City Council | Regular Meeting and Work Study - May 6, 2025

As my fellow council members make their
way to the dis, I'd like
to Good evening. How did everyone enjoy
this gorgeous day today? Very nice.
Thanks for being here tonight. I'd like
to call the May 6, 2025 city council
regular meeting to order. City Clerk
Lane, will you please conduct the roll
call? Thank you, Mayor. Uh, Mayor Lisa
Barowski, present. Vice Mayor Jandy
Bosquez here. Council members Barry
Graham here. Adam Quasman here. Kathy
Littlefield here. Marian McCallen
present. And Solange Whitehead here.
City Manager Greg Kaitton here. City
Attorney Sher Scott here. City Treasurer
Sonia Andrews here. And the clerk is
present. Thank you, mayor. Thank you.
This evening we have Scottsdale Police
Sergeant Eric BS and Officer Ray Wilburn
as well as firefighter Eric Flores. If
anyone requires their assistance, please
let a member of the staff know. Uh at
this time, I'd like to ask Councilman
Barry Graham to lead us in the pledge of
allegiance.
Thank you, Mayor. Me, my honor.
Pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the
republic for stands one nation under
God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
Thank you, Councilman Graham. Uh, as and
for the mayor's report this evening, we
have um, as many of you know, we lost a
very special and um, significant member
of our community, Paul Messenger, last
week. and uh he was such a powerful part
of the community. I wanted to take a few
minutes to recognize him. I understand
we have a video and if I could get that
started. You will all enjoy this very
well-known man in Scottsdale.
Without a doubt, our friend and
colleague Paul Messenger has lived a
life of achievement for over 90 years.
Arriving in Scottsdale in 1942, Paul
worked on his family's farm at Miller
and Indian School Roads before and after
school. At Scottsdale High, he was
active in the 4H club, played on the
tennis team, and served on the yearbook
staff. He made friends for life among
the class of 1948, including Bill
Schrader, Rusty Lion, and his future
wife, Kora Ross. Paul and Kora married
in 1950, raised two sons, Ken and David,
and established Messenger Mortuary on
the family farm property in 1959. They
also operated Scottsdale's first
ambulance service. While growing their
business, Paul always made time to give
back to his community. He became a
Scottsdale Charo in 1962, serving as a
golf tournament chair, even though he
doesn't play golf. treasurer, tabulating
the allcash ticket receipts at Cubs
spring training games, baseball chair,
and patron. He was a member of the Elks
Club, president of the Lions Club, and
friends of the Scottsdale Public
Library, and a longtime Scottsdale
Chamber of Commerce board director. As a
member of the Scottsdale Town Enrichment
Program in the mid 1960s, he urged the
creation of a junior college for
Scottsdale. Paul co-chared the
countywide bond election to raise $14
million for several community colleges,
including Scottsdale's. He continues to
help Scottsdale Community College
celebrate its milestones. In 1971, Paul
was appointed to fill a vacancy on the
Scottsdale City Council, then was
elected to a 4-year term, serving until
1976.
During his tenure, the city grew through
annexations, built its water department,
opened the center for the arts and
Vistad del Camino neighborhood center,
expanded its park system, and began
development of the Indian Bend Wash
green belt flood control project. After
city council, Paul successfully ran for
a seat in the Arizona State Legislature,
serving Scottsdale's District 28 from
1979 to 1985.
For decades, Paul was a member of the
Scottsdale Western Art Association. He
helped ensure the yearling sculpture was
funded for Civic Center Mall and one
with the eagle was funded for the
Scottsdale airport. Paul and Kora worked
as a team on so many business and civic
projects and received an impressive
array of community honors. Sadly, he
lost his beloved Kora in January 2020.
Among the gifts Paul gives to Scottsdale
is his storytelling about our history.
He helped found the Scottsdale History
Hall of Fame in 1994 and was himself
inducted in 1995. He writes a memoir
style history column for the Arizona
Republic giving credit to the Scottsdale
who created our cache and lifestyle. He
also compiled many of his columns into a
book. Paul was among a dedicated group
who championed establishing a western
museum in Scottsdale. It opened as
Western Spirit, Scottsdale's Museum of
the West in
2015. He and his family also urged
creation of a history research center at
Civic Center Library. Paul Messenger is
one in a million. He's humble as heck.
He has an encyclopedic memory for places
and faces. He's tireless in his pursuit
of community causes. He's the patriarch
of a much admired, successful family
business. But most of all, he's our
treasured friend. Thanks, Paul, for all
you've done to enrich our lives and make
Scottsdale a great hometown and visitor
destination.
[Applause]
In addition to all of the positions Paul
Messenger held in the city, he was also
known as uh a a force of big thinking
and great ideas and a very graceful man,
very very humble and uh we should all
applaud his service to our community.
And uh with that um we will miss Paul
Messenger and our thoughts go my
thoughts and prayers go out to his
family.
Tonight we have a
presentation and recognition from
Scottsdale Community Involvement Manager
Joy Rine on the 2025 Scottsdale 101 101
citizenmy's graduates which I had uh Go
ahead. Thank you. There's Joy.
[Applause]
Good
evening. An immersive experience that
awakens you to the pride and joy of
being a citizen of
Scottsdale. Discover what makes
Scottsdale great and learn how you can
be a part of
it. Look behind the
curtain. These are just two of the
quotes created by our attendees during
their latest session, and you will see
more throughout this presentation.
Government 101 Citizens Academy is just
that. It's interactive, informative, and
as another classmate mentioned, you just
need to look behind the curtain to see
what Scottsdale is all
about. Good evening. I am Joy Racine,
the community involvement manager with
the Office of Citizen Service and
Communications. Thank you, Mayor
Barowski and members of council for
allowing us to present tonight. This is
a program that's been run for many years
and it's near and dear to our hearts
because it does allow us to look behind
the curtain and it gives you everything
you need to know about
Scottsdale. Government 101 is designed
to equip participants with the knowledge
to actively engage in our community,
understand local government, and network
with other residents. It's everything
you need to know. Over the course of
nine weeks, 39 residents met once a week
to hear from city leaders and department
heads. They were able to ask questions,
learn how departments operate, and gain
a deeper understanding of what services
they provide.
Our carefully correct curated curriculum
covers a wide range of topics from
understanding the fundamentals of each
department, exploring the intricacies of
public policy, and gaining an
appreciation of Scottsdale history. They
were able to visit our north corpyard,
the new fire training facility,
Westworld, and the preserve. They heard
about ways to get involved, volunteer,
and they could network with each other.
I could go on, but I'd rather end this
presentation with you hearing from some
of our academy members as they make
their way down. Tonight, I have with me
Martha West and Skylin Flores, and they
are here to share a little bit about
their experiences during the academy.
Good evening, Mayor Barowski and members
of council. I'm sorry for the slow walk,
but it is just what it
is. I have very short u comments to
make. I first of all, I thank you for
the opportunity to briefly describe my
experience as a citizen academy
participant. By way of background, I'm a
retired City of Scottsdale employee and
very recently I moved into Scottsdale as
a new homeowner here in our
community. The Citizens Academy
experience was exceptional. We got to
view city government directly from city
staff who implement Scottsdale's vision
and policies and regulations.
We got an understanding of how city
government works and we discovered ways
where we can be part of government, part
of the volunteerism of the community and
find a way to give back to our
community. For me, the key takeaways
from this experience are twofold.
Innovation and pride. We learned that
innovation is in the DNA of this
community. And there are so many
examples large and small over the many
years since
1951. But the top three for me are the
creation and stewardship of the
preserve, the operation of the whole
neighborhood services team committed to
citizen education and outreach. I think
that is huge and quite
extraordinary. And then of course the
size and scope of our of our
volunteerism here in Scottdale. We were
told that the total number of volunteers
exceeds exceeds the um employee numbers
by more than 100%. I think that just
that speaks volumes of who this
community
is. And then the second piece beyond
innovation is pride. And we saw that
pride in the community infused in all of
the presentations made by the city staff
members throughout our citizen academy.
We do clearly live in an exceptional
community and many thanks to all who
brought our community to life for us.
Thank you especially Joy. Thank you so
much.
Thank you.
Good evening everyone. Uh my name is
Skylin. I'm a recent resident of
Scottsdale and currently a
sustainability student at Arizona State
University. Um, I just want to say this
experience was beyond valuable to me. I
think as a student, we never really have
a lot of faith that our degree is going
to work out. Um, and to see all of the
different departments putting into
practice what I get to learn in the
classroom and see it implemented in
reality and even more intricate and
complicated than can be put on paper is
pretty fulfilling. Um, makes me more
passionate about government than I ever
have been before. Um, and I just want to
be grateful and be excited to live in a
city that has had the foresight for so
many years to invest in its citizens the
way that Scottsdale has. So, thank you.
Thank you.
Congratulations to both of you and thank
you for coming to share your experience
with us
tonight. And here in the audience, I do
have additional members of our academy.
So, if I could please ask you to stand
to be
[Applause]
recognized and Mayor Barowski and
members of the council, once again,
thank you for allowing us to speak
today, for recognizing this group, and
for serving our city. Thank you. Thank
you. Did
Uh, Vice Mayor Dascus, I just wanted to
say thank you so much for bringing your
students here with us and students,
thank you so much for your interest in
the city of Scottsdale. Um, I'm a
Scottsdale 101 Citizens Academy graduate
as well. So, I have sat in your chair
and and uh it is it is with so much
pride that you learn about our city and
and how intricate and involved and um
how open uh the city is for its
residents. So, I would just encourage
you and and anyone else to participate
in our citizens government academy, in
our water academy, in our outstanding
police academy, and then we also have a
new prosecution academy that's a one
day. So, uh thank you so much for your
work, Joy. We really appreciate you and
the opportunities that it brings to our
citizens and our residents. So, thank
you very much for coming tonight.
[Applause]
Thank you. And congratulations to all
the graduates. Well done. Moving along.
Uh during tonight's meeting, the council
may make a motion to recess into an
executive session if we need to obtain
legal advice on any applicable item on
the agenda. If authorized by the
council, the executive session will be
held immediately and will not be open to
the public. The public meeting, however,
would would resume right after the
executive session
concludes. Next is public comment, which
is reserved for Scottsdale citizens,
business owners, and/or property owners
to comment on non-aggendaized items that
are within the council's jurisdiction.
No official council action can be taken
on these items, and speakers are limited
to three minutes to address the council.
If you wish to speak but have not signed
up yet, please see the city clerk. Uh we
received only, let's see, six, five,
excuse me, five uh requests for public
comment on non-aggendaized items. And
starting with Carla, I understand you've
got some donated time and you will be
speaking. Is that is that right, Carla?
Do you have donated time? There's going
to be three of us and we're going to try
and stick to three minutes each or
collectively
total. Total. Oh, wow. Total. All right.
[Laughter]
Thank you. Now I have to do it. Okay.
All right. Um, thank you for the
opportunity to speak. I'm Carla, a
preserved pioneer from over in Peaceful
Valley. A few months ago, we heard that
some council members were expressing
concern about keeping the long planned
and critically important Rio overpass in
the budget. So, roughly a month ago,
some preserve supporters started a
citizens petition to help encourage
council members to keep this important
item in the preserve budget. Um, since
then the budget review commission has
come up with a reasonable path forward
starting with a feasibility study and
this is compatible with the intent of
the petitions. So folks kept the
petitions on the street and verbally
updated signers as to the progress. All
of this is to show council the very
strong community support for connecting
the northern and southern parts of the
preserve in the smartest and most
economically reasonable way as we go
forward. Good evening council members
and mayor Lisa Browski. I'm Sonni
Kurtley. I'm speaking to you as a
resident tonight, a 56-year resident
living in southern Scottsdale. And I
want you to know that it was so easy
getting southern southern
signatures. Some of my neighbors can't
even see the mountains, but they're
fully supporting the mountains. And it
was so easy getting those signatures.
The second thing is that the signatures
are citywide. It isn't just, as I said,
just a section of the north, section of
the south. And then the most important
thing is
that there is absolutely no paid
volunteers. We had so many people that
wanted to volunteer to carry petitions
and they were all over the city as you
know. They were at Starbucks, they were
at the grocery stores, they were
knocking on your door. So no paid
volunteers. So we hope you will support
the feasibility study you'll learn about
in agenda item
20. visitors.
Good evening, honorable mayor Bowski and
honorable city council member. My name
is Johnley. I live at 11367 East Desert
Vista Road in northern Scottsdale. And
when I look out the uh southacing
windows of our home, I'm privileged to
look directly into the preserve and the
northern flank of the Mcdal Mountains.
It's why we bought our home there in the
first place over a quarter of a century
ago and why we have never considered
leaving. Uh I don't have a lot to add to
the comments already made by my
colleagues here, but I do want to take
this opportunity to recognize and thank
the volunteers who gave generously of
their time and energy as uh to help
circulate this petition and also to the
many Scottsdale residents who
enthusiastically stepped forward to add
their signatures in support of it. Our
volunteers carried the petitions to
meetings, concerts, farmers markets, and
other public events. They held house
parties for friends and family and took
the petition doortodoor in their
neighborhoods and they spent their
Saturdays and Sunday mornings at the
trail heads talking to uh numerous users
of the preserve residents as well as
many non-residents who choose to visit
our city uh in part because of the
preserve. I'm pleased to report that
what we found throughout this process is
unddeinished appreciation and support
for our beautiful preserve. People
throughout Scottsdale are passionate
about the preserve. People understand
its value and its importance for our
community and the need to keep the
preserve and its wildlife healthy, both
as an attraction and as a responsibility
to future generations. When we began
this process just over a month ago, we
thought optimistically that maybe if
everybody worked really hard, we might
be able to gather a couple thousand
signatures in the short time allotted.
But in the end, we easily surpassed that
number with a grand total of
2,843 Scottsdale residents adding their
names in support. So, we hope that
Scottsdale City Council will take our
petition and the expressed opinion of so
many Scottsdale residents into account
during the budget deliberations. And in
conclusion, we respectfully ask the city
manager to provide us with a written
response to our petition. And we thank
you for your time and consideration.
Thank you. Thank you all. And what was
your name, sir? John. John, you're on my
list. Okay. Deal. John Aley. Yes. Oh,
John. What? What's your last name?
Different. Different. Different. Okay.
Thank you. You were not on my list, but
thank you for speaking to us. Okay.
Appreciate it. Thank you. Uh,
Councilwoman Solange Whitehead. Yeah.
You know, I'll just jump in. I mean,
already a few minutes into this meeting,
we've seen what Scottsdale is, and that
is uh engaged citizens. We had discussed
a 101 class which is amazing. And then
this for anybody who wants to know what
2800 petitions in a very short uh
signatures in a short amount of time
looks like here it is. I I just feel
indebted to a community that cares so
much about our city and our wildlife and
our preserve. So thank you
guys. Thank you.
Next up, Dan Dan
Isac, followed by an Kelliano and John
De. Good evening, Dan Isaac, address on
record. At the last council meeting, Mr.
Quasman asked for a point of order
because he didn't like my pointing out
inconvenient facts. He claimed that
residents must refer to council members
by title and cannot address individual
council members directly. I'm happy to
have him point out those rules since I
found no such requirement in my
searches. In fact, the rules anticipate
addressing individual council members as
they explicitly give council members the
right to respond to a comment about them
when the comment is finished.
I'm shocked that since you are an
attorney, Adam, you have such a profound
misunderstanding of the rules of
procedure. There are two primary rules
to which public comments must adhere is
recited at each meeting. To summarize,
no personal attacks and the topic must
be within the purview of the city
council. My comments have been specific
statements about actions taken and
statements made by council members in
their official capacity and often during
council meetings.
Therefore, they meet the requirement of
being within the council's purview. And
while my comments are direct and blunt,
they are not personal attacks. There is
no name calling, no poratives, just
comments about observed behaviors and
statements. I will contrast that, Adam,
with the public comments by French
Thompson in February and in March. You
might remember that for the better part
of six minutes across two meetings, he
personally attacked me. He called me
liar almost a dozen times among other
peoratives along with objectively false
statements. Thompson's comments not only
violate the prohibition of personal
attacks, but I don't believe the his
opinion of my character is within the
council's
purview. Yet, Adam, you sat and did
nothing in either of those two meetings.
But now you would like to limit my
rights to address the council because my
views don't align with yours. Adam, you
voluntarily took an oath of office to
follow the council laws, including
meeting requirements. You don't get to
pick and choose how those are applied
based on whether you like them. If
you're unwilling or unable to do so, you
could always resign and step down from
the deis. Otherwise, please at least
pretend to be objective and not make up
rules that don't exist.
Adam, you and your squad can certainly
change the rules to control language and
dialogue, although I would caution that
history has not been kind to public
officials trying to limit speech.
Moreover, rules when applied
inconsistently can expose the city and
individuals to lawsuits and ethics
complaints. Just ask Barry. One last
thought. My father, who recently passed,
impressed upon me that respect has to be
earned. Despite being a medical doctor,
he aborted the formal the formality of
honorifics when people addressed him. In
that spirit, I will save titles for
those who have earned them. That is why
I will use them for Mayor Bowski,
Council Member Whitehead, and Council
Member McAllen, even if I don't agree
with all of their comments or votes.
When the others fulfill their
obligations to all of the residents of
Scottsdale, I will use titles. Thank
you. Thank you. Sorry to hear about your
father.
Uh, mayor. Oh, yes. Do you want to say
something? Well, if I can just make one
remark. We're free to say whatever we
want, but I do want to I do want to
second Adam's comment from last week
about titles and and points of order and
decorum, mayor, if that can be enforced.
Thank you. Thanks for your input.
Appreciate it. Uh, next. And oh,
no. I I go ahead, Councilman Clausman.
Yeah, I want to put let's put this to
rest. So I first of all, Mr. Isac, I
apologize to you. I think you're right.
I think that the that if I missed
somebody who did not provide the decorum
that I think is the standard of this
body and I didn't say anything and you
were insulted, you're my boss. I think
everyone in this room is my boss. And
you're right. And I apologize for that.
and I deeply deeply uh wish my
condolences for the passing of your
father. Here is what I would like to say
in terms of how we address the council.
I would like every everybody those here
especially who was part of the
Scottsdale Academy. You're going to see
how uh how uh Mr. Kaitton and how the
member and how when experts come and
testify, they're going they're going to
address a public body. There is a
decorum that how and this is how it
works. You speak what's called through
the chair. So madame mayor I'm may I
show them how they speak through the
chair and you do it by saying madame
mayor members of the council or madame
mayor
um Mr. Graham. That's how that's the
usual standard of practice in any public
body whether it's a state legislature or
a city council. It's that type of
formality that I think is important when
so that we don't devolve into just some
sort of mob uh craziness. I apologize
for making an example out of Mr. Isac. I
think that the decorum nonetheless
should be observed. It's the same reason
why I wear a coat and tie in this
meeting. I would love to wear a polo
shirt, especially if I had guns like
yours. Seriously. Um thank you. Thank
you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I
appreciate it. You know, as the chair of
this body, I'm happy to enforce the
rules as I see fit. So, having squables
about it and wasting taxpayer time,
citizens that come down here to listen
to uh productive business, I don't think
is necessary to have a tutorial for how
to address the body because I think it's
intentional and that in that case, you
know, to each their own. It's not my
choice, not your choice, but we cannot
control everyone that comes to talk to
us. So, thank you for that. But moving
right along, I'd like to move on to an
Kabiano. Seeing no an can I is John Deal
here? All right.
Okay, be patient. I'm old. I have bad
lungs. Last month, I came to this
council meeting to say a few words about
the subject I'm going to talk about
today. It was a DEI meeting. That was a
mistake. I couldn't take it. I left
after hearing 40 people talk. The issue
today is the 40 94 mini home project uh
that uh called Papago Village. It was
approved by the council early then not
by it was approved by the planning
commission early this year. Uh the area
was occupied by by Bud Systems for many
years but was never reused. It's been
abandoned for about five or six years.
It was uh used until 89 it was
classified as residential and uh then it
was changed and when it was changed to
residential many of the uh residents
nearby
uh went before the council the the
planning commission saying that it was a
uh it was a uh incon it was an erosion
of the residential character of the
area. Uh when the when the uh when the
resoning was approved, the planning
commission put a note in the file saying
to the extent that this amendment to the
zoning map may be inconsistent with the
adopted comprehensive general plan, this
amendment shall constitute an amendment
to that plan. Think of that. I kid you
not. Note that the Papule Village
project is built squarely on top of Camp
Puma, which was part of the old P camp.
Not that anybody knows what campaim was.
Uh okay. SR zoning is classified under
commercial and industrial but it it can
be a lot of things. It can be uh it can
be uh churches, offices, labs, daycare
centers, vet clinics and everything
else.
But anyway, it's it can be used for
dwellings. it considered medium density.
Of course, medium d nothing says medium
density like the 10 units per acre that
will constitute u papal
village. Okay. And now the important
part of this uh the papa village is just
another insult to residents by
developers and the city bureaucrats. I
want to speak of a serious issue. Oak
Street cannot handle the increase in the
traffic. The topography is deadly.
Though the
project area has been abandoned for
years and satellite images never show
more than 40 vehicles, the required
traffic study claims that the
development with 140 residents and 168
parking spaces will generate 45 to 50%
less trips per month per day than an
empty lot. Welcome to the magical world
of Scotsio zone. Oak is a unique road.
Its boundaries and top topography make
it a strange mixture of minor arterial
collector and local street. It is a
rough two-lane road with no sidewalks,
no medium, no landscaping, no lateral
buffer areas, and a very uneven rough
shoulder areas. It gets worse. The
intersection of 60th and Oak is deadly.
There are dips on all sides. You cannot
see the cards sometimes until they're 30
yards away.
Uh this whole thing is a grave accident.
waiting to happen. Thank you very much.
You guys have a good night. Thank you,
Mr. Dale.
That concludes public comment on
non-aggendaized items. And I would like
now like to entertain a motion to
approve the regular meeting minutes of
March 18th, 2025, special meeting
minutes of April 8th, 2025, and the
executive session minutes of April 8th,
2025. So moved. Second.
All those in
favor? Thank you. Next, we have our
consent agenda items 1 through 19. Do
any members of the city council have any
items on the consent agenda that they
would like to move to the regular
agenda? Mayor, Councilwoman Whitehead.
Yeah, I would like to move item five and
19 to the regular agenda.
Okay. Five and
19. And seeing no other
requests, I don't see any. Uh there are
no public speakers. Is that
right, Clerk Lane? on the consent agenda
items. Uh, mayor, the only I the only
item that wasn't pulled was item 14. We
do have one speaker, Roger Luri, and
that is on consent for item 14. Okay, I
see that. Roger Lurri.
Looks like somebody left their glasses
up here. Good evening, Mayor Barasi,
members of the council. I'm Roger Lurri,
chair of the Human Services Advisory
Commission, and I'm here to speak in
support of consent agenda item 14 that
calls for the adoption of resolution
13405 approving the commission's funding
recommendations for human services.
These recommendations reflect the
unanimous agreement of our commission
after a careful and comprehensive review
of over 700 pages of
proposals. The breakdown is as follows.
$180,000 for Scottsdale Cares. This is a
program made possible by the generosity
of our residents who choose to donate $1
each month on their utility bill. This
program's been in place for 30 years and
has raised over $5 million in support of
human services needs. This year, we
received 22 proposals with funding
requests totaling
360,000, double the amount that we were
able to fund. The programs recommended
address a wide range of essential
services for 436 unduplicated
individuals, including services such as
homelessness, youth and family support,
emergency rental and legal assistance,
services for individuals with
intellectual
disabilities, neurode divergent
challenges, and persons with autism.
Then uh we're asking for approval of
80,000 in general funds to support
Scottsdale Community Partners providing
brown bag meals to 125 seniors. Jewish
family and children services offering
counseling to 75 low-income seniors. A
new leaf sheltering 12 individuals
impacted by domestic violence. and the
Scottsdale YMCA providing transportation
to 50 homebound
seniors. Last 130,000 from Salt River
Puma Maricopa Indian Community SRP MIC
to support home delivered and congregate
meals for seniors. Uh we really thank
the SRPMIC for their generous grant
funding this. We appreciate the ongoing
support of the council and community's
com commitment to improving lives across
Scottsdale. Um, and we feel that these
services are a lifeline for many that we
serve during these turbulent times and
uh want to continue the partnership with
these nonprofit agencies. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Luri.
So with that uh we will take up the
consent agenda with uh the absence of
items five and
19. May I have a motion to approve
consent agenda items 1 through 19 with 1
through 18 with the exception of five.
So moved five and 19. Right. Five. One
through 18. Now one through 18 with the
exception of five. Second. being
creative. All those in favor, indicate
your
vote. Thank you. Those items passed
pass. And now I'd like to take up item
number five uh in order without putting
those at the back of the agenda. Is
there anyone here to speak on item five?
That
is poor poor decisions. Is there staff
presentation? Yes. Applicant
presentation.
Thank you, mayor, mayor, and council
members. I'm Casey Stany with the
Scottsdale Planning Department here to
present case 9P 2024, poor decisions,
patio and
kitchen. And you can see the site
location here. are generally located in
the Fifth Avenue district of
Oldtown. And closer up, specifically uh
on Craftsman's Court, it is just west of
that Fifth Avenue parking
garage. And it has the zoning
designation of downtown with the
downtown overlay.
So the request before the council today
is to adopt resolution
13349 approving a conditional use permit
for a bar use on this roughly 2700
square foot
establishment. So before we get into the
specifics of this particular
application, it probably makes sense to
go down memory lane a little bit and
look at some of the history both in
terms of this specific site and kind of
bars in general. So in the 1960s the
subject site was zoned C2 commercial.
Then in 2001 uh it was reszoned to the
newly created downtown district which
then two years after that had the
downtown overlay put on top of
that. In 1991 this site was operating as
a coffee shop and it also attained a cup
for live entertainment for that which
remains to this day
unchanged. However, in 2000 there's
there have been a few different uses
over the years. In 2000, the Dose
Gringo's operator uh started operating
with a series 6 liquor license, which is
traditionally bars. However, at that
time, we did not require conditional use
permits for
bars. A couple years later, they added a
second floor and they also acquired the
parcel to the south uh for a ground
floor patio for that restaurant
bar. And then in 2004, the city said,
"Okay, you know what? We want to start
requiring all new bars to go through the
conditional use process. This one of
course exempt out having already been
existing. Uh then in 2020 and in the
2020s there were several operators. Uh
they were operating as a restaurant and
so that effectively kind of removed that
that quote unquote grandfather status of
theirs and their their bar use was
so-called
abandoned. So jump to today.
Like I mentioned, uh, a restaurant
currently. They want to go back to a bar
again. There's no new construction
specifically proposed with this.
However, there is obviously an existing
twostory building, top floor patio, and
uh, a sizable ground floor patio. So,
the building is about 2,300 ft of gross
floor area and then an additional 5,300
square ft of patio space. And because
we're bringing things up to kind of the
current code here, going to the bar use
this time does require additional
parking. It would be 24
spaces and uh those would be uh across
the street with remote parking. And you
can see here uh to the southwest of the
subject site in yellow, the area in red
is where the remote parking would be.
And I want to clarify that there were a
couple of errors in the report and in
the stipulations that erroneously
identified 4,200 craftsmen, which is a
flower shop, as being a party to the
parking agreement. That is not the case.
However, they still do have the 26
parking spaces, two more than they need
uh at the area in
red. Here's a look at the site plan. The
areas shaded in gray are kind of the
more uh interior enclosed spaces and the
the area in white on the the right half
of the of the parcels uh is the outdoor
patio. And then for the floor plan,
we're looking at the first floor here.
Top half of this image is the more
traditional enclosed bar area. South
half or the the bottom half of this
image is that first floor patio. And
then if we throw the second floor on
there, you can see on the top half
mainly open air patio as
well. The city did do its standard
notification which is notifying all
property owners within 750 ft of the
subject site. We have heard gotten a
variety of public comments a lot in the
last 24 hours both in support and in
opposition which you should
have. That said, this this was uh
recommended for approval unanimously at
planning commission at the April
meeting. So, that concludes the staff
presentation. I do want to note that we
also do have uh a member of the the
police force here that can handle if we
need to some of the conversation about
the police elements that have been
brought up by some of the members of the
public. Thank you. Thank you. Does the
applicant want to take the next word?
Thanks for getting that presentation up.
Good evening, mayor, members of the
council. For the record, my name is
Lauren Proper Potter, PO Box 1833,
Temppee, Arizona
85280. And I'm here tonight on behalf of
Poor Decisions. Casey and I have almost
the exact same presentation except for
that I have a a long section that walks
through all of the required elements for
use permits that are in the code. Um, in
the interest of sparing you all of that,
I'm going to try to keep my presentation
brief this evening, although I'm happy
to go back and walk through anything
that any of you would like to discuss
here. So again, Casey explained the
nature of the request. We're here today
ultimately because my client needs to
obtain a series 6 liquor license from
the state to continue operating in this
location. He's been open for two years.
We've had no noise issues, no
complaints. Um, he's been a very good
neighbor. We have lots of support. We're
very proud of the relationships that
Jackson and his wife have established
with the other property owners on
Craftsman. Um, as Casey kind of showed
you, this is the site. This is a map
that shows where the support that we
have is located. We kept it really
specific to our most immediately
adjacent neighbors. We think those are
the people that are most impacted by the
granting of this request. And as you can
see, there's overwhelming support here,
not only from property owners, but also
from the majority of their tenants. Uh
we're very lucky to have a number of
those people here this evening to speak
in support if the council would like to
hear from them. And then as well we have
a number of Scottsdale residents and
patrons of poor decisions. If y'all
would just raise your hands if you are
here and you've registered to speak in
support this evening. Um all of these
people are more than happy to tell you
their amazing experiences at poor
decisions if you'd like to hear from
them. Although again we're happy to keep
this uh meeting as as short as possible
tonight on this item. Again Casey stole
my thunder here on my history slide. So
I won't get into this. Although I will
note dose gringo did open in 1996. So,
uh, there was a bar use here for, uh,
about 20 years. So, it's historically
been a bar use. Again, Casey let you all
know that the planning commission did
unanimously support this item. We are
very happy to have worked with your
staff to um, obtain a recommendation of
approval from them as well. And we
worked specifically through some
additional stipulations here to shore up
my client's commitment to operate this
as a restaurant during the day. And then
as the sales sort of gear a little bit
more alcohol focused in the evening that
changes. But so we wanted to make sure
that the the residents on the street,
the property owners, the tenants, that
everybody understood there's a
commitment here to continue operating as
a restaurant during the day. And so the
stipulations that we've come up with
require lunch to be served. Um it limits
the hours of operation some days of the
week. No cover will be charged. And I
think this is probably the most
important stipulation. And I know that
there's a a property owner on the street
who has had some concerns with the lack
of enforcability
uh against a different operator, not my
client, but another bar um that he's had
some issues with. And that's the great
thing about the conditional use permit.
It gives the council an opportunity to
provide teeth to your staff, to your
police department here to make sure that
these operators are being responsible
and being good neighbors. But we've got
another layer here. We have direct
stakeholders on the street with an
ability to control who goes in here and
to ensure that there's proper behavior.
And so this stipulation requires the
parking spaces to all come from one
specific property owner directly across
the street. I understand there's a a
typo in the stipulation, so I kind of
crossed that out. I think that'll need
to be modified ultimately. Um, but the
intent is that they all come from a
singular property owner. That's hard to
do. 26 parking spaces anywhere in
Oldtown. It's not easy to come by
parking. Um and be the property owner is
here tonight to speak in support. He's
so strongly in support. He is giving my
client these parking spaces free of
charge. They're valuable and that's that
shores up his belief in my client. He's
aware that that my client is a good
operator. They have a great relationship
on the street and it gives a private
property owner additional teeth. So
beyond the city enforcement mechanisms,
if Joe doesn't like the way Jackson
looks at him on Sunday, he can terminate
the parking agreement on Monday. 30
days, that's it. So it's a very strong
incentive to my client to continue to be
a good neighbor. And he's made that
commitment um to his neighbors on the
street, to you all. And there's some
additional stipulations that we would
like to offer up this evening to shore
up the commitment that my client has to
continue to be a good neighbor on this
street. one of these. I'm not aware of
any uh operator that has a CUP in
Oldtown or elsewhere that's agreed to
this stipulation, but we're going to
agree to a noise level limit and that 75
dB will agree that we will not be
exceeding that. That would be a
violation. Um right now the noise
ordinance is not enforcable in Oldtown
unless you're in a certain proximity to
single family residential. So, it's an
additional enforcement mechanism for the
city. Um, and then I I have proposed a
stipulation that I think staff would
like worded a little differently. We've
agreed to come back in a year for a
review. I believe the ultimate
stipulation that your staff um would
find acceptable is that this use permit
expires in one year. So, my client has
one year to demonstrate that with a
series 6 liquor license allows him to
just remove the pressure of food sales
from his business. He will continue to
be a good operator. And if he's not, he
only has one year. he'll be before you.
That license will expire unless it's
renewed by you all. So, um I'm happy to
walk through some of the additional
requirements for the use permits if
you'd like to get into kind of the
nitty-gritty zoning ordinance stuff. I
highly doubt anyone's interested in
that, but um I was told by the clerk
that I will be sharing my time this
evening with my client. I would like to
introduce him to y'all and just have an
opportunity for him to um let you know
the commitment that he's made to
Scottsdale with his business. So,
Jackson, if you and Mo'Nique want to
just uh come up here and say a few
words. You have four minutes, but do not
feel obligated to use them all, please.
Madame Mayor, council, thank you for
hearing us. Uh my name is Jackson
Armstrong, my wife Monnique. Um I will
talk briefly. Um, we have been in the
industry for 28 years now. I've been an
operator, manager or owner for over 20
years now. I have owned restaurants,
never owned a bar bar. Um, the only
reason that we are going to have to do
this as a compliance issue with the
state. Um, it is important for me to be
a good member of the community. We have
owned these restaurants in Chandler. Um,
we have uh this has been a dream for us
to own something in Oldtown Scottsdale.
Scottsdale is the mecca of good
restaurants, nice hospitality
environments. This became a um a dream
come true a couple years ago through our
um our amazing landlord to be honest
with you because there was a lot of
people vying for that for that building.
Um that being
said, we have it has been a very tough
two years in that location. Um with uh
with the streets being shut down for the
the hotels being built with um just the
history of that building of the last
tenant, we have had to deal with
um scraping some of the
uh yeah the ick as she says off from the
last building that caused a lot of
problems for that street. It is
important for me to be a good member of
that street, a good neighbor to that
street.
Um, and the truth, the reality is if we
are not issued an a permit here, we will
be closed. And that means everything
that we have put in. And I will tell
you, we have sold our businesses in
Chandler to financially support this. I
am not um a member of these large
entertainment groups in Scottsdale that
have unlimited funding behind them. This
is we work in that that building. I
scrub toilets and mop every every day.
My wife cooked in the kitchen all day
today. So, this isn't an investment.
This is a way of living for us. So, for
me, it would be devastating to not be
able to move on. I am more than
interested to um work with any of our
neighbors. Um we have a lot of support.
We have a lot of support from um
business owners,
patrons. It's important to me um to get
along with our neighbors. I don't want
to be a thorn to anybody. And I want
this place to be a place to celebrate
and commiserate. If something is great,
you come and celebrate. If it's
something bad, you come and commiserate
because you've got a family environment
to do that. We are a family
establishment. We have kids that come in
with their families to watch soccer. We
do um a lot for the community as in
fundraising
um for different
charities. We want to be a part of it
and um we've tried to demonstrate to be
good community members. That's our
intent. I hope I hope that we can be
there for a long time.
Thank you. Thank you,
Councilman Graham. Do you have
questions? No.
Just a question about the parking and
thank you for the presentation.
The there's 26 spots in that agreement
you you cited. Correct. Yes, Council
Member Graham. And then if they like you
you kind of made a joke like you know if
he looks at me the wrong way, I can
cancel it, right?
I certainly hope that Mr. Garrett Jiola
doesn't actually do that. I didn't want
to give him any ideas, but um the
agreement does have a 30-day termination
clause. No no reason at all necessary.
Well, I'm just saying if he decided,
hey, I don't like the way like what will
you do to meet the parking requirement?
As the stipulation is crafted, uh there
we would have to come to staff and find
an additional 24 parking spaces in the
area. Your ordinance requires that those
spaces come from within 600 ft. I know
for a fact that there's um only one or
two other places that those could come
from and it would be very difficult to
come by and it would be incredibly
expensive. So, practically speaking,
Council Member Graham um my client would
likely not be able to make those spaces
up. And so, as a result, Mr. Garola has
a pretty significant amount of control
over making sure that the user that goes
in this space is abiding by uh these
stipulations and continuing to be a good
neighbor. Can you uh can you I mean not
tonight, but can you send us a a copy of
the agreement, parking agreement that
you said you Yes, council member Graham,
happy to do it. And not only will I send
you a copy of it, it'll get recorded. Um
your zoning administrator will sign off
on that and those are recorded
documents, so it'll be public, but I
will get you a copy of it for sure. Very
good. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Thank
you. I'll take the speakers now. Joe
Graola Jr.
I thought you just
said, "Meroski, members of the council,
my name is Joe Garajiola Jr., my sister
and I own the building at 4160 North
Craftsman Court, which is essentially
across the street from Poor Decisions.
Um, prior to she and I owning it, my
parents owned the building uh since the
1980s. So we have been on craftsman
court for 40 years and as they say we
have seen them come and seen them
go. I am here tonight to speak in
support of poor decisions and in that
regard I would make three points to the
council. Number
one, as you have heard, they have been
there for two years. And in that time,
in my observation, they have been good
operators and good neighbors, which
stands in stark contrast to the prior
operator who quite literally cost me a
tenant. One of my tenants declined to
renew her lease and specifically said
it's because of what was going on across
the street. So if poor decisions leaves
and somebody else comes
in, who are they? What do they do? I
don't know. I know them. I've watched
them. So this is an instance where I
much prefer the known to the unknown.
Number two, when I was made aware that
there was a lot of conversation going on
up and down the block about this permit,
uh I met face to face with all of my
principal tenants, three of whom have
groundfloor spaces, so directly across
the street. And I discussed my feelings,
my observations, why I thought it was in
our benefit for poor decisions to stay
there. And I can tell you that among my
three big tenants, there is no
opposition to this permit. And number
three, and you have heard about it, the
parking agreement, um it does contain
language that says we can terminate that
agreement without reason or cause. And
um Mayor Baronsky, Councilman
Graham, it's a joke, but it's not a
joke. Okay?
If something were to happen, and I do
not for a second believe it will, but if
something were to
happen, I would not hesitate, and I have
told Jackson this, he's heard it from
day one, I would not hesitate to
terminate that agreement if something
was going on that was negatively
affecting our tenants. And as you have
heard, without the parking, there is no
license. And without the license, there
is no business. So, I think it is fair
to say that they are highly
incentivized to not have anything go
wrong so that I pull the plug on this
thing. I think they're good operators. I
think they're great neighbors. Uh, I
hope they stay for a long time and are
very successful. Thank you. Thank
you, Glenn Shep.
Well, let's show and tell today. It's
the first lease, at least that I know
of, in
Scottsdale. Um, old town, obviously.
This one is
dated 45. So, Scottsdale wasn't even a
city then till 52.
If any of you like to see it afterwards,
just let me know. We've been here a
while. Mayor, honorable madam, mayor and
council members. We've been here a
while. Um, my great-grandfather is here
when Arizona became a state. He's in law
enforcement up in northern
Arizona. Moved here after the family had
a miscarriage, be closer to doctors.
Um my grandfather on my dad's side
started working out in high school uh
Earl Ship at Buyer
Market.
1935 Mr. Buyers came to him and said,
"I'd like to sell you the market." Well,
my granddad said, "I don't have the
money." Uh well, Earl, just take it and
I'll give you the inventory with it and
when you uh make it back, you just pay
me back. I guess that was an early
carryback loan. This lease was for a
gift shop on the patio of that Earl's
Market. So, I know a lot of you have
second jobs. So, thank you for your
time. Heck, some of you might even have
lives outside of city
council. Um, I've worked a lot of jobs
myself when I was young. worked in
hospitality in Austria. Uh service
industry worked in
uh uh after college uh served in South
Korea uh as a intelligence linguist
low-level voice intercept north of Soul.
Um thankfully never saw any friends pass
away. Um worked in the entertainment
industry, commercials and film and TV.
worked in property management for my
family since I could push a
lawnmower. Um, of all the jobs I've had,
all of those have been jobs that require
hard
work. And as a property manager and a
property owner and a stakeholder in
Scottsdale, I think some of
the I've I'd have to say that um rest
our tenants. We own mostly retail and uh
restaurant commercial holdings, very few
residential. Um, I'd have to say that
rent restaurant tours are a special
breed and I'm not sure that they do have
a life outside their
job. It is their life. It's their
livelihood. And that's why I'd like to
say we're behind Jackson 100%. We looked
long and hard for him. Someone like him.
Jackson was a patron of Doingos as was
I and
uh he brings that vision and of that
nostalgia of Oldtown and uh we're here
for it. Take care. Thank you, Mr. Ship.
If you'd like to see Jackson's lease,
it's grown quite a bit. Yes, it has.
Thank you. We'll call up Megan Corollo
and Sandra Singh after that.
Megan.
Megan, Sandra.
H. All right.
Did we lose the mayor?
She just had to step away. I'm vice
mayor, so we can proceed. Uh, I'm Megan
Corollo. I've been a resident of
Scottsdale. My address is 9416 North
80th Place in Scottsdale, Arizona
85258. Um, good evening, Vice Mayor. The
honorable mayor has stepped out and
council members. Um, I own Flower Bar
located on Craftsman Court directly
across the street from Poor Decisions.
I've been a resident of Scottsdale since
2007. I started my business in
Scottsdale in
2011. And in 2017, I was able to acquire
the building on Craftsman Court, which
is now home to my floral design studio.
As you know from my email, I'm opposed
to this permit as it puts a bar directly
across the street from my business and
changes the very fabric of a part of the
city that I call home. I know it was a
bar. Um, just because it has been a bar
doesn't mean it should continue to be a
bar again in the future. Um, Craftsman
Court isn't just another street in
Scottsdale. It's a cornerstone of
Scottsdale's identity and it's where you
can find luxury retailers, boutiques,
fine dining, art galleries, small
businesses like mine, and unique
residences. As a small business owner,
some of you know that life. Um, there
are a lot of times when you're at your
business more than you're at your house.
And my family will attest to this. My
studio is my second home. And I know I'm
not the only business owner that spends
the long hours on Craftsman Court
because I see my neighbors in the
parking lots late at night and on the
streets driving
home. When I chose to invest in this
location, I did so based on Scottsdale's
plan. A city plan that outlined the
purpose and vision for this area of
Oldtown. One centered on unique retail,
upscale dining, art, and a walkable
street. I've invested hundreds of
thousands of dollars into my property
and business to complement this area of
Oldtown because it's a different kind of
Scottsdale. It has a small town feel
that is charming and deeply local.
There's a reason the Kimy Project is
investing $150 million at the end of the
street. It's because of our charm, not
the bar scene. And that's why another
bar doesn't fit in this area. At the
planning and zoning meeting, several
assertions were made that don't reflect
reality. It was stated that the
community largely supports this change,
but myself and 17 other business owners,
tenants, and property owners have
expressed opposition. 17 isn't a
minority. It's a clear voice from the
heart of this district in this
neighborhood. From people who have been
there longer than just a few years, and
people will keep who will continue to be
there for many more years to
come. Restaurants can make it in this
area. The proof is literally in all the
surrounding neighborhood dining spots
that are thriving. From bre breakfast
spots like Chop Shop in its flagship
location to Citizen Public House and its
three plus decades of success. I love
the idea of a restaurant being across
the street for my business. Who
wouldn't? And I'm far more likely to
visit a restaurant for lunch than I am a
bar. If the concept is not going to
change, then the applicant doesn't need
a bar license. They just need a a
different concept. Allowing a bar here
would unravel the delicate balance and
charm of Craftsman Court. We're proud to
be a destination for families, for art
lovers, for tourists looking to stroll
and explore, not just party. A single
permit may seem small, but their ripple
effects will be significant and lasting.
Let's protect what makes Scottsdale
special and invest in long-term success
over short-term gains. I urge you to not
approve this
permit. Thank you, Sandra Singh.
Followed by Steve Johnson.
Good evening to all. My name is Sandra
Singh and um I am the owner with my
husband of the Taj Mahal which is on
4225 North Craftsman Court and we're are
neighbors to the poor decisions. We have
been there for it's going to be nine
years this next summer and we are so
happy to be part of that street. Um and
we have seen um we were there when those
gringoes was there and they didn't did
they do do an amazing job and then we
had the neighbors that were there the
bad ones and um I understand where if
anybody is against this um because of
the bad neighbors I can understand that.
But with that being said, um Jackson and
his wife have been uh taking care of
this place the last two years and we and
I'm here not to take sides, you know,
because we like to like we like to be a
good neighbor. And my husband didn't
even want to even come here because he's
just like I don't want to take sides.
Like I don't want to do that. And it's
not it's not about that for me. The
reason I am here today is because I am a
person that believes in what's either
it's either right or it's wrong. And I
had to speak my words today and say that
I have no problem with them um
continuing to run this place next door
poor decisions. I trust that they will
not uh make it a place of what it used
to be when that old landlord was there.
Um I can say that I've never had have to
call had to call the police department
or have had any issues with even the
music being too loud. I we've never had
any problems with them at all in the
last two years. So, I don't see why it
would change if you were to um continue
letting them u do their business. Um
with that being said, I also trust the
law enforcement and the liquor
department. If they were to like become
a problem, they could easily get their
liquor license snatched. Like you would
shut them down and I trust you that you
would do that. So, and so there's like
regulations and laws and rules that they
would have to like still apply to. And
so then I'm not worried about it. You
know, if they were to become a problem,
then they would be shut down. So with
that being said, I do support um them to
be continued in business because for me
as the restaurant owner next door, it is
important that we don't have an empty
building next door. It is a very big
building and yeah you can say it might
be a hot spot but really it is a big
spot and it's might who knows you might
stay empty for a while and I and they
bring business to us just as we bring
business to them people come in for
dinner you know before heading over to
next door and have a drink and listen to
the the music or vice versa you know
they go there to listen to the music and
then they want to come have food over at
the Taj Mahal so it helps us you know so
Um, with that being said, yeah, just
hopefully they can continue to be our
neighbors. Thank you for your time.
Thank you very much, Steve
Johnson. Uh, good evening, Mayor and
Council. Uh Steve Johnson. I've owned
the property on Craftsman Court for uh
26 years now. I live there. I run my
business from there and I have a retail
tenant there. Um I have a long history
with the ups and downs of this street
and at one time we had five bars on our
street which was an absolute nightmare
and very difficult for all the
surrounding businesses. Over the years,
the city has developed the uh nine
distinct districts and, you know, opened
up the entertainment district, which is,
you know, full of bars. And that's when
most of the bars gravitated off our
street and we kind of regained our
street and it's evolved into more of a
um unique specialty area and stuff. Um,
I've sent many emails on the opposition
of the conditional use permit for this
bar, totally backing up my statements
with facts and history and how the city
handles um, situations with the
bars. And I hope you take all that into
consideration. Uh, there was a lot of
gray area and gray comments made with
the presentation on this and I just hope
you do your due diligence and and look
into that. I see I feel the city's
creating a very slippery slope and
passing this. You know, one day they
might say, "Yeah, we we just want this."
And then who knows, a month from now
they can change their model again and
now they have the CUP and then all of
our hands are tied. And again, my
experience of dealing with the city with
CUPs, they turned a blind eye very often
on this situation.
Um, I think you all have run on a
wonderful catchphrase of the quality of
life of Scottsdale and you want to
improve it and make it even better and
passing this will totally go against
that. Um, Megan and I spent many days
going around talking to all of the
businesses on the street um for their
feedback. Most were totally unaware of
that this is going on. And um I hope
that you take the um opinions of the 17
people that signed in opposition of this
as opposed to um some patrons which have
a totally different perspective. Of
course, a patron would want the
restaurant and bar to exist, but the
people that have to continue to do their
business around it are the ones that
have to deal with this. And it takes an
incredible amount of our time to have to
deal with the city. if things go south
and I just, you know, hope to God it
doesn't go south. U I'm all for having a
great restaurant. That's what we were
sold on two years ago. I think that's
fantastic. I don't think any of us
neighbors should have to pay the price
because their built business model
hasn't worked for them and applying for
a bar now. Thank you.
Thank you very much. And that was the
last speaker on item number
five, Councilwoman Whitehead.
Thank you, mayor. I I just want to thank
everybody who spoke and and everybody
who wrote as well. I mean, again, this
is what defines Scottsdale. We are
definitely engaged. And I also think
what I like about Scottsdale is not only
are we engaged, but we are kind of a
solutionoriented community. And the fact
that we had the government, you know,
the the elected officials, the staff,
the private property owners who's been
here for two generations, it's just been
a good process. I I also want to say I
want to thank everybody who has a small
business in this area and in any area I
it is such a risk. It is such a it is
such an investment of everything you own
and that's the case for uh Megan her
business as well as
um as well as Jackson. So, um, I really
admire people who do it because nobody
wants to go visit a town that has just a
bunch of Kmarts. And I know they're out
of business, but you know, fill in the
blank big box store. We want to go to
small businesses that are unique and
cool. And certainly both the flower shop
um and and uh this poor decisions are
very unique and interesting. Also, um
this is a case where everybody involved
I know and I like um Steve and I go way
back. He's been uh we've been
communicating since I got elected and
he's taken me on tours and we've had a
lot of successes. But I do want to um
I'm going to offer a compromise to get
us to where I think we need to be. But I
think the general public doesn't
understand a cup is not zoning. When
when an applicant comes to us with a
zoning case, we can say no for any
reason we want. We can say no because we
don't like what the city manager is
wearing today. You know, we literally
have a lot of leeway. We don't have that
leeway with a cup, a conditional use
permit. Um this this city council, this
body can deny it if it's an
inappropriate use for that site. And as
we know, this site was a bar for 20
years. And I also want to say the site
didn't change. The city's bureaucracy
changed. So in
2004, the city required a cup. So that
liquor license, whether it's six or 12,
we don't we don't have any say of that.
as they as they pointed out, that's the
state determination of which license you
have, not us. But we added this level of
bureaucracy called a cup, and that was
intended to protect the public against a
use that is inappropriate in an area.
But what we have here is the possibility
that if we don't approve this cup, we're
actually using something to protect the
public. We're using it to hurt the
public. Because if we tell a business
they can't be in business anymore when
they're absolutely in the right location
and this is a use that has you know been
used over and over again for for this
for a bar then then we're doing damage.
So it's always that balancing act. We
want the regulations to protect the
public but we as the leaders as the
elected leaders we have to protect
against the misuse of these regulations.
And so that's what I see here. Now that
said, Scott's still special. We always
like to bring everybody together and we
did have a lot of, you know, questions.
So, um, noise and and I want to tell you
noise isn't just an issue by the
entertainment district. We get noise
complaints everywhere, okay? People
don't like noise unless maybe they're
making it. So um
the but back to the noise this applicant
has offered us again in a mixeduse area
we don't that our sound ordinance that
it doesn't apply it applies in McCormack
Ranch right so this applicant has agreed
to stipulate noise and Steve's right
it's hard to enforce but you know it is
it is a stipulation and his cup will
depend on it um he also has very
generously offered to allow um to allow
me or to allow anyone on council to um
to amend this uh request to limit the
cup to expire in six months. That's a
very short period of time. Um this has
been a very stressful 48 hours for this
business, these business owners. And I
don't want the next six months to be
stressful. I want them to be
solutionoriented because again this is a
business that belongs in this location
based on the zoning and based on past
uses. So this council has very little
what we have the power to do is come up
with
stipulations based on the input of the
residents who are concerned and for the
right reasons are concerned to make sure
everybody gets along. That's really our
power. And so, uh, with that, let me put
on my
glasses. I am going to make a motion,
and that doesn't mean everybody else can
speak, but I'm going to make a motion on
item five and request that the
conditional use permit criteria have
been met and adopt resolution number
13349, approving the conditional use
permit for bar use of a 2700 foot
establishment with downtown retail
specialty type one, downtown overlay
DRS-1 zoning. Um, but I'm going to add
these stipulations. First, I'm going to
strike the one address, 4,200 Craftsman
Court for the parking. Strike
that. Um, add a stipulation that noise
levels from this establishment shall not
exceed 75 dB when measured from the west
side of Craftsman Court. So, that would
be the opposite side of the uh that
would be where the businesses are that
are concerned. and also um put a term of
conditional. I'm getting notes. Oh, one
year. Okay. Okay. We're going to go over
that one year. So, uh and that gives us
more time. So, this conditional use
permit is valid for one year unless it
is first amended or renewed. So I think
that's really a collaboration of the
leaders up here, our staff which are our
superpower and all the people in that
neighborhood. So I hope I get a second
second.
And can I speak to that? Yes,
Councilwoman Mckllen. Okay, I want to
speak to that. Um, I appreciate uh a lot
of what Councilwoman Whitehead said
about small businesses and everybody
pouring, no pun intended, pouring their
lives into their small businesses. I'm a
small business owner also. And uh but I
I really believe that like what
um Councilman Quasman said and what
Councilwoman Whitehead proposed, the one
year gives you the time to prove what
you've told us. And hopefully to all of
your neighbors, those 17 neighbors will
come back next year and say, "You guys
are rock stars." And um that's why we do
that. Uh, I also would like to commend
um uh the blend ship for coming and
showing the lease. And for those of you
who may not be Scottsdale natives, Earls
was the shopping store. Like that's
where you grocery shop. And to think
that Blenn is here showing us the
original grocery store of Scottsdale
where I went as a kid is so very cool.
So, thank you for sharing that. And um
that's my second.
Thank you, Councilman Clausman. Thank
you, Madame Mayor. So, I want to be very
clear on this on the one-year
stipulation. Um this is not a punt so
that in a year from in a year from now,
it's just a wave off and it's fine. And
this one year means something. There's
going to be teeth to this. And I want to
be clear that I believe in you. I
believe in the entrepreneurial spirit. I
believe in the success of anybody who
works like you do, like your beautiful
wife does. I want to make sure that this
is right for the community. I trust your
landlord. I trust your neighbors. But I
want to make sure we want to make sure
that this is right for Scottsdale. And
one year conditional means one year
conditional. I just want to be I just
just so that everybody knows and
everybody's aware that if that if we if
if you don't end meet your end of the
bargain that's it. Thank you. Thank you
Councilman Graham. Councilman Thank you,
Mayor. Councilman Quasman put in words
what I was thinking. He kind of
organized my thoughts.
Um so I'm a reluctant yes
tonight and
um we're watching you. I'm just kidding.
But seriously, no, I'm just kidding.
Seriously, uh it's
um our downtown is so
special and when you introduce elements
in one area that don't
belong, the speakers are right. I mean,
it can
just it can just change it. it can
adversely change it. And so tonight, I'm
a reluctant yes and revisiting for a
year. Thank you,
Councilwoman Littlefield.
Thank you, Mayor. Um, I'll duplicate
what Councilman Graham just said. I was
coming in here thinking no way. I am a
reluctant yes because of what has been
presented to us tonight. But you have a
year to prove yourself.
Thank you.
I don't see any other speakers, but good
luck. Sounds like Sounds like you're in
good
shape. We'll come see you see your new
place. Uh all those in favor of passing
uh item number five, poor decision cup,
indicate your vote.
All right, moving right along.
[Applause]
Next we move
to uh what was consent agenda item 19 um
regarding authorizing a resolution or
adopting a resolution to authorize
outside legal services contract related
to acts on legislation.
Yeah, I I just wanted to speak to this
and
um hang on, let me I forgot my iPad.
Um I I just want to offer my colleagues
um a motion to um continue this item.
and my reasons are many, but I'm just
going to keep it simple. Um, I don't
think this is a I I don't think it's
ripe. I don't think the law hasn't come
into effect. We um still have
opportunities to communicate with Axon.
Oh, there are public speakers on this
item, I believe. Should we have the
public speakers first?
Yes, but you jumped in to tell us why
you took it off the consent agenda.
Yeah. Okay. I'm and I'd like to hear
from the speakers. Thank you.
All right. Uh there are four people that
have indicated their wish to speak on
this item. I'll start with Dan Isaac,
then Andrew Greybar, Dr.
Sandra Ole, and Nick
Vanhe. Long time no see. uh Dan Isaac
address on
record. The people who ran on fiscal
responsibility after pushing away
millions in road funds after risking
tourism dollars because of ideology who
want to spend 21 mill million dollars on
an unneeded parking structure ruining
the most historic part of Oldtown and
who didn't want to spend money for an
election so we could know the actual
will of the people regarding
Axon now want to spend multiple six
figures to continue their assault on a
local
company and residents need to understand
that this initial approval is just the
first trunch. Some estimates are that
they want to spend a million dollar or
more for their vendetta, spending $875
per hour for the lead
attorney. So, just to
reiterate, we wouldn't spend money on an
election this year that would have
conclusively shown whether residents
support the development.
But now you want to spend even more to
fight the recently passed bipartisan
bill that would not have been necessary
had we held the election this
year. And before you claim this is about
fighting legislative
overreach, did we hire outside counsel
and spend seven figures to fight the
other ones that our state legislature
imposed on the city of
Scottsdale? the one that prevents us
from regulating
STRs, the ADU
override, the multif family zoning
override, the ESA expansion, school
funding limits, and so forth. No, we
didn't.
But somehow trying to drive out a
company that contributes billions to the
state of Arizona and has supported our
public our police department is somehow
a good expenditure in your eyes. Your
decision some of your decisions are
truly remarkable and not in a good way.
Thank you. Thank
you Andrew Greybar.
Good evening, Madame Mayor, members of
the council, and staff. I'm here to ask
you to please reject item number 19,
allocating $200,000 of taxpayer
contingency to fighting SP543.
I am a regular unaffiliated South
Scottsdale resident here advocating for
integrity and common sense instead of
instead of singing my 2-year-old
daughter to bed tonight. And it's for
reasons like that that you don't see
people like me here at these meetings
because we elected you to make good
decisions in ourstead rather than in the
interest of the view from our backyard
or the traffic on our drive to AJ's. The
people who would propose those
oppositions are always going to be here.
They are a very homogeneous demographic.
And if one thing is clear to me is that
their limit their interests are
incredibly limited. Not jobs, not
housing, not economic diversity, not
advanced manufacturing, not amenities,
mostly just traffic. And if it was just
that, I wouldn't be here. I'm here
because of the rampant and pervasive
misinformation of their campaign,
starting with the $100 million lie. It
is seen throughout all of their
statements to the press. It is seen
throughout their social media campaigns
and it's seen throughout their comments
um here in the council chambers. Here's
how they arrive at that math. 74 acres
times $24 million or 20 million I'm
sorry $2 million per acre equals $148
million minus what Axon paid for it is
49 which is 49.1 million equals 98.9
million not 100 but what is 1.1 million
to people who don't have any interest in
telling the truth number two their
signature campaign here's the man who
was arrested while collecting signature
at
bashes. Uh here is a comment from a
resident that I received saying that
they had signature gatherers come to
their homes five times despite being
sent away when told they didn't want to
sign. Number three, the source of the
funding. TA's advocates will not reveal
the source of
$430,000 worth of funding raised to
gather signatures that they paid $6 to 8
per signature for. Number four, the
housing crisis. I could spend 10 minutes
on it. I trust you guys to acknowledge
that it exists and to take take steps to
tackle it here in Scottsdale. And number
five, the
reimbursements. Given that Bob
Littlefield sits used to sit on city
council, I find it shameful that he
would represent routine and ordinary
reimbursements for the construction of
Mayo and Hayden uh as conspiracy with
the council and the council staff.
And as someone in the industrial
business, I actually find it laughable
that given this project would return to
its industrial zoning, they would ask
for truck more truck traffic. So, I ask
you to please take into consideration
the state's mandate that we tackle the
housing crisis and preserve a
manufacturer in Scottsdale instead of
spending
600,200 2 million of taxpayer funds to
fight SB1543 on behalf of the Nimbies
who would oppose this project. Thank
you,
Dr. Sandra Ol.
Good evening, Mayor Browski and council
members. I'm a resident of Scottsdale
Stonebrook, which is the community of
homes that is just south of the Axon
development.
We are the residents most directly
impacted by this
project. When I first heard When I first
found out that Axon wanted to add
housing and retail to its campus, I was
shocked and upset to put it
mildly, especially considering the
scale. I wrote letters to the editors
speaking out against it. I went to city
council
meetings and but as the project evolved
and the city negotiated some really
important
concessions that would make a meaningful
impact on our neighborhood. It became
more
palatable. The buildings closest to us
would be lower and there would be a
greater setback.
They added a burm and would limit Axon
Way and 82nd Street to our
community. The project was approved in
December and I accepted it because if
you're going to buy property next to
undeveloped land, you have to expect
it's going to get developed
eventually. You might be surprised to
hear that I was actually quite concerned
when the petition started going around
to squash it.
I didn't sign the petition, but many
residents who lived nowhere near the
land
did. Axon's request for the change in
zoning is what actually gave the city
leverage and the ability to negotiate
and make it better.
If Axon now did not build their campus,
the land would revert back to light
industrial, which means there's no
reason that an Amazon fulfillment center
or something like the MAC development on
Princess and the 101 couldn't go there.
300 semitruck trips in and out of there
a day, that's what I read, in my
opinion, is much worse than a
multi-billion dollar company providing
jobs, housing, and tax dollars to our
city. Unfortunately, the city wouldn't
push up the vote, so Axon had no choice,
felt it had no choice but to go to the
state.
I'm here tonight to urge the city
council to vote not to spend
$200,000 to
explore a lawsuit and then potentially
millions more from there. It just
doesn't make any sense to me to spend
all of that tax money to fight a bill
that would bring jobs and tax dollars to
our city and state.
Leadership doesn't mean always making
the most popular decision, but the
better decision. And these decisions can
be quite difficult because the choices
aren't
perfect. Lastly, Axon says they want to
be a good neighbor, and I do hope that
they will be and honor the concessions
they agreed to in December regarding our
community. Thank you. Thank you, Nick
Vanhe.
Mayor Bowski and members of the city
council, thank you for the time this
evening. My name is Nick Van Hefty. Uh I
live at 8088 East Maria Drive in the
Scottsdale Stone Brook 2 subdivision
with my wife and my two young daughters.
As you know, as my neighbor so
eloquently just put, um our neighborhood
is the south southern border of the Axon
development. Um, I'm here today to just
respectfully urge that you do not
continue down this path of seeking litig
litigation against the state
um on the on bill uh SB543 that the
governor just signed. I recognize that
the intent of this is to protect the
residents of this city, but please
protect those that are closest to this
development. The first plan by Axon
wasn't great. I' I've been here for
years, every meeting. It wasn't great,
but they came back to the table. They
worked with us as a neighborhood. They
negotiated with us. They negotiated with
some of the council members here, and
they brought back something that was
better, that we liked, that we felt part
of. If you guys move forward with this,
you're going to take that away from us.
We worked hard. We spent a lot of time
here. I spent hours in this building
that I could have spent with my
children. And we as an or as a community
didn't like this at first. I'll admit
that. But things have changed. And I
would tell you that there are very few
people in our neighborhood that still
are against this. Many that absolutely
want it. And most people are just
indifferent. They have better things to
do and better things to worry about. And
they just simply don't see an importance
in it. So, you know, as a taxpayer here
in Scottsdale, we've got really crazy
economic times upon us. And I can think
of a lot better things to do with our
taxpayer money than chase down
litigation against an amazing company
and truly ruin a neighborhood for a
bunch of really great people. So I urge
you to vote against this um continuation
of this litigation against the state.
Thank you very much for your time. Thank
you.
I don't see any more speakers and I
don't see any presentation. Oh, you have
other comments. Okay. I I see you. Okay.
Yeah. I I'm gonna um first of all, once
again, thank you to all the speakers and
I also see uh former Councilwoman Janick
in the audience. Uh you know, we spent
and I know Councilwoman Littlefield also
spent I don't know how many hours, okay,
granted, my kids are grown, so I didn't
miss out on any dinners with them, but
we spent a lot of time um getting to the
point that we got to last year with
Axon. And the concessions they made were
so so important to me because we have
Scottsdale. We've always aimed to make
sure development isn't just good enough,
it's good enough to raise the bar for
everybody around that that parcel, which
is what we did. Was it perfect? No, no,
no, it was not perfect. But it I it
absolutely and my the residents really
mo the majority of the residents can't
get everybody on board but the majority
of residents felt for sure that this
would raise their property values.
Besides that, how did we get here? The
referendum happened and I also had I'll
be honest some bad experiences. I mean I
kind of know what the referendum was
about and some of the things these paid
petitioners told me were like anyway not
true. Um, but that doesn't matter. It
was a referendum and it is it deserves
to go on the ballot. However, it
deserved to go on the ballot right away.
It deserved to go on the ballot so that
the very people who signed it would also
get to vote on it this year. And I get
that my colleagues wanted to save the
$600,000 it costs for a special
election. Point of order. Point of
order. We, Madame Mayor, this is not on
topic. We are we are simply voting We
are simply voting on approval of of
legal expenses. Okay, that is that is
actually quite accurate. I will accept
that. But I'm asking I would like to
point out that the $600,000 saved and
not putting a special election on this
year will be invisible compared to the
cost of legal action, especially when
this law hasn't even gone into effect.
The legislature isn't even out of
session. So, I am going to make a motion
to um continue this
item number
19 until a date um to be determined
based on uh here we go. Let me So I am
motioning I make a motion to not adopt
but to continue resolution number
13415 until a uh a date to be
determined.
Second.
Councilman Clausman. Yeah. I'm not gonna
I don't want to speak to the motion. I
just have a couple questions. First of
all, um
uh Attorney Scott, can I just ask you a
couple questions?
200,000. What's the reasoning behind the
200,000? Could it be 100,000? Could it
be 50,000? What's your reasoning in
terms of in terms of the number that you
chose? I'm sorry, I did not speak
through the chair there. I noticed,
Madame Mayor, Madam Scott, 200,000
100,000. What's the reason?
Um, Mayor Bowski and um, Councilman
Quasman, uh, the reasoning is that we
need to get through the end of this
fiscal year. Uh, this outside council
does charge
$875 an hour. Um, the estimate is
somewhere between 100 and 200,000 and so
I estimate it high. um so that we didn't
go over that amount to do all of the
initial work to evaluate um the case and
the theories of the case etc. Um thank
you returned for an executive session
with the council. Um those are all the
expenses that are included in that
$200,000 number. And and thank you Miss
Scott. Does that does that allocation
and that budgeting does that um is that
a guarantee of a law of a legal action
being filed by the city of Scottsdale?
No, it is not. Okay. And and would you
say that in in uh whether it's a whether
it's a corporate to corporate um dispute
or any type of constitutional challenge
that might occur? Um, is it would would
you recommend seeking legal counsel and
ensuring that all our options are
available to us or none available to us
in terms of getting the full view of the
view screen of uh of the lay of the land
in a in after a uh after a new bill is
passed.
Mayor Barowski, uh, Councilman Quasman,
if if the council is considering, uh,
legal action moving forward, yes, I I
would definitely advise the council to
study that, uh, with the help of, u
expertise and outside counsel at length
before making that final decision moving
forward. And can you can you please,
Madam Chair, um Miss Scott, can you
please talk about um Dominic Dre and and
his background and why he might be a
good choice for this council?
Uh well, m Mr. Dre, I I interviewed
several lawyers prior to uh recommending
Dominic Dre. He's with an excellent firm
of Greenberg Trrowig. He is a former
solicitor general uh for the state of
Arizona, meaning he had the top
litigator position um appointed by the
attorney general for the state of
Arizona. Um he does a lot of
constitutional work and a lot of
appellet work. Um he he has a very
impressive
uh deep resume in these types of areas.
Thank you. And and just, Madame Mayor,
before we before we vote on anything, I
just want to I just want to say to the
members of the press that are here and
members of the public, I want to
reiterate I believe in a deal with Axon.
I believe in a compromise. I we are in
we are in contact as recently as last
week, we will speak. And I believe that
we will find a compromise that works.
But the fact that everybody here is
talking about Axon in my opinion belies
the fact that there's a possibility that
the legislation that was passed that was
known as the Axon bill might be special
legislation and
unconstitutional and the only people the
only way we're going to be able to have
that information whether we make an
action or not and I hope we don't I
think we could absolutely come with a
compro come to a compromise is to seek
counsel. Axon has counsel. Why can't we
have the council that gives us the type
of legal the the legal uh understanding
and the knowledge as everybody else?
Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money,
but welcome to the world of corporate
law and welcome to the world of high
stakes appellet leg uh litigation. Um I
think that we're getting one of the best
and I think that I think a
$200,000 budget does not mean a $200,000
expenditure. I think that we could do
this for a lot cheaper than
$200,000. I think that I look forward to
hearing and learning about what the
constitutionality of the legislature.
This is beyond act. I truly truly want
the the public to understand that this
is not actually about axon. This is
about the citizens right for referendum
and the citizens right to have a stake
in their own democracy. something that
has been part of Scottsdale up until la
uh a month ago, three weeks ago. So,
with that, I want to make I want I want
this council to understand that getting
legal advice is not a bad thing. All it
is is just getting leg as an attorney,
I'll tell you, getting legal advice is
just getting legal advice. That's it.
Thank you, Councilman Quasman. I'm going
to chime in here because there's been
quite a few um I think
misunderstandings uh from the speakers
and first of all I don't know what
you're talking about or what someone
else is talking about. We never
considered the question of an early
election. We never took a vote on that.
So um quoting us as not being willing to
do that is just false. Uh certainly had
it come before us, it would have been
well
thoughtfully contemplated and perhaps
approved. Uh 1535 SB
1535 trumps your development development
agreement at Stonebrook. That's the
result of it. So at this point based on
what we know and again we're lawyers. We
don't do this kind of work. uh this
person that we're looking at retaining
does do this kind of kind of work and we
need the advice that you all need and
deserve. At this point, 1535 appears to
be an anything goes project at the Axon
site. And because Axon representatives
have not been meaningfully engaged with
the city about quote unquote
compromising, which I believe should
happen, and that's the goal for me, that
we come out with as good of a project as
you think there was, Stone Brook
residents, or preferably much better.
So, um, there are many issu Oh, aside
from Axon, as Councilman Quasman said
quite a few times, this is very bad
legislation for our community. So, there
are other sites in Scottsdale trust,
Arizona State Trust sites that would
potentially be further impacted by this.
So, we need we need to know where we
stand versus the rhetoric of, you know,
what's gone on in the press and Axon's
spin on things. Um, I would really like
the opportunity to be in a position to
come back to the table, negotiate a
great situation with Axon and the city
and and overturn 1535. That's my goal.
So, uh, with that, I know there's
Councilman Graham and Coun Councilwoman
Whitehead, uh, that still want to speak.
So, I'll turn to Councilman Graham.
Thank you,
Mayor. There were a lot of very good
comments up here that were made.
Uh, the mayor made some good points.
Councilman Quasman made some excellent
points. Right now, as we sit here, there
is a motion on the table that's been
seconded by Councilwoman
Whitehead. A
motion to not do anything.
I believe residents
deserve for us to hire the best legal
minds to look into this legislation in
all legal avenues to protect our
residents and to protect their rights.
The motion on the table to do to
continue means we won't even
consider our options that we're putting
our head in the
sand. The motion on the
table is waving the white
flag of surrender.
The motion on the table from
Councilwoman
Whitehead is a motion to
retreat. The motion on the table sends
the message that we are afraid to stand
up for you and to stand up for
Scottsdale.
So, I'm sure some of us were considering
to making an alternate motion, but I
would like to vote for the motion to go
through so we can put see where people
stand on the record and put it in black
and white for you to see where your
elected representatives stand on this
issue. Thank you.
Okay, Councilwoman Whitehead. Thank you,
Mayor. Well, I knew I wasn't going to be
the popular one on this one. We are
representing the citizens when we choose
to have a relationship with a corporate
neighbor that doesn't involve expensive
lawyers. The 200,000 doesn't buy us
anything any decision on whether this
legislation
uh will, you know, pass muster with a
judge. It's just a it's just a um a
review. This type of legal action will
cost taxpayers millions of dollars. And
I want to stress that the residents of
this community are not united behind
even wanting to challenge the uh project
that was
approved. Um I think the the people that
I spoke to at Axon and many of the
residents of the neighbor Stone Brook,
they wanted this on the ballot and the
mayor's right. Um, I read in plenty of
uh social media posts that this was
going to be postponed to 2026. I think
Councilman Graham was even quoted as
saying this we're going to save
$600,000. I get it. But Councilman
Graham was also quoted in the pay in the
paper, I think yesterday, saying this is
just the start. This is just the down
payment.
$200,000 of your taxpayer dollars being
spent to fight a corporation that brings
the highest paying jobs to this city has
been an
unbelievable neighbor and has made
expensive concessions. So, if you're
trying to repair a relationship in your
family, you don't start by hiring a
lawyer. You start by talking to them.
And that's all I'm asking for. You know,
maybe we should have meters here for how
many dollars we spend every single
council meeting. Okay? So, I'm not head
in the sand. I spent three years on
this. I had the neighbors show up that
initially were opposed to this project
and they showed up last year with
Councilwoman Janick and the uh five
others on that council and spoke in
support of this project. What you heard
tonight are residents who spoke in
support of this project. So sure,
there's residents who don't, but I don't
know any residents who want us to waste
money before we sit down with the with
the applicant, we sit down with Axon and
see even though we lost, we lost at the
legislature, but we have a good
corporate neighbor and I know they want
to continue to be a good neighbor. Let's
sit down and talk instead of spending
their money and having their board watch
them waste their revenue on legal action
and instead of spending taxpayer dollars
just as a down payment $200,000. Give me
a break. Just let's take time. Let's
pause. Let's stop with the point, shoot,
aim type of
policym. Let's pause. Let's wait for the
legislation to let's to the legislature
to wrap up. Let's wait for this law to
even go into effect. And in that time
frame, let's sit down and talk about all
those concessions and see what we can
get. And if we're not satisfied, guess
what? Lawyers are always willing to be
hired. So, thank you,
Councilwoman Mckllen.
Thank you, Mayor.
Um, I would just like to say that most
of the letters I received over the past
two weeks about this agenda were telling
us, "Do not waste our tax dollars. Quit
throwing away our
money on a company that's been a good
neighbor." Um, I would agree.
Uh, I would like to sit down with Axon.
I would like them to come to the table.
And there are questions. We don't know
how this legislation is going to affect
us. And I get that, but wasting more
money and throwing away more money um is
not the answer. Um I'll just stop with
that.
Councilman Quasman. Yeah, it just it the
righteous indignation that it's coming
from certain members of this body is
just ridiculous. Axon is corporate
counsel. Guess what? They got lawyers.
Like big surprise. They got I guarantee
you they got a legal opinion that said
this bill either is going to hold up in
court or it's not. There's the question
is that Scottsdale has a right to know.
And you said that we don't know the
answer. Members of this board of this
body just said we don't know the answer.
Well, guess what? Let's find out the
answer. I I I don't understand why it's
such a hard point to figure out to speak
with an expert about something. I It is
It would be wonderful. It would be
wonderful if every city had a an amazing
constitutional attorney that has had
that has had decades of practice in
appellet law at both the state and
federal levels. Guess what? Cities don't
have that. So, we got to hire somebody
to figure out where we're at. Once we
figure out where we're at, then then
we're able to figure out how a deal can
be formed. That's the reality of the
situation. Doesn't hurt anybody. Doesn't
insult anybody. I somebody said here,
"Ready, aim,
fire." By not acting, you're actually
fired. You're just out. You're just
done. Like, I'm I'm done. I'm fired. But
the ready means, let's get an expert.
The aim is can that expert take us to
where we want to be? Guess what? There's
a chance that the answer's no. And
therefore, you have to we then we come
up with other options. But I'm not
going, we represent the people. I don't
represent a corporation. I represent
people, including the members of that
corporation who live here. We We owe it
to We don't owe corporate entities
anything. We owe the people who live
here everything. I want to make sure
that our
partners have all of the information
when we represent them. And again, I
can't be the neigh the the the person
who reaches out and shakes a hand to
make a deal with somebody if I'm
hamstrung on the information that I
have. I refuse to not have enough
information going in. Hire a lawyer.
Trust me, it's the right thing to do.
And then make your deal. Thanks. Let's
go ahead and vote on the motion that's
on the table,
please. All those in favor, indicate by
I.
That motion fails.
Mayor, I'd like to change my vote to a
no on that. That was a mistake. I
apologize. That was a just wrong. Too
late. Too late.
Fat fingered that one.
Okay, that motion fails. And
uh moving forward, I just also want to
add to this discussion before I
entertain another motion. Um hiring a
lawyer, I think one of the most valuable
things for for me and the city is we'll
actually have a person that we've all
directed to get engaged in the process,
the negotiation, the analysis. and uh
sorry to say that has been hugely
lacking during the legislative process.
So I think this is a much better
approach whether we engage in litigation
or we don't. Um it's someone that will
go carry point on the entire situation
moving forward and I think that's a wise
decision and I think a vote uh to engage
this individual uh is a good one. So
with that, I'll entertain a motion if
anyone has one.
I'll make a motion to adopt resolution
1313415.
Second.
I would like to propose a friendly
amendment to your motion and I would
like to cap our investment our our
authorization at
$100,000 and I think that you know that
would make me feel a lot more
comfortable to get this solid legal
opinion because I know what that takes
to give a good legal opinion. Probably
won't take $100,000 hopefully. So, I'd
like to offer that and if it's
acceptable. Before I accept that, I'll
I'll um invite the city attorney to give
a response to that.
I think that
uh outside council would definitely be
able to return to the city council um
for an executive session to talk to the
council about the case. The if you're
talking about to get to a preliminary
opinion, yes, I think that would be
sufficient um to go beyond a preliminary
opinion. We'll I'll just have to if the
council wants to move forward, we'll
just have to keep bringing this matter
back to the council. Very well. Uh
friendly friendly um friendly amendment
amendment accepted
if the seconder accepts.
So do do you want to speak to this now?
Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Madam
Mayor. Councilman Graham. Okay. Thank
you, Madam Mayor. Again, I think that's
a wise decision. I think that was a wise
amendment. I think that's right. I think
that again this is not litigation. This
is seeking an opinion and it's okay to
seek an opinion and we can get it done
for 100. I like spending less on lawyers
if we don't have to. And so and so this
should get us this should get us across
the finish line and make us sure that we
know where we're where we stand.
Seeing no other speakers, uh I would
like to take a vote. Everyone in favor
of engaging with the revised amount of
$100,000 Greenberg charg on the acts on
matter indicate your vote by
I. And that mo motion does
pass. All right. Moving right
along. Next we have item 20 which is the
presentation discussion and possible
direction to staff regarding the
proposed fiscal year 202526 operating
budget and capital improvement plan.
Presenting this evening is Sonia
Andrews, city treasurer and Scott Selin,
budget department director.
Thank you mayor and council. Um it's
kind of difficult to follow that
previous conversation with the
presentation of the budget, but I will
try to keep it interesting. Um we're
very pleased to present next year's
budget and capital improvement plan to
you tonight. I am going to present the
first half of the presentation and pass
it over to our um budget director Scott
Cellin to present the second half of the
presentation. Next slide.
So the budget takes months to develop
starting in October and it goes through
many levels of review and this year we
have the new budget review commission
that also assisted with reviewing the
proposed budget before we are in front
of you tonight. The entire proposed
budget is published on our website so
citizens can access the entire budget
and citizens can also provide input
later this month when we present the
tenative budget to you and also um when
we pro uh present the final budget for
adoption in June. Next
slide. Before I start, I'd like to thank
the budget staff and the department
staff who spent an enormous amount of
time working together to put this budget
together for you. And I would also like
to uh thank the budget review commission
and city council for your input and
guidance on the
budget. Next
slide. The budget adoption is a
multi-step process. Tonight is the
presentation of the proposed budget. The
council is not asked to adopt the budget
tonight, but council may give us
direction on specific items in the
proposed budget. Council will be asked
to adopt the tenative budget on May
20th.
um before adopting the final budget on
June
10th. Next
slide. Our proposed budget for next
fiscal year is
2,27.9 million or 2.2 billion consisting
of an operating budget of 885.5 million,
a capital budget of 952 million, and a
contingency and reserves budget of
370.4 million. Next, next
slide. Our operating budget increased
from the prior year and that is because
we proposed 98 new positions or
full-time equivalents we call FTEES in
the proposed budget and that includes 66
public safety personnel and 32 other
positions citywide. Our budget also
includes salary adjustments for our
employees for market and merit and step
increases. 3% for merit and 5% for step
for those employees who are in the STEP
program. Our budget anticipates an 8.9%
increase in health care costs. And we
also included in our budget
implementation of phase two of our
ambulance
services. Restaffing of a fire truck.
That's 15 staff for the fire truck in
the south station. We also included in
our budget the expenditures related to
the new 0.15 park and preserve tax. And
there's also other increases such as
technology increases and other
inflationary cost increases such as for
our water purchase of water from cap and
also
electricity. Next slide. What is
important to note is that even though
our operating budget
increased about 40% of that increase is
paid for by new or dedicated revenue
sources for example as I mentioned
earlier the new 0.15 park and preserve
tax new ambulance revenue since we're
launching the second phase of our
ambulance service and also water sewer
and solid waste rate
increases. Another important thing to
note is that there are items in our
operating budget that show up as
increases, but they're really just
one-time items and not ongoing items.
So, they're not really true ongoing
increases to our operating budget, but
they do show up as increases. The first
one is the proposed additional payment
to our PSPRS, which is our public safety
pension. We are proposing the use of our
reserves that we have set aside
specifically to pay down the public
safety unfunded liability. We're
proposing proposing to use 50 million of
those reserves. They show up in our
operating budget. The second item is the
fleet acquisition budget carry forward.
Because of the long lead times in
acquiring vehicles these days, we are
not able to use all our budget in our
fleet acquisition budget this year. So
we have to carry forward that budget of
12 million to next year so that we can
spend the budget next year. And the last
thing is we are also proposing
reclassifying certain capital items
items that we were budgeted for in the
capital budget to our operating. The
largest piece of that is our engineering
and project management group um
previously known as our CPM or capital
project management team. and they were
included in our capital budget and
allocated to the capital projects. We
decided that to provide more
transparency in the budget and to uh
simplify the allocation of that
overhead, we would move that department
into the operating budget. Next
slide. Our capital budget decreased
overall. First of all, we increased our
street overlay budget to address the
street overlay issues and that is from
the discussions with our budget review
commission. Uh they uh recommended doing
so and under the direction of the city
manager, the proposed budget includes
42.9 million for street overlay this
year. And we also talked about the
reclass of the additional of the certain
capital costs to the operating budget.
And we also realigned the capital budget
with our cash flow. Meaning we pushed
some of our capital budgets to the outer
years instead of to next years to better
align with what we expect and how we
expect to spend our capital dollars. So
overall our capital budget decreased
because of these
reasons. Next slide. So here are the key
numbers of our proposed budget compared
to the current year and also compared to
the last year's budget. There's a lot of
numbers on this slide, so I'll take you
through it. Starting from the bottom of
the slide, you'll see that the overall
budget decreased by
3.8% compared to the current year. Right
above that total budget line at the
bottom, you'll see that our reserves and
contingencies decreased mainly due to
using the 50 million for the police
pension unfunded liability payment and
also using reserves for capital projects
as well as uh we unappropriated some of
those reserves and contingencies as
well. And above that line, you'll see as
we talked about our capital budget
decreased by 116
million. And then walking up the slide,
you'll see that our operating budget
shows an increase of 124 million. But if
we dissect that 124 million, you'll see
that the three items we talked about
earlier that show up as increases, but
are really one-time items are shown on
on the slide here. So when we remove
that, the true increase in our ongoing
operating budget is
6.5% that you see at the top of the
slide. And as I mentioned earlier, about
40% of that 6.5% increase is covered by
new and dedicated revenue
sources.
Um the one thing I wanted to mention is
that we believe that our budget is
structurally balanced and even though
the budget has increased especially on
the operating side is fully covered by
the revenues we
project. Next slide. So this is an
important slide to show that it shows
that our budget is structurally balanced
which I mentioned earlier. The revenues
are covering the proposed expenditures
and we're very focused on that every
time we put the budget together. The
first line is our general fund is our
largest operating fund with a proposed
ongoing expense of 410 million next
year. We project revenues of 423 million
to cover those expenses. The water and
sewer fund is on Nick's largest
operating fund and as you can see that
the projected revenues comfortably cover
the operating expenses that we project.
The excess or difference goes to capital
improvements and the same goes with all
the other funds listed on this slide.
These are all our funds. In total, the
excess revenues over expenses are
primarily used for capital projects or
reserved for future use. So overall we
project revenues of 961,000
uh million to cover proposed expenses of
886 million next year. We feel really
comfortable that our proposed budget is
structurally balanced and financially
sound. Next slide. So our general fund
is our largest operating fund. So I
wanted to dive into more details of on
the general fund revenues and expenses
in these next few slides.
This slide gives you a big picture of
our general fund revenues and expenses
over the last 10 years and what we
anticipate over the next five years. As
you can see on the left side of the
graph, the green line representing our
revenues and the red line representing
our operating expenses were pretty
close. There wasn't a huge difference
between revenue expenses. We usually
budget pretty close to our expense our
revenues. Then revenue growth started
increasing
and expenditures were not increasing as
fast as revenues. And in fact, revenues
grew significantly so much so that we
created quite a bit of excess revenues
over expenditures, which is what you see
as the bubble in the middle. And then as
expected, we started seeing revenues
come back down slowly while expenses are
still increasing but not exceeding that
revenue line. And that is where our
budget is for next year. And for the
next five years, we expect that revenue
and expenses will go back to where
there's not a significant difference
between revenues and expenses. And yet
we project that our revenues will
continue to be below the revenue line.
So we are structurally balanced. We have
been structurally balanced for the last
10 years and moving forward to the next
five years. So let me dive into the
reasons why our revenue picture looks
like this. What that big bubble in the
middle is and why our expenditures have
increased the way it's shown on this
slide. So moving on to the next slide. I
know there's a lot of information on
this slide, but there are some important
things for you to know. First of all, we
had a lot of one-time revenues since the
pandemic because of all the reasons
listed on the top left corner in the
green above. We had significant pandemic
buying and spending. We had fe federal
stimulus dollars, a housing market
surge, one-time land sales, interest
earnings that significantly increased,
and also inflation revenues. So as
inflation went up, our revenues also
went up along the
way. Most of these revenues, in fact,
all of them except for the inflation
revenues are one-time and not ongoing
revenues. So we do expect and we have
been expecting revenue, the revenue line
to start trending down. And we were
careful not to increase ongoing expenses
too quickly because of that.
Secondly, we also had some initial
personnel savings when the pandemic
started and as a result, you can see
that the red line was pretty flat
initially because there was a um the the
the expenditures weren't increasing
because of the personnel savings, the
vacancy savings and we were also kind of
falling behind with market wages
actually. So that's where the divide
started and that bubble started to form
which kind of created a fund balance
buildup. Then starting in
2223 because we fell behind the market
with our wages, we had to do some market
catchup. We also started ex uh seeing
the police PSPRS pension unfunded
liability problems and that increased
significantly during that time as well.
We also launched our new ambulance
service and we staffed some new fire
stations. So that's why you see the red
line, the expenditure line growing
starting in 2223 to
2324. We also increased FTEEs as our
population and visitors grew.
Now, we don't expect to see the same
rate of growth in our expenditures
continue because some of these are
one-time and as I'll explain to you
later, we're going to address that PSPRS
unfunded liability problem which will
create some expenditure savings for
us.
Um, I think the important point here
that I want to make is we
created we we have this bubble. We
expect the revenues to start coming down
and we have this expenditure increase to
catch up with the market to address our
pension expense and to address our
ambulance and new services but we do not
expect that revenue line to exceed the
I'm sorry the expenditure line to exceed
the revenue line. So I think that's the
important point you need to understand
here. Even though we anticipate the
revenues coming down and our
expenditures going up, we still expect
the revenue uh the expenditures to be
under the revenues as we have put our
proposed budget together and we expect
that difference to continue the revenues
being above the expenditures. So next
slide. So what did we do with this big
bubble that we had all the excess
revenues that we collected that we
didn't spend?
We used it for one-time items which are
capital projects and addressing that
unfunded liability pension um unfunded
liability. So the blue bars here as you
can see prior to that bubble forming we
uh the general fund transfers about a
little over 10 million for capital
improvements. Then during that uh point
in time where we accumulated a lot of
excess revenues, we were transferring
significantly more to fund capital
projects. And we also started the orange
bars show the uh payment to address the
PSPRS unfunded liability. We also
started doing that in uh fiscal year 22.
And you can see for the proposed budget,
we continue to propose transferring 49
million of our reserves and excess
revenues for capital and we propose
spending 50 million of our reserves to
continue to pay down that PSPRS police
uh unfunded liability. We are extremely
focused on and disciplined about
spending one-time revenues on one-time
expenses. And we project that after
that, as the revenue and expenditure
line goes back to where there's not a
whole lot of difference, we will return
to where we were before where we are
spending a little over um 10 million on
capital each year from the general fund.
Next slide.
This is a really busy slide, but this is
where I explain why are we uh proposing
50 million for uh paying down that
pension liability. So the top portion of
the slide is an excerpt from our latest
actuarial report. If you look at the two
red circles on the slide, the first
circle shows our um contribution percent
of payroll that we have to pay that
we're required to pay into the police
pension for next year. It's 52.55%.
That means for every $100,000 of officer
salaries, we have to pay
52,550 into the
pension. And the second red circle
there, you'll see it's if we pay 50
million into the plan, pay down the
unfunded
liability, we will be able to reduce
that percent of payroll to 40.25%.
So that means for every 100,000 of
officer salaries we'll be able to save
12,300 basic. So the numbers at the
bottom of the slide shows if we paid 50
million we for the tier 1 tier 2
employees we would be able to save over
4 million a year and for the tier three
employees we would be able to save
another 1.7 to2 million a year. Tier one
and tier 2 employees are the officers
that were hired before 2012 for 12 tier
one and between 2012 and July of 2017
for tier 2. And for the tier three
employees, those are the officers hired
after July of
2017. And for each of these tiers,
there's just some differences in the
factors of how they calculate retirement
and benefits. So really that that's just
the different tiers that was uh created
by
PSPRS. But we are really able to save
and reduce our budget with the 50
million proposed additional
payment. Now aside from budget savings
um the 50 million also helps us be in a
better position when we compete for
salaries uh with our peer cities. So
next
slide. We are financially
disadvantaged with these high
contribution rates when compared to our
peer cities. Without making the 50
million um PSPRS payment, next year our
tier one tier 2 contribution rate is
52.55% and our tier 3 contribution rate
is
47%. Compared to all of our peer cities,
that is significantly
higher. And why that matters is next
slide.
We are often competitive with salaries
with our police officers. So for every
thousand dollars of salary increase we
have to give in order to remain
competitive we pay significantly more
for tier one tier two for every$,000 of
salary increase we pay
$526 whereas Chandler only has to pay
$25 for a $1,000 salary
increase. Next slide. For tier three
that's the same. we pay significantly
more to remain competitive with our
current rate. So that is why we're
proposing a 50 million um contribution
to our police pension to pay down those
unfunded
liabilities. Next slide. I didn't spend
a lot of time talking about revenues. I
would like to go back and talk a little
bit about the revenues we project for
the coming year. As we discussed, we
expect revenues to decrease in 2526
because of the loss of residential
rental tax, the implementation of the
state flat tax and also we believe that
we are looking at an uh slight economic
slowdown right now. And that's why we
projected the decline in um revenues.
And again, even though we project a
decline in revenues, our revenue
increases do not exceed the revenues
that we
project. Um, next slide. And we I wanted
to touch on this. We didn't project a
further decline in revenues because of
the strong economy that we have in
Scottsdale. Our population continues to
grow. We have a very diverse economy. We
have strong employment. We have strong
household income. And we have a lot of
new developments like the MAC Innovation
Center, ASM, and some strong
developments that will keep our economy
going. But we are facing quite a bit of
economic uncertainties with inflation,
tariffs, consumer confidence,
macroeconomic policies, and actions that
the state legislature can take that
would impact our
revenues. Next slide. Sales tax is our
largest source of revenues, our local
sales tax. What we're projecting is you
can see on this slide that with the loss
of residential rental tax we are
projecting a slight decrease for fiscal
year
2526 and that would be offset by
sustained consumer spending this year.
And so for next year we will continue to
see that impact um of the lo I'm sorry
the loss of residential rental tax
actually started this year. So that 178
actually includes half a year of that
residential rental loss, but it was
offset by strong consumer spending. Next
fiscal year, we're projecting the second
half of that or a full year of that
residential rental
loss. And then what we project is a slow
and gradual return to normal growth over
the next five years in our sales tax.
Next slide. state. Uh the Scottsdale
maintains one of the lowest sales tax
rates in the valley and we're very proud
of that. It's at
1.7%. We maintain this low sales tax
rate and we're able to pro provide the
services to our citizens and we're very
proud of that. Next
slide. State shared taxes, state shared
sales tax, state shared income tax. Um
that's our second largest source of
revenues in the general fund. We expect
a decrease because there's a state flat
because of the state flat tax. Our
estimate is that we would lose about 8
to 10 million from the uh state flat tax
which kind of started in fiscal year
2425 and roll into 2526 as
well. And then we project the state
share to also gradually increase back to
a normal growth trend. Now with the
revenue losses and the economic
uncertainties, we will have to rely on
our reserves to cushion us against any
other additional uncertainties. Next
slide. So in the proposed
budget, we have increased our rainy day
funds and also proposed some additional
revenue loss reserves. Given our uh very
uncertain economic environment, we are
proposing the increase in these reserves
and rainy day funds in the event of some
future economic fallout. And that's the
last of my slide. I can take any
questions before I hand it over to our
budget director.
No questions. Thank you. I don't see any
questions at this time. Okay. Thank you.
Good evening, mayor, members of the city
council. Um, Scott Selene, budget
director, city of Scottsdale. I'm very
happy to be here this evening to talk
about the operating budget in a little
bit more detail. As I go through the
slides, I'll stop periodically to allow
you to ask any questions that you might
have. Operating budget is just over $885
million.
The proposed budget has 98 new full-time
equivalent
positions. This table shows the breakout
of those 98 new FTE positions by
department. The middle column there
shows the number of positions that are
funded by the general fund. And then the
right column shows the number of
positions that are funded by other
funds. that could include uh
transportation
fund.15% park and preserve
tax, ambulance fund, and any other
special revenue funds. Just a couple
things I would point out on this slide
is that just under half of the proposed
98 new positions are funded by the
general fund. And of the 98 new proposed
positions, 66 of the 98 are for police
and fire.
This slide shows a table of FTE changes
by department um with the number of
FTEEs for fiscal year
2425, the change and then the
FY2526 proposed FTE number. Again, the
change column shows the total of 98 FTE
positions that are as part of the
proposed budget from this year to next
year.
This slide shows the uh number of FTEEs
per 10,000 residents. Um goes back about
15 years or so, 20 years. Uh you'll see
the maximum the highest level it gets is
about 12.7 just before the recession.
And you can see how that number goes
along uh throughout time. If the the
inclusion of the 98 new FTE positions
would bring that total of 11.2 FTE per
10,000 residents. I've also included
some tourism visitor information on
these slides to just reinforce the
importance of taking into account not
only population growth but also tourism
growth um because our FTEES provide
services to
both. The general fund operating budget
is $460 million. About half of it goes
to police and fire. You see the $50
million PSPRS contribution down there in
the lower left and then the other city
departments as listed on the pie
chart. Next, I'm going to take a quick
look at a few department operating
budgets, mainly those that receive um
FTE in the proposed
budget. We'll start first with the fire
department. There are 44 total new FTEEs
as part of the proposed budget. 25 of
those go towards ambulance phase 2.
We'll talk about that on the next slide
in a little bit more detail. Fire
station 601 restaffing. Uh some staff
from fire station 601 were redeployed to
different parts of the city to meet
demand and the proposed budget restores
the staffing at fire station
601. Then we have four park and preserve
positions that are funded by the new
0.15% uh park and preserve tax.
As you all know, uh, Scottsdale Fire is
providing ambulance service to citizens
in a phased approach. Phase one, which
is currently live, is at fire stations
602, 608, and 615. Those stations are
indicated on the map by a blue star with
the number one on them. Phase two, which
is scheduled to go live in December of
2025, those locations have the red stars
with the number two on them. And then
phase three is scheduled to go live in
December of 2026.
Moving on to police department. Um 22
new FTEEs as part of the police
department budget. Nine sworn and 13
civilian. Looking at the sworn side,
there are three school resource
officers. Four park ranger personnel.
Those are funded by the 0.15% tax. A
lieutenant and a digital forensics
detective.
On the civilian side, we'll be adding
dispatch personnel, real-time crime
center personnel, two records personnel,
and a property and evidence
technician. Parks and recreation, a
total FTE increase of nine positions.
Uh, seven of them are funded by the
0.15% park and preserve tax. two FTE
from the general fund which is mostly
part-time hours for the two new sports
complexes and leisure education which is
supported by user fees. We had two new
parks, Ashler Hills and Thompson Peak
Dog Park. And with those new parks come
additional acreage for mowing. My
understanding is it's 29 extra acres for
mowing. This slide here shows a breakout
of the 0.15% park and preserve
tax. the table, each column is for an
allocation of that tax in the upcoming
fiscal year. Uh I call your attention to
the right hand side of the slide, the
total column. We anticipate $25.2
million in revenue next year. The first
allocation of that is for some Westworld
drainage debt that we anticipate next
year about 750,000.
And then after that, the remaining
revenue is allocated according to the
percentages in the revenue allocation
row, which is the exact allocation that
was originally passed as in the council
ordinance. So going back to the total
column, we $25 million in revenue. We
anticipate about 11 million in
expenditures, 4.8 million in reserves
and contingencies per the city's
financial policies, $5 million transfer
to the CIP, and then 3.6 6 million in
what we're calling unappropriated
balance. There's a few things, couple of
things going on there in the
unappropriated balance number. First,
takes a little bit of time to ramp up
hiring. And then second, some of the
proposed uses for this funding are large
enough that we effectively need to save
up over several years to get enough
money to to do the project.
Next, we're going to take a quick look
at the transportation fund. Excuse me,
Scott. I'm sorry, Councilwoman Debas,
sorry, Vice Mayor Dasquez has a
question. Thank you, Scott. I just
wanted to clarify, um, my understanding
was for the fire department that a fire
truck was expected to be early on in the
expenditures. Is that what that 1.7
million is for?
Uh, Mayor Barowski, Vice Mayor Dowskis,
um, I I'm not certain. I would defer
that perhaps that the city treasurer
could shed some light on that.
Um, Mayor Barowski, Vice uh, Mayor
Dasquez, are you referring to the rest
staffing of the 60 uh, 601 firet truck
or or the purchase of a firet truck?
Can you repeat your question? Sure.
Sure. So, it was my understanding from
the fire department that part of their
um allocation from the 490 was a fire
truck, a a a truck. So, yeah. So, I'm
sorry. Um no, let me correct that. Thank
you for clarifying that question. The
allocation of the Prop 490, which is the
0.15 park and preserve tax for fire, is
for fire mitigation and technical
rescue. That Prop 490 money is not used
for the fire truck and is not used for
the restaffing.
Okay. But we do have allocations for
that. Yes, that is coming from the
general fund. Okay. All right. Good.
Thank you.
Thank you. Uh Councilman Quasman,
a couple slides ago you were talking
about new parks. Um, is that with 490
money? Am I Uh, I'm sorry that you were
talking about new parks. Was it Ashford
Hills? It's bond. Okay, that's bonded.
Answer. Colleagues took care of that.
Thank you. Thank you.
Okay, moving on. We're going to take a
look at the transportation fund, which
is one of our largest special revenue
funds. This fund receives uh 0.2% sales
tax money revenue as well as uh highway
user revenue fund money and gas tax
money that's distributed by the
state. Uh this graph shows the revenues
in the green line historically going
back about 15 years. The operating
expenditures are in the blue bars and
the transfers to the CIP are the orange
bars. And if you look at the if you look
historically, you see kind of a similar
story to what um the city treasur was
describing about the general fund. You
see revenues and expenditures tracking
fairly closely and then you see them
start to break a little bit around
fiscal year 18, 19, and then throughout
the pandemic years where the revenues
kind of bumped up but the expenditures
did not exactly follow suit. So what
that resulted in is a buildup of fund
balance over those years. And then you
see in fiscal
2324 and a few years after that that the
the uh transfers to CIP start to exceed
the revenue line. That's where we are
utilizing that fund balance that had
been built up during uh the previous
years. Just want to emphasize before
moving on that the transportation fund
is structurally balanced. The revenues
are sufficient to cover the operating
expenditures and all expenditures above
the revenue line have been allocated to
the CIP for use in future
years. There's been a lot of discussion
about pavement overlay and about the
pavement condition index or the PCI as
it's known. This slide shows the
expenditures that we have made on
pavement overlay for the last several
years.
Initially in the uh initially we were
going to have $14.9 million for this
purpose in the proposed budget. That's
the gray bar kind of in the middle.
After some deliberation, including with
the budget review commission, um our
city manager reallocated some resources
to increase that total to $42.9 million
next year. And then you see the future
years uh at the right hand side of the
slide.
Here's a quick look at our operating
budget for our enterprise funds. Just
under $200 million. About 80% of it is
water and water reclamation fund and
solid waste and aviation make up the
rest. This is a quick look at the water
wastewater enterprise fund. Kind of a
similar um to the transportation fund.
Revenues with the green line, operating
expenditures in blue, and CIP transfers
in orange. And over time you see the
that the revenues are covering both the
operating expenditures and the capital
expenditures and that we've maintained
you know roughly the same amount of
allocation between operating and capital
over the previous
years. Here's a quick look at some of
the factors that are driving increases
in the water and sewer operating budget.
We're seeing increased cost in electric
utilities, cap water purchase costs,
water treatment, chemical costs, and
then we have some additional debt
service. So before I move on to the
capital budget, I'd be happy to pause
and take any questions that you might
have or if not, I'll just keep going.
Don't see any, Scott. Thank you. Our
proposed capital budget for next year is
$952
million. This is a table that shows that
$952 million broken up by by category.
Essentially, I'll start at the bottom on
the total capital budget line. Um, of
that $952 million that's proposed for
next year, $519 million comes from carry
forwards from previous years, while 433
comes from new requests essentially.
And then a couple of the categories,
community facilities, uh, decreases by
about $30 million next year compared to
this year, mostly due to completed
projects. Then water and water
reclamation. We realigned the cash flow
with some of our projects and that
resulted in a few projects being pushed
further out. So the result of that is a
decrease of $128 million. Last thing
I'll call attention to on the total line
is that our proposed budget of 952
million is 11% lower than our current
year, fiscal year 2425 capital
budget. This is the five-year capital
improvement plan totals um total of $2.2
billion. And you see the break up by
breakout by category there. Just under a
billion dollars for water and water
reclamation, 500 million for
transportation.
You can see the the remaining divisions
by category on the pie
chart. What I'm going to do now is very
briefly highlight um several projects in
our capital improvement plan. Uh this is
basically just information that can be
found in the
book. Each uh project will have the same
funding slide off to the side which
shows the amount of money that we have
spent to date as of February of 2025
when we had to finalize the proposed
budget. We have the five-year the amount
of funding for each of the following
five years and then a five-year total
project budget at the
bottom. So this project is for water
treatment facility improvements. It's
going to improve aging components at our
water treatment facilities. The funding
amount is about $82 million over the
next 5 years.
This project will design and construct
deep well recharge and recovery
facilities to ensure that the drinking
water aquifer that we rely on is
sustainable both short-term and
long-term. This project will increase
booster pumping capacity at a cap water
treatment plant. Total 5-year project
budget of $28.7
million. This project will update our
aging sewer system. It'll add new lines,
treatment plant work, and it'll
rehabilitate some sewer manholes. And
you see the 5-year total budget of just
under $70
million. This project is for the design
and construction of plant modifications
at the Scottsdale Water Campus and at
the Gayy Ranch wastewater treatment
facility. We'll move on to a few
transportation projects. We've spoken
already about pavement overlay. Just
want to emphasize that next year we're
investing $43 million um in pavement
overlay and a total 5-year investment of
$110.7 million to uh improve pavement
condition around the
city. This project will repair the
reinforced concrete wall along the canal
between Indian School and Thomas
roads. This project is an ALCP project.
Um it's funded by the 0.1%
transportation sales tax and the
regional ALCP sales tax. It's for the
design and construction to improve
safety capacity and um accessibility on
Puma Road between Los Pedress and Stage
Coach Pass. Total 5-year budget of just
over 33
million. This next project is similar to
the last project I just talked about. Um
again, an ALCP project for Puma Road
between Dynamite Boulevard and Las
Pedras.
uh getting close to the end here. So, as
we've talked about several times, the
budget review commission um provided a
lot of recommendations at the council
working session back on April 22nd. The
items that you're seeing on this slide
here are the items that they recommended
that relate to the 2526 budget and we're
listing them here to communicate that
they will be included in the tenative
budget in two
weeks when we present
that. Um, and then finally, this just
shows the next step in the budget
process. Um, two weeks from today, May
20th, is the tenative budget adoption.
And I believe that takes me to the end.
So, I'd be happy to entertain any
questions. I believe we've got city
staff here that would be able to answer
any more detailed technical questions. I
think we'll go go ahead and take the,
uh, public comments on this agenda item
before we open it up for discussion,
unless anyone had questions. Did anyone
have
Okay, Dr. Sonnie Curtley, followed by
Betty Janick, Freda Hartman, Harold
Back. Good evening again. This time I'm
Sononnie. This time I'm Sonnie Curtley
speaking as a member of the board of
directors of COGS Coalition of Greater
Scottsdale. I sound like Tula Bankhead.
You don't even know who that is, do
you? Coalition of Greater Scottsdale is
referring to the uh wildlife overpass on
Rio Verdie Drive and we strongly support
it. Our members support it. Uh it's a
wonderful concept, been around for over
20 years, and we certainly encourage you
this evening to vote unanimously to have
it in this year's budget. And like I
said the last time I was the microphone,
you don't want me to keep coming back.
Thank you. Thank you, Betty Janick.
Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My
name is Betty Janick and my address is
on record. Um, this is a letter I'm
reading for Howard Meyer who is another
preserve pioneer very similar to Carla.
We are blessed that we have those people
as part of our community. Mayor and
councel, with regard to the wildlife
bridge over Dynamite Boulevard, Riovery
Drive, I understand a recommendation
from the budget committee is to get a
legal opinion on what they perceive to
be a Prop 420 prohibition to building
the bridge and using preserve funds to
do it. is the author of the charter
change Prop 420 put in place. I can tell
you that is absolutely not true. Prop
420 does not prohibit building trails or
other improvements, especially those
improvements that were in the preserve
plan way before Prop 420 was even
conceived, which is exactly what Dr.
Curtley referred to. This overpass was
always in the plan and is always a
trail. So nothing in Prop 420 prohibits
building it or using preserve funds to
do it. If you do obtain a legal opinion
that says anything different, Protect
Our Preserve, an organization I am
president of, will challenge that
opinion because we do not believe
anything of the linguid in the language
of the charter change prohibits building
that bridge. And since we drafted that
change, we can testify on the intent if
necessary. on the overpass trail itself.
I am not opposed to doing the
feasibility study and no legal opinion
is needed to proceed with the study.
There is something in Prop 420 that
prohibits the study. Sorry, there is
nothing in Prop 420 that prohibits the
study as it is part of the expense for
the overpass project. The study may
provide information on the timing of
construction or possible cost savings.
In either case, preserve funds can be
used to build it. On another related
topic, I understand the budget
commission is considering sunsetting the
second preserve tax. On that, voters
approve that tax to raise money to buy
land for the preserve and to fund
improvements to it. And those uses not
only have not gone away, the tax will
not raise near enough money to even
acquire the RA remaining land in the
preserve boundary in excess of 4,000
acres that has already been reszoned for
higher intensity development. So if the
intent is to end the tax anytime before
its expiration date, that change would
require voter approval as it would
negate what voters already approved.
Eliminating that tax would not impact
your budget. just would slightly lower
the city's sales t sales tax which is
already among the lowest in the valley
which I think we've heard many times
thank you for your service to the
community and attention to this subject
Howard and then my own
comment to preserve is our much loved
pristine desert let us ensure it is
cared for in a manner that protects all
life within. Thank you. Thank you. That
was really well timed.
Right by the
bell, Freda
Hartman. Good evening, Mayor Moroski,
Vice Mayor, and Council members. I'm Dr.
Freda Hartman. I live at 12106 East
Weathersfield Drive in Scottsdale. U
18-year resident of Scottsdale.
I also chair the Scottsdale Library
Board and I'm representing the board
today to raise your awareness about a
CIP budget request for
FY2526 that did not make the cut for
your review and decision in the current
CIP review process. Uh it is estimated
at a cost of
$810,000 and it is for a second mainf
floor restroom for Civic Center
Library. Let me give you some background
on this just briefly. The main floor of
Civic Center Library has one restroom
located on the far east side of the
floor and that's all there is on that
one floor.
The total floor space is
103,000 square ft. And so it's quite a
long walk when one is on the west side
where there is no restroom and go to the
east side where there
is. Patients uh rather the the patrons
also must have to walk through various
areas of the library that are fairly
busy. children's areas, teens areas, the
uh cafe, the main lobby, the information
area, all of these are between where
they are and where they want to go. The
lower level restroom is available, but
it is accessible through stairs and and
uh elevators, so it's not quite as easy
necessarily.
These uh particular situations impact
mostly
the patrons who have mobility
challenges and the patrons with
families. And I'm happy to say there are
a lot of patrons with families who bring
their their children's in and they
really have a hard time trying to to to
navigate. Um
our public libraries are really centers
of our community. I think we've talked
about that a number of
times and they're important to
Scottsdale. And so the library board
does support strongly this request for
an additional restroom on the main floor
of the civic center library and that
would be on the west side of the
library and we ask for your future
consideration and support of it as well.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Harold
[Music]
Beck. Good evening, mayor, city
councilors. I'm Harold Back from the
68th Street Sidewalk Association.
A budget is a moral
document. People can look at it. It
represents a pile of numbers. But most
importantly, it represents a statement
of
values. The values of this
council, the values of this community,
and the values of our
city. When we look at the numbers
presented this evening, it's quite
extraordinary. But buried in those
budgets is a budget for a small project
for a small strip of road between
Camelback and Indian School along 68th
Street. It is a treacherous and deadly
part of the city that we enjoy.
It is critically important that that
budget get approved so that the urgent
need of people who use that
neighborhood, who use that street, do
not have to put their life at risk to
access the amenities that our community
has to offer. All citizens, including
disabled citizens in the
community. This city council has the
ability to approve that and to make sure
that it happens. A year from now, it
could be pride, a matter of pride for
this community, a stellar achievement
for this community, and a stellar
achievement for this city council. We
need your support. We need your help,
and we need to ensure that your
steadfast commitment makes it happen in
the coming year. It would be a great
achievement for our city. We need you
all to do the right thing. It is really
important. So, thank you very much for
your support. We hope that this gets
done this year and we're looking forward
to looking at the results of your hard
work. Thank you. Thank you, Harold.
Next, Cynthia Wenstrom, followed by our
last speaker, Stefan or Steven
Kuchio. Good evening, Mayor Barowski,
Vice Mayor Dasquez, and council members.
My name is Cynthia Wenstrom and my
address is on record with our city uh
clerk. It's been just a few weeks ago
that I spoke to you about the critical
need for the dynamite reality overpass
and again I'm here in front of you
speaking about that again. Um, it does
connect the south to the north preserve
and it also allows full opportunity for
the wildlife to go into Tontom National
Forest which gives them a healthy
genetic exchange and keeps our wildlife
very healthy within the preserve
ensuring that our preserve stays a
living preserve that lives and thrives
and unlike Phoenix, it does not die. In
the last few weeks though, I've thought
about, oh my gosh, every one of our
council members was going to come up and
they're going to probably run for
reelection. I really hope with all my
being that no council member chooses to
suggest that we sunset that tax early to
save the city city's citizens tax
dollars because we have, as you know,
one of the very lowest in the valley.
Those dollars belong and have been voted
on for the overpass and for the
preserve.
If that scenario were to occur and
someone did choose to run on that kind
of a platform, I also hope that they
would give full disclosure and express
that that would be the beginning of the
demise of the wildlife and of the
preserve without that overpass. The one
thing I do know over the last few years,
I've learned time and again, our voters
south to north are extremely
intelligent. They can't be fooled.
I hope that you will continue to support
the preserve over these next decades.
After all, the voters have voted for
dollars to support that very preserve.
Our residents know one thing. They love
McDow Snorm Preserve and especially love
the wildlife of McDow Snorn
Preserve. Council members, our citizens
again love that preserve. It's situated
on beautiful Sonorin desert land. Please
do the right thing. keep the tax for
what it is meant to be and what the
voters approved it to be and what it was
legally adopted to be. Keep the overpass
for the wildlife and keep our preserve
living and healthy. Thank you so much.
Thank
you, Stefan Kuchio.
Stephen, thank you.
Is it uh possible to get that put up
there
like so? No, that's not the right
way. Try one more
time. How's that look? Good.
Okay. Good evening, Mayor
Bowski, Vice Mayor Dubos, Dubosquez,
council persons. My name is Steve
Kuchio. I I live at 8819 North 85th
Court. I am the chair of the Mcdell
Sonor and Preserve
Commission. Last Thursday night, the
preserve commission unanimously approved
a recommendation to the city council.
So, I wanted to make sure that you're
aware of it for your upcoming budget
discussions. Our recommendations are
consistent with those of the budget
review commi uh commission's earlier
recommendation for a feasibility study
to be performed for the Rio Verdie
Wildlife
Crossing. Our recommendation
uh excuse me, our recommendation
provides a little bit more detail as to
what we would like to accomplish.
The details were emailed to you
yesterday morning, but I'd like to go
over the main points here. One, analyze
the project's wildlife and safety
benefits. Two, perform a concept design
to evaluate various aspects of the
project such as size,
location, use of the area's natural
topography, grading, landscaping, and
control fencing.
Three, consider the benefits of timing
construction with future Rio Verie Drive
road
improvements as well as the escalation
costs associated with scheduling the
project in future years. And four,
completion of the study in time for
review, evaluation, and discussion
during the next budget cycle.
So now there are two commissions
recommending basically the same thing
and the preserve commission will
appreciate your consideration for these
recommendations. Thank you.
Thank you very much. That concludes
public comment for the evening and uh
Councilwoman Whitehead has some
questions. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Um I
want to call out a couple of our BRC
members that are here. Mark Stevens,
thank you for being here and Carla. So
um and I really want to thank um our
charter officers and Sonia Kolat
specifically and your staff. Um you take
a very uh large complicated budget and
you make it really easy to understand
and for those people who are you know
maybe watching from the public. We
actually have had meetings where we dug
we did deep dives on this and so um yeah
so we are very prepared for this
preliminary meeting here to discuss the
budget. Couple things I just wanted to
point out. I know that this council um
has prioritized um the road maintenance.
So I'm fine with that. But I just I'm
not going to ask the questions here and
blabber. I will send I do have some
general questions and so I'll send uh
I'll send my questions to staff and then
staff will respond to everybody on
council. So I and
um I would have I guess um city manager
Kaitton the question on that bathroom
you know
$810,000 bathroom how can you give me
some background on you know maybe how
did that get bumped down? Is there still
room? It it does seem necess who how
long has that been in the process and if
it's not a short answer or if you want
to have staff speak to that where you
know I I would be curious about that
bathroom. Yeah, I'll I'll start off and
I may ask assistance from a colleague
here, Madame Mayor and Councilwoman
Whitehead. I think uh my understanding
this project became on our radar screen
around the time civic center was being
uh finished and so there have been the
addition of outdoor restrooms and we
wanted to analyze how those outdoor
restrooms may assist in supporting
facilities on the ground level. Uh that
evaluation is still being completed uh
in the grand scheme of $2.2 billion
dollars. I can appreciate uh the
question of why an
$810,000 project for restrooms may not
have become above the line and it's uh
we have more needs than resources and it
was currently under evaluation. Uh we've
been in communication with the chair. I
have a upcoming meeting to discuss uh
other opportunities uh that projects
that are on their radar screen. So
that's a little bit of a introduction to
an answer that we're still evaluating uh
some needs and certainly with some new
staff member and new eyes on it such as
myself becoming aware of uh the needs.
Thank you. Okay. Thanks so
much, Councilman Graham.
Thank you,
Mayor. I had a few remarks about this
budget and like Council Member
Whitehead, I'll probably be sending in
more questions and then we can share
those.
with our colleagues as time goes by. Um,
I want to make a prediction. Sonia, city
treasurer revenue will be higher than
you predict than you
forecast. That's my
prediction. You think I'll be right? Of
course
not. Um, my budgeting philosophy is
typically hold operating expenses and
increase capital
expenditures if we have the money. Uh
Scottdale is blessed in a lot of ways
because we are our collections are going
up. We are a successful city and be able
city
and coffers keep filling up. We have
more money to spend. And so do you want
us to just sit on the cash and you know
throw in the back room and do nothing or
do you actually want us to spend the
money and uh build things and and do
things with them and fund our public
safety?
So we're kind of dealing with that. when
you see some of these
increases. What I see in this budget is
a
reversal from the prior six years of
neglect and poor priorities in some
cases. And that's not an admonition to
all staff and that's not an admonition
to everything in it, but it's mostly
indicated by the pavement the pavement
quality of the streets uh in your
neighborhood.
You've seen
that collapse by 22% as they measure
pavement index average pavement index
it's called PCI pavement commi pavement
condition index collapsing 22% over the
prior six years when people think about
their city government you know we think
about public
safety paying our first responders
um and then after that you kind of it
should be nonpartisan. It should be non
ideological. And that's what I I'm
really excited about this council is
because we're we're moving away from
ideology. And I believe that your city
council should be ideology
free. And so what is ide what's what's
freedom from ideology? A lot of it is
just going back to the basics. Potholes
and parks,
$42 million this year.
going towards pavement
quality. That's a huge increase. And I
think I would like to take a moment to
credit new city manager Greg Kaitton for
that. He found the resources. He's put
that together. He met with the members
of this council. He asked us, "What are
your
priorities?" And we told him and he made
it happen. So I think recognizing A lot
of the effort that city manager Kaitton
has put into this budget is
worthwhile. It should be mentioned
though
that because we have deferred
maintenance over the previous years that
we're not going to get the
mileage, pun intended, literally the
mileage out of these dollars for paving
our roads because as we know when you
defer maintenance, the cost doesn't go
up in a linear fashion. it goes up
um exponential
exponentially. So a lot of this is
backfill.
One of the um backdrops of this budget
is understanding that this council up
here is
new. Um on the job for four months um
digging in city
manager, newly minted city manager.
This budget has been influenced strongly
by this new council majority and I would
consider it one of the best budgets in
many
years. However, I do think as we we just
established reestablished the budget
review commission which as council
member White had mentioned a couple of
the members are in the audience today
which we thank you for your service and
I'm sure that your colleagues are
streaming online so we'll tell them
thank you for their service too. Do you
think they're streaming online right
now? May maybe
um they are going to do a lot over the
next year, I predict with this budget
and when we have another year and we
have a new city manager that's been
there for a year, this budget is better
and the next budget is going to
be even
better. Councilwoman Littlefield agrees.
she
whispers. Um just a few more comments
then I'll I'll wrap up here. But much of
the um oper you know one thing we're
going to be talking about or there may
be attention given to is that we're the
operating budget is
increasing. Most of that increase is
from
votermandated revenue increases such as
Prop
490 or we're changing the accounting
treatment. And what we're actually doing
is we're putting things in operating
that were that were uh before that were
in capital. That's an improvement in
financial reporting and I would consider
that an increase in
transparency. So I would consider this
in that respect an a more transparent
budget.
This budget, I would argue, rescues
that, but maybe I'm being hyperbolic,
but I think this budget
rescues our police pension funding
status. 50% in there. Um, or are we
going to spend Okay, a budget is an
authorization. It is not you're not
actually writing the check. You have
authorization to write the check. Um
whether we spend 25 million, 35 million,
the public
uh the pension uh the police officer
pension fund is going to be in a much
better financial position. And that's
not only good for financial reasons
because we make 7 and a half% on that,
which I would like to argue the savings
that we get from the seven and a half%
we should earmark for more pavement uh
paving, but that would be maybe we can
work on that next year.
Sonia is like, "No, not too many more
changes." All right, we've already This
the paint is drying. Okay, no more
changes. Um, but we when we when we
apply this money towards the pension,
we're going to we're going to achieve or
experience a 7 and a half% return on
that. That's pretty much about as good
of a yield as we're going to get on our
money anywhere as a government. Um, it's
also going to be good for um recruiting.
is for peace of mind for our police
officers knowing that their pension is
in better quality. I mean, when you're
when you want to be a police officer and
you're looking for a job and you're a
high quality police uh uh candidate,
you're going to go to the one that has a
well um a wellunded pensioner or do you
want the rinky dink one that's not even
halfunded? So, I think that'll be good
for our police officers.
One of the one of the secrets out there
that's not very well kept is that
there's been some excesses in our police
overtime. Um, this budget, my my hope
for this budget is that this can re some
of those in and address those. We're
increasing police police officer
headcount. Is that correct, Mr. City
Manager?
Madame Mayor and uh, Council Member
Councilman Graham. Yeah, is correct. So
when we have a higher police count, we
can rein in some of those overtime
excesses uh which cost more not only uh
today as far as the overtime rate, but
also uh going forward um in perpetuity
with pension obligations. Um you also
get diminishing returns on a police
officer after he's been on he or she's
been on the clock for a certain number
of hours. You get a diminished police
officer because they can only go so many
times.
So, so this is going to bring you what's
that? Just like council. Just like
council. Kathy jokes. We're not paid
overtime. No overtime for us. Um, so we
are going to bring you better public
safety officers.
Um, so one of the things I'd like to see
going forward, Sonia,
is if I can get a little bit granular,
these capital budgets, and we talked
about this in some of our budget
meetings, these capital budgets that we
consider closed out and
finished instead of carrying forward
budget authorizations, really do what we
can to close those out. This is
something that Vice Mayor Dowskis has
brought up before closing out those
capital budget authorizations because it
looks like we're going to spend the
money this year. Like for somebody that
doesn't really, you know, isn't really
digging, it looks like it's and I
actually do want to spend that money. I
want to build things. I want to I want
to make improve our our our fixed assets
and our and our investments. And that's
clogging up bandwidth and it's creating
I mean I would argue it's nice to have
the authorization because if you need it
it's better to have it and it's better
to have it then you need it and you got
to go back and get it but it's
um it's to somebody reading that they
don't know and so it I think it is
clogging up bandwidth and like I said I
actually want to spend that money. I
want to add to our portfolio of assets.
Um I want new streets. I want bridges.
All that stuff. So those are some
thoughts. I am very excited about um
this budget on the whole. I think next
year even better.
Um but those are some of my philosophies
and I appreciate the uh sharing my for
listening to my thoughts and I
appreciate the mayor for letting me
comment. Thank you. Thank you Vice Mayor
Dascus. Thank you madam. Thank you madam
mayor. Um I'll echo some of the comments
from my colleagues. Um this has been a a
process that we have gone through
together working through this budget and
and sitting through several meetings. Um
but I also uh would like to thank the
budget review commission. Um I'll give a
shout out to my commissioner uh Brad
Newman who worked closely with Carla and
Mr. Kukio on a solution for this
feasibility study to to take what has
been budgeted as a $35 million bridge
and and he first looked at it and said,
"Oh my goodness, the largest land bridge
in the world and uh and then together
they work through what's a good
solution, how can we find out what's the
right solution for the animal life that
we have, for the preserve that we have
today, and let's work on on on figuring
that out together." Um and uh that is
that is just um residents working
together for the best solution of
Scottsdale. And I think that is just a
beautiful solution that you guys all all
prepared. So I thank you for that and
we're very pl pleased to see that it it
is in the budget and I I will definitely
be supporting it. Um so so thank you for
your collaboration there. Um I'm very
happy to see that we are uh funding our
police that we are um we are providing
uh security that our their pension will
be funded to 80% that that is a good
retention tool um but it's also security
for our police officers as well as then
also um providing our police officers
the staffing count that they need um and
then also supporting our fire with the
additional uh headcount for the
ambulance service which I'm very excited
for them to get up and running and and
looking forward to that success. Um, and
then another item uh for me is the is is
our roads. Um, in my area, um, you know,
there there are a lot of potholes and a
lot of cracked roads and it doesn't say
Scottsdale. It doesn't say Scottsdale
when you drive down cracked roads. That
that doesn't um emanate our brand. And
we want to bring in luxury visitors and
travelers. we want to bring in in those
folks and uh they don't want to drive on
cracked roads. So I think we have to
work through some of those basic
infrastructure items like the police,
like the fire, like the roads and um
that's the the role of the city here. So
very excited about that. Um I do uh want
to call out one item that was in the
budget um that came up in our meetings
this week. I noticed that there was uh
just under $400,000 set aside for
Scottsdale Arts for some anticipated
expenses. Um but those weren't outlined
um enough enough. They weren't terribly
outlined. And so what I would like to
make a motion to um move the
$392,938 that were set aside for
Scottsdale Arts um from the general
enterprise fund operations to the
general fund contingency and defer that
increase until we have a chance to
discuss it further. Second.
Uh the city attorney wants to speak to
that.
Thank you, mayor, and uh Councilwoman
Dubasquez. We're on the agenda tonight
for a presentation and you can direct
staff and so could you clarify your
motion or can we assume that your motion
is to direct staff to do those things?
Yes. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.
So motion withdrawn. Um, so I will make
a motion to direct staff to move
$392,938 that is set aside from the
general enterprise fund operations to
move it to the general fund contingency
and defer that increase until we've had
a chance to discuss it further.
I'll second that.
Do you want to speak to the second?
Because I'd like to ask a couple of
questions about this.
I don't need to speak to the second
except that I'm somewhat I'm I'm
familiar with this and this was an item
that
um did not have the clarity or detail or
granularity that this council uh that
the taxpayers deserved in a budget when
they open and review and so I think this
is a wise motion.
Is there anyone here that can speak to
this since it wasn't included in this
presentation?
And if
I'll start off and then my uh colleague
may be able to assist. Uh so madame
mayor and members of council. Uh this is
an item I believe is part of a broader
uh plan. Uh and we are currently working
with uh the organization uh that
expiration of their contractual
arrangement is nearing its end. And so I
think this allows an opportunity uh for
us to finalize some of the contractual
negotiations. We're anticipating come
coming back to city council in the very
near future for an extension uh and then
that will allow us a little breathing
room if you will uh to have a longer
term contractual relationship revisiting
that. And I think that dubtubales quite
nicely with at the same time having the
discussion about this potential
longerterm master plan and tying those
two together. So I think as I understand
the direction it's really still keeping
those funds available but putting them
in more of a questionable state if you
will while these other items are being
resolved and then we would return to
city council and seek direction in that
regard. What specifically was the
$492,000 to be used for? That's more of
what I was getting at.
Okay, Madame Mayor and members of the
council. So the
393,000 consists of a one-time 100,000
requests for a stratei strategic plan
for Scottsdale Arts and then there's
$23,894 for increase in their management
fees and then there's um
$34,000 for community arts grants.
There's
29,987 for public art administration.
There's
20,327 for learning and innovation and
um a few other thousands for um public
art conservation and specialty
equipment.
So when would this be brought back for
consideration because I think we're out
of time, right? It's in this it it's in
this budget proposed budget, but it was
not specifically a you didn't explain it
very much in this presentation. So, when
would it come back for consideration?
Before the budget's approved, we will be
bringing the tentative budget back to
council for approval on May 20th, and we
can include some additional discussions
about that at that time before the
council adopts the tenative budget. So,
really, the motion is simply moving the
393,000 down to contingency to allow for
further review and discussion. is not
removed from the budget. It's just
moving it from the line item down to
contingency. And so even if you don't
have the discussion before the budget
adoption, if you have a discussion after
budget adoption and decide to move some
or all back into the line item, you can
still do that. Okay. Thank you,
Councilwoman Mckllen. Thank you, Mayor.
Um, first of all, uh, Sonia and Scott,
thank you for all of your work. I just
want to thank the staff and our city
manager, Greg Kaitton. I know that you
guys have taken an inordinate amount of
time, spent it with all of us on council
and had, just so our citizens know,
individual meetings with all of us to
make sure we understand the thought
process behind the budget. And so, I am
grateful for that and the time you've
spent doing that. So, thank you staff.
I'd also like to thank all the
volunteers of the budget commission. You
guys worked hard. I'd be in my office
and I thought they're still going on and
I had left the meeting like an hour
before and then I'd come back down and
see the second half of the meeting. So,
thank you and thank you to my rep uh Dan
Schwikert who um is not in the audience
but home I'm sure watching it online.
Um, that being said, one of the other
things is for the public, there's an
increase of 90, what was it? 98
full-time employees. I want the the
public to understand that even with 98
full-time employees. We are still
understaffed. We are not at the staffing
that our city was at in 2012.
So they are doing with a population that
has grown multi- facilities come
online and we're still working with less
staff. So good for you, city of
Scottsdale. I I that is amazing to me
sitting through all these meetings and
thinking we're doing more with less and
we're still trying to catch up. That
being said, I'm very excited about us
paying down the retirement system on
behalf of public safety because it does
position our city um at that 80% which
when people are looking to come or to
apply uh they're going to look at our
city first and they're going to want to
be public safety here. They're going to
be a fireman in Scottsdale or a
policeman in Scottsdale and that makes
our community safer. So, thank you. Um
good for thought Sonia. Those are my
comments. Councilman Quasman,
you want to call the qu call the
question? Oh, let's you want Solange, do
you want me to call the question on this
one or would you prefer that I you want
to
Madame Mayor, I I I uh I paved the way
for for uh Councilwoman White. No, I
just wonder if what Vice Mayor Damascus
is asking is more clar I don't do we
have to vote on this or can we just like
with the paving just have more clarity
and then vote on it at the next meeting
because either we pull it I I think you
if you don't support you want to maybe
pull the plug on it you want to vote I I
I mean my my thought is I would I don't
want to vote against it because I don't
know it and I don't want to vote for it
because I I want to No more. Yeah. And
so that was the purpose of my motion was
for now, let's move it into contingency.
And then what the city manager was
saying is that we're under contract
negotiations very quickly here. Um it
does seem to be probably June 30th. So
in in the next couple of months, if we
if we just move this into the into the
contingency, we'll still have the money
available. We have time to investigate
why are we spending $100,000 on a
strategic plan for a non our nonprofit.
We can we can answer some of those
questions. The money is still in the
budget. It's just not in the active
we're spending it line, but we can then
it if we decide to spend it, we can then
move it over. I just I don't want to
approve $400,000 for items that I kind
of don't think are our responsibility to
spend. Um and so I'd like to just move
it into the into the contingency line.
Okay. Okay. And I do have Thank you.
Thank you, Vice Mayor Dascus. Another
question. Um before you want to call the
question, one more question here. Um do
we have a back to paving? Do we have a
kind of an itemized list of which roads,
you know, worst to best roads? Is that
something that we have available? And
then specifically what's happening with
Thomas,
Madame Mayor and Councilwoman Whitehead.
So two parts there. The first is we just
did a comprehensive analysis of all of
our roads throughout the community and
have a PCI for everything. What we are
working on now is developing not just a
one-year plan uh but likely a 5 to
10year plan. I do want to point out two
things. One that was illustrated next
year we have some surge funding I'll
call it. But then after that it really
returns to less than that 20 million
which I will tell you uh will not be
enough to increase the the pavement
condition index. So part of developing
the 5 to 10 year plan will have a
discussion with city council to
understand what a 75 looks like what an
80 looks like for example and then
really get your feedback on what we want
to try to achieve. uh for sake of
discussion right here today let's just
say for sake of discussion a 75 and for
audience it's a scale of zero to 100 100
being good zero being poor we have
approximately a 63 average right now so
we have quite a ways to go if we want to
get into that mid70s range so se in
addition to your question about Thomas
what we have with Thomas and is it is a
fail failed roadway. So what I advocated
in many discussions with the budget
review commission is if it's failed
today in 12 months and in 24 months it's
still going to be failed. If we could
reallocate those dollars it was
approximately$19 million. However,
because of cash flow we had 15 million
available. So we have uh effectively
reallocated 15 million from Thomas
reconstruction to pavement uh condition
index improvement throughout the system.
And the argument is again it has failed
today. It will continue to be failed in
12 months or 24 months. We will still
need to return to it. The only increase
in cost would be inflationary pressures.
However, what we can do is use that $15
million for what we have for next year.
now with the reallocation and invest
that in roads that are on the bubble.
Meaning if we invest in a good number of
roadways over the next 12 to 24 months,
we will save them from becoming failed
failure. And that is a significant
savings in the cost because if you treat
it the roadway when it doesn't fail uh
then it is significantly uh cheaper per
uh per roadway per square yard if you
will. So that was the measure in order
to get to the 42 million to uh really we
they call it kind of global work if you
will on many roadways. We will identify
all of those opportunities that is being
done now by a third party and we'll
identify the different treatments much
like a toolbox. Some would take a
lighter treatment if you will. Some
would take even a little bit of a
heavier treatment but not a full
reconstruction. and we would identify
those roadways uh for next year that is
in process and then also bring back that
five to 10-year plan and then understand
the costs uh that it's going to take to
get there. I will tell you that it I
don't have the exact number but is north
of 200 uh million at this point uh just
for the audience uh member edification
it's approximately$ 1.4 4 billion dollar
uh asset that we have and has
deteriorated over the years and at 63 uh
we have a lot of work to go um before we
get back into this more uh stabilized
manner. So I suspect we're all going to
know a whole lot more about paving over
the next few months and few years.
Um I will say you know I and I do want
to mention that we did forfeit a grant a
regional grant on Thomas Road. So, I get
it. I'm willing to be open-minded about
that decision. I need to know a lot
more, but we still have a failed road
that is dangerous, is a liability to the
city, and a danger to the public that
lives along that roadway. So, I'm not
thrilled, but I understand we always
make
um compromises in how we proceed. So,
thank you.
So, we'll go ahead and vote on this
motion, and then I just have a couple of
questions to follow up. All those in
favor of the motion to move this
Scottsdale Arts proposed budget amount
to contingency, please indicate by I.
Don't see councilwoman Mckllen. She is
absent for this vote. So, we'll move on.
A couple of questions I have, Sonia.
there were um pro there were allocations
for increases in staff pay um all across
the city it appeared. Can you provide us
with or at least me and copy whomever
with um what that looks like what the
amounts are projected uh year overyear
at least the next you know fiscal year.
Um, it's my understanding that the city
uh overall staff has received
significant increases in pay and I hear
what the logic is because we had fallen
behind. But if you can also include what
the um increases in uh salaries were
across the board at city at the city
that would be very helpful over the last
you know this fiscal year and prior uh
four years I think going back. Um, I
would really appreciate that because as
you indicate that sales tax revenues,
city sales tax revenues are declining.
State shared uh revenues will be
declining. We've already lost, you know,
a a bump with the with the uh rental
tax. Um, all signs are pointing to maybe
a little instability in the economy. So
projecting or including as placeholders
um as a placeholder staff increases I
think is uh I' I'd rather have a lot
more justification for that and um
information on what that actually means
dollar-wise and
percentage-wise. And then uh on that
note, I've I've been on record as being
concerned about the police pay. I would
ask that who would be qualified? I guess
city manager. I would ask that you I've
seen a couple of studies that are done
across um countywide, you know, with the
cities our size, top eight or 10 cities.
And while it doesn't come from us, I'd
rather see something that we can rely on
and be objective. Uh but if it's true
that we're in the bottom, you know,
we're the eighth um in terms of overall
compensation and behind cities like
Apache Junction, I I think we should fix
that problem sooner rather than later.
But I'd rather have validation and
verification that that's actually the
case and not just talking points. So, I
would ask if you can prepare that for us
before the next uh meeting to adopt the
uh budget. That would be great. And then
on the Scottsdale Arts, because
certainly for me, I've reviewed the
budget and this the details of this just
popped up um on at this meeting. So,
some of us had more information than
others and not anyone's fault, but um if
you could prepare an overview of that
and any concerns right away so that we
can we can be ahead of that for the next
meeting, that would be great.
And also lastly, Sonia, I um I want to
just understand dollarwise, I I know
you've you've included the um $50
million payment uh on the um the funding
for payback, if you will, funding for
police retirement funds. Um I would like
to know what the actual savings is. Did
you have that in one of the slides? You
did. Okay, then that was already in
there. then that's sufficient. I'll look
back at the slides and I'm really glad
your 11% uh re reduction um from last
year's budget. I think that was the
number. So, congratulations on that. And
I love the fact that our streets will be
paved. And if anyone's listening, can
you also make the pot the man covers not
two inches below the new paving? Can
someone do that for us? Yes, ma'am.
Please, because that hurts tires.
Anyway, and that's all I have to say.
Uh, I think that's you wanted direction
and I think everyone's given sufficient
direction. Anybody else? Councilman
Clausman. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Uh,
members of the council, just just um
just a couple things. I want to get be
really clear about the unfunded
liability because it was brought up by
the budget review commission and there
is you deserve a city council that's a
watchdog uh for the long run
and paying down unfunded liabilities is
the hallmark of good municipal
government and that that is the
definition of sustainability. Um it you
hear horror stories of cities on the
east coast with unfunded liabilities
getting out of control. This what we are
doing in this budget is the opposite of
that. And you're seeing it on a
bipartisan a nonpartisan a superartisan
level that everybody wants to make sure
that our police is that their that their
livelihood has been secured. If there's
any one part of this budget that I think
is fundamentally important is that we
are concerned and making sure that that
the taxpayers are not left on the hook
10 years from now, 5 years from now, 10
years from now, 15 years from now with
an unpaid, unfunded liability and
saddled with with this disaster. We are
fixing it now to save for the future.
That's the definition of fiscal
stewardship.
On another note, um I did review the
budget with uh with the city manager and
the city treasurer and and I'm of an
opinion that the council needs some
support, some additional support and uh
we I I really believe that we should be
allocating existing FTEES uh to the
council as management associate support.
Um it allows the increase um in council
support without without increasing the
number of FTEEs. And I think that that's
a that's a a reasonable and and and fair
thing to do. Um so with that, I'd like
to make a motion uh to direct
staff uh to reclassify the management
analyst PCN 3279 to a management
associate and to reclassify the
executive assistant PCN uh 0179 to a
management associate and to relocate
both these positions from the mayor and
council cost center to the city clerk
cost center.
Second.
So before we take a vote, did are you
just removing two employees from the
mayor's office? Is that what you're
attempting to do?
We are restoring we are restoring a
level balance on the council to ensure
that this council doesn't have to battle
to share a single uh a single uh
associate support.
So of course I'll oppose that. I mean
these members in the mayor's uh office
have been present for many years. um
understanding that you and a couple of
other members want to continue to
undermine uh the mayor uh me who was
elected by
72,000 voters in Scottsdale. Um I'm very
opposed to this. I think this is a very
inappropriate motion to make and really
shows true colors as to what's going on
here. So, uh, with that, I know you've
asked for direction, um, in this council
agenda item. This is an improper motion.
Entirely improper.
Sure. Uh, Councilwoman Whitehead, and
it's completely out of order. Okay. So,
I will say that Perry Mason, we want
gotchas, but not city government. So, I
this sort of comes out of the blue for
me, too. Look, I I Maril's amazing. Ben,
did you hear that? Merely is amazing.
Um, but I I'd rather just push this out
for this. We're at the point in the
budget where we're just tweaking things
and I am going to oppose this. I'm open
to having discussions, but I don't this
feels like uh not very well thought out.
Did I say point shoot aim before?
So anyway, I would prefer to have this
discussion after this budget cycle. I
get it. I respect it. I would love more
staff, but I'm going to oppose it. Thank
you, Councilwoman Mckllen.
Thank you, Mayor. Um, I'd like a
clarification. There's no action that
can take place tonight on this,
correct? Other than a direction.
Correct. uh Mayor Barowski and
Councilwoman McCallen. This is simply
direction to staff to do that. Uh the
council will have an opportunity to look
at the tenative budget coming back um
not too terribly long from now uh to
make a final decision on the tenative
budget and then there's another action
past that. Um so you can take a motion
to direct staff. The council could
certainly uh deny the motion to direct
staff on this item. I don't know if
Sonia has anything to add um about this.
Um can I ask one more clarification
question? Certainly. Is the current
staffing the same staffing that it has
been say the last two decades?
Well, this has caught me by surprise as
well. I I'm not sure I can answer that
question. We have had um a chief of
staff and um an assistant I don't know
the title up up in the mayor's office
for some time. That's certainly not part
of my budget. So I haven't studied the
cost center that it comes out of. That's
something maybe uh maybe Sonia could
answer better than I or maybe the city
clerk could answer.
And I'll just chime in. Instead of being
punitive and really uh interesting with
this motion, I would if you're looking
for more staff, maybe ask for more staff
in your office instead of take such
aggressive undermining
uh approach to my office. maybe chat
with me about what my staff does and
whether my staff is needed in my office
and whether we can cooperate and
collaborate to also utilize the staff in
the mayor's office.
Councilman Graham U. Thank you, Mayor.
Um I guess can we can we call the
question? Can we vote on the on the
motion on the floor? Thank you.
I want to ask again, is this a proper
motion, Jerry? It doesn't appear to
be. Mayor, it's a motion to direct staff
to make these adjustments to the budget
to bring it back for the tenative
budget. I I'm just not in a position to
say it's an improper motion because we
are on the agenda for directing
staff. With that, we'll vote.
Moving right along. We do not have any
uh citizen petitions for this evening.
And we do have one mayor and council
item which is at the request of Vice
Mayor Dasosquez uh asking for the city
council to reconsider or to consider
whether to initiate a formal review of
the development review board's April 17,
2025 decision which approved design
plans for a new 191 unit town home
community
uh on Legacy Boulevard. The council
council can take one of two actions
related to a possible review of a
development review board decision.
Initiate review of the development
review board decision which would take
place at a regularly scheduled council
meeting at least 30 days after the
council moved to review this matter or
to take no action. Vice Mayor Dascus, uh
would you like to add anything? Sure.
Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um I've had the
pleasure of chairing the DRB committee
for the last couple of months and at our
April 17th meeting there was a uh
project which is the BB living at
Cavisson that came up and um it is uh at
Cavisson so it's on the north side of
the 101. Um this is a project that is
town homes and it was presented to
council as um two styles mixed in
together. So some of the buildings would
be uh Spanish style, some of the
buildings would be traditional style. Um
the colors were not compatible with the
area. Um and uh and so it it was a
project that seemed to me that could be
done at anywhere in America. And in
fact, the applicant provided a
presentation that showed these projects
and similar looking projects done in
Austin, Texas and and throughout the
country. And so, um, I voted no because
North Scottsdale is, uh, Scottsdale is a
special place to begin with. We have our
own special look and feel. And in our
design guidelines, we do say that uh we
have these minimum requirements that
that we need to fit within. But also all
projects need to fit within the area
that they're going into. And I feel very
strongly that um this project does not
it just doesn't look like it belongs in
North Scottsdale. It looks like it could
be along the side of the freeway in Park
City, Utah or or in Portland, Oregon.
And so um I I uh brought this appeal uh
forward and asked for it to be placed on
the agenda and um one a wonderful thing
has happened which is that the applicant
has reached out and said that they are
willing to um uh update their design to
make it look more like a North
Scottsdale project, a little bit more
like their neighbors in Greyhawk so that
it would be a project that would be
better for all of Scottsdale um and
would look like Scottsdale. And so, um,
I'm asking council to initiate a review
and bring this back for agendaizing for
a future council meeting, um, so that we
can look at raising our design
standards, asking for things to look
like Scottsdale rather than, uh, any
town USA. So, um, I will, uh, make a
motion to initiate a formal city council
review of the April 17, 2025 development
review board decision regarding the BB
living at Cavisson. The review would
take place at a regularly scheduled
council meeting at least 30 days after
the council moves to review the matter.
Second, Councilwoman Whitehead, sorry.
So, thank you, Vice Mayor Dascus. I just
want to explain why I'm going to vote
against this. Certainly I over six and a
half years I've chaired many DRB
hearings and I agree now that I
understand I don't think you spoke at
the hearing but I understand her
concerns and they're valid concerns but
we have a state government that is
always wanting to take away our right to
even have a development review board and
I certainly don't want to have uh to to
provide to weaken that um here at the
council. So what I have always done in
DRB and to the probably probably many of
the people were upset that I did it, we
would continue these cases and I would I
would spend weeks working with the
applicant, working with other DRB
members and getting it corrected at the
DRB level, but um it is a valid reason.
I oppose doing it. I'd rather see it go
back to the DRB and to keep that DRB um
our right to have a DRB in place. But I
do want to mention that this is uh we
often hear about the apartments in the
pipeline. Well, this is a shovel ready
site. Permits have been gotten 400
apartments. There's not another other
than taking out the shovels. Nothing
else is needed. And this um land was
sold
and the new project's 150 town homes.
So, it's a down zoning. So, I feel very
fortunate that you can, you know, take
those out of the pipeline and and this
second site in that area that is going
from highdensity apartments to a town
home. So, I'm very pleased about that. I
I just don't support uh bringing DRB
cases um up to the council level when it
I feel should be done at the DRB level.
So that's why I oppose it, but I like
the uh reasoning. Thank you, Councilman
Graham. We have a perfectly legal
process for bringing cases up from DRB.
We've done it many times. I I'm a little
bit perplexed by that comment because
the rules are made to do this. We're
following the rules. We're not making up
rules. We've exercised this rule many
times.
And also the DRB exists at we created
the the c not this council but the
council create creates the DRB. The DRB
is a creation of the council that we
delegate tasks to and that we it's in
our it's we're privy to bringing those
cases back to council. So I I don't
understand the comment we shouldn't do
what we're allowed to do. The other
thing that my colleague just mentioned
and I guess where I'm going with this is
that I enthusiastically support this
motion because the renderings just show
boxy dense stacking or boxy dense cookie
cutter apartments in North Scottsdale.
If we don't do this, if we don't
exercise the the rights that we have,
you're getting boxy cookie cutter
apartments in North Scottsdale
guaranteed.
we have a chance and the developers
already or developers attorneys already
reached out to some members on council
and they've already w demonstrated a
willingness to make modifications. So,
we should be thanking the vice mayor,
vice mayor Dowskis for bringing this up
and for bringing you and Scottsdale a
better product. I think actually we
should be exercising this right more
because in South Scottsdale when we've
thrown up hundreds thousands of these
dense boxy cookie cutter apartments we
could have we had more leverage to get
better quality better architectural
materials better Scottsdale higher tier
of Scottsdale
design the comment that if we do this
then we're we're risking like the state
punitive
retribution. That is literally the
talking points of outofstate apartment
developers. That is exactly the argument
that they make not to do this. So, I'm
just I'm blown away by what we just
heard before us and we should be
thanking Count Vice Mayor Dubowskas and
I enthusiastically support this. Thank
you.
I don't see any other requests to speak.
So with that, we'll take a vote
on taking the DRB decision to
council. All right, that concludes the
regular agenda. I believe I have oh the
citizens petition. So tonight we
received the petition uh citizens
petition to undertake the uh feasibility
study for the wildlife bridge or the
sorry the Rio Verdie
overpass. So we heard much discussion
about that earlier. Uh, does anyone want
to take a motion to take action, direct
staff to return information to us on
this or take no action?
Schedule at a future meeting, I should
say. Uh, Vice Mayor Dascus. Um, the
applicant asked us for number two to
direct the city manager to investigate
the matter and prepare a written
response for council. So, that's what I
would like to recommend is that we
proceed with number two. I'll make a
motion for number two. Second. Second.
All those in favor.
Don't think we're registering.
All right.
Excuse me. That concludes the regular
agenda. And now we have uh Vice Mayor
Dascus here on the board. Okay.
Nothing. Next, we have the work study
session, which provides a less formal
setting for the mayor and council to
discuss specific topics with each other
and city staff and provides staff an
opportunity to receive direction from
the
council. We don't have any uh citizens
that want to speak on this.
Um, presenting tonight is the quart
quarterly financial and capital
improvement plan updates. Uh, Sonia
Andrews will speak. Thank you, mayor.
Thank you, council. Um, I will make this
really quick since we just went through
the budget presentation and it's late.
So, next slide. So, the purpose of this
quarterly review is to provide
highlights for the general fund,
basically revenue collections and budget
to actual variances. Next
slide. Overall, the general fund
revenues are 5% above budget and overall
the general fund expenditures are within
budget with a 2% positive variance. Next
slide. As you can see on the slide,
um sales tax revenues being our largest
revenues are 12% above budget. And one
of the reasons it's 12% above budget is
because we've had some large one-time
audit payments. So, without the large
one-time audit payments, we're at about
9% above budget. Next
slide. This is the rolling uh 12-month
rolling local uh sales tax collections.
And as you can see, it's just bumping
along and pretty flat for the year, but
it's not decreasing. Next
slide. Our general fund total revenues
are coming in at 5% above budget.
primarily the increase in uh the
positive variance in the sales tax is
offset by the negative variance in
property taxes and the reason is because
we um had to pay the quasmire lawsuit
refunds and that decreased our property
taxes for this year and so next slide
um on the US side we are uh within 2%
positive variance on the budget as you
can see the large negative percent
variance is in our capital outlay
contracts payable. Even though the
percent is pretty large, like 15 uh% the
dollar amount is really just 200,000 and
that was because we had some um
equipment that we purchased um that we
didn't expect. So that we spent some um
funds over there. Next slide. And then
overall uh when we look at our
expenditures by department um we're all
in line with the budget. And that ends
my portion of the update and I will turn
it over to Allison.
Thank you.
Hi. Good evening, mayor, members of
council. Um, for the CIP update tonight,
I do have a short
video. Welcome to Investing in Our
Scottsdale quarterly recap, highlighting
projects from Scottsdale's capital
improvement program. 77th Street Access
Improvements. Del Camino 2 is a
residential community that has long been
home to the Yaki families in South
Scottsdale, adjacent to the Indian Bend
Wash. This community faces an ongoing
challenge, limited access, especially
during storm events. With only one
access point from Roosevelt Street to
the north, residents are often cut off
from their homes during the rainy season
due to flooding at the Indian Bend Wash.
Through a federal economic development
initiative grant and local funding, a
new $2.8 million city project will
provide much needed secondary access to
the community, helping to ensure safer,
more reliable access for residents. This
will be achieved by building a new
mixeduse pathway which will also
function as a vehicular access route
during flood events. Design work and
community involvement on this project
have just begun and construction is
scheduled to begin in the spring of
2026. Repair lakes and irrigation in
Indian Bend Wash. Most of the amenities
in Scottsdale's Indian Bend Wash park
system were built in the early7s.
Scottsdale voters approved funding in
the 2019 bond election to make
muchneeded upgrades and repairs to the
lakes and irrigation systems. Work began
in the spring of 2023 and the first two
phases of the project are now complete.
Work is taking place now on phase three
which will build a new pump station and
intake line for Elorado Pond so that the
lake water can be used to irrigate
fields. Work will begin on phase 4
during the fall of 2025 and make a
series of improvements to Vista Del
Camino Park. The entire $34.6 million
project will be built in phases and take
several years to complete. Booster Pump
Station
114. Several upgrades to replace aging
infrastructure were recently made at
Booster Pump Station 114 located just
north of Yolinda near the Encala
community. As part of this overnight
project, the team replaced the chlorine
quill used to add chlorine to the water
and a critical 36-in butterfly valve,
which helps to maintain proper water
pressure throughout the water delivery
system. The equipment was located more
than 30 ft underground, requiring
careful planning and precision to ensure
everything was replaced safely and
efficiently. To minimize disruption,
most of the work was done overnight,
avoiding peak water usage hours and
ensuring there were no service
interruptions. These upgrades are part
of a
$173.6 million investment citywide to
upgrade our water distribution system
and ensure that it continues to operate
at full capacity, providing clean,
reliable water to the community. Sha
Boulevard
improvements. Several improvements have
been made to a segment of Shea Boulevard
to make the roadway operate better.
Intelligent transportation systems or IT
fiber vaults and conduit were installed
along Shea Boulevard between Loop 101
and 136th Street. Intersection
improvements were made at Shea Boulevard
and Vinda 110th, 114th, and 136th
Streets. Right turn lanes were added at
110th and 114th Street. Signal
operations were improved at Shea
Boulevard and 110th Street with the
addition of east west green arrow left
turn phases. Site distance was improved
at the intersections of 110th Street
Vinda and 136th Street. Sidewalk
upgrades were made on the south side of
Shea Boulevard between 112th and 114th
Streets and the north side of Sha
Boulevard between 136th Street to the
city boundary. This recently completed
$19 million project was built in phases
over two years and will make this busy
travel corridor operate more
efficiently. Police training
facility. First responders in Scottsdale
now have new facilities to train at
thanks to a bond project that modernized
and expanded the police training
building. The new facility includes a
new 1500 ft modular tactical shoot
house, a new indoor 25 yd 14 bay
shooting range, a new defensive tactics
mat room, a new video training simulator
with a 280° screen, a new fitness room
and equipment. The building was expanded
to add two new 30 seat classrooms that
can be combined with the 60 seat
capacity. Upgrades also included new
locker rooms, a new break room, and new
flooring and paint throughout the
building. The $20.4 million renovation
has modernized the building that did not
meet current needs and national training
standards. The new facility has already
hosted training exercises where existing
members of Scottsdale's police
department, and the first class of
recruit cadets will begin their careers
at the facility later this
month. And that concludes the latest
highlights of capital projects in our
community. Thanks for watching.
There's also a budget slide if you can
pull that up
please. Thank you. And that concludes
the presentation. I can answer any
questions. Thank you. I don't see any
requests to
speak. That is that
it. I move to adjourn this meeting.
I everyone say I I