annual reviews from the judge to the city council for each of those two years within the term of their contract. So that one is now corrected and will be sent forward to you.

Um the second one again was a discussion that we had at the last meeting and we wanted to have some language correction.

So the proposal came back to us corrected and the council did approve it as refined and that is primarily regarding new development and that the city does have the power to require any persons, firms or corporations responsible for new development to either provide or furnish the infrastructure and other items they need or to pay a fee in lie of providing that so that the city could also pay to get it done.

And this is something that again we've seen lots of other cities and towns across Arizona when there's major new developments going on that the developers do pay for things not only pay for the roads and the sewer extensions but they also pay for things like new uh police stations.

So, these are things that are now within our if you vote yes in November will be within the charter for the city to be able to negotiate um and maybe um have less of these fees be paid by the general taxpayers um as we move forward. And the third area was a correction to an item that council approved last time. Again, this was about requiring that we have a appraisal done before we purchase any city land.

So, that's on record for the public to see the appraisal and are we negotiating fair deals when we're acquiring land. Our city realtor uh real estate person did mention that we do a lot of easements, purchases of land so that we can put lines through property uh water lines, you know, etc. and that those are primarily small dollar amounts that we're negotiating to for those easements.

And if we had to do an appraisal on every one of those, it would be almost as much for the appraisal as it would be to acquire the land. So, we changed the proposal that'll be coming to you in November. We approved it this past week that if the land is more than $100,000 worth of cost, then a appraisal will be required. if it's less than a h 100,000 then we will not be doing an appraisal because it's just not worth spending your taxpayer dollars that way.

So those are three more uh charter amendments coming to you in November. So the final area that council touched on that I want to cover is regarding a change to our land development code in regards to hillside development standards. The council has had study sessions on this and heard from many of you the concerns about um kind of the scraping and denuting of hillsides that have been happening um across the city.

And in working that with our staff, we came to appreciate that the hillside development standards that had been in the land development code were not being applied to single site projects that consisted of multifamily and/or commercial developments. And so as big one lots of many many acres was being purchased, it was being treated as a single lot. And that was why we were seeing some of the scraping we were seeing.

So work done by council, work done by planning and zoning, work done by our community development and legal, all coming together in a revision that we passed unanimously last week that we will be changing our hillside development standards. So now including those residential land splits and commercial development.

Um so one of the things that I want to cover in the uh discussion um there's a um some information regarding what a lot will look like and how steep the slopes are in different portions of the lots and so if someone buys that entire lot you know what's going to be done. And so what we did was set up maximum disturbable areas by the steep percentage of the slope that's being discussed.

So if the slope is 0 to 20% no slope to 20% slope, you are allowed to follow normal zoning procedures for for developing that piece of land.

But if another portion of your same lot is 20 to 30%, you are allowed to disturb up to 30% of that acreage that you can do with a minimum of half an acre was so one one house for example would be able to be developed all the way as far north as greater than 40% slope going on that only 10% of that land could be disturbed and the minimum lot area for those 40% % has to be 3 acres.

So, it's a it's a mathematical equation that hopefully is fair to the land owners while also protecting our vistas um our sa safety of homes on on steep slopes etc. And so those are the standards that have gone in and um we uh after unanimously being approved by um planning and zoning council also has now approved them as well.

So hopefully going forward you will be uh more pleased with how hillsides um which are probably one some of the biggest areas left within the current city boundaries um how they're going to be developed moving forward that people could take rather than scraping sides of 20 to 40% they'll be able to transfer some of that density to the part that they actually could develop. So that will be a little bit denser perhaps on the flatter areas and a lot more undisturbed vistas in the others.

We shall see. But um this is our best foot forward in this area that you've brought forward to us multiple times over the last few years. So thank you. This week it is our America 250 festivities going on throughout the week. It is our Prescat Frontier Rodeo days. Both the rodeo and our parade on Saturday happening. Lots to do Wednesday. Uh the rodeo is kicking off actually today, but Wednesday we start with a renewal of our band stand on the courthouse plaza. 400 pm ribbon cutting.

Should be short and sweet, but a lot of fun with a band playing on the band stand. Pretty excited about that. Way to go. Friends of the Jersey Liies and Prescuit Chamber. On Friday, we have, of course, the Kitty Parade happening in the morning. We've got a new adventure going on over at Charlotte Hall with a family festival, Heritage Day, is happening. Go check that out. Even hot dogs and pies available for sale. And then finally, I want to point out on Friday, we're doing something new.

We're taking the fireworks and we're bringing it all back to Pioneer Park. For those of you that were here for a while, um you'll appreciate that we're having a Freedom Festival hosted by the city of Prescuit with some amazing sponsors. It will be at Pioneer Park from 3 to 10:00 p.m. At 9:00 will be the beginnings of the fireworks that will be happening.

I have been assured by our fire department they are pre-treating areas and that they will have lots of people on hand to make sure that we do not pose any risk with that happening. More to come as the weather unfolds, but it should be a great day. There'll be food trucks there. There'll be water slides. Bring the kids. Bring chairs. There's other information.

Go on the city of Prescat website to get the information, including off lot parking happening that you can find a place and be shuttled over to Pioneer Park as the day goes on and it fills up. So, hope to see you all out and about around the community this whole week. And uh this will be the best week of Prescuit with both the rodeo and America 250 happening together here. Thank you. We'll see you soon. Bye.