Town Council Fall Retreat Day 1 12/1/2022

who are joining us today we look forward
to working with you when you officially
take your seats on January 10th
um also around the room today for those
of you for our councilmember elex we
also have members of our executive team
here as well as specific members of
staff that are going to be giving you
presentations in various areas of topics
and interests so a lot of hard work goes
into this and I want to send a big thank
you to them for the work they've done
preparing for today I also want to thank
Elena and the entire team of people that
help with all the logistics and setting
these Retreats up and the planning and
the work that goes on behind it it is a
lot of work so we always appreciate them
and all the hard great job they do so
with the retreat I'm going to keep my
comments shorter we'll run a little bit
behind I will follow up with an email
and send you some of the major
priorities and initiatives that we have
going on this year as well as what we
see coming for fiscal year 24. I'll
touch on a few things and we certainly
have a lot to cover over the next two
days and it's it's a very information
intense presentation many of these a lot
of the issues are very nuanced and
complex
um you have printed copies of the
presentations in front of you
that of our residents in Gilbert Arizona
I also want to say
um as we go through these next two days
I've always believed that success comes
from having great relationships and
strong relationships so especially for
our new council member elects and the
staff that are here and each of us let's
spend the next two days as we dive into
these issues on building our
relationships with one another getting
to know one another I truly do believe
it's key to success in life personally
and professionally
and we are all here to serve the
residents of Gilbert we're all on the
same team we we serve in different
capacities and different roles but we're
all here in service to the residents of
Gilbert Arizona and and hopefully
prepare for their future to make their
lives better to make sure that they can
enjoy the best possible quality of life
um that they can
actor that's going to be important to
our success is that everybody
participates in the conversations we
need to hear from each of you each of
you also bring very unique backgrounds
and experience and and understandings of
issues as well as the people that you
talk to in the community the ones that
elected you and the ones that reach out
to you with questions or concerns it's
really really important that everybody
lets the voice be heard in these issues
so we as staff can understand where your
concerns are or where questions May lie
and so that we can be more responsive to
you and get getting you the information
you need to build understanding on some
very very complex projects and
initiatives another thing I want to
encourage there's no bad questions
questions serve the purpose of gathering
information and building understanding
and knowledge on things and some of you
have heard me say it before we have over
220 lines of service that we deliver in
this organization by big and small by
Major lines it's about 80 lines of
service and they are as diverse and
Broad across the Spectrum as you can
possibly imagine we are not a private
company building six products and we're
all kind of focused on the success of
those products we treat Wastewater we
fight fires we respond to Medical
emergencies we provide parks and
recreational programming we maintain I.T
systems and the security of those
systems and there's very little overlap
in in many of those functions and so
please do ask questions and we also as
those of you have been on Council for a
while and those of you who have just
joined us will find out we have
literally thousands of statutes and
codes and policies we have to follow it
is a lot and so please please please ask
questions and we are more than happy to
answer from the smallest to the biggest
question there's no bad question so
please do participate and if you don't
understand it please do ask us questions
until you do
let's remember to be respectful to one
another
these are challenging issues and topics
for our community we're not immune to a
lot of the things that are happening in
the nation right now and across the
world we've got some tough decisions to
make and so let's remember to ask
questions but also show respect to one
another so that we can make the the best
decision we can and to maintain and
build very strong solid relationships
and then last we try to keep these
Retreats very relaxed and conversational
so let's let's
um let's embody that over the next two
days and let's not forget to have some
fun too
um because there is a lot of hard work
to do and I know for me I laugh every
once in a while helps keeps things in
perspective keeps me humble and helps
keep me focused quite honestly on the
very serious work we have to do
so in general you've heard this before
but we are a community of roughly 280
000 people now and growing
um and realistically we're in the last
decade build out Mary mentioned on the
tour of the Town Hall where 102 years
old as an incorporated municipality in
the state of Arizona and we're in the
final 10 years of building this
community out because we are landlocked
along all of our borders so there's no
more expansion for Gilbert to occur
there's some small pockets of County
Islands but we're landlocked and we are
in the last decade and there's some
things that are going to find this
decade as some of you are already aware
and will continue to understand better
I call it we're in the age of
infrastructure we have a lot of needs
across our water systems our Wastewater
systems our transportation systems our
Park systems our Municipal facilities we
have a lot of infrastructure needs and
it's going to be pretty solid over the
next decade as we complete build out of
this community
we've also many of you have heard of our
new council member elects I look forward
to talking to you in more depth about
our city the future initiative
you know in its most simplistic form
that is nothing more than making sure
the decisions we make today provide the
greatest opportunity for for the next
generation of Gilbert residents and our
children and our friends to enjoy the
same quality of life we enjoy in this
community American cities have not done
a great job in when they reach past
build out in maintaining the quality of
life that they've enjoyed during build
out and so that is where a lot of our
focus is on infrastructure on Public
Safety on the quality of our
neighborhoods and I look forward to
talking with each of you in more depth
about that
there's some significant issues we're
going to cover many of
them today but we all are aware of the
Colorado River drought conditions and
we're currently in a tier two we fully
anticipate to be in a tier three Lauren
Hixson is here with us this morning
she'll be the first person up to talk
but there's a lot of decisions we'll
need to make to help guide this
community through that we have a robust
diverse water supply but there will be
things that this community will need to
decide on how we want to approach this
and how we want to manage our way
through this because with tier three
come water Cuts we don't know to the
extent yet or how substantial they will
be but I think that we would be
faulty in our thinking to think that
tier three will not be announced next
August and there will be cuts of some
magnitude we're also dealing with a lot
of construction inflation and general
inflation Phoenix is as you may have
heard or read about as one of the
highest rates of inflation in the nation
in August I haven't seen the latest
figure in August it was around 13 which
was higher than any other region in the
country and so that is also creating
issues for us with projects with
Staffing with cost of services cost of
operations we're doing everything we can
to mitigate that to the extent it's
possible we've come up with a lot of
creative ideas and there's also a lot of
tough decisions to make to continue to
manage our way through that
we continue to have a very tight labor
market and Staffing challenges they were
rather pronounced at various points over
the last year we had 40 vacancy in
police dispatch at one point which
really starts to put a strain on those
people that are there and our ability
which is a very critical component to
Public Safety and Police Service uh
those dispatchers are the one they are
the lifeline from our residents who make
that call to our officers who respond to
any number of situations but I.T
um private secretary companies
information technology and technology in
general continues to change our lives in
ways that are truly staggering at the
speed at which that's occurring and
those individuals are in high demand I
think at one point Mary if I could phone
a friend we were down 12 bodies in I.T
at one point
well currently how many vacancies do we
currently have
two two so
um a lot of that has been with your
support some things you did with us last
year last spring to help with um wage
issues based on inflation but we
continue to struggle with Staffing
challenges and you're going to hear from
a couple of our senior staff members
about our Recruitment and Retention
conversations we've been having in the
organization trying to find ways to
recruit the best people we can and hang
on to the great people that we have but
tight labor market and staffing issues
continue to be a challenge for us and
then within this region
housing availability and housing
affordability is an issue and we're
hearing from a lot of our employers they
can't find a Workforce and the workforce
one of the challenges outside of just a
very tight labor market is where those
workers are living and and how far they
are having to commute to get to places
employment so and again that's not
unique
uh to us it's not even unique to this
region or state it's happening around
the nation but because of the growth in
this region it's particularly pronounced
again in the Phoenix area and there's
just there's the the pros and cons to
everything all of these great
announcements with these major
corporations that are are locating in
Phoenix and bringing those great jobs to
Phoenix also brings a great demand for
the workforce to fill those positions
and that Workforce needs a place to live
and they need Transportation Systems to
get them to and from where they're
living to the place of employment but
as a reminder our staff these are good
problems we could have much more
challenging things to deal with and I'm
not minimizing the challenges we have at
all but there are significantly more
challenging things in other parts of the
country even other parts of this region
um that these communities are trying to
figure out that that we don't have to we
don't have the pronounced problem in so
the problems but the good problems all
in all and I know by working together
we'll figure them out so with that I
will ask Lauren Hixson to come up and we
will start in on the presentations for
today thank you
good morning everybody as Patrick said
I'm Lauren Hixson and I'm the water
resources manager and with me today is
Rebecca Hamill I'll let her introduce
herself real quick
good morning my name is Rebecca himmel
I'm the water manager for Gilbert
wonderful okay so I'm here today to talk
about
the wonderful Colorado River and the
updates on what's going on there and the
impacts that we foresee for Gilbert
so today's presentation I'm going to
give just an overview of Gilbert's water
supply
um
object portfolio then I'll talk about
updates on the Colorado River
specifically what we know to date on
impacts and what we're doing to mitigate
those strategies and then Rebecca is
going to share specifically on some
infrastructure projects that we're
pursuing in order to fully more fully
insulate us from potential impacts
so what I have here shown on the screen
is both Gilbert's long range water
portfolio so all of our supplies fully
available to us but then on the right I
want to highlight that we have the
breakdown of how we met demand in 2021
so they're slightly different
um because obviously we have a full
portfolio but how we use that it differs
from the full portfolio so in 2021 we
met 34 of our supply from SRP directly
at our North Water Treatment Plant 38
cap water combination of both the Santan
plant and our North Water Treatment
Plant and then 28 was pumped from Wells
so our overall portfolio of cap water
which is delivered from the Colorado
River is made up of many contracts and
agreements and priority levels so
right here shows the breakdown of the
percentage and this is also provided in
your packet there's some supplementary
information for you guys as far as our
water supply portfolio and the most
important thing when looking at this
graphic on the right it's provided by
cap is the priority of those different
priority pools different names for all
the different types just based on
different agreements in the past but low
priorities at the top higher priority at
the bottom so Cuts will come from top to
bottom so thankfully we're most of our
supplies are higher priority
how we use these supplies as I mentioned
38 percent was delivered either to the
Santan plant or the North Water
Treatment Plant in 2021 and the majority
of that 80 percent is delivered to the
Santan plant however we do have the
flexibility to deliver some of that to
our North Water Treatment Plant which we
did in 2021 about
um
15 of our supply
and then we have five percent that was
sent to recharge which gives us some
flexibility with shortages when it comes
to being able to meet demands directly
so then that takes me into the Colorado
River and its current status the two
main reservoirs on that system are like
Powell and Lake Mead those are the ones
you're seeing in the news all the time
right now
um with the elevations dropping and the
operations of these two reservoirs is
very important
um but there's two main guidelines that
have been established in 2007 those
operational guidelines went into effect
to help mitigate shortage impacts in
2019 the drought contingency plan was
adopted further to protect the
elevations for forthcoming shortages
that were foreseen at the time
something to just really highlight when
it comes to the Colorado River and its
priority system within that water system
is that amongst all the lower Basin
states which is California Arizona and
Nevada Arizona has some lower priority
status and that specifically is only to
our Cap
supplies but that is really important to
highlight when it comes to the
negotiations between the states is that
unfortunately the cap is Junior status
so you may be familiar with
reclamation's 24-month studies that they
put out every month and currently the
November 24 month study is forecasting
for 2023 what's already been declared
the tier 2A shortage that was declared
in August and will take effect in
January and then in 2024 the projections
which I don't know if this if it does
work okay great so this is for 2023
we're looking at a tier 2A and then 2024
the projections show a tier 3 is most
probable and the Min probable you'll see
this line up here which is the max
probable however I really highlight
these lower ones because that's really
where we've been operating the last
couple years and so although the
projections have a large range of
possibilities
it's really based on some hopeful
conditions happening one of which is
that these projections are based on a
seven million acre feet release from
Powell that's an important volume
because it helps stabilize like Mead and
I'll go into some more detail about that
but then it's also based on what I call
hopeful hydrology it's definitely it's
statistically correct it's um you know
there's but there's some assumptions
there that are a little too
um Rosy
um in my opinion and so when we're
looking to the future we kind of have to
look at those lower projections and I'll
go into some more detail here as to why
and it really does tie to Lake Powell
and also the incoming flows that we've
been seeing over the last couple years
so Lake Powell
um on the graphic here there's a very
important elevation 3525 the current
elevation I checked I think a couple
weeks ago when I was putting this
together is at 35.28 so we're just a
little bit above that 35 25 foot
elevation and that's a buffer elevation
that helps
provide sufficient power production
within the reservoir but also I want to
highlight a couple different pipelines
within the dam and how the dam operates
hydraulically itself
at 34.90
we reach a minimum power pool
that also that means that the flow can
no longer go through the pipelines that
create power go through the turbines
within the dam but it also means we've
gone below these pipelines that are
larger that can
pass more flow down to Lake Mead so
below that elevation I've heard it said
those pipelines are like fire hoses and
the lower elevation ones these bypass
tubes are like garden hoses so the dam
cannot pass as much water at the lower
elevations which then affects Lake Mead
and then also just to highlight if you
get to Deadpool no power no water from
the dam
which like Powell is Upstream of the
Grand Canyon
um so these are just critical items to
Arizona and to the country and to the
world
so I mentioned the operations of like
Powell but then also how does this
impact Lake Mead
um if Lake Powell cannot deliver
um seven million acre feet then it will
continue to drop this graphic here is
actually just based on seven million
acre feet coming from Powell but also
it's based on specific runoff conditions
that are more realistic to what we've
been seeing
so one of the major stressors that's
occurring on the Watershed is that we're
seeing pretty average snowpack in the
system but we're seeing way below
average runoff and that's because the
The Watershed is drier
the Springs are hotter so the water is
not
getting into the Watershed not coming
down through the streams into the
reservoirs
so therefore we're on this downwards
Trends towards Deadpool which is why I
call the other projections hopeful
um we definitely hope for those
conditions and we hope they come to
reality but we need to plan for these
conditions that we're actually seeing
I want to point out that if the releases
from Powell are lower
um then we're going to see that trend
line in Lake Mead
um
continue to climb faster
just some more Graphics these are the
current volumes within like Powell and
Lake Mead I mentioned on a previous
slide it showed that seven and a half
million acre feet is what's allocated to
the lower basin
um and then upper Basin is seven and a
half million acre feet as well so that's
15 million acre feet but we don't even
have that in in storage in the system
today
so Lake Powell is at about 5.4 is what's
projected at the end of this year and
7.3 in Lake Mead
so on that hopeful and really exciting
note
um just in summary the tier 2A shortage
and the current can um you know all the
actions to date 2007 guidelines 29 team
drought contingency plan there's been
some other actions 500 plus plan
Etc and those just have not been enough
to protect the system and so you may be
aware in June Reclamation announced that
an additional two to four million acre
feet needs to be preserved in the
reservoirs starting in 2023 and that was
asked above and beyond DCP
DCP is 1.4 million acre feet so you can
see the system really needs additional
conservation in order to buffer us from
future declines in these reservoirs
and to date we have not
um that volume request has not come to
fruition they said in August that
Reclamation said in August that if by
then the states haven't come up with a
plan to save that much water in the
reservoirs that they would take
unilateral unilateral action they have
not done that yet they've been
essentially just trying to incentivize
conservation you may have seen that the
influx inflation reduction Act is being
used to help fund lower Basin
contingency plans conservation plans and
so that money is being put forth to
water users throughout the Basin to help
pay for them to leave water in Lake Mead
so there's been a lot of different steps
to take taken by Reclamation we have not
yet seen mandatory reductions those may
be forthcoming highly likely since we're
unable to get the volumes we need
voluntarily
um
Basin State negotiations aren't going
great
um California has the highest priority
in the lower base and they also have the
largest allocation and they use all of
it and so we really need them to
participate in order to help save the
system
there may be some action there as well
and we're hoping that they follow
through on some promises to contribute
to the system
and additional efforts Reclamation
announced that they will be
um
re-looking at the operations of the
reservoirs for prior to the required
date of 2026 so they're going to look in
order to reduce releases from Powell
they actually have to go through the
NEPA process and environmental impact
statement process because that impacts
the ecosystem of the Grand Canyon so
they're doing that and we should know
more mid next year as to whether though
there's approval for that so lots to
come what we're certain of we're not
certain exactly of how this is going to
impact us but we are certain that we're
going to have less Colorado River water
and therefore you know we're advocating
just for ongoing preparation management
and investment in our water resources
and our infrastructure
so with that what does this mean for
Gilbert
so what we know so far is that it's been
time to enact our water supply reduction
management plan we've been in stage one
since June stage one is water education
so we've been ramping up that
um education to the Community Resources
available
Etc you can see all four stages of our
plan here shown stage one and two are
all voluntary should we need to move
into stage three and four that's when
there would be restrictions on watering
for our customers
thus far in stage one we have as I
mentioned we've done social media posts
Outreach we have a water shortage
webpage that we continue to update we
have assembled our internal shortage
management team to come up with
different ideas and strategies to get
the word out there and to help motivate
our customers to reduce demand
we have met with the Chamber of Commerce
to give an update in August and we're
doing a an HOA Roundtable next week to
talk with our HOAs about reducing demand
how can we help them what are they
looking at with their Landscapes as far
as changes they may be considering and
then we launched our smart irrigation
controllers uh rebate this in September
and since then we've actually issued 56
controllers and one to an HOA and our
preliminary estimates from our pilot
program is that each controller saves
about 40 000 gallons which is
significant so we're hopeful to continue
to offer that program and expand it as
as we can to help mitigate the need
the reductions that we foresee
next year early 2023 we're going to do
an external stakeholder group launch
with Representatives throughout the town
to help get their input in how to you
know just ramp up conservation efforts
and then launch a non-residential Turf
conversion rebate
um we're also hopeful to expand our
rebates coming fiscal year 24.
with that um
I just want to highlight this is from
the drought contingency plan what we
estimated our our impacts the impacts
would be from the DCP and what
reductions we were forecasting this
somewhat gets thrown out when it comes
to just what may happen with Reclamation
just that uncertainty so previously as
we were looking we do know thus far for
2023 we're in a tier 2A that's about a
1.4 reduction to our to our supply so we
were good with stage one of our plan
when we were looking previously at maybe
a tier 2B in 2024 we still remained in
that stage one condition
2025 we were thinking maybe that's when
we'd hit a tier three that would ramp us
up to stage two but this is based on
previous projections
um and we're kind of not really in this
environment anymore
so with that we are looking at what are
the potential realities again these next
two slides are just how we're kind of
trying to bookend what reality we may be
living in so best case maybe we need to
implement stage two come mid 20 2023
once Reclamation has come out with more
additional Cuts
Etc maybe that's our best case come mid
2023
worst case
um just putting it out there that maybe
we don't have any Cap Supply again we're
just looking at bookending the situation
because then we're ready for anything
and everything in between those two
scenarios Arizona is advocating at the
state level that the cap cannot run dry
so this is a very highly unlikely
scenario but we must plan for all
situations and every scenario in between
with that I'm going to hand it off to
Rebecca to talk about how we are
planning to insulate ourselves from this
worst case scenario
thank you Lauren
so if you're following along in in your
book you'll see a map I'd ask you to
flip forward to the next one we're going
to work on building this graph first and
then we'll get back to the map so
um what I'd like to talk about is
transitioning from the Water Resource
we're now talking about Water Production
so our physical ability to produce water
at the facilities that we currently have
and walking you through this graph we
have this is our current ability to
produce water our current production
capacity we have in blue our SRP surface
water which is produced at the North
Water Treatment Plant in pink our cap
service water at the San Tan Vista plant
and in Orange are firm well capacity so
all of the wells that we have throughout
the system in Gilbert
um I have a few acronyms up here I'm
going to Define them so MGD I'm talking
about millions of gallons per day so
switching over from acre foot per year
in production we talk about million
gallons per day so how much can we
physically produce each day and I'm
talking about maximum day demand so
maximum day demand is the single highest
day of the year the hottest day of the
year the highest day of the year where
our customers are are using the most
water in 2020 we hit 78 million gallons
per day that's our highest to record is
a particularly hot summer so that's the
number we're holding for our maximum day
demand and if you add all of these
numbers together the 45 million gallons
per day at the North plant 24 million
gallons per day at the sandhan plant and
35 million gallons per day for Wells you
have 104 million gallons per day so as
Lauren was talking about those different
shortage tiers we have different trigger
limits for stage three and stage four
and I'll get into that in a little bit
but what we're looking at is is this
ratio I'm going to call it a utilization
ratio so what's our maximum day Demand
versus our our production capacity and
right now we're sitting at 75 percent
this is our current system configuration
and we're in a comfortable place
moving forward to the unlikely but
possible scenario of a short-term cap
shortage where we Have No Cap Supply we
take away that 24 million gallons per
day from the San Tan Vista plant and our
production our ability to produce water
goes down to 80 million gallons per day
so with a Max day demand of 78 million
gallons per day firm production capacity
of 80 million gallons per day our ratio
is 97 and a half so we're in a tough
spot and the way we fix that is either
by adding Supply or reducing demand
which in Gilbert we're looking to do
both we're asking our customers can
serve and our drop plan is asking
customers to conserve and I'll also be
proposing some additional supplies to to
help get that ratio back down
so in the next scenario we're proposing
12 million gallons per day of additional
well supplies to combat and and weather
the deepest of the cap shortages so with
12 MGD additional supplies our Max day
demand stays the same our firm
production capacity goes up to 92
million gallons per day and our ratio is
85 percent
now overlaying that oops all right we'll
do one more before we overlay it we
expect that a long-term cap shortage
could look like half of our Colorado
River allocation so instead of the 24
million gallons per day we get at San
Tan now from the cap we're looking at 12
million gallons per day and so this
scenario brings us back to where we are
now minus 24 plus 12 and then plus
another 12. uh we're right back up at
that that 75 ratio in the long-term cap
shortage scenario so now overlaying what
a stage 3 and stage 4 drought might look
like those are triggered at 92 percent
for stage three and 99 for stage four so
you can see here that in a short term
cap shortage where we have no Colorado
River allocation we're well into stage
three and we're approaching stage four
with those additional well supplies in
the short term we're out of stage three
we're out of stage four and then with
the long-term cfu shortage we're in a
really similar position to today
but Gilbert is still growing
and so in this next next slide this last
column is our resiliency supplies you'll
notice here the SRP surface water has
stayed the same until here it increases
by 15 million gallons per day later
today you're going to hear a
presentation by Gene Jensen about the
North Water Treatment Plant
reconstruction and that includes an
additional 15 million gallons per day of
capacity for growth so that added into
an additional 12 MGD of resiliency
supplies which are additional well
supplies and other supplies that we need
to keep Pace with growth as we approach
build out we have a future maximum day
demand projected at build out of 96
million gallons per day and a firm
production capacity of 131 million
gallons per day for a ratio of 73 you'll
remember we're currently at 75 so this
is this is a good position for us to be
in going into the future
now what that looks like in the future
with future demands future stage 3 and
stage four with that 96 million gallon
per day max day demand debt build out
you can see that with the long-term cap
shortage the additional 12 million
gallons per day of well capacity is not
enough alone to keep us out of stage
three and so we really do need the
additional supplies to keep Pace with
growth to keep us um out of long-term uh
stage three and stage four drop
shortages
so to summarize we're looking at in the
short term the deepest cap Cuts with
zero allocation from the Colorado River
we could be looking at a 12 MGD
short-term Gap we're looking to fill by
accelerating some projects which I'll
talk about next uh in the long term to
keep Pace with growth another 12 million
leading to 24 million gallons per day
and this is the number I kind of want
you to keep in mind in the back of your
head is a three-year construction
timeline so when we're talking about
building a well it's a pretty lengthy
process so there's property acquisition
there's borehole siding drilling do you
have
um do you have a productive borehole do
you have a good quality borehole it's an
extensive process before we actually get
into drilling casing and equipping the
well and that entire process
optimistically is a three-year
construction timeline for the from when
we start the project when we're able to
permit and introduce that water to the
system so there's a little bit of a lag
in these projects so that
okay I'll talk first about the um this
is the slide that we skipped for
um back in your packets this is our
current water system and our supply
limitation so up here we have our North
Water Treatment Plant down here we have
our Santan Vista water treatment plant
and the the system is is divided into
four different pressure zones so Zone
one is this kind of pink color here zone
two is the Blue zone three is the green
and the little corner over here and
purple is zone four
so the North Water Treatment Plant
generally serves everything north of the
202 and Santa and Vista generally serves
everything south of the 202 with
additional well supplies that augment
the capacity in high demand times or
when our plants are offline for annual
maintenance in zone one we have a well
inventory of nine Wells zone two we have
five Wells on three we have four Wells
and zone four we only have one well but
it's a small zone so when we're looking
at accelerating these projects we're
going to be looking at augmenting our
supply in zones two and three where
Santan is typically delivered and where
we could use a little bit more well
capacity
um so this is the proposed acceleration
of well projects all of these projects
were existing in our Capital plan they
were planned for keeping Pace with
growth from now until build out these
projects have been accelerated so we're
looking to move forward a few of these
that have current funding in FY 23 and
then proposing to move forward a few
more of these into fy24 the reason
they're staggered is we don't
necessarily have the capacity or the
ability to deliver them all starting
this year so it's a phased approach and
when we build a well we design it with
the hopes of a two million gallon day
capacity and like I mentioned these
these Wells typically take three years
to complete so those that were starting
this year we wouldn't see them until FY
26 those were starting next year we'd
see an FY 27.
and with that I'll hand it back to Lori
to close us out thank you
thanks Rebecca so that just ties all I
mean the well projects all tie into our
overall Colorado River strategy
um you've probably seen this slide on
many of um my presentations to council
lately and it will continue to be
included in all of the council
Communications because really we look at
our strategy under three main topic
areas which is operational resiliency
which are those well projects ways that
we can continue to deliver wet water to
the system we're also looking at other
ways to Partnerships Regional
Partnerships in order to maybe do some
exchanges Etc to kind of buffer Us in
that interim before we can get those
Wells online and then long-term
portfolio sustainability that's all
about being able to continue to serve
Gilbert for the long term in accordance
with our assured water supply
requirements and just for the longevity
of this community and then water
conservation and efficiency really
looking at ways to reduce demand because
that's going to also lengthen and extend
our supplies as much as possible
so then what to kind of expect this next
year and Beyond we're looking at a few
different things we've mentioned already
today that stage two is likely on the
horizon we're accelerating requests for
CIP those are going to have budget
impacts Staffing impacts and then also
additional conservation pools to provide
our community and then just there's
going to be lots and lots of interest in
this topic and of course we're available
to help you understand what's going on
and also provide that information to the
community
so with that I'm just going to left
leave it on this slide with just all of
our efforts are really to make sure that
shortage at the river does not mean a
shortage at the tap with that I'll open
it to questions and thank you for having
us today
Mike Scott please
you've probably heard Lauren emphasize
the importance of reclamation in this
whole process and so far they've been
cowards they've done nothing
and the only way that
this is going to be addressed as if the
seven Basin States work on it together
and right now the upper basins
they could care less
I read a quote the other day from a
rancher in Wyoming that says when it
rains and snows in Wyoming that's
Wyoming's water not anybody else's
that's the attitude of the upper Basin
and we've got to get over that as a
council requested item
to explore and and discuss the
possibility of creation of a public
works Advisory board and some of the
merits to that to having a body of that
nature and this conversation came out of
for those of you who have been with the
town for a little while we had a
transportation advisory task force that
the Town Council assembled and when we
were putting together the information
for and reviewing information for the
transportation ballot issue that was
before the voters
the member of that task force but
um we were talking about transportation
and and the many needs we have in
transportation as as that body knows
full well as they've helped us review
that information and put that
information and make that recommendation
to council but we were talking
internally about going Beyond just
Transportation related matters
um into more infrastructure related
matters in general and a lot of the
infrastructure that's critical to the
quality of life in our community so the
ask for this is a discussion on the
merits of creating a public works
Advisory Board and direction to staff on
proceeding forward with that
starting with the why why do we believe
this would be important because
infrastructure Utilities in the
environment are critical lines of
service for the organization and
absolutely essential to the quality of
life we enjoy here in Gilbert and
those primary areas of focus as we look
at this are Transportation Systems water
treatment wastewater treatment reclaimed
water storm water Solid Waste and
Recycling hazardous waste and then
sustainability issues which encompasses
a pretty broad spectrum of areas of
focus but the thought being that each of
these areas would be important areas
that if we had a body to help us
evaluate projects and evaluate programs
commission studies to help us best
understand the needs of this community
there could be a lot of value in that in
value to the mayor and Council as that
body could help review and vet things
for potential action and Direction
further direction from the mayor and
Council
and so the how what this would look like
and again this is for purposes of a
conversation
um the Public Works Advisory Board is
intended to be an advisory body that
studies assesses and renders advice on a
full range of infrastructure
Transportation right-of-way solid waste
recycling Hazardous Waste Water
treatment wastewater treatment storm
water management sustainability related
matters and make recommendations to the
mayor council Town management and the
public works department
and some of the the
um things that I just stated but some of
the the things that we see that could be
a value proposition we've talked a lot
about Community engagement public
engagement and getting feedback from our
residence and input from a residence we
thought this may be something that
provides another opportunity for
valuable input and engagement for our
community as we evaluate projects that
do have impacts sometimes directly on
their property sometimes directly on
their rates and sometimes just in
general with things that we do for this
community that are of great importance
and great value to the community that
this body if we appointed it with
individuals from our community with
various areas of expertise
professionally and by way of experience
could be something much in the manner in
which are planning its owning commission
is populated with individuals with
various areas of expertise and and
professional experience that they could
help us evaluate some really critical
projects and really critical initial
initiatives in our community community
and provide value to the mayor and
council with with recommendations on
potential action and Direction on those
items
so the how and this is just we we looked
at Public Work bodies from across the
country a lot of cities have them
advisory bodies all the ones we found
are advisory in nature they do not make
binding decisions on a community or on
projects they just advise staff Mayors
and councils but similar to other bodies
we have seven members appointed by the
mayor and council with professional
backgrounds and experience in the areas
of focus advisory nature only Gilbert
residents appointed for for two year
terms these are all just things to throw
out for your consideration it's not that
you could make whatever determination in
regards to the size number term
um just for purposes of the conversation
if we wanted to move forward with this
in looking at it our thought was first
um if you'd like us to work on this and
what man in what Manner would we go
forward but a scope of work in the focus
area so we threw some things out based
on what other cities use these bodies
and have them look at we could certainly
expand that we could uh narrow that in
more we could form an official Council
subcommittee or we could just form a
working group but really looking for
direction from the Council on how you'd
like us to to move forward and further
explore and vet this this potential bot
advisory body for the town
then we'd bring that back to a spring 22
strategic Retreat for those of you who
have been with the council for a while
this would be something in addition to
the Spring financial Retreat we do every
year we look at things that have a
financial impact to our budget and to
our community
um the thought being with so many new
council members two years ago we had
four new people come into roles now
we've got three new people council
members coming into the roles that it
might be a good time to do a combined
Retreat strategic Retreat between the
executive team and the mayor and Council
and really talk about the future of
Gilbert current strategic initiatives we
have underway new initiatives we may
want to look at and undertake but do a
combined Retreat so that we together can
build a consensus around a focus and
direction that we're going to head into
and we can use that as as kind of that
starting point
um to look back to why have why are we
moving down certain paths or why are we
tackling certain programs but it'd be a
great opportunity to get us all on the
same page and work together towards
creation of that vision and this is
certainly something we could bring back
to that retreat at that time to further
discuss that and maybe make a direction
to move forward on it if we were we
could look potentially May June time
frame to interview and appoint board
members and then have this body actually
start up in fiscal year 24 which is July
1st we're on a fiscal year-end budget
here in Gilbert or the entire State of
Arizona so fiscal year 24 would actually
be July for fiscal year 24 what would
generally do not have meetings in July
so technically the first meeting of the
body could be in August of next year
so with that I know it's pretty
straightforward
um happy to have any thoughts uh input
or discussion you've got it this time
and if you'd like us to proceed forward
under the man under which manner you'd
like us to do that
um to further vet this out and bring
something back for a Spring retreat for
cons full consideration
so we had not envisioned that aspect of
it Scott but it's certainly something
that we we could vet out further
um in regards to any infrastructure
related piece
um the thought here more was and I'll
use docatel Road alignment project as
one that this body could go work with
staff to go through that project
establish you know the need for the
project
understand the variables involved with
utilities and and right-of-way needs
also provide an opportunity for
residents to come and address the body
on a specific project that is imper
packs to their property
and then make a recommendation to the
Council on what they believe is is the
right approach with that project going
forward or with an expansion of the
water plant or a Wastewater Plant
um that's really what was more
envisioned for it but we could certainly
explore additional areas such as the one
you mentioned
I'm not going to make eye contact right
now or Leah
um we'd have to look at Staffing yes we
we certainly would need to look at
Staffing to make sure that we set this
body up for success and get the full
value out of it
so I Envision a combination of
um Parks and Rec board and Planning
Commission in this sense because Parks
and Rec board they about
this Planning Commission you use them as
an example because we have specific
um scopes of work that some of those
members of the community come from such
as Architects landscape art Architects
those kinds of things so you'd be
looking for specific
specific members do we have an idea of
what kind of jobs those folks would be
coming from you know Public Works in
general covers such a broad spectrum of
things I think that's something we'd
want to talk through where it's the
right number of members and what are
specific backgrounds we look for
certainly someone with a civil
engineering background would be a
valuable member to that agency someone
with specific utility experience Water
waste water would be a valuable Zone
with Transportation Planning experience
would be a value valuable member to have
on a body like that but I think once we
Define the scope of things that would go
before this body then it would give us a
better idea of what types of individuals
to recruit for that for that Advisory
Board and you mentioned other cities
have this board yeah is around us city
of Maricopa actually has one currently
the last City I worked in outside of St
Louis has one there's quite a few cities
that use them in this capacity and as we
know infrastructure projects are very
complex Transportation projects our
transportation master plan which the
council just adopted are very complex
undertakings and the thought being that
at the the transportation ballot issue
that we did a very big lift and a very
complicated issue and having that body
assembled to to really think through
question the projects look at the scope
of things and then make recommendations
to the council we thought was was a real
value add in that process and could be
for things like this as well
foreign
in addition to kind of the members that
you just mentioned Patrick it might also
be valuable to have a
our transportation system and utility
in the town of Gilbert I think about
depth of knowledge that's necessary to
really vet through these
projects and give us that extra
perspective
positions might also be better connected
to National Trends Regional Trends and
issues that might be affecting us that
that we aren't that we don't necessarily
have our
layer up
um
I was just curious
um
with the community or maybe a
neighborhood or something like that do
you anticipate that being a piece of
that as well so
um council member tilkey had asked if
this board
one of the things again just initial
thoughts Kathy and I know we've got the
council Communications subcommittee
looking at how we engage with our
residents our boards and commissions
that was a value proposition that we
thought of Kathy that here is another
opportunity for residents to engage
their local government on something that
has an impact with them sometimes
personally with their property sometimes
just with projects in general to have
their voice heard and have input in the
evaluation of these systems and again so
that body then can make it even more
informed referral of direction to the
council I Envision just like any other
public meeting like a public like a
Parks and Rec board that the public can
come and speak are are Planning
Commission where the public can come and
speak and have their say at the same
time so it is another level for them to
be involved I think I think the only
thing that I would um probably recommend
is not two-year terms but three year
terms because I think the majority of
our boards are for your germs except for
planning commissions so let's keep those
consistent and when you're starting up a
board it's easier to do three-year terms
because you can
do a couple of them as three year terms
and a couple of them is two-year terms
and a couple of them is a one-year term
so that we can make sure that we have
that staggered effect as the the terms
expire sure yeah any of those things
that again there was just a starting
point for conversations but certainly
we'd look at all of that in whatever
Direction the council want to go in
otherwise so I think with anything else
anything but mayor I think it might be
nice just so that we get it into a habit
as a group that when
um staff is asking for some direction
that we all
say yes or no or what concerns we have
because sometimes it's very easy if two
or three of us are speaking and then
staff is assuming that everybody's
agreeing and maybe you're not and so
maybe we could just go around with the
council and just find out if they they
feel that is it worth staff's time to
look into this a little further and
bring back to us or if he had any
concerns that includes Council elect
members is Kathy saying yes yes thank
you oh yes
of things the board that would come to
the board would want to try to cover all
those bases or as many as possible with
individuals with backgrounds in that
area extremely specialized though
correct
um there are some things that are
underlying you know civil engineers are
very often involved in multiple aspects
of the various things that I've
mentioned but some things like solid
waste recycling sustainability issues
certainly are more specialized without a
lot of overlap
that would probably be an important part
of evaluating this how big do that does
that board need to be and what would we
want to make sure and find by way of
backgrounds
are those research those those people
those resources available
and
not a member at Large
yeah those are all the things we look at
my hope would be with 280 000 residents
we'd have we would have the majority of
it covered and hopefully people that
would want to serve in that capacity but
certainly Jim we want to think through
all that those kinds of issues
this is a formal it's going to be a
commission or
though Jim as their as their evaluating
projects they could always bring people
into to have Specialists come in and
discuss items for presentation purposes
like there's only one young kaprowski so
she might have to bring somebody else in
um
Bobby any thoughts
I like the ideas a lot about
get some insight from other people too
yeah the thought what Chuck was that you
know things coming directly from staff
to council you know puts a very large
burden on you to be that finder of fact
and review the issues and deeply
understand it so we all know Council
agendas are usually pretty full with
things so having a body to actually do a
lot of that heavy lifting and evaluation
of things would provide you know some
some Community input as well as
additional outside thought um in when it
comes to making uh recommendations to
council
I would recommend a seven-member body I
think that seven is a nice number to
work with
I think yeah
it might need to be broadened to nine
just because of how many different areas
you're trying to cover the one thing
about the transportation task force is
that there are nine from different areas
and
um
because some people may not be as
engaged a nine-member body would at
least get you know five or seven very
active members which would be helpful
okay well and mayor if
um
and I'm not trying to short-circuit the
conversation
um but if the direction is to pursue
this further
um guidance for us is
um put together a working group
internally involve councilman koprowski
as the liaison to that working group and
let us work through all these issues and
and really nail down proposed scope and
then we'll recommend by number of
members so that we make sure we've got
good coverage
that are
an alternate like we do with the
Planning Commission I don't think any
other boards or commissions have that in
Gilbert but you could
absolutely so I'd be happy to
you know be the liaison and talk with
you but I think like in like a working
group it is probably sufficient we don't
need to have a formal subcommittee no I
think a working group with staff and you
with liaison is good perfect
yeah and I like the scope of time that
you included too okay okay so we will
move forward uh we'll work with
councilman kaprowski pull together a
small working group and we will Target
bringing something back for Council
consideration at the Spring retreat
which is anticipated probably late April
early May time frame
that'll be difficult if we want to seat
this board in May and June so just yeah
mine too because we'll have to advertise
for it in order okay we'll look through
all of that and and uh
make sure we we allow ourselves enough
time to just let it done
that's the only thing I'm thinking okay
Leah Jessica anything you would add in
okay
yeah Judy
thank you Patrick we typically only have
the applications open when we are
actually recruiting for people but one
of the options is to have kind of a
general interest application so I'm just
mentioning it because it's possible that
we could maybe start looking for some of
those potential
um candidates and then we would
obviously once we officially have the
opening we could invite them to all
apply but maybe that would help to kind
of start getting that interest going
possibly so we can look into that thank
you our applications now include that
would you like to be involved in
something else or volunteer for
something else too so that's good
thank you
did you get enough Direction yep I think
we've got it thank you
thank you
hopefully
you see over there
are you staying over there
all right hopefully everybody is still
on the sugar high not on the sugar Crash
from the cookies some of us had way too
many cookies to eat at lunch
um so we will get started on the North
Water Treatment Plant
and we wanted to start with this quote
so as you are already know and as many
of you are learning we have an
exceptionally talented team here in
Gilbert working to anticipate the
community's current and long-term needs
especially when it comes to
infrastructure this team believes that
infrastructure is the backbone of
economic growth and the reason that we
believe this is because we know
firsthand that infrastructure is how we
provide our residents and our own
families with clean water with Safe
Streets with sewer with an array of
services
in Gilbert we know infrastructure helps
create jobs and it supports business
growth as evidenced by this aspirational
photo for downtown Gilbert so this quote
from Margaret Thatcher she may have been
intending to be literal to Rhodes but I
interpret this quote as applying to all
infrastructure and that is economists
travel on infrastructure
so today the presentation that Gene is
going to walk you through today is an on
one of Gilbert's most significant
infrastructure projects in our history
which also happens to be one of the
largest water infrastructure projects in
the entire Southwest and that is
benign so you heard a lot of acronyms
yesterday so Gene's going to walk
through the details of this project
including some of the key and very
significant challenges facing the
project there's a lot of information
that she's going to share and trust me
when I say that there's an overwhelming
abundance of information that was pared
down and taken out of the presentation
to keep this as digestible as possible
but if you take just a few things away
from what she's going to walk through
with you if you take just a few things
away from this presentation it is that
delivering safe clean water is a sacred
trust that we take very seriously that
maximizing Gilbert's water resiliency is
imperative and that time is of the
essence with this critical project for
our residents and our community and so
with that Gene's going to walk you
through the North Water Treatment Plant
reconstruct
hey Julia so for those folks that
haven't had the chance to meet before my
name is Gene Jensen I'm one of the
capital project supervisors and our
utilities area so my team delivers Water
waste water storm water and reclaim
water infrastructure projects on behalf
of the operations teams really glad to
be with you here today it's been a
little while since I've had an
opportunity to share this project with
the council at large the last large
presentation we shared with you is in
February of 2021 but since then we've
had a number of updates and and updates
along the way that are I think relevant
here but it's time for us to bring this
project back and on top of the
conversations you've already had today
with regards to water resources and
others I just wanted to bring us back to
the original challenge statement that
this project put forward the internal
subject matter experts and we are
blessed to have a team of folks that
really understand every component of
these types of projects work together
and develop the challenge statement you
see before you and I share it with you
now because I will tell you that this
challenge statement evolved through this
project
but it's underlying messages still true
a substantial investment is required in
order for us to continue to produce safe
reliable and resilient water from our
North Water Treatment Facility
a brief overview of what we're going to
touch on Leah was very gracious to say
that we cut out a lot of material for
context there are more than 70 slides in
the Boneyard for this that we could
spend time on but in the interest of
time we are going to make sure we focus
on the most important messages and
takeaways as you saw on that first slide
we had key takeaways each section will
have some key takeaways and for those
slides that are very material dense you
may see a summary note at the very top
to help you understand what's the most
important message we're sharing we'll
walk through the initial Challenge and
how this project came to be through the
staff internal development process that
business case that was presented and how
the project has since developed the
project team how we're implementing best
value through our value engineering
processes our cost and program
recommendation as well as share with you
an upcoming Milestone hopefully next
week we'll be going before the Planning
Commission for the special use permit on
this facility so I want to make sure
that you folks are completely up to date
as to where we are with this project and
how we're moving forward
so the initial challenge this view here
looks towards the east so actually the
the Drone that took this image is
probably about 600 feet west or east of
us here the North Water treatment plan
is actually located barely a stone's
throw across the riparian from us
um this view takes a look at the old the
existing facility and wants to share
with you just how large of a facility
this is this is a really involved space
a lot of structures so just you have a
sense of the capacity and the space that
we're taking up
the takeaways for this initial challenge
is that this facility serves about 150
000 of our residents today but is
anticipated to serve up to 250 000 in
the future this is a substantial amount
of impact to our community
the staff efforts to date have focused
on creating best value and considering
long range infrastructure implications
not just what's easy and quick today but
what's the best investment for the
community going forward
also I want to reiterate just how much
collaboration happened between the
internal subject matter folks you've got
some of them here in the room today with
Lauren and Rebecca and Jessica and
others but it went far beyond the stones
of this room to include a group of folks
who are not able to be in front of you
today sharing with it but I wanted you
to know that they were involved as well
so some context on the North Water
Treatment Plant it is an existing 45
million gallon per day facility located
in the northeastern corner of Gilbert
like I mentioned just down the street
currently serves about 150 000 residents
anticipated to serve 250 at build out
it is the backbone and the most flexible
part of our resilient water supply it
does not receive water directly from the
Colorado River it's a different water
source the salt Verde Rivers as well as
groundwater
and it's an economic driver as you can
see highlighted in blue this is the
sections of our community that receive
water from this facility today they open
a tap they're likely getting water that
came from this facility
it's the economic driver behind our
Northwest Redevelopment District our
downtown our medical complex near the
Gateway Hospital as well as the regional
economic components that are served
through the Gateway Airport areas
now this slide summarizes some of the
efforts taken on by staff highlighting
the key takeaways from those efforts
including that our integrated master
plan indicated we needed to reduce our
dependence on groundwater in order to be
able to provide that resource in the
time of drought or need
our water quality master plan identified
the most important components of our
water quality compliance portfolio going
forward helping us focus our efforts
where they would most be needed in the
years going forward
a facility condition assessment was
completed in 2018 the first that had
been done for this facility identifying
a little north of 70 million dollars in
structural rehab and repair these are
structural improvements that wouldn't
change a thing about the facility other
than keep the walls up and the lights on
this is an important note because it's
part of the decision process
in addition to that staff took on a very
comprehensive piloting effort to look at
different ways of running the facility
to look for optimization as well as
making improvements throughout the
systems
so how did we get here how do you how do
you get to the point where you realize
this is the investment you need to make
and I'll share with you that it started
for me at least as a part of an ozone
project system replacement we were asked
to take a look at the ozone system on
site and say it's time to make a major
rehab of this structure
it's a 16 year old piece of equipment it
needed a million dollars in maintenance
is this the best thing to do do we want
to sink a million dollars into a piece
of equipment that's approaching its end
of life or do we need to ask ourselves
questions we did a cost benefit analysis
on that piece of equipment and
identified that replacement was
appropriate for replacing it we should
optimize how we use it and optimization
for us is where the most opportunity may
lay
so that optimization encouraged us to
ask ourselves a lot of questions is that
ozone system in the right place why do
we use ozone is there another compound
at the same time that we're having these
conversations within that one project
the operations teams were working
together to take a look at how to handle
our disinfection byproduct compliance I
know we talked yesterday about
eliminating or reducing acronyms as much
as we can so I'll tell you right now
disinfection byproduct DBP total
trihalomethane and tthm for us are all
interchangeable terms so you may see DBP
or THM on these slides that is a
compliance challenge so our operations
teams were meeting with engineering and
one another to figure out how to
continue to maintain compliance and we
wanted to take advantage of a decadal
dry up on the canal an opportunity to go
through every part of that facility and
make sure it was in good working order
and had the Investments it needed to run
long into the future
and then that effect of all of these
efforts going on at once was this
incredible cross-pollination
conversation between all the teams where
we went hang on I don't think my project
is as far removed from your effort and
is far removed from this other effort as
we thought
so that got us to the point where we
started to develop this large packet of
information that we could share with our
leadership to in order to gain guidance
that business case development
comes into four primary areas that where
the backbone of why we recommended the
Reconstruction of the north plant
first and foremost is the regulation
Gilbert's population has grown from when
a regulation was first put in place and
we will walk through the timeline on
that that population grew and crossed a
threshold 250 000 residents which
required that we have to take a new look
at our regulation and compliance
standards in order to meet that going
forward
water quality the north plant was
designed at a time period where water
quality was really stable and
predictable but unfortunately we have
experienced some really dramatic changes
in the Watershed that serve this
facility
and that component was a key factor
because the north plant was never
designed to operate the way that we've
asked it to design the terrible analogy
that I usually use is if you bought a
car in the 1960s for a road trip you
wouldn't take that same car to F1 and
that's what we asked that car to do we
bought that car with a certain kind of
water quality in mind we tried to put it
on a much different race track
for my Water Resources standpoint when
we first kicked this project off we were
focused on preserving our groundwater
but now we're starting to see the
incredible importance of this facility
to unlock our flexibility as we Face
continued drought conditions on the
Colorado River
and finally as I've mentioned a few
times site condition
so those are the four pieces of the
puzzle that we put together
to build this business case
so the stakeholder team we've
consistently tried to create a message
that we can all understand and work
towards and that's where this initial
challenge statement you saw on the first
few slides came from
those four pieces of the puzzle come
together as such
so from a regulatory space
the North Water Treatment Plant if you
recall from that blue overlay serves
Northern Gilbert and the eyebrow that's
represented on the 2018 map represents
kind of the limit where it's no longer
the majority facility so residents north
of that eyebrow typically would receive
water from the north plant in the
majority
the reason I point that out is below
that eyebrow you see that there's less
pockets of yellow orange and red which
indicate potential compliance challenges
that's because our Santan Vista water
treatment plant receives a different
water portfolio and it's less reactive
so it tends to be a more stable water
for our long-term regulations
this growth that we had here in Gilbert
pushed us to be with the First Community
in the country that we are aware of that
went from one level of compliance to the
next highest tier so we grew and that
growth required we take our eight
existing sampling sites that were
distributed based off of a model of our
system at that time
Pick 12 new sites based on a
representation of our system and those
sites have to be married to being
representative of the full system you
don't get to pick where they are you
have to do a pretty comprehensive
analysis to say these sampling points
are representative of potentially some
challenges in our system
the reason we point all that out is
because as you see on the left image and
then as we zoom in onto the right if we
were to reduce our Reliance on
groundwater which is how we had been
managing this particular compliance
challenge to date we would go from
having pockets of yellow orange and red
to almost our entire Zone one being a
challenge compliance area
I share this because it's the worst
thing from the water operation
standpoint to have to send out or real
close to it at least this is a snapshot
of a letter that went out to our
residents informing them that the water
that they were receiving was not in
compliance for at least one monitoring
period now disinfection byproducts are a
long-term chronic contaminant this is
not something that makes you sick
immediately but over a long time a
lifetime of exposure it does increase
some risks in this case
that we want to be sure and mitigate I
share this with you to help you
understand where it falls on our
timeline it's right here in the zone one
tthm violations we had two consecutive
quarters where those letters went out
but you ask sometimes where do these
projects come from where how far back do
they go and in this case the regulation
was first introduced in 2006 it was
first part of our compliance program in
2012 and at the same time that we're
doing that we have to take a look at the
system those operational trigger
exceedances are a process within this
regulation where you look at how the
system is running and you say to
yourself if I keep running this way I
might have an issue next quarter I point
this out because it's to share that the
operations teams did a great job of
seeing those kind of yellow lights and
getting that system back where it needed
to be
unfortunately in 2017 they weren't able
to use all the tools in that toolbox
there were some equipment issues other
challenges that resulted in two known
violations
those were reported to the public at the
same time we were starting our 2017
Water Resources master plan we're in the
process of updating that now that's a
requirement every five years
we did a water quality master plan first
one for the town of Gilbert where we
wanted to make sure we were investing
well across the entire water system not
just focusing site by site but saying in
a comprehensive way how are we doing
water quality
we underwent that condition assessment
and then the census although a little
bit more complicated in 2020 than normal
it did come back and indicate that we
had exceeded that population threshold
and we needed to redistribute our sites
a key point from this slide if you take
nothing else away is that we've been
under this new regulation since the
beginning of the year and so far so good
the team has kept us within compliance
despite the increased challenges and
we're doing well
but this is requiring kind of an all
hands on deck approach
I mentioned before in my terrible
analogy about cars that the north plant
was designed at a period in time when
water was much more reliable in terms of
its quality and the reason here and I'll
point it out into the graphic is a
function of many different things but
one in specific is the impact of
wildfire and weather pattern changes on
our watersheds so Phoenix is the little
tiny blip in the bottom left-hand corner
of this map that is served by this
massive Watershed of that chunk that
Watershed has unfortunately experienced
consistent wildfires the first and most
significant of which that changed our
portfolio was the rodeo chetta Sky fire
back in 2000 which burned hundreds of
thousands of acres in northeastern
Arizona for those of you that enjoy the
Heber Overgaard or show low areas if you
drive through there as much as I have
you've probably noticed that that area
is still recovering and that's part of
why although this fire is now 22 years
old it permanently and likely
irrevocably changed the water quality on
this Watershed that we see at the
facility
beyond that the plant sees three
different water types throughout the
year it is one of the only facilities in
the country that's asked to treat water
from two different rivers and then throw
some groundwater in there too
that Salt River that we see in the
summer is more likely to form these
disinfection byproducts
the water we see in the fall the Verdi
has color to it thus the name it also
has an increased fraction of arsenic and
well water although we often use
groundwater to offset our disinfection
byproducts this one actually has some
components in it that can aggravate that
disinfection byproduct process
the plant used to shift water in April
and October
reliably just one River swapped to the
other and what's changed since then as
the weather patterns have shifted is
that we're seeing that this water
quality shift this River shift is not
bi-annual it can be weekly it can be
every few days if you remember a late
winter snowstorm on the Verdi Watershed
about three years ago now
probably four years ago now because the
pandemic's a giant time suck for me but
the there was a lot of snow kind of up
by Payson that snow was so substantial
that the river swap didn't actually
occur until three quarters of the way
through July but Salt River Project
needed to run that system differently in
order to meet their own obligations and
so we were seeing water quality shift
Thursday night from Verdi to salt
Monday night from Salt back to Verde and
groundwater in between so a facility
that used to change every six months was
now changing three times a week
groundwater isn't just an important
resource in terms of putting physical
water into physical pipes but there is a
financial implication to not using our
full allotment of reallocated water this
totally sustainable water here because
of the way the facility was designed we
were leaving up to seven thousand acre
feet of renewable water in our
proverbial bank account that we weren't
using and drafting out instead
groundwater to make those needs make up
so here what we see is that we want to
be able to maximize this renewable
resource versus using our groundwater
which is our insurance policy against
the future
I mentioned also our condition
assessment the most important piece of
this was there was a 70 million dollar
backlog of structural and physical
repairs the facility needed but in our
evaluation we also identified that the
facility was requiring double the
industry standard for reinvestment
indicating that in addition to the 70
million we'd found there was likely
underlying problems within the facility
in terms of how it was constructed and
its quality that we're going to continue
to become a financial strain on the
community
this structural reenhancement whatever
you want to call it would not have
allowed us to do what we need to do
treatment wise it would have simply
improved the physical structures to make
sure that they were stable for the
future
so what does that mean that was a lot of
really dense information and the subject
matter team has a little bit of
self-awareness we are nerds but we
understand that not everyone wants to
get into the weeds with us so because
there are some that might the team put
together a 30-ish maybe 35 page white
paper summarizing
everything you just saw
and then also doing some Alternatives
evaluation and Analysis we knew that we
needed to to kind of condense all of
these ideas and thoughts and Analysis
the teams have been doing and putting
them together in a way that made us so
we could all see it together
that then allowed us to take a look at
all the Alternatives what do we do we
obviously have a challenge how do we
bring It Forward we developed
Alternatives evaluations
that were then ultimately presented to
the council in April of 2020.
but between then when those challenges
first came to play and that presentation
it wasn't as though the north plant
wasn't being a continuous point of
consideration I share with you this
slide because it basically just
highlights the challenges that the
facility was brought forward or the
various Communications to council
between when those violations happened
and 2020 when we presented the actual
plant project for your consideration
highlighted in red are probably the ones
that were the most significant including
our water quality update on the
violations our water quality master plan
and Water Resources master plan
indicating that we had the challenges of
groundwater use as well as drinking
water compliance
the north plant condition assessment was
brought forward
there was a general presentation about
long-range infrastructure planning and
how we need to be looking long term we
should be building infrastructure for
the decadal view not for the Daily
we presented in April 2020 at the
financial Retreat the various
alternatives for your consideration and
then in November we came back and said
we think we also want to recommend not
just a reconstruction of the base 45 MGD
plant but going ahead and taking the
facility to its intentional build out of
60 million gallons per day
the one thing I didn't highlight on that
was that of those items you saw there 25
of the projects conducted at North plant
by by number not by Dollar were
emergencies in that same time period so
that's a substantial concern point for
my team specifically because that means
there's something going on we're not
predicting
so this graphic was presented in April
of 2020 to share with the council the
thought process that the staff went
through in evaluating the alternatives
for the north plant rebuild
we focused on a series of Alternatives
and I share a few of them although there
are sub Alternatives and some
additionals that were out there to share
that we went as far as what happens if
we do nothing
what is the implication of doing that
all the way through what does a regional
partnership look like can we reach out
to our sister cities in this case our
boundary sister cities not our
International ones but to build these
structures that would help us save
dollars potentially and the short
version was there was not a regional
solution available
so as we went through each alternative
we vetted it against one of the
conditions above does it get our water
quality where it needs to be does it
protect and allow us to have flexible
use of our groundwater
does it maximize our public trust by
reducing the risk of a regulatory
challenge
what's the most cost effective which was
an important consideration because there
are multiple ways to achieve this water
quality objective and finally which one
gets us out of the danger zone the
quickest and that ultimately recommended
the Reconstruction of the full facility
a further Financial evaluation took a
look at this and identified that this
was also the lowest cost option over the
same time period so although up front
the costs may look different
over the course of the facility's life
the savings would be coming forward
so that gets you kind of a little bit
through the how did we get here and how
did we make the recommendation to
council that was ultimately proved
forward now into our project team
development here in the room with me
today I have a few representatives from
our project team I'll ask them to sort
of wave in your general direction we
have our partners and our joint venture
between our two contractors sunt and PCL
Construction we've got Kaden Clint with
us today we have John Westervelt with
our pncm team and Ben Lee who is our
design engineer all the way in the back
there
like good engineers and contractors
they're as far away from the teacher as
they possibly can be
but
but you'll notice in the next couple
slides they get to the front row and
they're right in the front of the class
and we start talking about problem
solving so the objectives for this
section is to share with you that the
staff works really hard to establish
project objectives at the very beginning
so we knew what success looked like
before we had ever sketched a concrete
box or written a specification we wanted
to know what we wanted to achieve
the best value philosophy has served us
extraordinarily well as we've gone
through some very trying economic times
in the last 18 to 24 months
so first up
I'm sure no one has forgotten that
things have been a little weird
but we started this project during the
height of the pandemic and so trying to
get 25 or 30 people all working together
is really really challenging so I
someday I'm going to stop putting
Rebecca's head in a giant picture on
this but this is the only photo I took
from this Workshop so she's just gonna
have to deal with that and so you've got
her on Zoom you've got another probably
25 people represented in these little
squares over there trying to get this
really collaborative project meeting
pulled together when we can't be
physically together
Kurt's not as mad about the back of his
head because he's not super obvious like
no one totally recognizes him but poor
Rebecca up there
but the important detail here is that
before we even got anyone under contract
I told him before I sign anything with
you you're coming to the stakeholder
development process you're giving me
your time and we're figuring out how to
do this project this was in August of
2020 as you recall we presented to
Council in April of 2020 advertisements
were due June of 2020 we interviewed
July of 2020 and less than two weeks
later I had them in this room working
through stakeholder development
hmm
so what did that come up with so before
we brought our contractor or our
engineer in the room staff worked with a
technical advisor to establish these
criteria for Success on this project we
wanted to be sure that we understood
obviously value and cost are critical
but how do we measure all of the
different things that don't have a
dollar to them how do we establish best
value and you'll see that what staff
ranked was reliability maintainability
flexibility and future operation
conditions as more important than even
their own day-to-day operability they
wanted a facility that was going to
serve us long into the future and be
reliable and resilient and this has
helped us as we've made decisions as we
go forward
the other thing that I'll point out is
there are a handful of non-negotiables
you know you can't have a facility
that's intrinsically unsafe you can't
have a facility that's not going to meet
regulations so those were considered you
know no Alternatives that touched that
space
I mentioned that contractors and
Engineers like to sit in the back of the
room but for this effort they actually
got it right up front this was held as
we looked at how to lay the facility out
for those of you that saw the first
versions of these presentations we
suggested that because Nichols Park is
immediately adjacent it could be
impacted in a
groups so representatives from each team
scattered throughout this space all
working independently of each other we
laid out the facility in a way that now
minimizes the impact to nickels and
maintains that Community amenity as well
as maintaining its primary function as
an opportunity in case there's a canal
issue for that water to go someplace
so this was a really valuable effort it
was difficult to do because this was
still in pandemic times this was October
of 2020 so not much better than August
was but we were able to do hybrid as
well as in-person versions of this and
you'll notice there's lots of town staff
although it's hard to tell everyone from
the back
um we've got folks from planning and
development services and others all in
this team
so
with that jumping into our cost and
program Direction some takeaways here
we took a comprehensive value
engineering focused design stand down
over the summer
for those of you that are on we're on
Council in June of 2022 you received a
memorandum from our staff advising you
that due to the extraordinary economic
pressures we were under we wanted to
take a design pause to Truly Deeply dive
into value engineering so that's piece
one
the recommended program budget going
forward is 545 million dollars
and that the reconstructed plant will
come online in early 2026.
so what does that value engineering
Stand Down achieve and what does it look
like
the summary from it was value
engineering was not something we first
started in that process over the summer
we didn't go like it's time I guess we
had been doing it all along so up till
then we had generated 75 different
Alternatives throughout the project
whether it was a material shift or
design change that were considered but
during the value Engineering Process and
it was intense
we're talking 45 50 people in the public
safety Amphitheater over the course of
six days two weeks
minimal snacks we weren't really nice to
them either we generated over 150
additional ideas I'll walk through what
that process looks like just so you can
be familiar although if you saw the
Public Safety Training Facility it's a
very similar process in terms of what we
took on but
it's hard because you generate these
ideas and you want to like start oh
that's a good idea and you want to tear
into it but there's a process we follow
to make sure each idea gets measured
fairly and independently and considered
along the way
one other piece we wanted to share with
you is that our cost pressures and we'll
share with you a really interesting
index mapper we're using we are seeing
those cost pressures start to level I
wish I could say that I was seeing
declines across them not yet but we are
seeing those major Commodities starting
to stabilize and the other thing I
wanted to share with this team is that
when we reached out to council and asked
for your consideration for that 120 day
design stand down we actually completed
30 days ahead of schedule
so we finished the ve e effort in 90
days and that's why we're able to come
to you today ready to present the full
recommendation for your consideration
so this cost program recommendation I
share with you here what a typical ve
process looks like we gather information
we look at what are all the key
functions of a facility we ask ourselves
what are the most crazy creative ideas
someone yells at the engineers because
they want to start evaluating them
immediately and they just want to tear
into it you're like no just ideas it's
chaotic but we have professionals that
know how to Wrangle us we then go into a
value analysis process and every idea
unless it is completely
unimaginably impossible to build and out
of the 150 plus there were only two they
got eliminated on first round for that
get more than five or six pages of Excel
spreadsheets it's heaven for me it would
probably be miserable for most of you
but there's pages and pages of review
for every idea we went as far as to look
at whether or not the floors would get
these little toe kicks
it only saved 1500 bucks and it probably
would result in long-term drywall damage
so we didn't do it but the idea was that
we went that far in terms of the ideas
we considered the big shift between a
typical process though and the process
we undertipped is we added this sorting
step
normally as soon as an idea doesn't fit
your overall program you stop looking
into it but we wanted to do a full
evaluation of every idea give it its
full Merit and then a categorize it into
our various possible models so we
presented it to the council and to our
leadership we would be able to say we
literally left no stone unturned because
we actually considered whether or not
landscape should be included
all of this is then captured in that
ongoing living design Evolution log
so this design Evolution log is
continuing to be updated this is not a
one-time static process it's an ongoing
effort but it was an extraordinary lift
for that 90 days
so from that memorandum that was shared
with the council in June I wanted to
provide an update on the items that have
new information and those that are
complete
so as you see here the first one was
that construction package one which was
approved in January and construction
Package 2 which was approved in June
we're either at or under budget that's a
great piece for us right now that hasn't
changed
the other item that hasn't changed is
that we did conduct a value engineering
design value focused Stand Down
and that was initiated to explore
the widest range of Alternatives we
possibly could
that's complete and ahead of schedule
the other three items we'll share on the
next slide with an update
and this is a part of our process to
update the council as to where this
project now is
so focusing on the three that have
additional updates or information
we see that package three as we used to
refer to it and I say used to because
I'm going to share with you a new
packaging scheme that we're recommending
had the majority of the treatment
complex
the 60 cost model showed a 35
escalation from February of 2021 to June
of 2022.
and finally that The Stand Down would
shift the overall project schedule by
about the same number of days as we were
down for that time period
so going through those is an update
process the first one is that we're
recommending splitting package three
into two packages package three and
package four it confuses even us we have
a big map in the trailer and we've used
colors so it's packaged purple and
package green or package you know help
we need help so we go through and we lay
out all of these Alternatives too but I
want to share why we're not just
splitting that package up because I love
doing paperwork there's a financial and
a scheduled benefit to splitting the
packages out
the next is the cost
as we as evaluated in June the cost
model was 35 higher than it was 18
months previous
through the ve process we reduced that
overage by almost 40 percent and we are
now on target with the Mortensen
construction index for this area for
industrial construction which is what
this is
that index indicated 21.5 percent
escalation over the same period we are
showing 21.6 that's as close as we could
hope
we presented yesterday on a number of
issues to the new council members about
procurement and inflation we presented
that same material to Council in June
we're seeing 25 and 40 escalation on
most of our projects so it's remarkable
that a project this size is actually
seeing inflation that's a little bit
more in line with the larger industry
the last is that the stand-on would
shift the overall project schedule by
about four months
but in reality we've cut the schedule
down by 30 days and through repackaging
we'll be able to bring that facility on
about two months after we originally
planned we originally looked at New
Year's 2025 we're now looking about 60
days beyond that
so a great opportunity by the team to
split all this up
I mentioned that we had multiple cost
models and if you remember from the memo
that was sent we were going to look into
three areas a balanced model that
honored all of the original project
objectives a scope model where any
processes we could avoid building today
and maybe build tomorrow we would look
into
we would also look at Capital cost over
life cycle costs where that made sense
and then finally Capital was what is the
literal Bare Bones minimum we can
construct to get a 60 MGD facility
online that's looking at things like how
much emergency generation do you want
and really cutting as much of that back
as far as you could
what we found though when we went
through all of these evaluations was
that the only model that could actually
achieve the objectives of being
financially
responsible long-term vision and
building for something for the future
for the community was to recommend that
balanced model
and the implications of that balanced
model
are that it honors our best value
approach which we committed to we have a
project Charter many of you that came to
the groundbreaking signed
I don't think it's legally binding Chris
a poster probably not
[Laughter]
um
but it allows us to maintain the
commitment we made to the community back
in 2020 that we were going to build a
long-term facility looking towards the
long-term expenditure the long-term
costs and the long-term resiliency and
our ability to serve water to this
community
it also happens to have the lowest life
cycle cost that's not coincidental we
didn't wait the lines we looked at every
cost and everything that could come out
of it and it did come out as the lowest
the the downside to it is it requires
some complex construction sequencing
we're not just building an airplane
while flying it we're building it
backwards and demolishing it as we go so
this is a really challenging effort
we'll kind of show you what that looks
like on a couple of Graphics here in a
moment
but to share with you the cost is in
alignment with the industrial
construction inflation indexes
and the system is now upgrade ready for
the future
I want to be careful to mention that
upgrade ready in this case there's a
regulation we're not currently aware of
that could come up in the future we have
both physical and what we call hydraulic
or available space on the facility to
allow for additional treatment if needed
so with this we're going to start a
little video this video is a power bi
dashboard that our contractors team put
together
and it's going to show how we weighted
the different models balanced scope and
impact I'll drive our ground scope and
capital the impact score in the upper
right hand corner you'll see 100 items
190 items 100 items
each idea is then impact how much does
this change the project from the base
project objectives so you'll notice when
we click on this those ideas carried
from package one to Package 2 to package
three so ideas were considered across
multiple packages if available and then
waited against their impact so the
balance model only had an impact score
of two a minor impact overall to the
relative project unfortunately this one
just didn't quite animate the way we
were hoping but this is an impact score
of five when it comes forward and this
one if you only focused on this impact
score you get an impact of almost seven
so as you remove those ideas that are
commonly held in order to get to the
next savings bucket so to speak You're
negatively impacting the project from
its original objectives
so an overall impact score of 2.2
moderate impact score of four and a high
impact score of five but again that's
why we wanted to show what happens when
you turn off the underlying ideas that
are shared in each package the impact
score starts to really grow and the
delta in the cost is not as substantial
as you would have expected
so with that
our cost model summary
under the balanced recommendation we're
moving forward with the original project
objectives we did go system by System we
looked at systems that had intrinsic
resiliency and then compared that about
whether we did an N plus one type design
so if an existing a piece of equipment
has resiliency within it do we need
three of them or can we only build two
took that on the process by process
basis we wanted to balance the
efficiency of the plant with its ability
to respond to emergencies
and ultimately what we'd share with you
is that the cost model presented in
February of 2021 was 457 million
the cost model update as of June of this
year was 575 and what we're recommending
going forward is 545 million dollars
the asterisk is not because we're trying
to hide anything we just wanted to share
this is a cost model We are continuing
to Value engineer and identify
Alternatives just yesterday we had a
presentation with an emergency backup
generation company that would use
natural gas instead of diesel and may
actually save the Town Money long term
by allowing us to do some Energy
Efficiency planning through Peak shaving
and other opportunities along the way so
we're not done with this process this is
the snapshot in time at the end of the
most recent ve effort
so with that I mentioned before that we
are splitting the package up and it's
really difficult to understand even for
me some days how many packages we're
really looking at so in green hard to
tell that that's actually new but that's
the new solids handling facility that's
under construction now anticipated to
come online in early March
that's making ways so that we can
eliminate the solids drying beds that
are now under that orange that
represents our underground and deep
structure piping that was a procured in
June of this year so that was approved
by Council in purple and now with New
Roads is the new treatment complex as
well as the new chemical building and
administrative facilities there's a
little bit outside the fence there and
then as you come in the new GAC building
appears as well as this is a big tank
structure and in the last phase we
remodel and repurpose existing buildings
and build our new pre-sed imitation
tanks so as I mentioned we build this
plant backwards and to simplify it we'll
do some magic and turn off the ground
and then go ahead and have that
underground piping show up so you can
appreciate how much structure is really
in this site that has to be built while
this whole facility can't come offline
for more than a few hours
so
it's a really it's a credit to the team
that they're going to be able to do all
this we're doing this now every day to
keep it so that the public
continues to receive that safe reliable
and resilient water and they don't see a
change in their service
for those of you that were like that's a
lot of things turning on and off here's
a simplified version of the five
packages we're now recommending the
benefit of this package is it will
reduce the schedule by about two and a
half months overall on the whole project
which isn't
super amazing on a five-year project but
it's better than going longer but it
will also save the project about three
and a half million dollars if we waited
until every design package was
completely ready as we had originally
structured it there'd be 60 to 90 days
where the contractor would be on site
but have no work to do
and so in order to keep those staff
available that would be a substantial
cost to US versus keeping them busy and
moving and helping us keep that Staffing
ratio even so folks are not spinning up
and then spinning back down again
I mentioned that we're not done value
engineering some of the things we're
continuing to look at now that we have
completed 15 months of piloting out of
the North plant
um we ran a 1 6 000 scale 15 gallon per
minute version of the treatment plant
for a year and a half almost
we now know that we don't need two ozone
dosage points back to Ozone that
original project that first got us all
spun up
we wanted to make sure as the ozone in
the right place is it the right dose so
the price we had in the 60 cost model
assumed one dosage now we have piloting
information that's shared with us we can
lower that dosage potentially reduce the
cost of that equipment
we're going back to Market that going
back to Market saved three million
dollars on gmp2 by repricing that pipe
we went to as far as to go out to the
package five which was those
pre-semitation basins we're looking at
what it would take to go from 360-ish
foot basins to two slightly larger
basins with the same treatment impact
but less footprint and less cost to
construct
and then on the overall we're still
continuing to look at contingency
General conditions and general
requirements we're looking at
construction rate efficiencies as well
we have an ongoing PPI tracker a
producer price index tracker I'll share
on the next slide
we're looking at just-in-time purchase
and Market optimization and it's stated
here as a shared savings Clause what we
mean by that is finding ways to
incentivize our team to continue to
identify savings even after the
contracts are issued because that
continued diligence that continue to
focus on best value can't stop just
because the pencils are down from the
engineer's perspective
on the next slide it'll start animating
immediately so I'll speak to it before I
start it
the contractors team has put together a
power bi dashboard that scrapes the
producer Price Index
we then Focus those on the most
important commodities for this project
because obviously the producer price
index has everything from Alfalfa
through nickel and through steel we
wanted to focus on what was really
impacting this job so we can track it
because what the producer is paying
impacts the manufacturer's final cost
and that would impact our buy so if we
start to see a producer price level off
or even decline that will help us inform
on purchases
so with that this PPI index
will kick on here and you'll see to the
left it'll be a data point at the very
beginning when we took that initial cost
model of the project and since then this
is just a representative of the
volatility this is a hundred percent up
here 50 here so you'll see some items
like the blue line here have actually
declined and kind of leveled off others
continue to be really volatile and that
helps us understand along the top is a
ticker telling you where we are this
updates monthly with the Bureau of Labor
Statistics data dumps and it's helping
us keep an eye on what we're doing
you can pause it if you have a
particular interest in a particular
material it's like the worst stock
ticker in history in that particular
capacity because it's never money that
I'm getting but regardless you wanted to
see what number two diesel fuel is doing
why do we care about number two diesel
that's what's in our construction
equipment that's what runs the
excavators versus in this case
fabricated steel plate appears to be
leveling off so if we're getting close
to a structural steel purchase we now
know that we're paying similar to the
price that we would have paid if we
bought two months ago we can make a
decision based off of what we see
so we're using this as a tool going
forward to make sure that those
purchases and those buys are happening
at the best possible time
so with that the only thing I want to
make sure I pointed out is the graphic
you saw of the plant we're not painting
it purple and yellow we're still I I
know and I'm sorry Mary Peterson I know
you would love for it to be purple but
but we'll be um we'll be presenting a
rendering soon that'll have the form
inlays that will impact this exterior
wall what you'd see from the Nichols
Park if you were down there with your
family
um but did want to make sure that you
folks were aware that next week we'll be
going before the Planning Commission for
consideration of our special use permit
special use permit is something that the
town requires of certain kinds of
construction including agrotainment PD
and fire stations this facility needs
one for the construction that we're
currently going through it doesn't have
one in place so we are going through
this process just wanted to Sugar that
we will be at the Planning Commission
next week if you want to see this
presentation again but really really
short just focusing on what the plan is
I'll probably be giving it again
and then with that
this is a flyover of the facility so you
can have an appreciation for just how
much was going to change two changes
from what you see here what's going to
be in the future those Square basins
will be demolished in the last phase so
they're shown here because they're not
impacted in the construction this is an
emergency recovery Basin it is not a
secret fishing pond it's not normally
full of water this is what happens when
you let the Architects go loose but they
they mean well so we flew past the
solids handling we're going to come
around to the treatment complex as
you'll see here we're only intruding
into Nichols Park a little bit we're
using a fence and some structures to
minimize our intrusion down that slope
so you'll still be able to play sports
and take photos although there will be
some changes visually to that space
this is the treatment complex if you've
been out to the Santan plant it's going
to look very very similar just a little
bit bigger same treatment processes with
the new Step being the granulated
activated carbon which functions as a
polishing step to help remove those
Organics those Organics are basically
the leaves and the material that are
breaking down on the water that we have
to remove and that they form that
disinfection byproduct when they
interact with our disinfectant chlorine
one new change in terms of if you were
driving past there will be a new
driveway that goes out to Guadalupe Road
to facilitate truck traffic in and out
of that GAC space
um the other thing is no the roads won't
be fluffy this was our rendering so the
asphalt won't be super squishy I'm sure
councilmember koprowski you're like what
are you guys building out there but it's
just to sort of highlight existing and
future roadways through here
one thing to point out are North
reservoirs
um here on the North End of the site
those are not changing in a substantial
way the evaluation and condition
assessment indicated that those were
appropriate for reuse
um and that's not actually an empty box
that's a finished water pump station so
not everything got rendered but we
wanted to show the majority of the
facility for your uh consideration here
just to give you a sense of how much
will be changing on site
in Nichols Park if you want to build
them there
honey
cricket
yes
so
um if you got to the end of that
43-ish slides and you wanted to know
kind of what are the most important
messages it's actually probably in
almost reverse order for me although
Others May disagree I think the most
important thing is we have built a team
that understands front to back left to
right that the work they do today is
benefiting a community of over a quarter
million folks most of whom will never
have the opportunity to know them or
shake their hand so they're doing work
that matters they're doing work that's
important it's something that whenever
they put me on the spot and asked me to
make a comment to the craft and Crews
that are out there that I try to
reinforce a quarter million people in
the community are saying thank you
and they're saying No thank you for the
opportunity to build something
meaningful for this community going
forward
that's been the most important thing for
me time is of the essence with
everything going on on the Colorado
River and elsewhere we can't afford to
step back on this effort because we need
this facility available to provide safe
resilient water for our community and
that the existing facility was unable to
meet those needs as it existed
so we have a new challenge statement and
we've shared this before the previous
one the north plant has exhausted it was
a it was a statement that shared where
staff was kind of at
what are we going to do this is a lot
how do we carry this forward how are we
going to bear this but instead now it's
I think a much more positive Focus Where
Do We Go From Here type of message how
do we provide safe resilient water that
surpasses local and National drinking
water standards sustainably and when we
say sustainably we mean dollars we mean
the environment we mean the community
all together into the future
so before I go to the next slide and
close out for questions I wasn't sure if
our construction or project team wanted
to add anything or correct me on
anything if they're smart they won't
correct me but I wasn't sure if you guys
had anything you wanted to add from the
back there
good answer
so so Ben Ben is has been dying ever
since we said to go to five packages he
says we needed a project theme song and
so we rewrote the lyrics to Lou bega's
incredible hit Mambo Number Five to be
about a construction project I'm going
to work with Dana and the digital team
to get that
okay
we're gonna hold her to that
um we're
laughs
indeed in case you weren't I didn't know
I actually did teach youth art for a
long time so I'm pretty good at that but
with that um we are grateful for the
opportunity to provide this update on
the North plant project this is an
incredible opportunity to do something
meaningful for the community today and
going forward I know that a lot of folks
kind of get to come in here and and say
things like this this is going to be
terrible but we got a plan this is part
of the plan and I'm grateful to be a
part of that plan going forward and a
tremendous appreciation for our
operations teams who helped with the
initial problem development who helped
with the mopos we do today and are
continuing to maintain that compliance
while we get the easy job of building
the cool project
that's it
I was waiting because I didn't know if
you were just gonna take a breath and
keep going
we're ready all right here we go
so land use 2.0 so it has this name
because at a previous Retreat we had a
discussion about some different land use
topics and we wanted to have a
we will um walk through today we'll
start with infill and Redevelopment then
we'll touch a little bit on mixed use
staff has been working on a mixed use
ordinance that we're going to introduce
to the council at a study session on
January 21st so we wanted to give you a
little heads up as to what that looked
like and how that kind of fits into some
of the infill and Redevelopment projects
um as part of an overall discussion on
affordable housing in the valley you've
probably seen some articles and
discussions about Guest quarters and
secondary dwelling units so it's just
going to tough very briefly and very
high level about how the town of Gilbert
handles those and then just kind of walk
through our process a lot of times
people talk about the development
process and it gets a little cloudy or a
little confusing so I thought I'd just
kind of walk through a little bit of how
some of these go I've got some really
good flow charts for design review board
and then if if something needs a
rezoning and a general plan Amendment so
we'll have kind of a good opportunity to
see how our our project go through the
process
so to start with
um I figured we'd start with just two
um definitions so that we started on the
same page so infield development is the
development of vacant or partially
developed Parcels that fully abut
develop properties and we're seeing a
lot of this now and I've got a lot of
examples you've probably seen in your
handouts of where we're seeing more and
more infill development and we're seeing
a lot of infill development because
quite frankly a lot of the green fields
are gone we only have a few large tracks
left a few areas that don't have much
development surrounding them so we get
into the infill development and as
you've seen and as you know the infill
development and Redevelopment comes with
a lot of different challenges so we will
talk through some of those as well and
this is a definition that's directly out
of our Land Development code
Redevelopment on the other hand is any
new construction on a site that has
pre-existing uses it represents a
process of land developing uses to
revitalize the physical economic and
social fabric of an urban space so what
you're really doing is is redeveloping a
site you're taking a site that that has
maybe lost its useful life and you're
starting over you're you're putting a
new use a new building on it kind of
starting from scratch in the hopes of
some economic vitality and like I said
the Redevelopment and of course as
everybody knows probably the biggest and
best example of Redevelopment in Gilbert
is the Heritage District you can see in
this picture here where we kind of
started you know this is Zinburger this
is the the rest of the the marketplace
there so this is now that at the top so
you can see how it's changed definitely
over time and and it continues to do so
I just thought these pictures were
pretty pretty good to show how things
have changed and obviously as part of
the the Redevelopment there was land
assemblage there was development that
occurred so yeah there's a a lot of
change that's happened in the in the
area and as I mentioned um it completely
changed not only the physical area but
the economic and social fabric of that
area so what was one time you know maybe
some houses or some of those other
things now a very vibrant economic
driver in in Gilbert
Redevelopment also doesn't just have to
be commercial it can be residential or
doesn't have to be just residential it
can be commercialized it's a lot of
different things so
um we'll kind of bounce through some of
these examples that we've seen in the
last few years so this example is the
Carson so this is on Gilbert Road it's
just south of Gilbert Town Square that's
uh this is the one that's just south of
Sal's Pizza there across from town hall
2.8 Acres this zoning went from shopping
center to multi-family medium it's eight
two-story buildings uh 40 units and it
comes in at about 14 dwelling units an
acre
um
one of the challenges or interesting
things about this is you can see in this
picture it was an old home at one point
in time so I honestly don't know if it
was The Farmstead for the entire area or
if it was just a home that was
constructed that fronted onto Gilbert
Road but you can see it was it was a
house it was due for redevelopment there
are single-family homes along the South
which which give us a little bit of
context in which to play you've got
commercial on the west which I believe
that's the bowling alley and then you've
got Sal's and Phoenician and everybody
there to the north so as we look at the
development we have to kind of figure
out how is this going to fit in there
and again fit into that that context of
the area this was an aerial it's an
older aerial but you can see where it's
under construction again what I kind of
wanted to point out and you can see it
on this is we have the single family
structures to the South so we provided
more of a buffer on the south so you've
got the pool you've got the drive aisle
you don't have necessarily the buildings
right up against the other single-family
homes that it's not so important on the
west side or the North side because
you've got commercial development so you
kind of know what you're getting into if
you moved into those developments
examples of what the building elevations
look like and then here's what it looks
like today so this one's constructed I
believe they're they're leasing right
now but I thought this picture was
pretty good as well because you could
see some of the commercial to the north
and you could see that the height is
starting to match and you're sort of
compatible with what's to the north it
doesn't show the houses to the South but
at least you can kind of see that it's
compatible with what's to the north
um the next one is
the Wyatt apartment so this one is on
Gilbert Road as well this is south of
the public safety facility so these guys
back right up to
um the parking garage there that's on
the south side of the public safety
facility
um 10 acres this one went from office to
multi-family medium an office was kind
of a tough play there because it's kind
of mid-block there isn't really a lot of
other office around it other than ours
so a little bit difficult this went to
multi-family medium again six buildings
these were three stories
um tall 216 units about 21 units per
acre again you can kind of see where we
started there was a house up front
really nothing in the back we always
knew that this would redevelop this
property the South would redevelop at
some point you can see the parking
structure there to the North and then
we've got single family to the East and
really I think you can even see oh well
you can see the old house there where
um the the one we just talked about that
was south of South so this is the aerial
while it was under construction again
you can see we've pushed everything away
from the single family homes not so
important against the easement and the
the public facility to the North and
then we knew this would redevelop so
there's a little bit of buffer there to
the South as well and I'm saying these
kind of things so you look you can
understand some of the contexts that we
play in as we look at these
Redevelopment requests as they come
forward these were the building
elevations in the site plan again you
can see a lot of their
um their landscape setback and buffer to
the east was detention the rest of it
was sort of parking lot and Landscaping
and then this is what it looks like
today so you can see at one point we
went from this
to a facility that now looks like this
barely very nice very nice amenities
nice pool outdoor seating areas I mean
it again it definitely changes the
fabric and the economics of that that
piece of property
uh Andrew Lucia Villas this is an
interesting one this one has received
mixed reviews I would say is a good way
to a good way to put it one of the
things I've always really enjoyed about
the town of Gilbert is there's a lot of
different choices in housing whether it
be large lot or equestrian or smaller
Lots or tracked homes we've got some
three-story facilities whatever it
always seems to be that there's a some
type of product for anybody that wants
to live in Gilbert or wants to move
around in Gilbert so this is southwest
corner of Val Vista and Ray 14 acres
um even with 101 units it's only about
seven units an acre
um the thing with this one is it's a
very tight development and I think
that's where it's begun to get its mixed
reviews two-story buildings pretty tight
small Lots you can see what it looked
like um previously
but again there's single family to the
South single family to the West
Commercial to the north and to the east
so there really wasn't an issue of of
buffering obviously along the arterials
but they created the big open space here
with the there's a walking path tried to
create a buffer here in order to
separate these uses appease the
neighbors concerns and and create some
sort of transition then that would help
with the development
um units that's not for rent right I
believe so yeah
um here's what the building elevations
look like when they came through a
picture of the site plan again you can
see the open space and retention open
space and retention trying to provide
that buffer uh and then I just grabbed a
couple of pictures of the existing
buildings off of their current website
but it's a it's a different product for
sure but
you know again one that that we see as
part of Trends in the in the marketplace
um not all of these projects become very
dense a lot of them try to start that
way as staff we look at a lot of
projects that come in and immediately
um put up red flags and concerns and
talk about support or no support for
different reasons this is one of those
that really tried to up the density to
start with and we had to have some long
discussions with them about surrounding
land uses and and staff support so this
is Lindsay and Galveston it's on the
west side of the road 12 acres this one
actually went from sf-43 to sf-35 so not
a huge jump in zoning the 43 is 43 000
square foot Lots they went to 35 000
square foot Lots so a little bit of an
increase in density but not a great deal
and this came out at a little over one
unit per day or one unit per acre that's
the site you can see there's a couple
houses that front Lindsay Road you've
got larger lot along the South larger
lot along the west and and the North
can't remember off the top of my head if
the surrounding land is all in the town
or some of its County Island but it
doesn't really matter we still have to
look at the land uses that are there and
and have these be compatible
so this is what they came back with 35
000 square foot lots for the majority of
it here's 46
000 38 37 in the middle so we try to
have those lot sizes that were
compatible with the ones to the South
you know putting a development that we
looked at that was south of Sal's the
Wyatt you know where it's
two stories you know 14 units an acre
just would not be compatible would not
fit in this location so we had a lot of
conversations with the folks and this is
finally what was uh brought through and
approved
uh I didn't don't have any house
pictures for you because it's not under
construction quite yet so
um here's another one that's interesting
this is at the southeast corner of
Greenfield and Superstition drive again
kind of on those larger areas or
one of those larger lot developments it
wasn't necessarily they didn't try to
jam too much density in there and we
really wouldn't support it giving some
of the surrounding land uses uh went
from sf-43 to sf15 and this is only
about a unit and a half per acre
um this is the Christian school now I
forgot the name of it I had it
Gilbert Christian School
um
they uh to the north is a Lennar project
this was another Reed Porter project and
this is the site we were talking about
here that's why it's called the the
orchard so I want to give you a little
bit context too along the north side
there where the the orchard ends that
Superstition drive and I want to say
that because the next picture shows the
development this is superstition drive
so we've flipped everything I just want
you to be able to to see the context but
again knowing that you've got
kind of a transition happening between
some smaller Lots in a school into some
larger lots and then maybe even some
larger lots to the to the east of that
this is one of those developments that
that took a little bit of time to to
work through to get that transition
there was opposition from the neighbors
to the east but I think everything
worked through pretty well and this was
the project that was ultimately approved
other infill development examples that
we've seen and that we've had
discussions on obviously that Kohl's
shopping center
um at Cooper and Baseline they came in
and that was the southwest corner of
Cooper and Baseline there was an
existing shopping center there they came
through and removed a portion of the
residential and ended up constructing
multi-family on it I believe in that one
staff was against the proposal
um
but it's moved forward I believe it's
under construction now we've had several
discussions about the southeast corner
of Gilbert and Guadalupe there's a new
Starbucks in that location we've had
some other projects being discussed in
front of the Big Lots there we've where
some folks have talked about buildings
with some significant height which
might be okay it's going to depend we'd
have to look at it there's not a lot of
height in that area so depending upon
the height we'd we'd really need to take
a look at it the Northwest Corridor is
another great example of some infill and
Redevelopment we've seen there are empty
lots I'm still in that area so we're
seeing some new development of some
smaller industrial buildings in that
area but we've also seen some
Redevelopment of some sites too
Aldi's is coming to council shortly this
is on Arizona Avenue they're going to be
tearing down the old Auto use that was
there and there's gonna there's a
rezoning there to to build the grocery
store and some multi-family around that
fries at Val Vista and Baseline is a
very interesting one we've had a lot of
conversations on over the years but
nothing's moved forward so just south of
that fries up against the lake there's a
lot of empty dirt that has never
developed and nobody's ever come forward
with it it's a difficult piece because
there's no it's Zone commercial there's
no Frontage onto any roads it's very
hard to see so so I wouldn't be
surprised if that one wasn't a ripe
piece where somebody would come in and
want to put some multi-family up against
the water with abuse but we haven't seen
anybody come forward with anything like
that
and then once that was The Craze where
all the CVS and Walgreens on every
single corner and those are starting to
fade and go away so we've seen these
turn into the four-wheel drive store at
uh Williams Field and Gilbert there's a
church I believe that one is at Ray and
Lindsay so there's been a couple
different ones that have turned out oh
and there's another one that turned into
a real estate agent C at
yeah there you go so we're we're seeing
some interesting uses come back out of
those
um those sites as well
um in an attempt to kind of take get a
snapshot of what we could be looking at
and I'm sure everybody's going to look
at this and say hey wait a minute you're
missing this site or that side but I
asked Our IT team the gis guys to just
quickly pull anything that's between 5
and 20 acres that could have a potential
free development so they they didn't do
any kind of analysis on the land they
just said okay these these Parcels are
between 5 and 20 acres and you know here
they are so you'll notice for example in
the Northwest Corridor a lot of those
are either you're not seeing a lot lit
up well some of the most of those are
less than the five acres so they're not
showing up is on here but you can see
there's still quite a bit of areas that
we could potentially see
Redevelopment or or development on and
these will be these won't be the easiest
to Pieces because a lot of them are
surrounded by other development and and
we'll really have to look at the
character of the area and what's going
on around it in order to to try to fit
those developments in because really we
don't want you know underutilized dirt
anywhere in the town we'd like to we'd
like to develop it out as best as we
possibly can
so why are some of these vacant and some
aren't
um I took a stab at this and you'll
probably think of some other reasons as
well but a lot of times we've seen where
you know somebody owned 50 acres 100
acres 20 acres whatever they want to
keep the Farms dead but Shea Homes is
ready to develop so they sell them off
15 Acres they keep five acres they build
the subdivision around it and then you
end up with a a piece and as soon as the
uh you know the the parents are done
living in that house and that's time for
redevelopment what are you going to do
how are you going to infill that in a
lot of instances we can plan for those
subdivisions around it so there's
connections and then you ultimately kind
of fit it back in there but that that
always isn't the case in some of the
older developments so those are those
are difficult access is always a big
thing too I'm coming back in are these
projects Parcels is going to only have
right in right out
um can they even get two points of
access can they meet the fire safety
requirements that we have for you know
for our First Responders
um difficult surroundings you know
what's around it is there are there
railroad tracks is it um
pushed up against an industrial area and
these guys want to go
um residential different things like
that strain shaped lots and we've got a
lot of triangles and just odd you know
um you'll get ones that are you know 100
feet wide and a thousand feet deep and
you know I guess you put a spaghetti
Farm on it or something but I mean it's
a very odd shaped piece of ground so
spaghetti Farm very long very long
laughs
[Laughter]
um a lot of times the price of land also
will will keep something from developing
we've seen that a number of times if if
the projects won't pencil the project
the property will just set vacant for a
while and then as we've seen recently to
the willingness of an owner to sell if
they don't want to sell and they don't
want to move on the price will uh or the
project well the property will just sit
there in an undeveloped state for a
while
so what are some of the concerns I have
touched on some of them as we were
talking what are the concerns that staff
looks at when when projects come forward
for an infill or Redevelopment that's
you know not a a vacant site in the
middle of nowhere where we don't have to
worry about too many things one is
density that's always important I hit on
some of those with the larger lot
subdivisions that you've seen and even
with the ones south of Sal's I mean that
that transition between the single
family and the commercial was pretty
important so we we always look at the
density and how it's going to fit into
that area
setbacks you know
we've had a lot of discussions about
when this kind of goes along with the
height too maybe we want to set back one
or two story structures further from
single-family homes that are one story
and we have to work closely with a
developer on a lot of those but
um you know can we can we push those can
we get those setbacks can we do an
increase setback where we've got
additional Landscaping in the green
space and maybe some of the amenities so
that um uh those setbacks provide that
buffer again then to the the adjacent
properties traffic isn't always an issue
and really it doesn't matter if it's a
brand new project or infill or
Redevelopment it's always an issue and
it there's always a perception wrapped
around it but it's something we need to
take a very close look at because what
is it going to do to some of those those
locations the why it was a good example
trying to line up those driveways with
what was across the street becomes a
little difficult because not only do you
have the entrance to the back of the
public safety facility there but you've
also got the entrance to the shopping
center to the north so you've got a kind
of play this game where you're lining
things up and that all it's very
difficult sometimes when it comes to
some Redevelopment Parcels
architecture we always look at the
character of the area and how is this
going to fit we want to make sure that
there's some type of compatibility
between some things in order to make it
look like it's not an afterthought or
something new but again kind of matching
that fabric of the community I'm
character of the area same way if we're
in Morrison ranch or Gateway or the
Heritage District we really need to pay
attention to what's around there and
ensure that we're following the goals
and the policies and the the plans that
we've set out in the past
and then the Land Development code Our
Land Development code is really set up
for new development as we start to get
into more Redevelopment and things like
that we've really had to take a look at
it and figure out the best way to do
some things there isn't a lot of
flexibility in some of it and if it says
a 40-foot setback it's a 40-foot setback
and how does that work on some of these
projects and it may or may not and so
that can really hamper whether or not a
project can go forward and then if
there's a deviation requested staff has
to determine the you know the
desirability of that setback and is
there a good story to be told as to why
that should change what is the what is
the benefit to making that change
um
I'll pause there just for a minute to
see if there's any questions concerns or
discussions on infill or Redevelopment
before I jump into a real high overview
of mixed use and moving on are we good
okay I'm just going to give you a real
high level overview of the mixed use
ordinance as I mentioned this will be
coming to council a study session on
January 21st it's been to the chamber
thank you Sarah they loved it I thought
it was great greatest presentation ever
it's been to the Planning Commission the
Planning Commission
it felt like it
um
it's uh
the Planning Commission has seen it they
recommended approval of moving it
Forward right now we've got it out to
Amanda helped us send it out to some
folks at the Uli they've got a kind of a
Redevelopment group so we've got some
developers in that area looking at it
nationwide's taking a look at it some of
the other zoning attorneys in the area
have looked at it so we've got several
folks that have given us feedback on it
so I
is Urban Land Institute so yeah
um so this would be the proposed
definition that we would put in there
and you can see we start putting things
together so you know integrates two or
more distinctive uses
um cohesive pedestrian-oriented
environment again we're trying to get
back to something that that actually is
more of that mixed use if you'll
remember
back a while ago we had the regional
commercial zoning district and in
Regional commercial you can do Loft
above and that was sort of our mixed-use
zoning area well you could also do
stand-alone apartments with a use permit
but you had to show that these
Standalone apartments and Regional
commercials somehow met this mixed-use
type thing and there was a lot of
confusion a lot of projects that came
through that were approved through that
use permit we seem to always be battling
with developers about it so eventually
we just pulled the use permit in the
multi-family out of regional commercial
not to handle that okay so several years
go by and we start to see projects where
now we really want to use this mixed-use
tool but we really don't have anything
and I'll show you an example here in a
minute but this is one of the things
where you know we probably should have
done this a couple years ago but now
that there's an impetus to do it we're
moving it Forward here's some of the
examples that we were talking about
around town
obviously epicenter at agritopia we even
kind of consider Gilbert Town Square
across you know west of Gilbert Town
Hall a mixed-use development and and
there's there's a multi-family back
there there's some office there's a lot
of retail so I mean it's it's horizontal
yes it's not the true you know planning
vertical mixed use but
um we're trying to kind of get to some
of that same way with Verdi aquili
station the medical office is getting
ready to break break ground most of the
commercial isn't right now there's
multi-family to this house but it's one
development that kind of came together
and then obviously Heritage North too
you've got the you've got the office
you've got the retail you've got the
restaurants you've got the hotel
um
uh just another picture of epicenter
this is the one I was talking about
that's creating some some difficulties
for for staff this is directly south of
epicenter so it's at the southwest
corner of Higley and Ray so they've
proposed a mixed use development that's
somewhat similar to epicenter what you
see in kind of the outlined in red would
be a commercial portion the yellow would
be more of the multi-family and let me
get to this because this is interesting
so it's 15 acres and the request to
rezone is to three acres of General
commercial eight Acres of multi-family
and 2.9 Acres of shopping center so
instead of us having a mixed-use zoning
District where this would all fit under
one zoning District it's nice and clean
we're now carving that piece of property
up into three different areas in three
different zoning districts and it also
makes it very interesting because Chris
and his people in legal don't like us to
draw zoning lines through buildings
which I completely understand so we're
trying to kind of put all of this stuff
together so this is is the one that
you'll see soon I'm using it as an
example as
December 13th council meeting yes so
uh and by the way this is also one of
those projects that came in completely
different than what it looks like now it
used to be an obviously last year and I
still know
s
she probably drop a lot of products yeah
yeah all along Elliott road yeah it was
kind of stripped out yeah
um as we bring forward the multi I'm
sorry the mixed use there's gonna you'll
see three different districts there's a
small a large and a regional and it's
meant to
um meant to handle different SCI
different size of properties so is it
the ribeylon site is it a smaller
30 Acre Site or is it
um some piece that that maybe this piece
south of uh Sal's where we could have
had a coffee shop on the first floor and
maybe some retail above it
um we also have an amended use table so
we've looked at what can be allowed in
these different land use districts and
we're putting those into the new use
tables
um
some of this will require some
amendments to the other Land Development
code sections whether it be setbacks or
landscaping or parking but you'll see
those as they come forward and then
we'll also have design guidelines that
can be used by everybody to really kind
of help understand what this is and what
this means and then they they can make a
determination whether or not they'd like
to apply for mixed use or not we are not
going to go in and Zone anything mixed
use right off the bat this is going to
be a tool that the developers or
applicants or property owners could come
forward and ask for rezoning like they
can come forward now and ask for general
office they'd be able to come forward
and ask for mixed use but the reason I
wanted to show you this is there's a
there's a lot going on with the
mixed-use district we've we've really
done a lot of research and a lot of a
lot of hard work to determine how this
will play out and we're getting that
feedback from those groups I mentioned
which will which will help us make sure
that this is a tool that can and can be
used and I fully understand and expect
that we'll go through a time or two and
there'll be a tweak here there that
we'll have to come back with but um at
least I think we're putting the right
foot forward
this is the small these are these are
just some examples but I was talking
about you know less than 10 acres it
corresponds to these different General
plan Amendment or general plan
categories the medium is a little bit
larger than maybe a little more density
again you can see the different
districts and you can kind of start to
see too the scale that we're talking
about so much smaller type developments
then we Step Up This Is The Gilmore this
is the one at the Northeast corn
northwest corner of um Val Vista and
Jermaine Gilmore yeah
um and then oh and I think epicenter
would actually fall in that as well and
then this is more of the riviland type
of development where it's it's a larger
piece but they they still want to have
some flexibility and some mixed use that
they can they can work with so
um I'll remind me when we did the Land
Development code update we did not do
the land use chapter correct we didn't
do the parking chapter parking the
parking the parking's under review right
now
um it's a chapter we didn't do yeah I
think it was the parking because
um not too long ago we've gone through
and revamped our land use charts so we
had we had a consultant look at that
maybe I don't know eight ten years ago
but when we did the refresh we put it in
a better format so people could
understand it
so Kyle could you uh go back to small
yeah and
help me visualize where that would land
today in Gilbert because it's a pretty
small like
um so I'll just pick an example let's do
the North West corner of Gilbert and
Elliott
so less than 10 acres we want
multi-family above retail perfect for
mixed use so but you wouldn't see that
as a project I'll just say south of the
of our police
Department
um particular project I wouldn't see
that no that I don't know that we would
want to put retail south of there I
don't know that that would fit real well
yeah I guess
I guess it might not be in a corner it's
going to depend upon where it's located
and if retail's even viable yeah but
it's a tool that can be used if they
want to one of the things we struggled
with we had a brand new apartment
complex go in on SanTan Village Parkway
it's between San Tan Village Parkway in
Greenfield there it's that that middle
piece
um they wanted to oh I'm sorry that's
not the right piece it's the it's the uh
apartment complex that's going in by
Mountainside Fitness just to the north
they wanted to do a coffee shop and a
little bit of retail we don't have a
tool for them to put a coffee shop out
for people driving by to come in it's
either multi-family or it's commercial
we don't have that mixture right now so
this would allow instructions
okay thank you appreciate that
again very high level on that kind of a
picture of the design guidelines we
really want to try to make this user
friendly as we go forward this is just
the timeline this dot star should be
over here
um but we plan on bringing it to the
study session in uh January I think this
is a January 21st meeting and then we
can establish a time to bring it back
for approval uh there's two meetings in
February so if we can't hit February we
could hit early March for sure
all right uh accessory structures well
guest quarters and secondary dwellings
again this is very high level I just
wanted to point out on what the town
currently allows as far as these items
um guest quarters so guest quarters are
meant for temporary housing of
non-paying guests so this is the
mother-in-law's quarter this is your
brother-in-law is coming in town uh you
got a buddy coming in something like
that it's it's just meant to have like a
casita or something out there for for
somebody to to stay in it's basically
allowed in all of the different zoning
districts and AUP is required and AUP is
an administrative use permit so there is
a staff review that goes through this we
want to make sure that it's compatible
with the surrounding areas that it
doesn't encroach on anything we want to
make sure that it that it's okay and
would issue that AUP there's one per lot
is allowed we don't want to turn it into
an apartment complex we want to allow
somebody to have the ability to have a
spot for somebody to stay not 30 people
to stay
it's within the building envelope
uh within the building envelope so it
meets all of the setback requirements
can be attached to the main structure or
detached from the main structure this is
kind of important we these two are
important same Utility Services primary
and no kitchens and again that's meant
to be
um
not so that it turns into a rental
somehow we don't want you know two
different structures on the same lot and
one is being rented out because now
we've turned this single family loted
subdivision into two single-family homes
on each lot I mean now it now becomes
something completely different
to get away from that though so this
would be your guest quarters
um if it's a secondary dwelling unit
um same type of thing same zoning
districts AUP one per lot within the
building envelope unless it's over a
detached garage so sometimes detached
garages can sit outside of the the
building envelope depending upon where
they're where they're allowed attached
or detached
same utility services this is where now
we would allow the full kitchen and this
is one that actually could be rented so
it is a little bit different but it
still goes through that administrative
use permit process
we always look at the architecture to
make sure it doesn't it doesn't look
different than the neighborhood that it
fits within the neighborhood and then
because it's basically a separate
structure a separate dwelling unit
parking is required so there is a a
requirement for additional parking to be
placed
so as as you hear all of these
discussions about
um affordable housing and what are
different places doing and the the you
know the house committees are meeting
it's um just want you to know that we
are we do have things in place and we
have had things in place for quite a
while
um to allow some more flexibility in our
in our zoning to allow for some of these
guest quarters and secondary dwelling
units um I believe Gilbert was one of
the first two that partnered with Lennar
and we did the next gen homes
um it was one house but they had two
kitchens in it and at first everybody
was freaked out because oh no this is a
duplex well we worked with them so that
there was a free flow between them so if
you had parents that wanted to live in
the you know area over here but you
still needed to take care of them but
they wanted to cook and do their own
thing they could but there was still a
free flow so it wasn't like a duplex
type thing whereas two separate families
you you either that you really liked
whoever you were living with
um but there was then you could have
those two two different kids and work
that way
all right I know I'm running long Kyle
yeah
can they connect a home occupation out
of one of those or both of them they can
do home occupations Adam yeah sure our
home occupation
um requirements are are very flexible I
mean we
we've done quite a bit to ensure that
people can do a lot out of their homes
as long as they're not negatively
negatively impacting the neighborhood
you know we don't want uh
uh you know we went on employees showing
up we don't want signs on the houses we
don't want things like that but
otherwise we're pretty pretty flexible
in working through beaumonts yeah
I'm concerned with it is can we relax to
a point of uh in-law quarters
you know are you trying to prosec
process it all the way through to a
secondary dwelling unit when
you could have the kidlock where she
could have your elderly parents looking
back but still want to be able to cook
their meal but you wanna
there or
whatever you're
son you want to put them out there he's
finished College he's trying to get on
his own
but not but not be in the house and not
have to have the full secondary unit
well
um
not necessarily even as a rental I mean
because that would prevent in a sense
yeah well I mean a kitchen is allowed
it's not required so you could
absolutely have somebody on the guest
quarter the guest quarters can't right
but if you were to use that as for
elderly parents you can't afford the
five grand a month thrown into the build
age home you want that they still want
to cook right right
why should that be an issue for anyone
I'm just curious I don't think it's a
good question it's more so that we kind
of understand what's happening and as we
go through the use permit is there I
think there's probably a good reason to
look and relaxing now but then there may
be we've we've had some difficulties
with some of our code Provisions around
this and are looking into some of the
some of the issues for sure if you're
sharing uh utilities yeah it's not like
you're renting a bunch of people at a
party in 24 hours a day right okay we're
gonna we're gonna see a a gap right now
the uh Arab assisted living is 4 400 a
month it's going to be 6 000 the next
seven years I believe you're going to
see a gap of people that can't afford
that six thousand but are going to want
going to want to have that privacy to
have the kitchen or have a caregiver
make the meals for them in that kitchen
right yeah and I think we're set up to
allow that um just through our processes
and as I mentioned we were I think we
were one of the first ones that that
worked through with Lennar some of those
next-gen homes in order to because that
was during the recession when people you
know were losing homes and needing to
move in with parents and that became a
big thing so
right yeah
any thought in looking at
um
when someone wants to be a container for
this or like a tiny home how are like
how's that been considered in the past
um typically excuse me typically it's
been handled through our the building
code side of things
um
in Gilbert if you're going to have a
structure it has to be on a foundation
so like a tiny home a lot of those are
not on foundations or on trailers so
that wouldn't be something necessarily
that we would support or allow shipping
containers
um
I don't know that we've seen anybody
wanting to do an accessory structure or
living quarters on their home we have
had a couple folks come in where they
want to build like Apartments out of
shipping containers we haven't seen them
come back but um so it's something that
that we can look at and explore but it
hasn't been anything
um we haven't seen much of that
and we haven't seen any tiny homes or
anything like that come in as just
primary dwellings on sites and I think a
lot of that has to do with price of land
and and what you're going to put on it
so
I've seen the question on social media
I've seen people ask
if anybody knows where they bring their
tiny home to park it or do you have a
large lot and you'd allow me to bring my
tiny home and have it on your lot and
people in Gilbert are like no can't do
it can't do it so right it is it is it
is talked about
I know I'm running way over so I'll try
to move through the I'm trying to move
through the hardest part quickly how's
that
um our process so our process is always
been and I think some of you have seen
this before to take something that comes
into the town that looks like this and
we want to turn it into something that
looks like this without making our
proper or our applicants go through
something that looks like this that has
never been our our motive we've never
wanted to do that
um ever since I've been here we've tried
to streamline as many things as we
possibly can and that's another reason
why we're very upfront with people
because we don't want them going through
the process if if there's not going to
be support for it
um this is a very simple kind of
overview of the process this one is does
the land had the appropriate General
plan designation and Zoning if your
property is zoned and has the general
plan for it and you're ready to move
forward with your salad and go okay
you're going to design review you'll
come in to staff you'll do your you'll
make your formal smooth and do your
staff review you go to Planning
Commission and the Planning Commission
approves it doesn't take Council action
because theoretically Council has
already seen this through the rezoning
and general plan whenever that would
have happened so Council would have been
already been aware that's going to be a
commercial development okay it doesn't
have the correct zoning or general plan
okay we start from the very very
beginning we ask the applicants to go do
a neighborhood meeting okay get your
letters out to everybody within the
required radius and all of the HOAs
within the required radius and hold a
neighborhood meeting we want them to
hold the neighborhood meeting and
explain to the neighbors what they plan
on doing before they even come back to
us with a pre-application a lot of times
that takes care of a lot of the red flag
issues and everything else the other
side of that is we don't want them to
come to us and they'll say you know this
looks pretty good then they go to the
neighbors and they have the neighborhood
meeting they say well wait a minute
staff has already supported this this is
already okay by the town well now
so we have the neighborhood meeting
first then it comes in for the
pre-application meeting and the formal
review staff reviews it we have
conversations back and forth with the
applicant on any questions or concerns
then we bring it to the Planning
Commission and the Town Council for
public hearings once that part is done
then they basically fall back into that
design review where the staff reviews it
and then there's the Planning Commission
approval there are many times where
folks will take both of these and run
them together they can run them
concurrently a lot of times in the past
we've seen projects where you have to go
through your general plan and your
rezoning and then your design review and
then you have to apply for your building
permit and get your grading permit and
now you can do this well what we've
tried to do is stack those more so you
take that long line of time and compress
it so that folks can get through the
process much quicker it's a little bit
of a burden to do that on the applicant
because they have to expend dollars up
front to do those plans because we need
pretty detailed plans in order to issue
permits but at least we've given them
the option to do that and as you know
through their building process we've
created a lot of new building permit
processes where folks can kind of like a
menu they can choose what they want to
do and then approach the town that way
this is a little bit simpler just to
straight down the line and by the way
these are all on in our applications so
when folks go online to our applications
they know the process up front and and
know exactly where we're going but then
you can also see too where there's
a lot of public notification
neighborhood meetings are required all
of that information so you can see kind
of how it moves through that process
same thing with the design review
process again a lot of neighborhood
Outreach as well
um this is very important for us and
we've been pushing this for years and
years and years this is the what's
developing nearby map that's on our
website we have everything from
neighborhood meetings because even when
there's a neighborhood meeting there's a
yellow sign that goes up and the letters
go up
um you know what's under review with
planning
um planning decisions that have been
made and then a lot of times people
don't know anything's happening until
they see construction well now they can
go on and see the building permit review
and the construction too so if you see
sticks going up you can click on that
you can go to that intersection oh this
is what it's going to look like here's
the site plan here's the staff report
here are the building elevations so
anytime we get in front of anybody we
try to push this message out so that um
uh and and Dana's team has been
fantastic over the years helping us
become continue to push this out and Jen
to get this out to the residents so that
everybody knows um what's happening so
we try to be as transparent as we
possibly can I know Kathy has even
talked about this at the power inch
powwows to try to get the information
out there so
um
okay yeah I'll talk to the RIT team and
see what what else we can add to that
yes
um it was a general discussion council
subcommittee meeting about ways we can
engage in various forms of it tonight
one of the things
QR codes on signage and if we have a QR
code on this town just
exactly
the one thing I learned from experience
in the past is that to get the
homeowners really involved in this
process you have to take them by the
hand and we lead them into the process
and through the process I tried years
ago to get HOAs or neighborhood
representatives to come to our pref so
they'd hear what was discussed at the
pre-app and understand that it's
first of all the the process is open and
secondly that it's more
um complicated than they really
understand
hearing your your presentation is there
a way I don't know if it's even possible
to
mandate the developer when they meet
with those Neighbors in the mandated
neighborhood meeting can they can we
mandate that they have Representatives
accompany them to preact to hear that
presentation
yep
to have um HOA from the neighborhood
whatever I don't know if we can mandate
it because I don't know that I can force
somebody to come to a meeting but I mean
we can encourage it for sure but we're
forcing them to have the neighborhood
meeting well we are because they're
entering our process but now we would be
requiring like a neighbor to come to our
meeting I can think that through a
little bit when we do have neighborhood
meetings um staff always is there so
we've got staff basically every single
night of the week going to Neighborhood
meetings so it's a little bit different
but we're there we see what's going on
we require them to give us minutes and
then come to the pre-app so we're kind
of watching it from beginning to end we
just here at the public meetings that
everything's determined before it gets
us it's already determined the town
wants this and so we're going to approve
it well I want them to understand in a
pre-app meeting there's a lot that's
process before it gets to us and a lot
that is discussed a lot that is required
right you know it's important Scott's
point we require a pre-op meeting much
to most developers Chagrin most too much
zoning attorneys Chagrin they don't like
the pre-op meeting but we still have
that on our in as part of our process a
lot of cities and towns don't do that
it's an extra step for them yeah there's
been times too in Our Land Development
code the planning manager has the
authority to require additional
neighborhood meetings and we've done
that several times if somebody's held
one in March and they're coming through
in October nope you please go have
another neighborhood meeting this is too
far so too long yeah I assume that
developers asking the HOA
representatives are 10 correct they're
asking what I'm sorry HOA
Representatives we send them letters
what they're they're a required part of
the notification so we've we've got a
list in the Maricopa County Associated
is it and I want to say at the
assessor's office has a list too so if
you you can go on and
you can go on and create a circle and
whatever comes back it's got all the
lists of every all the HOAs all the
property owners so that's how we get
that information it's saying 90 of the
time
offers that something's going on and
especially their residents and I don't
think I can think I can count on one
hand how many times over the years of
Planning Commission I had somebody from
an HOA come to a Planning Commission
meeting to talk about a project very
very seldom do we have HOAs get involved
I think it's more you know because
management companies have so many
neighborhoods that they're you know
controlling that they don't necessarily
even always pay attention
that's one of the areas I think we'll
talk about when we get that presentation
from our Communications subcommittee is
how do we reach out to HOAs and get them
involved make sure we have the right
information that type of thing
so hopefully we'll be addressing some of
that and it'll come from now what they
want when do they want to be involved
and all of that so I think it'll be
really good feedback
um Kyle this but
I think it maybe is some Morrison Ranch
project but
um this time we were able to get a
timeline of when the meetings were and
so when there is a lot of neighborhood
um involvement for us to have that as
council members so that we could respond
quickly to them
um
good
information
great glad to hear it
yeah and
or the problems or the the things you
guys hear you know I I haven't been
notified and I didn't know this was
happening you know that does occur but
if you look at Planning Commission
agendas there's 20 to 30 items on there
every single time and if one or two of
them gets it every six months I I think
we're doing a pretty good job I mean
there's probably still ways to improve
and different ways to reach out to
people but I think we're doing a pretty
good job of getting them
I'm a half hour over you
sorry