Fountain Hills approves tax levy, fountain policy while defending $67M Park Place lawsuit

district roll call please mayor dickey here vice mayor fredell councilmember mcmahon councilmember charno council member magazine councilmember spelig councilmember grizbowski present thank you first item is the approval of the minutes from the meeting of june 7th can i get a motion please all in favor say aye hi thank you next grady thank you mayor mayor and council and for the public who are here tonight we have before you the cottonwoods maintenance district tax levy and our finance director will be giving you an overview of this um and uh recommending approval with that i'll turn it over to mr pock all right good evening i guess madam chair board members uh june 7th the final budget was adopted for cottonwood's maintenance district this tonight is to approve the tax levy to go to the assessor in the treasury's office for collection of property taxes for the cottonwoods maintenance district total levy is eight thousand six hundred and sixty nine dollars that's 149.46 over 58 parcels that includes um items for landscaping the uh wall maintenance reserve that we have that we build up each year we just finished painting that this year also the postage and advertising costs those cumulative costs this is the first year that we started charging the uh 10 administration fee and that is 10 of those three items just what i just mentioned so there are any questions i i just had a question so the the vice mayor had asked previously about um a couple different things about the district one would be you know what would be involved in the possible dissolution of that also he had some good comments about um cost recovery and so i distributed a memo to the council last week on this very topic and if the council i realize it's probably not the appropriate time since we're really talking about the levy but if the council is interested in this when we do our budget process for the next year we will present to the council some different options on both partial and full cost recovery we are limited as to how much we can collect to not exceed 18 of the total value of the uh of the parcel that we're currently maintaining but if the council is interested we can certainly do that through the next budget process if we're wanting to get more of a closer to full cost recovery also that that was a lot of information and thank you for getting that to us so that we can make a good decision on that so i appreciate that do you have any speaker cards on this item no mayor we do not thank you any other questions or comments all right um trying to see where the motion is anybody wanna um it's on page three i think yep oh sorry no it's not i'm losing it i'm i haven't seen it where's the moment i think it's page five oh page five oh there we go i get a motion please move to adopt resolution cmd 2022-03 and make it to the right page yeah okay thank you all in favor please say aye aye aye thanks so much i will adjourn that meeting and we'll start our regular meeting please stand for the pledge and remain standing okay please remain standing for a moment of silence thank you all right roll call please mayor dickey here vice mayor riddell council member mcmahon council member sharno council member magazine council member spellage councilmember grazbowski president thank you so much as always we start with our activities and reports um town manager do you have anything uh mayor and council i do not have anything to report at this meeting thank you thank you vice mayor i know you have a couple things i do um mayor i'd like to request a point of privilege if i may take a couple minutes of the council's time and um if that's all right thank you so at the last council meeting there was some discussion at the end of the meeting dealing with the recent raise given to our town employees and i think it will left us a little bit unsettled because a lot of people i got a lot of comments and emails from residents in town saying how come there was no discussion on this so what i'd like to do going forward is make sure that um with the raise that they got was four percent and in the last year and a half it's about ten percent and we're adding about two hundred thousand dollars in round figures to our current salary base here in the town over the years that's going to add up to be a lot of money so i'd like to know if we can make sure in the future that there's some kind of a line item or some kind of discussion whenever there's a raise proposed because i think probably going forward now salaries are one of our biggest expenses in this town and i think the public might like to weigh in on it and i know the council might like to have some discussion on it so if that's something that we could consider doing in the future i think it would be important for both the residents and the council yes and uh we're all for for doing that we did have some slides but perhaps that that got lost in that so we'll try to be a little bit more um open and make sure that that seems to be a lot more clear to the council going forward thank you we'll take that under advisement thank you so i do have a couple of other items i last week i attended the chambers foundation ribbon cutting so it's it's a new venture for the for the chamber of commerce in town and it's exciting for them and for us so if you get a chance you can check that out on the on the chambers website there were a lot of businesses and a lot of people in attendance and also on june 14th i attended the global ties arizona the town hosted a luncheon with mayors from argentina botswana gambia italy kosovo and south africa and these people were so impressed with this town and above all our fountain and our parks they wanted to know a lot about our water reclamation and how we how we deal with our wastewater and that kind of thing so it was a good exchange of ideas and thoughts and we gave them a lot of information about our town and they were very impressed with the fact that here we are in the middle of the desert and we have a fountain that uh one of the highest fountains in the world so uh it was a good exchange so it was a a good thing to be able to attend and then uh two saturdays ago i had the pleasure of attending operation screen reduction and you may be wondering what that's all about the owners of pearl nutrition on saturday june 11th in conjunction with a couple of businesses in town uh held what we call operation screen reduction it's to get youth in our town off of screens whether it's an iphone ipad monitor tvs that type of thing so in the in attendance were uh council candidates uh brenda allen skiller corn hannah toth uh sheriff joe uh councilman david spellich and um orlando brown did a lot of the videoing for for the uh for the event and the goal again was to raise money for the boy scouts in our local town to help send them off to camp and get them out of the house and off the screens so i'm pleased to report that we raised over 3 700 and every single scout in this town will be attending camp so it was very successful and scout scout troop 343 raised all the funds necessary to be able to accomplish that goal so it was really great to see the town come together and support the youth in this town so it was well needed and well well-attended wrong button i too attended as jerry just said and i think we had 60 or 70 residents show up and write checks and hand cash to the uh scout master so um i think it was a great event and they had a slideshow going on during the event and showed all the events that the uh kids that go to this camp participate in there was horse riding and shooting archery a bunch of things so i was really glad to go to it and uh show them support and i was even more excited that 60 or 70 residents showed up and donated so thank you this week i attended the one and only legislative update call that we've had in easily a month if not six weeks also i went to the gpec ambassador event the arizona's craft beer industry i was really bummed i couldn't go to the on-site meeting because rumor has it there was a taste test unfortunately i had a meeting beforehand so i couldn't make it work according to the arizona craft brewers guild we've got about 94 brewing companies in arizona with about 120 brewing locations in 2021 they estimated an economic impact just of this industry of one billion dollars so yeah it was it was a very interesting meeting and you know me i'll talk beer it was super fun thank you councilwoman well i really appreciate that you were able to go to that launch obviously i was out of town we have a lot of people out of town um abroad and such so um yeah i got to go to my granddaughter's graduation so that was very nice in new york the only thing is tomorrow we have a mag regional council passing of the gavel from mesa mayor giles to avondale mayor weiss and looking forward to that our next item is a proclamation which is uh saying that july is park and recreation's month so i think we might have a couple of commissioners here and if you want to come up with rachel i will present writing that there we go ready whereas parks and recreation is an integral part of communities throughout the country including the town of fountain hills and promotes health and wellness improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks and whereas parks and recreation promotes time spent in nature which positively impacts mental health by increasing cognitive performance and well-being and alleviating illnesses such as depression attention deficit disorders and alzheimer's and whereas parks and recreation encourages physical activities by providing space for popular sports hiking trails swimming pools and many other activities and whereas parks and recreation is a leading provider of healthy meals nutrition services and education activities such as out of school time programming youth sports and environmental education which are critical to childhood development and whereas parks and rec increases a community's economic prosperity through increased property values tourism attraction and retention of businesses and crime reduction and whereas parks and rec is fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community and ensures the ecological beauty of our community and provides a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors and whereas the town of fountain hills recognizes the benefits derived from parks and rec resources so therefore i jenny dickey mayor fountain hills do proclaim july to be recognized as park and recreation month this 21st day of june 2022.

congratulations [Applause] hey anybody have anything they want to say thank you mayor i will say something on your way while you're walking makeup congratulations to our gold star parks department thank you all right oh got a shock thank you so much um our scheduled public appearances we are going to have our presentation by captain kratzer from mcso welcome captain good evening madam mayor members of the council get this going here that didn't take long to have technical difficulties i just need the home screen it's on the home screen here thank you okay i know tonight is the last council meeting before summer break so i promised uh justin weldy i'd keep this to an hour and a half all right um so i usually try to do a stat presentation that covers the crime stats for the last couple of years around february not long after the end of the year closes so we have two two to three years of stats that we could show what the year prior looked like well i wasn't able to do that for i had some unexpected time out of the office so what i decided to do that i think would be a little bit more relevant was go back for two years looking at kind of a modified fiscal year in a way so the stat comparison that i'm going to do will look at two years and as i go through i'll explain what those two years time frames will look like so we'll look at june 2020 through may of 2021 it'll be a month time period and i'll just reference that as year and then we'll look at june 2021 through may 2022 same 12 another 12 month period and that'll just be referenced as year and what the stat comparison will review for those two years will be the top 20 calls for service i think that's relevant because it shows what residents of town are calling into the sheriff's office for for what those incidents are they're not always crimes you'll see as we go through those then i'll look at the top 20 on view activities by deputies so and i'll have definitions of all this as we go they'll be brief but that's just when a deputy has downtime and they're conducting on-view activities things that they observe and then we'll look at the top 20 calls for service that resulted in an incident report and that's a little different than the call for service because a call for service with an incident report means that there was either a crime and that's why a report's written or something significant enough that a report should be authored so those change a little bit then just the top 20 calls for service and then we'll look at major crime indicators that's probably what most people are the most interested in knowing but we'll get there and it won't take that long i promise okay so a call for service that's a call generated by a member of the public or another agency or any external source to mcso so it's not anything a deputy is is doing it would be something that a deputy has called for the mcso has called for so we'll get into our top 20 calls for service right away so you could see welfare checks are the most the top 20 and that's the number one thing we get calls for and that's usually someone can't get a hold of somebody and they would like a deputy to go check on somebody those numbers always remain really high a false burglar alarm you can see how high those are citizen motorist assist and i don't know how well you guys can see those numbers hopefully they're clear enough for the members of the audience and those at home i believe that this is going to be posted online on the website so people could go back and look at this follow-up that's when somebody calls in just asking for additional follow-up on something they may have another bit of information they want to add on a previous call i highlighted some of the ones that there were noticeable changes on that in my opinion are a little bit more relevant so i just want to let you know if you have any questions during this or you want to stop me and ask any questions sometimes what i think is relevant may be different than what you guys see or something may jump out at you guys that you have a question on but loud neighbors disturbing we saw we saw a drop in that um which i was a little surprised to see because we've had a lot more calls for service for some of our short-term rentals and the um we call them party houses um we we've seen an ex we've experienced a increase in those calls but i think across the board maybe other noise disturbances where someone just has a neighbor who's playing some loud music maybe that's dropped a little bit vehicle crash with no injuries and again remember these are just the calls for service that the public makes so sometimes when a deputy gets there the call may change and it may not necessarily be what the call came in as vehicle crashed with no injuries we saw an increase there of from 2021 of 116 to 163.

in my next slide i'm going to cover some of the significant things that we're seeing here going through suspicious persons traffic hazards civil actions suspicious persons and vehicles attempts to locate a lot of times those are for drivers that are driving aggressively audible burglar alarms civil matters and standbys you could see thefts that that dropped a little bit from the year prior assists to other agencies that that's fort mcdowell or scottsdale or another agency calls us for anything found property animal noise problems we saw an increase there criminal damage over two years remain the same for calls that we received and then injured sick persons so takeaways from that what i notice in that and i use these to analyze kind of our personnel and maybe shifts and where we put personnel or if we see a significant call for service peak we try to put more personnel there suspicious activity calls and suspicious person to vehicle calls over the last two years that just shows us that people are remaining diligent we constantly ask people to be diligent in what you see if you see something suspicious please call it in even if you think it may be nothing but you got a hunch we'll go check it out and maybe it's nothing and we'll clear it or sometimes maybe it's someone looking to commit a burglary or some other crime the loud neighbors disturbing calls have decreased by nearly 11 percent the other thing to keep in mind on some of these the percentage number that's associated to it looks really large not necessarily here but in some of the other stats but kind of like with any numbers and data when you have a small sample size that percentage a few calls or things can change it pretty drastically vehicle crash with no injury calls have increased by 40 so we went from 116 to theft calls decreased by 19 yeah i have a quick question on that increase of 40 sure do you know is any of that due to uh being impaired not many are due to impairment we we obviously have some vehicle crashes even minor vehicle accidents no injuries that result in duis that number has remained pretty consistent over the last two years um uh animal noise problems calls have increased by nearly 37 percent and criminal damage calls have remained the exact same over the two-year comparison at 57 and again these are calls for service from the public sometimes the deputy may get there on a criminal damage and it may be you know someone wrote on the driveway with chalk and even though it came in as a call that way it's not really a crime it's not a criminal damage that number could change from the end with the report so next we'll look briefly at the on-view activity of a deputy and that self-initiated activity by a deputy and not a call for service from dispatch on-view activity is generally conducted by a deputy when the deputy is not responding to a call for service as calls for service take priority so in our top 20 over the two year comparison i'll highlight some of the ones that we saw significant changes or important changes patrol vacation watches those are always high we saw an increase in deputies doing those i think a lot of people starting to get out of town again now that maybe kova is starting to weigh in a little bit school programs we saw a pretty hefty increase in that again a lot of things are covered related here now that we're starting to get out of some of those restrictions welfare checks we saw pretty big increase on deputies doing those speeders that one is just when a deputy based on maybe an area he knows is problematic or she knows is problematic or there's a call from a resident of hey we're getting speeders on the street can you park in the area so that's the amount of times deputies went out in those areas looking for speed enforcement community policing we saw a large increase in that again we were able to get out now and have more contact with individuals we're starting to pick that up but you can see some of the other the traffic violations i didn't cover at the top but that remained pretty consistent over that two year period that we looked at with just a one and a half percent decrease and so i kind of covered all this already the traffic violations have remained mostly consistent patrol vacation watches school programs community policing efforts have all increased substantially due to covet restrictions relaxing uh welfare checks have increased by 135 percent you could chalk that up to the same and deputies patrolling for speeders have increased and some of that is based on some of the emphasis over the last year with um the corridors and all that calls for service with an incident report so that's what we're looking at next so these are the calls that public made where the deputy took a report so our policy requires a deputy to take a report if there's an allegation of a crime that's made and they can determine that it does appear a crime was made or did occur but not only crimes also for vehicle crashes so a vehicle crashed with no injuries we saw 100 in the year 2021 modified year 2021 and then an increase to 143 thefts we saw a decrease from 64 to 48 criminal damages we saw a slight decrease identity thefts we saw a decrease trespassing we saw a decrease frauds in con games we saw a decrease in minimal but a decrease disorderly conduct we saw a pretty good size decrease there from 40 to 21.

a vehicle crashed with injuries we saw an increase from 25 to 35 hit and run no injuries we saw an increase from 24 to 31.

now hit and run with no injuries that could be something as minor as and not to downplay this but a car parked at a grocery store parking lot and someone comes out and finds damage on their vehicle the other driver didn't leave their information behind that's a hit and run with no injuries um but a hit and run with no injuries could also occur on the roadway a minor fender bender in a car takes off so it's kind of all-encompassing uh assaults we saw an increase on that from 18 to 31 shoplifting we saw an increase from 18 to 29 and then assaults domestic violence we saw a slight decrease so just some of the takeaways we saw vehicle crash with no injuries reports those increased by 43 percent theft reports decreased by 25 in that two-year comparison criminal damages saw a minor decrease identity thefts decreased by 24 trespassing decreased by 16 uh fraud and con games decreased by three calls so not a very significant amount the disorderly conduct by 47 and a half decrease and then we did see a 40 increase with vehicle crashes with injuries hit and runs we saw a 29 increase and assaults that increased from the 18 to 31 was a 72 percent increase and then a shoplifting increase by 61 percent now i can't answer for all of those we do look when we see significant increase as we try to go back and see if there's any correlation we can make or things that we could do to try to bring that number down or put attention to those things or understand why they went up so like the shoplifting's target is very good with their loss prevention at reporting a shoplifting system they get hit pretty good because they're a large department store with a lot of electronics so they'll usually report um when they get them they might have two or three when they do report it at one time and a lot of times they turn it over to us when they find so some of that we did see some increase with target retail shop thefts with electronic devices over the last year and then we'll move over to major crime indicators and so these are crime stats that include arson assaults burglaries homicides motor vehicle thefts robberies sex violations and thefts so i think it's important here to kind of let you know what you know each of these intel because some of them even for me it didn't make sense what some of them do until like a burglary but arson that one's pretty self-explanatory includes any intentional or suspicious cause of fire for residential or businesses or the attempt so that's the key in this this also includes attempts for any of these crimes assaults will include any simple assault any aggravated assault this will also include any domestic violence assaults any stabbings shootings or attempts of these crimes burglaries include business and residential as well as any attempts motor vehicle thefts include stolen vehicles and stolen vehicle attempts robberies include armed robbery strong armed robberies carjackings and attempts of these crimes and then theft is probably the biggest one because it encompasses so much it includes thefts from vehicles deaths from residential and businesses shopliftings and the attempts so some of this numbers the data we all know how data can sometimes be used and it's not necessarily used in an attempt to make it look bad or look good but sometimes human error can play in there not even human error but deputies a lot of times the way these that this data is being collected is how a deputy clears a call for service so if a deputy has a package he gets a report of a package that was stolen off of the porch of a property that in theory is a burglary someone entered a residential property to commit a crime but some deputies may call that a theft from a theft and not a burglary so you could see how maybe it could be reported different burglary rather than a theft and we work hard to make sure that the deputies understand those things but it happens all right so the major crime indicators for two years the two-year comparison we see thefts in 2021 199 and 2022 175 and again that includes all those things that that incorporates the debt from vehicles that that from residential businesses shopliftings and attempts so and that also includes the we saw a pretty significant rise in and not just fountain hills but the valley of um lost my trains out there of the deaths from the vehicles the uh i don't know why i'm slipping on my mind slipping on that one um the exhaust piece i can't think of catalytic converter i don't know why yeah so we saw a significant increase across the state not even just the state across the united states and those um so that played some role in there but the numbers were still down for 2022.

assaults were pretty even 98.99 burglaries that's where we saw an increase from 50 to 77 and then motor vehicle thefts pretty close a small decrease sexual violations a little bit of a drop off there robberies those numbers were the same two and two very low numbers and thankfully and homicide and arsons we saw zero so that chart at the bottom just kind of shows that in a bar graph it's not super crisp to see but it just gives you kind of a visual um but what i will say and then this gives major crime indicators by month so just this tells you major crime indicators include tells you all those things that includes and it shows you a combined total month to month of um how many of those we had you there's really not a pattern there it kind of goes up comes down there's no significant pattern there and then major crime indicator takeaways deaths have decreased by 12 percent assaults have remained consistent burglaries have increased by 54 and again that number um that percent sounds large and i mean it is the change but it's 50 to 77 and motor vehicle thefts have remained consistent from 31 to 29.

so there were some things in not being able to address some of the um have my presentation for a couple months we've had a couple of busy agendas here uh there have been some topics of conversations that have come up that if i would have been doing the monthly presentations maybe we would have addressed and looking at the stats you know you don't always see um the things that maybe people have reached out to mcso on or the council but one of the things that um i when i was looking through these we did look at you know there was a large topic of conversations of the uh the group homes or the um rehabilitation homes and we had a lot of emails from residents and there was a lot of communication of just you know have you guys seen an increase in calls for service for those and i just thought with doing this and i know we've already kind of moved forward from that but when we looked at that from law enforcement data and calls for service that we had we didn't see any significant increase in numbers in fact we didn't really have any calls for service that were identifiable to the properties that were shown now that's not to say that there were things that happened that weren't reported to law enforcement that's just speaking on statistical data that we had for that so i just want to bring that up if there was any questions on any of the things that i talked about today or any crime statistics or things that maybe i didn't hit that you had interest in please ask yes thank you madam mayor thanks cap as always do we track aggravated batteries of police officers i could get that data we do track it it's usually low enough in fountain hills that it doesn't hit on the radar of top 20 calls or or it would be included in that assault major crime indicator but i don't have that number readily available for fountain hills what it would look like for the last two years i know we've had a couple just interested yeah um something that i would like to be addressed by you in the future after the break is if you could touch upon how many registered sex offenders live in fountain hills if you could also touch on the policy of mcso of checking for address checks of resident the residents of sex offenders how many arrests we make of people that are in non-compliance who are registered sex offenders so um i'm kind of surprised at the number i'm just doing some peripheral research that uh of sex offenders that we have in town so if you could maybe put a report together i think it would be something that the residents might be interested in knowing um i think everybody should look and see where they live and see who's living by them so if you could look into that and kind of give us an idea i know in chicago we would do resident checks every six months to make sure people are in compliance i don't know what it is here and we also would make arrests yeah that's that's something we could do i can work with the town manager on maybe how to get that to the council or or you know time frame um i i will tell you that at the district level we don't have a lot of of direct involvement we have a unit that handles that and i'm sure i could get that information from them and i'm sure they have resources that can tell them by zip code and area where where they are and then also answering how many times that they do the address checks or the registration update checks great appreciate it um what i wanted to address too is um i waited for this to talk to you personally uh i received a couple of emails um bashing me for um running down law enforcement so um i don't know if the people before they sat down at their computer partaked in smoking some of the devil's lettuce because anybody that knows me knows that i am a huge supporter of law enforcement so where they got this from um they thought that i called into question because i asked for an audit of the mcso contract and what services you're providing the town what we're paying for and making sure we're getting what we paid for so let me clarify which i don't think i need to clarify to you or to the men and women on that are assigned to fountain hills i'm not negative law enforcement by me requesting that we um check because it's 50 percent of our budget so um i would think that when we're spending that much money on law enforcement that the residents would want to know we're getting what we're paying what we get paid for so um i hope you didn't take my comments and thought that i was running down mcso the it's important to note that the men and women that serve as well as you um don't have anything to do with the contract and the servicing of the contract that's done by command staff down in phoenix and the sheriff himself so i want to make it perfectly clear that i respect i love and i support everybody in law enforcement and especially the people that work here in fountain hills so i didn't want my message to be taken out of context or spun the problem that i have is i believe that we're paying a lot of money and spending a lot of our tax dollars and i want to make sure we're getting what we paid for uh council member spells that's completely understandable um i think the men and women of law enforcement feel very supported by you and the council as a whole here and have now as far as i know we've not had any um feelings of the opposite of that and regardless you know questioning the contract or you know the due diligence with fiscal responsibility um the deputies totally understand where that comes from it's out of their reach and their control and i don't think it slows them down one bit so thank you for that thanks for the report captain it was very enlightening um can you comment on the increase in burglaries is that more crime of opportunity or what what are your thoughts on that yeah so we looked at that just to see because there was a noticeable increase there and and that's essentially what it looks like there was no there was no trend or pattern of you know time of day or day day of the week that was occurring on it was pretty sporadic and most of them did appear to be crime of opportunities um we didn't have any you know major residential burglaries that resulted in a high value i don't want to say we didn't have any but these weren't those these were more of um you know i and i can't speak generally speaking on all of them because i'm going to put them all into one shape that they don't fit in but yeah they did appear to be more crime of opportunities and not necessarily any trend or pattern of you know this is the place commit and what i will say is i don't know how you guys took this report but if i was a resident of fountain hills i'd be very pleased to live here i think the crime stats are extremely low especially when you compare fountain hills to the rest of the valley and i mean i'd be lucky i'd feel lucky to live here and live in a place that had such low crime stats especially violent crime stats and you know i know the property crime stats are unsettling but even those and when you put them in you know relative they're pretty low per population thank you any other questions or comments and i'm sorry um mayor i did have one additional thing that i need to advise you on that was separate from this and it'll just take a couple of minutes you may have some questions on it um but i think it's important to let the council know logistically with mcso i'm afraid to say this now with uh council members fellowship no but this is something that the council should know there's been some logistical changes within mcso and that's regarding the detectives that were at every patrol district so each patrol district we have seven of them we are called district seven fountain hills rio verde we have six other ones district one in mesa district two in phoenix district three and sun city all you know we have seven of those we each had our own unit of detectives at our district and those detectives were responsible for the investigations of any crimes in that district that were beyond the scope of a patrol deputy so something that may take a little bit more work to investigate and they were also responsible for being called out after hours and investigate any serious crimes um so those detectives were housed here we had three the town pays for three full-time detectives um the agency made a move it was supposed to i think it was the goal was this fiscal year so july they made the move a little bit early all of our detectives from the patrol districts have now been centralized and housed in the downtown phoenix area they're under now one unit called the general crimes division and that division is now responsible for east and west side and all of the detectives are now housed there so if we have a crime here that would be sent to a detective typically before our patrol district detectives it will now be investigated by them there in phoenix and then if there's a response that's needed they would respond the east side crew would respond here for persons crimes fraud crimes basically they're broke down by persons and property crimes so you know i'm not trying to sell you all the bad parts of this because what the glaring effect of this is is that i we lose the three deputies that were housed here that we are able to sometimes utilize if there was a bigger call for service or an incident that occurred they were here they could respond what we gain from this new centralized unit is more expertise it's more in line with what the standard is in law enforcement in some of the major valley cities now we differ quite a bit from the other city agencies because we service a bunch of different areas in maricopa county we're not just uh you know the city of mesa or the city of phoenix so but one of the areas and one of the selling points of this is that those detectives are getting a lot more individual training for their area of expertise so now they don't have to be good at investigating three or four different types of crime they focus on the person's crime or the property crime and one of the things we're seeing and one of the reasons they went to that was the identity theft cases that we're seeing a spike in and the specialized investigations that come with that so they have a whole unit down there for identity thefts a lot of times those were ones where the district detectives was a little bit out of their realm of understanding anyway so um i'll i just wanted to let the council know that that move was made that the agency did go to that and so um you know that'll be something that you know if there's further discussion we need whether you know it's off the record or what the town manager we can have well i would add this to the top of the list of something we want in the new iga to have it back because i do think as a small community having those bodies here their bodies that can be reallocated for other uses i i get the idea thinking from a centralized standpoint it might create the the synergy and efficiencies but i can see from our standpoint as a as a small community i think it would be um we're losing three bodies so i think that's something we should consider trying to get back i sure wish you and i said that before i went into my my my it doesn't change my opinion of mcso i know that decision wasn't made by you i'm sure it was made by a big boss who has no idea what he's doing and has never spent any time being a detective um so now here's what i'm concerned about i'm concerned about um what our clearance rate is going to be so for people and residents who don't know when a detective has assigned a case to see that case all the way through either to an arrest or the case is closed that's called a clearance rate so what i would be what i would be concerned about is because of that happening the clearance rate plummeting i don't know what the clearance rate is right now i think you told me a while back what it was so i would be very interested to find out since this move has happened when we had three detectives assigned to us what was their clearance rate and how we can track it i think um i boy um why weren't we consulted since we have a contract you're not going to know the answer to that i don't even know why i asked i like i said when you have these people in the ivory tower making decisions like that that affect a small community like us it doesn't make any sense to me so and if i could council member spells that was probably one of my biggest concerns was the maybe the responsiveness of and the um service that maybe a resident here in fountain hills gets with the detective when when they were here and they were housed here it was easy for me to be over that case or get a call from a resident and look into it with my detective and that can still happen i just you know i want to ensure and we can definitely track case clearance and ensure that i think they're going to need a little bit of time because it's been about a month and a half two months and there's probably not been a whole lot of clearances of cases i would say yet so maybe we give it a six months and we start doing a comparison but what i was gonna say is just also that responsiveness ensuring that that still is there that people can reach out to the detectives and have that same level of ownership of the investigation by a detective who you know doesn't work here there was something to be said about a detective working here being assigned here with ownership of a case and i'm just hoping we don't lose that in the transition but to the town manager's point i know that there's some negotiations going on and that might be the time to broach that topic with executive command so are the three detectives that we lost even though they went into the would you call that the general assignment pool yeah general crimes unit okay those three detectives that we lost that are now downtown are they do those three detectives still going to handle things even though they're downtown specific to fountain hills no it's going to be it'll be whatever detective is assigned on that unit who gets the case from here would be so they those three detectives would no longer have just ownership to fountain hills they would be for the east side if they're assigned to the east side so district 1 lake patrol and fountain hills so it would be whoever gets whoever's on call and whoever is the case agent and it could be different quite a bit i hate to say it but i think this is this is not going to be not going to be good i i don't know that this is the place to have this kind of a conversation this is obviously technical and um you know perhaps getting a detective who's an expert on the particular crime or whatever investigation that's happening here so i think this is something since we are in this trans transition looking at the audit looking at a new negotiations that that is obviously something that we will look at going forward but trying to get to the ins and outs right now of this and make uh judgments on it maybe i i'm not comfortable doing that right now obviously it's a change and it's something that i'm glad that uh where we know about going forward and we'll make sure that as always we are well served by mcso um again we haven't had this uh type of a study in the last maybe two years but we were the safest zip code in the valley and we were the getting that for the least per capita and the least per square mile of any city or municipality town in maricopa county so i think that these are all items that we will look at going forward i want to thank you so much because i know recently there were some a missing person and some other things going on in town it was so reassuring to see all you there in the neighborhood and in the um you know in town and solving that and others that i'm aware of so i really appreciate all your attention and um does anybody have any other questions or comments thank you so much captain take care and justin i'll yield the rest of my time thank you next is our call to the public do we have any speaker cards yes mayor we do first we have one written comment from jennifer nil nelson that you received at your your stations and then we have eight um who were here who put in a request to speak card uh first is jacqueline underwood hi thank you actually my name is jacqueline schlum underwood i've been a resident of this town for 45 years uh it's breaking my heart to be here right now i am so disappointed in this my husband retired 30 after 32 years of being a phoenix police officer he started spending more time at home we said we'll take on a project we'll expand our backyard january 28th i wrote a letter to the town saying i have oh i'm sorry i got a i got a survey done and i found i had a bunch of easements um january 28th i wrote a letter to the town and said how do i get rid of these easements time went by march 9th i called again how do i get rid of these easements and farhad answered the phone and i said i wrote you an email on january 28th he confirmed yes i have it sorry i have never called you back or replied sent me the instructions on how to remove the easements not an easy task i had to write eight letters to eight different utilities pay each of them a fine or a fee of usually fifty to a hundred dollars i compiled all this got my survey done paid to have my own survey wrote a couple questions of farhad no answer so i stopped in one day i said i'll just ask him i walked upstairs there was a woman standing at the desk no greeting i had my stack of papers i said i think i need to turn these in her response to me was we don't take those here so rude i said okay can i speak to farhad i want to make sure i have everything she said you need to submit this online okay i'll do that can i speak to farhad she went and got him brought him back and he said he was very nice he went through all my documents he said i had everything inside i just need to submit online oh and don't forget to pay the 750 dollar fee to remove the easements that nobody wants on my property so i went home took care of that paid the fee submitted everything what do you think i've heard from the town crickets nothing this town deserves better service not only from the town employees but from you guys these mass meetings were embarrassing they were so unprofessional 45 years i've sat here i've never had to do this and i thought there was a time when we did have to do this 2003 john beidler you want to know what happened to him he was recalled shape up we need a new change now next is liz gildersleeve good evening i wanted to congratulate you on the legacy you'll be leaving for fountain hills thanks to your passage of the recently watered down version of the sober home ordinance that you voted on and passed in may perhaps you are already aware that local realtors such as the one who's marketing a new construction build on fountain hills boulevard are already touting the possibility of a sober home to prospective buyers so congrats the word must be getting out now just as we warned you it would that fountain hills is officially a sober home destination an easy mark thanks to your week ordinance i'm sure the families that live near the fountain hills boulevard new build location will be thrilled with the news you could have been bold you could have been brave but you chose to side with the sober home and detox industry you told us in part it was because you feared lawsuits but apparently the recent 67 million dollar lawsuit filed last week against the town from the park place developers and maricopa county superior court is no big deal regardless of the outcome and i hope it works out but regardless of the outcome where was that same boldness and tenacity that i watched you all display in the face of the park place developers during the sober home discussion we would have cheered to see you defend your fellow residents and adopt the planning and zoning reasonable ordinance recommendation instead moments after the sober home vote in may residents watched mr magazine unfortunately is not here go down into the audience and shake the hands of the fountain hills recovery owners did anyone seek out ron and marianne sampson after your may vote you might remember the homeowner who who during her call to public tearfully and genuinely described what it was like living next to a sober home instead mayor dickey incredibly you equated the samson situation to living next door to a barking dog the lack of empathy was stunning again well done our town can only hope the upcoming election will bring much needed change to this room and a new council that will fix the problems you've thrust on our community starting immediately with amending the sober home ordinance thank you next is bart shea ironically the developer she was referencing so eight years ago i came to town there was a patch of dirt in the middle of it and i got talked into developing the entire patch of dirt nine different development agreements were scratched over that piece of dirt not one of them ever came to fruition nine different development agreements were agreed to by the town they could never get financing on they could never build anything on they couldn't do anything on so after two years we negotiated a development agreement got a little bit backed up on some stuff couldn't get the thing done in time actually we could have achieved a permit and not been timed out ironically i was informed this morning during a court case that the town is elected to determine the development agreement is expired and they're going to have no further review of the plans which means it's a complete do-over on the thing if it goes through so the town issued they could have issued an at-risk rating permit like they did for the past two projects they didn't that would have kept it from getting timed out the town granted approval in both phases to complete the grading prior to the building plans this was a staff decision or a council decision either way it was the cause of this delay on it these are part of the agreements that town delayed through staff imposing unneeded conditions in other words staff decided the development agreement was not relevant and that we needed to follow the 2020 vision plan was created in the development agreement and evidenced by the council asking which one was governing this parcel the town was walking away from the a lot of little things so the town is literally walking away from 2.6 million dollars worth of infrastructure that i was providing paying for on town property that'd be the completion of the avenue which at this point is going to stay just like it looks right on the street even if i build the project at this point without the development agreement i'm under no condition to go and prove that i don't have to that was a gift the linear park from the centennial circle which was the final connection to make the circle for downtown that's no longer requirement that was only a requirement inside the development agreement this council has decided that no longer needs to be there so even if i go build the product on there without the development agreement you don't get the linear park you weren't paying for it i was the town parking lot the extra parking that doesn't go either all the arguments over how many spaces are going to be there and john's confusing concept of how it has to go that's no longer there either again it's 2.6 million dollars if the town wants to complete they have to come up with a budget they're already 60 million in a hole for street repairs but they're going to come up with 2.6 to finish downtown on it the town's walking away the town is walking away parking stalls your users of the avenue will only be accessible from the avenue so if we don't build a product that was designed implemented and put in for permits on that and approved by the town council from this point forward the avenue the fountain can't be closed in other words no more fair no more great fair no more clothes in saguaro in the avenue thank you next we have bridget muellner hopefully i said your name correctly i was uh interested in your all the people that you had that you met with botswana and all the i just want to know where you had lunch up at adero canyon i would can't even imagine how you ended up picking picking all that but anyway the reason i'm here and good evening everybody i understand the council took out liability insurance for sober living homes but didn't include the responsibility of the house manager on the premises i wanted to know why that decision was made why not have the responsibility of the house manager on the premises i wanted to know about that it's one of my questions i want to put you on the spot um i also wanted to have clarification of the number of people allowed in sober living facilities in fountain hills how many people are allowed in these facilities i imagine that depends on how big that is but um is there a cap on these houses in this town i mean how many are we going to allow here um if you don't mind um because you're asking a lot of questions this item under state law is not agenda size for full discussion so what i will do we we do have the department director in the back i don't know if he brought business cards but he can certainly answer all your questions that you've asked at the the podium so if you don't mind he he will get your information written down john do you need a tablet i have that if you need it okay i do have a couple more points if that's okay can i continue i also wanted to know if parking of the residents staff and visitors has ever been addressed at these assisted or sober living living houses uh next door to me at um i don't know if i can say the address is that all right maybe not okay on fountain hills boulevard next door to me is at the new build on the description there was a assisted living put on the description which they've since taken off but they were going to have an assisted living there i guess at some point but i guess apparently because of the um the footage uh 1200 foot uh footage they're no longer going to be able to do that but um i just wondered because it's a boulevard and parking would have been an issue on the boulevard and i just wondered what made them think they could go and do that ah time is up we'll we'll get back to you um there's there's answers for probably all of that and uh and more so thank you next we have dominic cirone hopefully i said your name correctly i kind of feel a little like a fish out of water because i got nothing bad to say tonight good evening my name is dominic cerrone and i am here tonight to pass on my thanks i'd like to recognize the staff at the community center for the overwhelming success of joe arpaio's 90th birthday celebration from start to finish jennifer lyons and her staff excelled in preparing and executing the event with more than 250 people in attendance with many vips the staff performed remarkably well from the setup to the patriotic decorations the electricity generated by the event will certainly circulate through fountain hills and the surrounding joe's birthday celebration will help fount hills and the community center to be in the spotlight for other spectacular events we have a gem of a facility and a staff that can help bring other meetings to our town fountain hills has everything right here for what it takes to become a leader in the event planning marketplace i've been coming here for 20 years and i couldn't be more proud of the community center and the city council for helping to showcase this event thank you for all those involved in making this happen joe arpaio's 90th birthday party is one that most people won't soon forget thank you next we have lori troller good evening mayor councilman um grady um i'm lori troller resident of 5g is my topic and hopefully you guys had a chance to read the 18 page article i left in your mailboxes and i literally tried to email that for 10 hours didn't go through sorry but that's where i'm going to start with the assumption you guys now know exactly how dangerous and the death and disease that this type of radiation causes and so the public knows i'm happy to email anybody who would like that information um or you can contact bob burns in the back he has a copy of the same letter and he can publish that i'm sure he's happy to um and i also promise it's it's written very simply if you are scared of the technology and what it is it's very simply written you'll understand um so mayor dickey we all understand safety is your utmost concern so we're i'm hoping you can look at it in this light because it's a little different um and i'm asking for a special session uh to be scheduled during your vacation sorry uh to get this ordinance done and in place because the timing is critical um a 5g is the 5g rollout is well underway and we need to get this in place before we have towers starting to pop up in our yards um they've already converted a few of the towers that they do own in the in the facility or in the town and the churches and in the school and i know everybody seeing the one at palisades and shea we are about to be drenched in this 5g radiation so looking across arizona fountain hills is only is one of only a handful of places that uh don't have a um what's it called it's called a small cell ordinance in place and without one first of all the aesthetics of this town is going to be dictated by the telecommunication companies and the reason for that is it it takes over a hundred thousand uh 5g antennas to cover the area of fountain hill so just imagine driving up golden eagle and seeing a straight line of fake cactuses in every third yard it's not right and second the importance of not living in 5g radiation so your proclamation you just made for the parks so health and wellness improves physical mental health cognitive performance well-being alleviating illness depression and incorporate or increase property values 5g radiation is going to destroy all of it so april is about to present the legality of what we can include in our ordinance um so please take her information and let's put this in in the next two weeks thank you grady just just a point of correction uh lori so i i did send you we did have a small cell wireless ordinance and a couple resolutions that were passed in 2018 and it was based on the league's model ordinance that all the other cities pretty much followed so we do have it in place and i did send you an email just before this meeting with the copies of that so that you can take a look at it but we do have regulations following state law because in 2017 i believe it was house bill 2365 passed governor signed it into law and it pretty much requires cities and towns to not put up any obstacles to 5g coming into their communities so but we do have um regulations that we were allowed to adopt and so we do have some in place but but nothing that would prohibit it from coming into town yeah well there's april get on to that um we can do something about skill or school sorry and there are some towns that have done in the residential area but she'll get into that but thank you thank you next we have april mccormick hi good evening all so um i have dealt with this extensively for years everywhere i've lived and that's been california and hawaii i'm now here i'm originally from north carolina i've been a planning commissioner for 500 square mile county and i know way more about this than most people do um i know that the house 2365 was based on the fcc's federal order of 2018 and the fast track order you know really limiting what you can do however multiple municipalities all over the country have taken a little bit of what they still can do and crafted that into a masterfully restrictive ordinance to protect residential property values and the aesthetics of their community what the fcc order still allows you to do is to control the aesthetics of your town and well we're talking about aesthetics with antennas what that means is the location the height the setbacks and one other thing i can't remember it on top of my head yeah i've been on the density right the spacing between them so when these restrictive small cell ordinances are passed basically location is laid out per zoning district so the first time i became aware of a unbelievably awesome 5g ordinance was mill valley california and as soon as they adopted that i called the plane director i called the attorneys interviewed absolutely everyone that i brought to the city of upland california we did a massive citizen education program massive email campaign petitions with hundreds and thousands of residents and it was the point where we just couldn't do nothing anymore and so mill valley broke it down into most uh desired district you know heavy industrial light industrial commercial makes use residential was off the list and when hospital 2365 was introduced yuma pitched a fit and became exempt and found hills having no street lights whatsoever and being a dark sky community could have done the same thing i believe i'd like you to actually go back and try to think about doing that but while it's in place now what you can do is you can do an urgency ordinance which gives you 45 days to look over three different ordinances that i've supplied you today that do just what i explained 1500 feet apart they can go in every other zoning classification besides residential and you're doing that because aesthetically it'll change this town forever let me tell you why you don't think you have a problem yet when a carrier comes in to do a application they're getting what's called a batch permit application that goes to public works not to you and that's 25 antennas per single application at that point it's too late you've lost all control and they're never coming down even when you adopt an ordinance they don't ask permission they ask forgiveness in upland we had them prohibited in the historic district well one night at three o'clock in the morning people out in the historic district were awakened were woken up out of a dead sleep because five g's were going on their utility pole outside of their home the next day myself and the council members amassed called the number on the box and some third party won't even tell you what carrier that was for it's impossible to get them down once they're up and you completely by doing nothing you are the lowest hanging fruit with a complete cart blanch the ordinance is the most permissive thing i've ever seen and it can be modified mill valley's ordinance is 108 pages i gave that to you today multiple municipalities all over the country are just copying and verbatim it has stood up to challenge and i would ask that you please put this on the agenda to discuss an urgency ordinance after you view the three different ordinances i gave you today thank you so much thank you our last speaker is dory wittrig mayor and council my name is dory woodrick and this evening i just wanted to mention a few things about the park place and development which is now a lawsuit development i understand but it's been an interesting period of time to see how this whole process has unraveled and i won't pretend to know all the details i don't it depends on whether you're not in my backyard kind of person or one who believes in progress and quality growth as to which side you might be on and there are a lot of in between i've been selling fountain hills since 1985 and always the completion of the downtown has been a very big bone of contention for our community it's even more so for those who come here and see a lot of vacant land and weeds it's easy to forget in 2022 how ugly this downtown was prior to the phase one of park place it's even easier to forget the immense amount of risk and effort and capital that it took for bart shea to get phase one off the ground but he did it and completely transformed our downtown and our community some like to quibble about building colors but in the grand scheme of things bart brought hundreds of people to our downtown which supported our businesses which in turn supports the rest of our community our downtown is now a place of pride and enjoyment it's easy to throw darts at most developers and bart shea is no exception he's a very bold personality who doesn't hold back his considerable opinion you have to be bold to take the risks he has taken but no one seems to give him credit for the many other many many thousands of dollars he has donated to this community for items like the musical instrument park the community garden the community theater and many many other efforts that he just writes a check for currently he's ready to donate thirty thousand dollars to the fountain of light sculpture to build the base because he cares i've been embarrassed at times for our town council for the way you have talked down to someone who has made such a dramatic difference to our community none of you sitting here or very few others ever have made such a large contribution or impact in our community i feel you've been no less than professional and have not taken into consideration the mountain of challenges there are to the development process in and 21 and 22 it has been horrendously difficult the last couple years and you've also made that process more difficult for him and now you risk losing the linear park the um the walkway which would be the completion of the avenue of the fountains and the final stretch of the sidewalk and the landscaping and the parking building that would give us 70 other public parking spaces and all because you don't like the personality before you and i realize that there are other technical issues but from the outside looking in the way you have behaved you've really taken a personal vendetta against him i encourage you to reconsider and work this out and you will also be walking away from five hundred thousand dollars in tpt taxes and six million dollars in bed and sales taxes over the next seven years which would have done much to improve our roads please let's work this out thank you any more cards no mayor that's it thank you so much just grady could we ask john to please meet with my schwein in the back of the room and that was going to be the top of my agenda in the morning because we do have her contact information so thank you thank you david next we have our consent agenda unless you'd like to take something off i could take a motion please if i could ask to be the consideration for the approval of the six months extension if it could be removed and voted on separately oh sure um let's see so what do i do i just say we we uh have all those items accept that one yeah seek approval of move for approval of the consent agenda except for item b okay and then that'll be the first item okay i have a motion please which one are we not approving right now b is in boy yes okay move to approve all of the consent minus b thank you thanks all in favor please say aye aye thank you so this will become our first item uh item b six month extension for saguaro and shea grady i'm gonna have for han go ahead and speak on this yes madam mayor uh members of the council hello uh uh as you see before the uh in the agenda the applicant is requesting a six-month extension i have asked the applicant to attend to provide the reasoning for that extension request but if you have any questions before me for me before i ask him to assist please do correct me if i'm wrong was this subject to a traffic study of some sort and where are we on that my understanding is it is subject to a traffic study particularly the council at the time expressed concerns about ingress egress at that location and however the way it was left is that it would be subject to approval by the town engineer who would typically do these types of evaluations for for traffic studies so it'd be administrative at that level and if i may add mayor that is to come with the the site plan submittal when and if that does come in thank you madam mayor i didn't mean to cause any confusion with this it's just would be hypocritical of me to approve an extension when i didn't approve the project to begin with so that's why i wanted it separated out i'm not for the extension i'm not for the project so that's why i didn't want it included in the agenda i didn't mean staff to get thrown for a loop or anything but i just want to be consistent in my voting thank you um so i get a motion please on this it's on page 119.

move to approve a six-month extension to the special use permit to allow residential uses at 9637 north soarow boulevard for maximum 17 dwelling units subject to the stipulations approved by council on december 7 2021.

thank you is there a second second thank you um so we have a motion and a second all in favor please say i i i opposed thank you so i think that means we don't have four or is that is that a majority of those who are here okay thank you yes mayor majority of the of the council quorum of the council present correct oh okay quorum is president all right thanks david appreciate it though i understand um our first item and only our regular agenda item is uh item 8a repealing our resolution about a new fountain lighting policy rachel uh good evening mayor and council um i do have a presentation but in the interest of time i know we have a lengthy secondary meeting the if you may recall earlier this year we presented a lighting policy regarding the requests for lights in the fountain we had allocated a opportunity for the public to request that however since that time there has been a case law through our supreme supreme court and at the recommendation of our town attorney he is recommending a amendment to that to remove the public opportunity to request colored lighting so the motion before you tonight is to modify our policy to remove that option essentially what it would do is that public request for the fountain lighting would not be accepted and that all lighting would be at the authorization of the town manager or the direction of council thank you do we have any speaker cards for this no mayor we do not thank you so everybody understand grady yeah just wanted to remind the council i think about half the council was kind of leaning this way in the first place so it shouldn't sound as a surprise and and we've already kind of been following that we've had council members provide direction to staff for instance we lit up in the colors of ukraine their flag colors on the fountain and we've done things like domestic violence month and things like that so um i think it's going to be business as usual the only thing is is that we will be just removing the the public component and they certainly the public could always request something through a council member then and the council could then give us direction but we're really saying that the policy as we know it before does not exist thank you don't let anybody know that we like a mandate but here's one that we're going along with so uh can i get a motion please move to approve resolution 2022-32 as presented thank you all in favor please say aye aye any opposed thanks rachel very much um our next item is legislative items and normally you know we've been kind of rushing through these um sharon did you have anything you wanted to say about it um there well you know we uh we had a conference call with our um our consultant today um the budget they got like eight days left um [Music] we had uh it's still up in the air obviously um uh senate bill 1116 which is removes residential rental tax which has a 500 000 hit on town of fountain hills um we're hoping that there was some um language in the wayfarer bill that's going to stop that from happening but we just have to keep watching that short-term rental bill uh not really what we wanted to see still a lot of back and forth on that but if they come through with the budget that bill's probably out the window but we will do our own we will we will work on our own ordinance we're going to move ahead we're going to look at fire as it has we're going to look at parking which has other ramifications so uh look forward to that on a future agenda and then we have the medical marijuana one which threatens to kind of undo what we did when it passed but again that seems like maybe something that won't work because it goes against the voter protection act so we will see how all those things come out but i want to make sure that we mention them all any other conversation thank you um so we will adjourn this meeting if i can get a motion for that thank you uh all in favor say aye aye and we're gonna get going with our joint meeting with our wonderful school board thank you so much for coming and uh we'll do some rearranging up here and we'll get you up here and we'll have some good talk all right and we're going to get going here so we'll call to order and we're going to start with i will ask president jenkins to introduce her members please thank you mayor dickey this evening from the school board we have dr wendy barnard mrs jill reed i'm nadia jenkins on this side we have mrs judy ritkowski and then mr dana sarr i would also like to recognize down below we have our current interim superintendent dr patrick sweeney and then our incoming superintendent dr kane jagadinsky we you know and we also have our um executive board secretary krista andre in the audience thank you so much welcome everyone we're happy to have you here um and i apologize but we had some um major travel plans with a couple of our our council members but uh believe me they're very interested and uh be happy to share with them everything that we talk about here so of course we have uh councilwoman grozbowski sharon we have uh councilman spelich mayor dickey and we have vice mayor jerry friedel and um so and the other folks will uh we'll catch them up on what we talk about so our our first item so yes we're only here to discuss we're not voting on anything we just want to get together you know covid you know we i don't know when when the time limit's going to run out where we can't keep blaming kobe for things but um but we have uh well been planning for quite a while trying to get together and um i know now your your school year's over and this is a good time for us to talk so i'm going to turn it over to grady and he will have our staff do presentations and such grady uh our town manager yes um so we're delighted if you look at the agenda under a and in the first bullet we have an item called safe routes of schools this was a collaborative effort between the fount hills unified school district and the town of found hills we were able to apply successfully and received some grand funding from the maricopa association of governments and i'm going to turn it over to public works director justin weldy who's going to just give you a little bit of an outline as to what the grant awards consist of and what we're going to be doing with that the funding that i'll turn it over to mr weldy thank you madam mayor madam president council members board members thank you for the opportunity to share this exciting information the first section that we are going to be discussing is the safe routes to school grants i i would like to note that in the agenda that is published it says opportunities we took advantage of those opportunities some years back because these are every two to four years depending on the type of grant worked with the school district in getting letters of support and applied for and received too please note that each time these opportunities come we will again work with the school and the school board to apply for the grants that are applicable to this the first one is the safety assessment grant this is a relatively large one this is primarily funded through mag 94 of it comes from ag the matching funds for that come from the town of fountain hill relatively small dollar amount for what we're receiving this one is a non-infrastructure assessment to determine how to make routes to schools safer for the fountain hills elementary and middle school the assessment will look at routes traffic calming signage and other items related to those safe routes to enhance the safety for k-8 children any questions on that one before we move forward fair enough that one that i just mentioned it actually becomes available in july of this year we will collaborate with the school in regards to that process and the selection for the engineering firm that will do that is actually done through mag we will keep the school updated on that process as we move forward um we're also aware that there may be some um some school decisions that are going to be made in the future about maybe the school district and and uh school locations so we will if if there are some changes we will definitely make sure that the the study and analysis incorporates that so that if there are any changes that might affect school locations then we will certainly have that be part of the analysis thank you for that additional information in indeed as we collaborate with the school all of the information moving forward we will share with the engineering firm as they work towards this assessment the next one which will become available in fy24 is a considerable amount of funding and this one again is a 94 with the town matching the other which is again a small amount of money at eight hundred and eighty two dollars this one right here is actually non-infrastructure to support activities that will educate and implement safe routes to school this will support the first grant this may include wages for a school safe route coordinator safety gear helmets vests etc and incentive prizes for the students as they participate it will also provide funding for school crossing guard training which is very very important and critical we certainly want our marked crossings to be safe and in order to accomplish that we will collaborate with the school on the training for the individuals they have selected are there any questions about this grant fair enough thank you you're welcome the next one is actually a new one that we have collaborated with the school on we've worked closely with the interim superintendent dr sweeney and the transportation director john flynn this is something that has been discussed between the school and the town for a number of years this is actually permanently installed flashing school zone signs on this particular project right here with support from the town manager and the mayor and council the town is going to fund this which is also a strong recommendation in the adopt manual that is published related to this it's important to note that this process is moving relatively quickly this was an in-house design by our staff our town engineer and our assistant engineer we just this week you may or may not if you go to that area of fountain hills boulevard have seen some pink paint on the pavement that is the survey and before i get too much further for those that may not be aware this up here is the fountain hills middle school it's on north fountain hills boulevard just before you enter mcdowell mountain road with this being towards the north as we worked to do this design we recognize that southbound traffic on mcdowell mountain road in-ring fountain hills boulevard adjacent to this school we're going to need to warn them in advance so we have added an advanced sign on that corner that alerts them and it'll be flashing to make them fully aware that they are entering a school zone in advance time so they will have time to slow down the second flashing 15 mile an hour sign will ju be just north of the crosswalk here's the sign location it'll be flashing here is the mark yellow crosswalk when we're going northbound because we have an adequate sight distance there will not be an advanced flashing light there will just be the traditional reduced speed limit sign ahead and then there will be the flashing 15 mile an hour once again just before the crosswalk these are the two types of structures that will be used on the project each of these structures are solar powered and communicate with each other via radio the timing coordination will be through myself and the transportation director john flynn so we will have the school calendar built into it we will obviously monitor it with support and collaboration from the school we think this one will be a well-deserved long-awaited improvement in this area any questions related to this one thank you i have driven to that school countless times over many many years and it these are very very needed i think people get very confused coming from rio verde coming in very fast with the turn not realizing that there's a school there and then also people getting confused about the actual where it starts and where it stops based on the sign in the middle of the road right now so this is going to do great things for the the teachers who have duty at that crosswalk and also our students um and the family so that we keep that road safe before and after school so and i'm so happy to see their solar panel this is great thank you this is very needed appreciate it justin i have a question when will that be done madam mayor council member this will be done before the children return in august that's amazing that's a nice addition i agree with dr barnard um sorry sorry we're not that technologically advanced that coming in from rio verde i'm glad to see that there will be a sign that that gives some warning because folks do come in pretty quickly on that road and um anything to get them to slow down before they approach our our students and uh crosswalk crosswalk guards would be great that's a nice addition so thank you very much for everything you're putting into keeping our kids safe you're welcome madame mayor madam president any questions any other questions or comments thank you so much thank you madam mayor um justin i'm assuming that you're going to loop in with captain kratzer and um possibly at times have that enforced by traffic control by radar madam mayor council member yes um while i can't speak for him i will let you know that this area is patrolled nearly every school day during peak flow times whether or not you see a marked vehicle there it is being patrolled thank you i will comment on that that and i have not gotten a ticket but i have a lot of experience in the district um and so uh the sheriff's department does a really good job of patrolling our school zones especially the one on fountain hills boulevard um you know the one that goes past mcdowell mountain is more of a residential street so people tend to drive slower there but fountain hills boulevard as we all know can become a speedway so um the sheriff's department has done a really great job sometimes you know the they're parked right in the middle of the of the road sometimes they're parked in a little bit more obscure location um same with at the high school you know sometimes they're they're visible and sometimes they're not and and we've seen a lot of speeders get pulled over coming right out of that school zone so i i appreciate everything the sheriff's department does for that thank you board remember that kind of goes in with the the statistic that we saw between speeding from last year and speeding from this year that uh we've really picked that up so um this next item i just wanted to mention that i had some uh some folks reach out to me about this uh about the rules of the road you know which side do you ride your bike on what's the id walk on and such and uh it was a kind of a big deal and that made me remember when the kids were at mcdowell mountain school and we'd get the you know when they'd go and they'd get the handbook right away and it was all about that so maybe there's a way for us to kind of partner on this and so um is bo gonna speak to this or grady uh beau is in fact a community relations director will go ahead and kind of explain what his plans are related to this well thank you mayor and madam president uh council and school board my name is beau larson i'm the director of community relations um we have had some discussions about this and i've been doing some research on what other communities have done and i too remember you know those brochures of what side to ride on and how to properly cross the street and who to respect as you go along and so there's a lot of information out there from mag the city of scottsdale uh this u.s department of transportation as well as the arizona department of transportation for us to glean upon and so what i'd like to do is work with the school board or you're assigned to figure out what do we need in what order do we need them because there's a variety of you know timings i'm sure you're going to have but one of the things that the mayor and town manager have kind of donated me for is to develop the the collateral do social media provide the the internet resources that are needed that we can share on multiple platforms as well as our channel 11 our our cox channel 11 just to help keep the get the momentum of communications out there um and so i think there's a great opportunity to really raise the level of awareness of the importance of not only the children understanding how to do things but the the adults remembering how to do things so that way we can if there is a stat that we want to lower i hope we will lower it are there any plans to do anything at the high school and the flashing lights or any of um oh i should have asked that before i will not speak on his behalf but okay yeah and even some um outreach i do think that that is another area that people don't unders it's just educating people when it's kids push the button to make it flashed across the street and people will still drive through it and that's more of a older like educating residence that when it's flashing you must what is the rule you have to stop you know all of that to answer your question the fountain the high school is not zoned a school zone that's a pedestrian crosswalk so that's actually town mandated it's not a school zone so because it's a high school i believe dr sweeney we cannot put a school zone there is that correct grady that's my understanding with the regulations governing schools that's on a major arterial so that would not be the same as an interior and it's also the age of the the kids that are going there so you are correct but as dr barnard said some education that even though that's a pedestrian crosswalk not necessarily associated with high school if the buttons pushed and those lights are flashing it would be nice if people stopped because that's the law but the other thing that i notice is a lot of people don't understand how to maneuver through a school zone like do they stop before the light you know slow down before do they like go all the way through and continue past the other signs so some education on on how to to drive through a school zone thank you i will just comment and say as an avid walker in our community who often sees people walking on the incorrect side of the road and who has uh quite adamantly taught my children how to properly walk on the road i i would appreciate anything for both our um students as well as our you know ten more tenured citizens to know how to be safe on the roadways thank you and madam mayor and madam president those are things that i want to make sure that working with you that we're at the proper level for the communications because one size definitely doesn't fit all for the population we're talking about so so i look forward to working with you good thanks very much um next it just says other concerns or issues about this like safety school safety so is there anything i know uh your superintendent got your phd on school safety and such and um so wondered if there's anything you'd want to communicate with us or anything we can help with when it comes to that you know given recent histories or any anything that you'd like to convey yes ma'am um i personally don't have an item other than to say that um as uh dr jagodinsky comes in the school board will be having a retreat so that we can collectively synchronize as a new body with our superintendent and one of the priorities will definitely be school safety it's it's an annual priority we are due for another review with or i say do it's not something that's mandated we as a district know that we haven't been reviewed by homeland security to reassess the safety and security of our buildings for a couple years in part because of covid so that's something that we definitely want to revisit and and prioritize and then certainly based on that assessment we can then uh itemize what uh actions we need to take and what budgetary dollars we can put towards that perfect data yeah and you mentioned the budget issue obviously and that's an important aspect of what we're talking to talk about later on when it comes to our facilities right now with three facilities we have to make sure that all three of those are in safe and we've done a lot of investment to keep them a lot safer than they were back in my day early on in chinese as well however we may be down to two which means we'll save some of that funding that we've been applying to mcdowell mountain potentially and we can apply that somewhere else but safety is by far and away our most important aspect of what we do obviously student success might be number one but that doesn't work if you don't have a safe school environment so everything that's been talked about so far in terms of safety is so important thank you any other comments dr j do you have anything else i was just gonna put him on the spot i was gonna do the same thing school safety is a huge huge issue and i spent a lot of time researching it and i was here dr sweeney the last improvements to to school i have a lot of ideas that i want to share and work collaboratively with the town and all of our school leaders to i'd just like to thank the town for your ongoing support of the sro you know we have a long history of having great sros in that position excellent relationship with the sheriff's office and sro after sro after sro is they have good relationships with the kids they provide you know that presence and immediate response and reaction when needed and i know that's a commitment the town has taken on through the years and i really really appreciate it and hope that that continues well thank you for mentioning that um we really appreciate that anything else on this safety items or anything traffic thank you um next i think grady's going to talk to us about our transportation iga or proposal yes so something related to this brought was brought up uh probably about three or four years ago between um that the town and the the school district at one of these joint meetings and since that time the administration under dr sweeney and then rob when he was superintendent began to allow us to utilize like the vans that are there um but what we're thinking is we probably just it's probably time to formalize something into some sort of intergovernmental agreement um one of the things we'd like to do for instance um the vans are great and they they've been very much appreciated by the staff but one of things that we're looking at is perhaps in the summertime when there's off-peak use by the school district we might be able to take advantage of the school buses and perhaps the bus drivers in the town can maybe uh pay some you know hourly rate uh for the bus drivers and maybe for the use of the buses for say a summer recreation program or our senior program something like that so that's what we're really basically talking about but thanks to um dr uh sweeney initially um when we had this um on a previous agenda he allowed us to uh follow up um and start using the vehicle so it's probably time now we haven't taken advantage of it except for maybe the last couple years and it's been very sporadic but it's probably time for us to actually formalize it into an iga and bring it back to both the governing body of the school district and also our council any questions or comments on that yes sharon i it's been a number of years but i remember there was some sort of communication breakdown at some point i know there it's been a couple of employees ago but somebody actually was stranded i think they were stranded here and the bus or the van or whatever naming never came and picked them up i don't remember who it is i just vaguely remember this because this seems so long ago so i feel like part of my concern is when we do this we need to ensure that our local folks i mean usually these things happen on saturdays for us or after regular school hours so our local folks need to have the phone number of the driver so that they can contact them was it an emergency did they just forget i don't want a group of 30 kids stranded depressed because community services plan this really super fun trip and now they don't have a ride to it a very good point and something you know when you do put these together sometimes you don't include all those types of contingencies in the actual intergovernmental agreement but from an operational standpoint you certainly want to make sure that we have that kind of information available and it's a very good thing to bring up so i appreciate that council member yes not stranding kids is a good idea we have other igas to talk about grady um i think these are our existing ones relating to communications and other things so i don't know if you want to take them all in a big lump i just thought i'd just bring these up so these are we just bring these up um just more or less just to show the um the breath and extension of our relationships and how they extend so clearly through cox communications the town of fountain hills makes available the education channel for use by the school district also we have the the intergovernmental agreement that covers any type of construction activity we do not charge building permit fees or or things you know inspection fees things related to that so um in exchange for joint use of of the school district facilities then we're not extending um costs to you for basically those services and then finally we have an inter-governmental agreement related to shared use of district and town facilities as an example you know every year we have the graduation held at the amphitheater at fountain park um the town has also utilized um you know not as much anymore but we have in the past like the the gyms at the high school and also the school district has also utilized on occasion the community center so this has just been as a small town and a small school district we really benefit from having a very good working relationship and it doesn't really make sense i mean it is a true um partnership in the spirit of of what a partnership is so um hopefully uh by this next time we have a meeting like this we'll have the intergovernmental agreement will also be something that will be already approved and on that list i'd be happy to answer if you have any questions about those items but they're just there just to remind us the relationship that we have in our partnerships that we already utilize um thank you grady and i just want to say that um the iga for the shared use has become really popular with the school district with the community center in the previous years many moons ago when i was on the pto we always held the gala for which is our large fundraiser for the year at different resorts sometimes close sometimes not close but the pto has um has partnered now with using the community centers so it keeps every you know our folks here local they're using local vendors uh our sports teams are now using the community center a lot for team dinners as opposed to having it at someone's home which again kind of keeps it local keeps our kids in a space that um isn't at someone's home it's a little more safe not that our parents aren't safe but um it it's just a little more formal so uh we really appreciate that the town offers us that that ability to have the community center to use for for those banquets yeah i i second what jill said i think it's a it's a great reciprocal relationship um and i don't know i remember at one point not everybody knows that we have this agreement that we can that we share facilities we encourage the use of facilities from the town and the school so i mean i would say think making this more known to different groups from you know our athletics to everything else and then also the town certainly i remember my children going to some of those really awesome summer camps at the middle school gym and um so i think that we should revisit this i think it's the 15th anniversary of this looking at it a 2007.

it's actually a photocopied with three-ring binder i am like yeah um so i think i think revisiting it even if the language stays the same with the new signatures and all of that keeps it fresh and a living document that people um know about and use good good point and uh i'll work with staff on maybe doing some updates there's probably some also some maybe things related to um risk management and insurance and things like that that probably have changed since this probably originally went in so thank you thanks for the comment okay i'm gonna be a big old pen in your balloon um we just had a lot of heartache and got a lot of emails and really got beat up about the community center and all of the new rules and the new pricing that we just put into place i'm not saying we should charge i'm just tossing that out there that we're going to hit get hit from a lot of people that it's not fair you're charging insert whatever your favorite music or acting or whatever so expect to hear that so we might should be prepared um i don't know where we're going to stand on this well i don't you want to say something dana and i've been like here so long going back and forth with this so yes and that's true i'm just older than you so we had a wonderful arrangement between the school district and the town for many years we transferred land easily we transferred the operational of the parks and other things back in the day to where we i think if you remember we won an award and from the state for having this relationship between the two governments um so the fact that it's been a while since we've reviewed these it's probably a good idea but i think as we go forward there's probably going to be some good reasons to have more of these i hope anyway and uh to your point sharon the um and i remember as a school board member traipsing down to town council meetings mo this was about the sro but it's the same um constituency so i understand what you're saying about clubs and entertainment and such but the school district is you know paid for by the same exact taxpayers as we are it is a very natural partnership and i think we when we talk about the gyms or doing some of those things i think we you know basketball or whatever things that we lack are absolutely the perfect solution for all of the kids that live in this town because they go to the school and their parents pay the same uh taxes such as they are for um both of our entities so it's a really natural partnership and um and i really appreciate that you're going to revisit it because um i i agree that there's probably some stuff that needs to be updated but sharon i do appreciate what you're saying because we did just go through that whole exercise but i definitely see this different and we have igas with the sanitary district as well so we keep that big picture in mind whenever we can yes sir vice mayor sharon maybe the fhcca will contact the school district and maybe work out some arrangements directly let's move on [Laughter] thank you jerry so dana do you want to take the next one or do you have other staff that's going to introduce i'm delegated because i've been the one probably talking most about this as i said earlier we're looking at enrollment projections that take us below a thousand students currently we could put all of our students that are enrolled this fall into one facility to high school and have room left over so we know we've got excess resources that we are dealing with and we're paying for mcdowell mountain is going to be used a lot utilized again this current this coming year but we're close to making a decision on what to do with that and going forward four peaks has been closed for our purposes for quite some time um you know we're not in the landlord business and it is probably it is the oldest facility in the district and whether it's feasible to re-image it for some other use or it should be torn down as discussions that we're going to have the same thing can be said about mcdowell mountain i was living here and down the road from there when it was being built and i've been in construction most of my life and and it was not designed to be a century-old facility it's pretty much outlived its usefulness not just from a physical standpoint but quite frankly from an academic standpoint we don't know what 50 years from now will require from us in terms of facilities maybe nothing at all quite frankly but that's so far down the line that to project our needs for maybe a change in the demographics in fountain hills maybe not but we don't want to necessarily give up the ability to do something with those two properties 50 years from now we just don't know what our needs will be so one of the thoughts that we've had among many is that we work out an agreement with town to re-use the land itself we know when i was on a committee here we realized that they were we were short park space based on our population and so forth uh and you know we're landlocked so we don't have a lot of extra space to develop parklands but with um the lack of need for those two parcels for educational purposes there's quite frankly a possibility that they could be made into park um first thing that comes up in my mind because i have the neighbors that have dogs is a dog park but that's just one of a hundred ideas that could be utilized in those areas mcdowell mountain has a wash that runs through it on the south side of that wash we worked with the town many years ago to develop a passive park at that location with the bridge over the wash the same thing was being developed at the high school campus on one side of the wash that is now a desert into a passive park which would have helped our park numbers a little bit so i think no decision is ready to be made at this point and we've only briefly talked about it as a board but i do think that going forward that discussion needs to take place and that between our administrators and our two entities we need to come up with a solution that meets the needs of the entire community as we've said already even though we have a few more residents than the town does because of some annexations that took place years and years ago and in the last 10 years actually for the most part we share the same people so no matter who owns them you or us the same resources available to the same people so i look forward to these discussions going forward on what we can do with those two parcels that we may or may not actually use thank you any discussion questions or comments about this oh well well just you know obviously i think in terms of what the legal uses are and what can possibly happen and um also the educational plans that you have to maybe you know we get we always want to have more families we like to have a inner generational group here you know like again living in the past but when we all moved here it was a lot of young kids a lot of young families so um seeing how that develops seeing how the uh you know what you think you mentioned the demographics and even way back then you were always uh you know kind of on top of that kind of looking at what could be expected as far as income levels and such and so um i look forward to that conversation and uh with the facts with uh what can um you know what can we accomplish together and i think it's always about that and i really appreciate it very much any other questions or comments about this issue or uh or any issue actually yes ma'am oh yes i can imagine you will be um any other items for the good of the order staff you guys have anything no everybody's good all right well i guess i could take do i get a motion to adjourn here i don't even know i suppose yes motion to adjourn thank you everybody's in favor on thinking all in favor aye thank you so much we appreciate it so much you