FY 2025-26 Proposed Budget Briefing to Council

Come on.
Good morning. Good.
[Music]
Because I didn't hear anybody else.
[Applause]
Well, good morning everybody. We're glad
to be here for another one of our budget
sessions and uh thank you staff. Thank
you council for being here. This is a
one of our important annual traditions
to address next year's budget. And to
the city manager, directors and staff,
we appreciate the time and effort that
goes into preparing this material, this
and everything that is behind this. The
council strategy framework
outlines the uh our vision to move the
city forward and the budget is an
essential part of putting all this
action and our vision into place. So
council, you know, we started working on
the budget in October when we held the
budget kickoff workshop to outline our
broad priorities for this upcoming year.
We then held budget workshops in
February and March to look at the
economic factors and provide direction
to staff on key policy issues. And all
that previous work has been factored in
in the proposed budget and capital
projects that we will be reviewing
today.
Chandler is known for careful and
conservative fiscal planning amongst the
dynamic state and local economic
activity and this continues to enable us
to provide essential services and vital
amenities to the Chandler community all
underneath the flavor and guidelines
that council has put forth. I do want to
thank our city manager and all of our
departments for working diligently to
ensure that we can provide all of those
service in a cost-effective and fiscally
sound ways. So today directors from
across our apartments will provide
briefings and that word briefing has a
keyword brief in the middle of it on
city operations and proposed capital
improvement projects. We'll also hear
from various proposals to tackle needs
throughout the city to address
challenges and discuss impacts to
current
operations. Council, it's my earnest
goal to keep us on target and issue
clear direction to the city manager and
staff. If at time uh we need to give
direction then I will uh pause and make
sure that we are clear that council can
understand what perhaps is the voice of
a council member as opposed to what is
the voice of council and uh we'll
probably be doing that if things come up
at some point during the day. We also
have a lot of presentations to get
through today and I I know we wanna uh
be done sometime this afternoon, not
this evening. So, be thoughtful about
your questions. Uh avoid repeating the
the same questions or comments and if
you agree with a fellow council member,
simply indicate such and that's going to
be noted in the minutes as well. So,
with that, let me turn it over to our
city manager to get the budget briefing
started. City manager. Thank you, Mr.
Mayor, members of council. Appreciate
you being here today for this great
annual tradition, the all day budget
briefing. And uh we are thrilled that
after many months of hard work, we are
here at this important date. So with
that, mayor and council, I am pleased to
present you the fiscal year 2025 2026
proposed budget and the 2026 through
2035 capital improvement program for the
city of Chandler. I want to thank the
staff, particularly the budget division
and the executive leadership team for
the extensive contributions they've made
to preparing this
budget. Mayor and council, before we get
into the proposed budget, I want to
touch again on what makes Chandler
different. as a reminder of how we are
able to weather the unique economic
conditions we have seen over the last
few months. First, our diversified
economy, which has evolved over many
decades. Our strong financial position
and policies, relying on the council's
direction of adhering to the city's
financial policies, has allowed the city
to be a AAA bond rated city by all three
rating agencies, one of only three
cities in Arizona to achieve this
designation. This in turn allows for
lower costs to provide the
infrastructure and facilities needed by
our residents. Our strong reserves, our
dedication to managing ongoing
expenditure growth, our emphasis on
well-maintained infrastructure, our
excellent public safety, and our
wonderful quality of life, which make us
more competitive for high-paying jobs
and the economic investments in our
community we have seen over the last few
years. as
well. Strength in numbers is more than
just the theme of this year's budget. It
embodies the city of Chandler's
commitment to sound financial practices
and the collaborative spirit that drives
progress. From elected officials to city
departments to our engaged residents,
every stakeholder plays a key role in
advancing the strategic framework's
focus areas. This direction has resulted
in excellent fiscal sustainability,
strong economic development, quality
public safety, and well-built
infrastructure. The
FY2526 proposed budget is structurally
balanced over the long and short terms
and was prepared following the
traditions of transparency and
efficiency that have allowed the city to
continue providing exceptional service
levels the residents of Chandler have
come to expect.
The budget was also crafted with an
emphasis on the council focus areas
contained in the strategic framework.
Directly linking the improvements and
funding requests. These focus areas
ensures we are meeting policy goals that
have been set to ensure the needs of the
public are met. Focusing on all of these
areas ensures we are meeting a variety
of needs across all aspects of the city.
The proposed budget is the result of
department directors and their teams
reviewing and prioritizing services
provided and capital projects planned
and connecting them to the council
strategic focus areas using council
guidance from the council budget kickoff
last October budgets workshops one two
and three earlier this year and the
feedback received from residents during
the budget survey and other
means the proposed FY 2526 budget totals
1.6 629 billion. This figure represents
a small decrease from the prior year of
about.1%. And is a fiscally prudent
budget that focuses on core services,
infrastructure, and using one-time
revenues to continue long-term savings.
The total operating budget increase was
4.1% with a decrease on the capital side
of
3.5%. And additionally, when isolating
just the general fund, the increase is
6.6% 6% overall with 5.5% in operating
and 9.9% in
capital. Some of the operating budget
highlights include balancing the needs
of residents and the increasing cost uh
environment that we have seen over the
last few years while keeping the
property and transaction privilege tax
rates low. To that end, as of this year,
Chandler now has the lowest general
sales tax rate in the entire state of
Arizona. And yet, we've been able to
include to add funding to ensure we are
competitive in the market for talent,
including an up to $25 million payment
of one-time dollars to ensure our public
safety personnel retirement system
obligations continue to be considered
paid off, and ensuring ongoing funding
remains available to meet other needs
throughout the city. We've also
maintained strong
reserves. As we've previously discussed,
several key factors are influencing this
year's budget. These include a decline
in certain revenue streams due to the
statemandated elimination of the
residential rental tax that took effect
in January of this year, the tapering
off of economic activity as Intel's more
than $30 billion expansion nears
completion, and the ongoing impacts of
inflation, which continue to drive both
operational and capital costs. Focusing
more specifically on expenditures, the
budget reflects increased personnel
costs as the city invests in its
workforce, continues to fund aging
infrastructure improvements, includes
bond-funded capital projects approved by
the voters, as well as grant-f funded
programs, and adds a larger one-time
payment to PSPs to ensure we maintain
our fully funded
status. During our first budget
workshop, we received direction on the
priorities we should use when looking at
the use of ongoing revenues. These five
areas were carefully considered as we
structured this year's budget to meet
expectations and put the city in a
fantastic position to make investments
in capital programs and reduce debt.
Additionally, as discussed in budget
workshop number two, we engaged again in
a modified zerobased budgeting exercise
to ensure a thorough evaluation of
current budget lines for three
additional departments. This analysis
ensures we are using existing resources
to meet changing needs before adding
budget capacity to a department. That
exercise will continue in the next
budget year as well, eventually making
our way through all city departments on
a rotating cycle.
We will hear today from the directors
and their leadership teams about the
ongoing additions to the budget that
will help meet service level
expectations and move the city forward
in several key areas, especially in our
core technology needs such as enterprise
resource planning, software, and cyber
security. You will hear of budget
enhancements across the focus areas, but
as you can see, a big focus was on
technology, community safety, and
quality of life for our residents. The
long-term operating forecast manages
these costs with revenue growth that
aligns with actual economic conditions
and keeps the city structurally
balanced. In addition, the ongoing
adjustments recommended allow for
continued alignment of workforce needs
with long-term service goals. We've been
able to convert many of our successful
one-time funded positions into permanent
roles over the past few years, and this
year we are able to add those to those
successes. Of the 18 positions
recommended for ongoing funding, 12 of
them were previously supported with
one-time funding, including grants, and
have proven critical in delivering
high-quality services to residents.
Converting these positions will ensure
we see no reductions in service as
community needs remain high. In addition
to these conversions, we are adding six
new positions, three of which will
support public safety, strengthening
both the police and fire departments.
One position each will be added in
development services and the law
department funded either from revenues
or a reallocation of existing budgeted
savings. Finally, a senior water water
quality technician in the water
enterprise fund of the public works and
utility department will enhance the
delivery of safe, reliable water to our
community. These new positions are a
major decrease from last year's 48
approved new positions and represent
only about a 1% increase in the size of
the city workforce.
Additionally, priorities were set in the
October kickoff meeting for the use of
our one-time funding as well. And those
four guidelines were used to determine
the best uses of our one-time dollars in
this year's
budget. From a one-time funding
perspective, we were able to invest in
technology projects, existing parks and
athletic fields, public facilities, and
public safety needs ranging from
equipment to technology to health and
wellness programs. This budget also
maintains strong reserves, including the
15% general fund contingency reserve and
the budget stabilization reserve of 10
million. In keeping with our commitment
to transparency, maintaining sound
financial policies, finding ongoing
efficiencies, and supporting essential
services and infrastructure maintenance,
this budget aligns with the priorities
established by the mayor and council, as
well as the input we've gathered from
residents over the past year. This is a
structurally balanced budget responsibly
allocating ongoing funds to ongoing
needs and one-time funds to one-time
expenditures. It emphasizes core
services, voter approved projects,
infrastructure investment, and it
capitalizes on long-term opportunities
that will position us well for future
economic adjustments. At this time, I
will turn the presentation over to Don
Lang, our deputy city manager and chief
financial officer, and Matt Dunar, our
budget and policy director, to provide
you with additional information related
to the proposed budget. Thank you, Mayor
Council. Mayor,
Council Member
Orlando, I'm looking through the slides
here. Um, when you talk about PSPs, I
have some questions on that. Uh, I could
do that now or you could do it later. I
don't know if you have a specific slide
on PSPRS. I think so. Yeah. You rather
do now? Perfect. Yeah. So, you know,
we've we've uh been the envy quite
frankly of the valley in the last few
years about paying PR
PSPs and now we see a $25 million
one-time additional cost. Can you kind
of give us a little more explanation of
where that's coming from? Sure. um
through the mayor, council member
Orlando, uh it is we have been saying
that we are paid off. Um and that
certainly is through the analysis that
we've done, we get a modeler from the
public safety retirement that loads all
the actuarial assumptions and the year
going into the 2425 budget. That modeler
said how much to pay to pay off. The
problem is it is a projection and that
projection uh is of in delay. It's a one
year behind because it's all based on
the actuarial report that comes out uh
later in the year that looks back and so
the activity from that prior year
resulted in uh some investment loss. It
also resulted in some change of
assumptions that actually costed cities
more. So with those changes, those
additional changes, um it did require
some additional one-time money to
maintain that payoff. So, uh we are
including it in there. We're not sure
that we're going to need the full 25
million. That is an estimate. Um but
because we haven't even received the
modeler from PSPs as of this year to
recalculate it. Um but we are putting
that in as a whole. And then when that
actuarial report comes out in November
that tells us the results of the prior
year just through June 30th 2025, we
will know how much we need to pay to
ensure that we're we continue to re u
maintain a payoff in the PSPs. So thank
you for clarifying that because again
it's just a placeholder. It is and we
have not seen the actuary tables yet.
Could be lower hopefully not higher but
let's just assume it'll be a little bit
lower. Correct. Correct. Thank you.
Thank you mayor. Yes, appreciate it. And
Don, just a a follow up on that. So, I I
I think this council has been extremely
prudent and and I've been very proud of
the way everyone has has wanted to both
ensure that our our police liabilities
paid off, but also if just if we did not
pay this, this would then include higher
interest and everything else, right? So,
there is we are paid off, but this is
just the annual payment which is
abnormally high from a normal scenario,
right? Yes, mayor. I'm glad I'm glad you
brought that up because the importance
of what mayor and council have done
through the years to ensure the payoff
of what we keep referring to as the
unfunded liability. That is the part
that is not funded into the future for
both our police and fire personnel. Um
Chandler has made a concerted effort to
pay that down. And by doing so, we pay
through payroll, our bi-weekly or
bimonthly payrolls, we have to pay an
annual contribution into the public
safety retirement fund on behalf of all
of our sworn personnel. And that ongoing
rate, that percentage that we pay of
their wages is very high. If you have a
very high unfunded liability, they tack
on kind of like a credit card that has
accumulated a lot of additional
interest. It's kind of like that in a
way. they tack on this big payment on
top of what your normal contribution to
retirement is. So, by doing so over the
years, mayor and council have have um
really brought down using onetime
dollars, brought down our
ongoing payment into the PSPs um
retirement system and uh has saved well
over $9 million ongoing. And that has
really helped us farewell as we've been
uh through the a reduction of
residential uh transaction privilege tax
that was mandated by the state. That was
really how we were able to with the loss
of over 11 million in revenue, how we
were able to really keep our budget in
balance by bringing down those ongoing
costs. So kudos to mayor and council on
that.
Okay. All right. Seeing no additional,
please proceed. All right. Well, it
looks like it's my turn. And I have to
tell you, it's hard to temper the
excitement when we get to this
day. Every year, I've been here 18
years, and every year, I don't know why
we go into this day, and it's kind of
like the Super Bowl of of our budget
season. So, there you go. Um, I am
excited. Our theme this year is strength
and numbers. And I love that theme
because it starts with our residents.
and the strength and numbers of our
residents that love our community and
give back to our community is huge and
that's part of what makes our city so
successful along with the mayor and
council who truly cares about our
community along with our directors who
really care our team Chandler and
members of our departments but I would
like at this point just to give kudos to
our budget division Matt Enrique Sylvia
Helen Savannah Lucy and Cat that are all
sitting at this front table and along
with a lot of budgeteers that are in our
departments that help pull this entire
proposed budget together over months of
work. So, thank you. Thank you for all
your work on this.
Yes,
exactly. All right, so moving along. Um
the city manager has given a wonderful
overview of the proposed budget. Now,
we're just going to go just a little
deeper, but this is a macro level of our
budget. I like this slide because this
tells if if you just want to know at a
very high level where the money comes
from to fund every bit of our operations
and capital in the city of Chandler,
this is the slide to look at. So between
2024 25 the current year we're in
adopted budget compared to what's being
proposed for
2526. Um the budget is just slightly
down. We're still at about 1.63 billion.
But when you break that down a little
bit and and just to again to say what I
mean by macro level, we have 64 funds
that we manage in the city of Chandler
and those are both operating and capital
funds and this representation is all
those funds rolled up to the top and it
it helps us to really understand what's
happening with our revenues. So again,
operating and capital, we have I'm not
going to go through every single color
on here, but we have fund balance,
grants, state shared revenues, local
taxes, utility fees or charges that come
into the enterprise funds, property tax,
other charges, and system development
fees. But I'll only point out a couple
that are changing significantly. One is
fund balance. you'll see in blue um the
current year it's a very sizable number
872 million but then when you move into
the proposed that has been reduced to
562 those are idle funds that are in our
fund balance of all those 64 funds that
are being used and appropriated in the
budget when you see where the money goes
and you'll notice too in 2526 there's a
gray section that is not in the prior
year that gray section represents bonds
Those bonds are an important part of our
capital program that fund almost 73% of
our capital program. It's both our
general obligation bonds as well as
excise tax revenue obligations that fund
our water and wastewater program. So,
excuse me. In we sell bonds every other
year. So, we didn't sell last time um it
was back in November 2023. So that blue
that very large blue section in 2425
includes bonds that are still in the
fund balance that are supporting our
capital projects in the proposed budget.
That fund balance has been drawn down
and we're adding a new bond sale. So you
kind of put put that together. The other
section I'd like to point out is um
let's see most of them are pretty even
when you go through and and really some
of the changes are more in the uh in the
general fund which we'll jump into later
so I don't want to be repetitive but one
part that I think we could point out is
utility charges those are the enterprise
funds those are all self-supporting
water wastewater solid waste and
reclaimed um those enterprise fund
charges, those utility charges fully
support the operations and capital of
those funds. And you'll notice there is
an increase in those about $12 million.
Um and that is a direct result of uh fee
increases that we have built in that
will be discussed later in this
presentation.
The next slide explains now where the
money goes. And again reminding that
this is all 64 funds operating and
capital perspective. So we're looking at
it all combined. Um and I'll point out
again just a couple of these categories
that maybe have changed a little bit
more. The blue section is our department
operating. That includes both again um
well this is just the operating portion.
So you'll notice that has gone up about
36 million and we've talked about that
$25 million PSPRS payment, but Josh also
highlighted many of the decision
packages. Um the majority being on or
one-time packages, but there was some
ongoing. All of that combined together
is what's causing the increase in the
blue section when you go and and I
should mention here that this many of
the decision packages or the majority
are to maintain our service levels. Um
and it's really coming off a a period of
high inflation and the departments have
been very successful in reviewing what
they're currently doing and making sure
that they're right sizing their budget
through these budget requests. and
you'll hear about that a lot today. The
next couple sections is the maroon and
gray. Those are combined. I like to look
at those combined because it's both
capital carry forward and new capital.
Um altogether that has gone up or gone
down, I'm sorry, about 30.8 million. And
uh really that's just kind of fluid with
our capital plan in what comes on in
that 10th year or I'm sorry this is just
the the uh first year not the 10-year
plan. So in the first year what moves
over into capital and what shifts up
into the year of the proposed budget. Um
I should mention too that for all funds
it is important
that the state of Arizona requires that
we appropriate for all the whatifs. So
we do have a high amount of of reserves
and contingencies that are reflected
here in green.
Um we do it is and why capital carry
forward is as significant as it is
because any capital project in process
that appropriation has to be
reappropriated whatever we believe has
not been completed in that in the
current year we're in we have to carry
that forward and reappropriate it. So
the capital can be significant just with
the nature of capital projects and the
time it takes to complete them.
All right, moving just carving out
general fund. I'll mention a couple
things here. If you look at our largest
gen our largest fund which is general
fund, this presentation rolls up not
only the operating fund for general fund
but the general funded capital fund as
well as the debt service fund. So we've
got um again a cross-section of all the
revenues that fund our general
operations operating and capital. Uh
just a little more to say here on local
taxes and license fees since I didn't
mention that in the overview in in order
to not be repetitive. But in this case,
you're seeing our uh local taxes and
license fees that are noted in blue go
up about 5.5 million. And the reason
those are going up is we've had some
wonderful development and um a lot of
credit goes to economic development and
their team. But even our large
industrial users have now come online
and they are uh have increased the
utility transaction privilege tax and
that that can now be recognized because
it is online. It's being used and it has
now been included in our projection. But
because we have an increase there, we
also have other categories that are
still seeing slight growth. And then of
course, we also have a reduction in
regards to our residential rentals. So
you put all of those ups and downs in
there and we still have an increase
overall ongoing and one-time of 5.5
million in that category. So that's good
news. Um then if you shift over, we also
have our general fund balance. We've
talked a lot about that at our various
council work sessions, but that one-time
money coming into general fund during
this period, council's been able to use
towards the public safety retirement
payoff. Um more um capital projects that
perhaps we don't have bond authorization
for like our technology area or uh other
capital projects that we've been able to
divert from bond funding into general
fund. So, it's been a very uh successful
few years in maximizing that use of
one-time dollars. Um, so general fund
balance is still being used and has
increased to the tune of 23.4 million in
use of those funds. And then moving
along into state share, this is the full
transition to the flat tax. This is the
year that we are now fully in in uh
receiving it based on flat tax. So,
we've fared that entire transition very
well. Um, and we do have a slight
reduction in that and and a slight
increase in our state shared sales tax,
but altogether um it's very minimal.
It's a reduction overall in our state
shared of 1.3 million, but we're now at
a complete transition to our flat tax in
our urban revenue
sharing. And I think uh I will mention
too on the uh debt service the debt
service charge um oops that's on the
next slide the property tax sorry go
back to property tax in yellow you can
see that that's pretty flat um and that
is a result of our assessed values
really not changing much this year um
due to a um a house bill that went into
effect um that took two years. We're
always two years behind on our property
tax. But you'll notice that that revenue
collection is very flat. And we'll talk
more about property tax later. So I
won't get into that right now, but I did
want to point that out. On the next
where the money goes, this is how we
spend our general fund dollars. The
majority being our department
operating. And then uh the next of
course being our capital carry forward
and new capital and contingencies and
reserves. Our financial policy does
require a 15%
uh of our operating revenues and general
fund be set aside for those whatifs in
every budget year. If that is not used,
it simply falls back into fund balance
and gets reappropriated in the following
year. And then finally, that debt
service. I did want to point out that as
well. It's typically pretty consistent
from year to year. You'll notice in
green the adopted amount prior year and
the proposed coming up is very similar.
Um and that is a result of every other
year we sell bonds but every year we are
paying off bond paying off debt. If we
sell bonds and add new debt we try to
keep that debt service payment nice and
consistent supported by an unchanged
secondary tax
rate. All
right, the next slide shows total actual
expenditures compared to the adopted or
proposed budget. So this is kind of
interesting but like I mentioned in the
state of Arizona we have to appropriate
for all those whatifs. So we did want to
show just um you know it seemed when you
hear the number 1.63 63 billion. It is a
large number, but it is important to
understand that that appropriation has
to be there for those things that could
happen during the year and the large
capital appropriation because in the
state of Arizona, we're required to
appropriate for the full amount of that
contract in year one. And why then we
have to carry forward if that project
takes a three-year period. You'll see
that appropriation each year, but it
that is a result of this. So, um, you'll
notice we went back to 2021. The adopted
budget, um, compared to what is actually
spent each year is almost 50% of of the
total. 55.9 is the is the average
spending over the last four years. But I
think that's just a a really interesting
part of the budget when you look at the
total appropriation throughout the year.
mayor and council is is u making
decisions on spending that come forward
through our council meetings and being
very deliberate about how our budget is
spent even after it's
adopted. Okay. So, uh with the general
fund being our largest operating fund,
we did we do spend a lot of time
forecasting and projecting into the
future. So, we're going to talk a little
bit about our ongoing and our ongoing
revenue and our fund balance projection.
So, we have to make some assumptions
when we're setting the general fund
budget. And um the revenue assumptions
that we made in 2526 proposed budget
uh is eight 82% of our revenues are
considered ongoing and 18% as one time.
We actually go through all of our
revenue line items in the budget and
review them for whether they're they're
considered ongoing or one time. Will
they be there every year into the
future? And that's so important to us
because if it is locked in as ongoing,
that's the amount of money that we feel
is available for those ongoing
expenditures. And because we are a city,
it is an operating or it is a service uh
really focused city. Those costs, the
majority of them are our personnel or
people. And it's important that we make
we're very careful about not setting
that too high and making decisions that
then lock in people to those revenues.
So it is it is a deliberate decision
that we make each year and you it's a
pretty big spread still and a lot of
that is still the result of what is
happening in our community in regards to
development. Moving on into the
expenditures, the personnel assumptions
in our forecasts, we not only estimate
the first year of employee wage and
benefit adjustments, but we also add in
projections in in the next four years as
well. And then uh of course there we'll
review if there's personnel or position
changes that are needed. And as uh city
manager discussed um there are a total
of 18 positions but in general funds
there there are 17 that are reflected.
Many of those the majority are
converting one-time funded. They've
always existed but one-time funded over
to ongoing and some partial revenue and
reallocation of re of expenditure
budgets. And then uh finally the
one-time additional payment of course is
included in our personnel numbers as
well. And then jumping down to
operations and maintenance. The
department requests included um I
mentioned this already but really
maintain our service levels. that was
the focus as we've con continued to deal
with inflation um and the CIP related O
andM because we will not do a capital
project unless we know we can pay for it
and there are some coming online and
that O andM is also coming online with
our ongoing
expenditures. The next uh slide reflects
our forecast in a line graph and this
shows the five-year forecast. total
revenues are reflected in the blue line
and the ongoing portion of those total
revenues are reflected in the red line.
Um you'll see that gap in the middle are
all the the revenues that come in that
are considered one-time that are used
for one-time operating onetime capital
those types of things. And then we have
our expenditures noted in ongoing
expenditures noted in the orange line at
the bottom. Our goal is to keep that
orange line below the red line. That's
very important. And we are what we're
calling structurally balanced. That is
the terminology used that your ongoing
revenues support your ongoing
expenditures over a five-year forecast.
We're not dipping into one time to pay
for ongoing. So, we are structurally
balanced. Um, I did want to mention also
we we do have built in a $10 million
budget stabilization reserve. This is
not appropriated. This is on paper. This
is part of our financial policy that
states um you you have the dis the
ability to state whether or not you will
set aside a budget stabilization
reserve. This year uh we discussed
through our work sessions that it would
be $10 million. That represents money
that if something happens during the
year, say there's been talk about a
recession, um there's it's it's out
there. 50/50. We don't know whether a
recession could or could not happen.
There's a lot of unknowns at the federal
level that really can change the economy
very quickly. This budget stabilization
reserve will allow us to pull from fund
balance to supplement revenues should
our revenues not come in at the level we
expect. It it it really kind of fills
the gap so that the operations of the
city can continue as they are. And um
that will give mayor and council and
staff time to really look at our budgets
and figure out where thoughtful
reductions need to take place should
something happen in the future or even
if the federal or the state um changes
something midyear that is unexpected in
our revenues. So it's a it's a very
positive I think um financial policy
that has served us well over time and
even in our past recession.
And finally, before I turn it over to
Matt, I did want to mention our one-time
dollars. Our projection, our general
fund balance currently is at uh we're
estimating we will end the year around
331 million. Um this slide shows in blue
our projection that after appropriating
the use of those one-time dollars for
operating in capital and some economic
development contracts once you if you
were to spend every dollar of that
appropriation. This would be our fund
balance at the end of each of those
years. And our financial policy does
require that by the end of this forecast
that we cannot fall below a minimum
reserve equal to four months of our
ongoing revenues. So that calculation
was completed and that number is 101.8
million and we are ending the 5-year
period at 127. So we're we're in a good
position in Chandler to weather the
storm or any challenge that may come
along. So, with that, I'll turn it over
to Matt Dunar.
All right. Good morning, Mayor. Oh, go
ahead, Council Mando. We're gonna have
to hold off on your joke, right, Matt?
That's right. Yeah.
You go back one slide, Don.
Um, so, um, this looks a lot rosier than
it did two years ago. So that's u and I
through other things we're doing
obviously cost cost avoidance as well as
uh revenue stream that we that's coming
into the city. So that that's the good
news there the three the 37 the 379
million the delta between that remind me
again why we have that delta there. uh
through the mayor, council member
Orlando, that is the um analysis we do
every year that determines whether
revenues are ongoing or one-time. So, if
we have like like happening in our city
with our largest industrial development
happening, uh there's been a lot there's
I think 8,000 contractors on site using
our motel, our restaurant and bars and
everything. When that project is done,
that's going to change what we're
collecting on transaction privilege tax.
They're going to all leave. they're
going to leave our hotels and
restaurants and everything and it will
it will affect that. So that portion of
collection we have to estimate and we
put that in the one-time bucket. So a
lot of it is in that contracting but
then we have to look at each category
very carefully. So that's more onetime
dollars. That's heavier onetime dollars
versus ongoing what you're saying. It it
it carves out the portion of the total
revenues that we believe will not be
there in the future. Got it. Thank you.
Thank you for just one one
clarification. So the 344 and the 379,
it's 344 and then just the difference is
the ongoing. So the 379's total revenue
344 is the ongoing portion of the Okay.
So that delta is the is the one time the
one time the one time portion. Got it.
Thank you. Okay. That's you roughly
estimate about 18% annually of one-time
dollars o over our general to make up
our budget.
That's correct, mayor. In the proposed
budget, it's at 18%, but as it moves
through the years, it's going to start
to narrow. So, it'll get closer probably
to 90 uh
93%. Um ongoing and then the difference
one time. Great.
Council member Harris. Um and also we
have to consider our sales tax and where
we are with the sales tax.
Can you kind of let us know how um in
terms of delivery to from the state um
through the collected share share um
share sales tax um distribution are we
currently
at how far behind is the state in terms
of delivering the dollars that we have
uh provided through the mayor council
member Harris uh this we have a very
good partnership with the state and how
they manage that um state shared sales
tax works very fluidly. So we once they
do their collection, they do the
calculation and we get it the following
month. So um that's happening regularly
and right now the state is projecting a
fairly strong uh state shared uh sales
tax. Our projection is below their
estimate. We always um we we look at our
local economy and we budget our local
sales tax, but when we look at the
state, we have to take into consider
consideration a lot of other factors.
So, we typically estimate our state
shared slightly lower than what the uh
state is estimating that we're going to
receive. Uh but it is close but slightly
below. So, we're being very uh careful
about not uh projecting too too uh
aggressively on that. But it is still
strong. So we still so basically we
still have so even within the budget of
being fiscally prudent um there is some
built-in revenue generation that could
happen. But because we're fiscally
prudent and we we are approaching the
budget in a way that if the unknowns
happen there could be revenue coming in
from here and there could be additional
income. But instead of estimating at the
level in which the state says, "Hey,
there's going to be a strong amount of
sales revenue being redistributed back
down to us," we're going to slightly go
underneath that amount so that way we
can stay strong just in case they overp
project and we can be in a column that
we feel is safe. That is correct. All
right. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. Well, it's great to be with
you, mayor and council. Uh today, as Don
mentioned, for us it is kind of like the
Super Bowl and and for me it's kind of
bittersweet because I have to tell you I
have a problem. I'm I'm addicted to
money. Um and and the biggest problem
with being addicted to money
withdrawals. So to today all the
department directors are going to be
talking to you about some of the uh
requests that they have and to me those
are some of those withdrawals. But you
know we we'll make it through we'll make
it through the day. Today uh I'm going
to talk a little bit about some of the
enterprise funds and the analysis that
we have uh that we've done and we were
requested to have some additional slides
today just for uh primarily the public's
information about kind of the
methodology and the and the rate
discussion that we have on enterprise
funds. So we'll talk through that.
There's no decisions that are needed
today. We'll be having additional uh
conversations with mayor and council
starting in July and August. Uh we'll
have work sessions etc. Um but we'll we
will discuss kind of what the
methodologies are and what the revenue
requirements are looking like uh going
forward. We'll have those discussions
again with mayor and council July
August. Public outreach on this will
start in September. And then we
anticipate an effective date for these
rates in about March of
2026. So as Don mentioned, she showed
you kind of the the graph that shows a
fund balance for the general fund. And
we do the same process for our
enterprise funds as well for water
wastewater reclaimed and solid waste.
And keeping in mind that these funds are
self-supporting. So the water enterprise
fund uh the revenues generated from the
water bills that we uh create fund that
fund only. They don't cross into
wastewater and they don't cross into the
general fund. It's just for the water
needs. Um as you can see the fund
balance has some planned reductions
through capital projects and programs
that we're utilizing fund balance for
over the next couple of years.
the same on on wastewater. Uh reclaimed,
while that's the only one that's
growing, when you look at that total
column, uh we're still under a million
dollars uh in reclaimed. So, you know,
it is a a slight increase, but we're
trying to maintain the operating reserve
that we have in that fund as well. Uh
and we've got some additional uh costs
that are going into that fund. So, that
operating reserve is going up a little
as well. And then solid waste, just a
gentle kind of decline there. When you
look at those rates, the anticipated
rate needs that we have over the next
couple of rate plan. We do adjustments
every other year. As Don mentioned, uh
for the next fiscal year, we're looking
at a 15% on the water side. Uh same 15%
on wastewater, 18% in reclaimed, and a
6% on the solid waste side. Uh those are
the initial proposed uh rate adjustments
when we look at the revenue requirement
to make sure that fund stays stable in
the outy years. We do a 10-year
projection on these. uh we do a
five-year projection on general fund,
but utilities because of all of the
capital needs that they have, the heavy
and sometimes large uh capital projects,
we make sure that in the even longer
years, uh we're making sure that that
rate is sufficient to meet the year 8,
year 9, year 10 in the long run and
ensure you know sustainability. Um we do
have operating reserves in each of those
funds, 20% for water, waste, water
reclaimed and a smaller reserve in solid
waste as the majority of that is all
contractual. So we can have a smaller
reserve there. Uh and then the costs
associated with what's making these
changes to the rates. We've talked about
with mayor and council in a uh prior
work sessions uh work session three on
the budget. But just a reminder for the
public of the important aspect of our
infrastructure that's aging in Chandler.
So I think this slide really shows it
well when you look at the actual chart
of when the infrastructure went into the
ground for water wastewater utilities in
the 70s and 80s. the 80s really started
to pop uh significant amounts in the 90s
and 2000s. And when you look at the life
of those assets that are in the ground,
uh we do have some that are coming to
end of useful life and need replacement
to make sure that we have consistent uh
clean water and ability to remove waste
water and treat it. Uh on the water
side, some of the operating cost
increases and aging infrastructure cost
increases that we're uh focusing on and
that are driving that rate change that's
needed. Uh we have about 187 miles uh
that are considered highest high or
moderate risk water manes that will need
to be replaced. So we're planning a
30-year replacement of those. Uh in our
CIP, we also include a significant
project for a 48 inch transmission line
which will reduce we have kind of a
single point of failure feeding West
Chandler and a majority of our uh
residents and businesses in that area.
And that single point of failure is a
concern for John Kudson. Uh keeps him up
at night. So uh that project while large
in nature uh will really help um include
or increase that redundancy that we have
for this critical infrastructure that we
we have. John sleep and John can sleep.
He can't retire yet but he'll be able to
sleep. So that'll be good. Um also from
the operating perspective we have water
purchase costs which are escalating. So
we do have to purchase that water that
we treat and then deliver to our
residents and businesses and those costs
are increasing. And then treatment costs
for chemicals, power, uh, and our
personnel costs are all escalating as
well. So, those are some of the drivers
on the water side. For wastewater, a
similar story. Uh, we have 10 miles of
high-risisk lines and 7,000 manholes
that are considered highest, high, or
moderate risk that will need rehabbed
over the next 30 years. Those are
included in our CIP plans. In fact, uh
Helen Parker, who runs kind of our CIP
operations there, uh she looks out 20
years for that capital plan and make
sure that the rate is sufficient to meet
the needs over the next 20 years for
from a fiscal sustainability
perspective. Um we also have a very
significant project there, a new 66 in
under that goes under the loop 202
allows for the existing pipe to be
rehabbed. Uh and then we have some aging
plant work that needs to be done. We
also have on the operating side
treatment chemicals, power and personnel
costs that are all
escalating. In looking at the needs from
a an enterprise perspective, we have a
what's what we call a revenue
requirement that 15% water, 15%
wastewater. Um that we need to see the
revenues grow by that amount to make
sure that we're fiscally sustainable.
Um, but that revenue requirement doesn't
necessarily get distributed to all of
our classifications of customers
equally. We do what's called a cost of
service analysis. The last time we did a
cost of service analysis was ba was back
in fiscal year 201920. Uh, and it was
based on that data that we're currently
um running on that cost of service
analysis. And a lot has changed over
that those last five years. But that
cost of service looks at the revenue
requirements and looks at each of those
classifications whether it's residential
uh multif family non-residential
industrial or landscape and looks at the
actual cost impact they have on the the
system and then attributes that revenue
requirement to them in a manner in which
makes the most sense. So it shifts
really that cost of burden to those
different classifications based on the
burden they have on our
system for our cost of service. uh we
complete those every five to seven years
and really the industry standard is to
do a cost of service analysis to make
sure that uh we are fair and equitable
in our approach to charging our
different customer classifications and
it does more accurately reflect what the
actual costs are for providing services
to each of those classifications of
customers. So when we incorporate that
cost of service analysis into the rate
revenue requirement that we have really
we have three options that we'll be
talking about with you as we go into
these discussions. The first is to look
at that cost of service analysis we did
back in fiscal year 1920 and stick with
it stay the course. Uh when we initially
adopted that mayor and council direction
was we want to go to full cost of
service. Uh and so we have been doing
that. We've this planned for three rate
adjustments to get us into alignment
with cost of service. We've done two of
those. This will be the last one. Uh
however, this approach would not really
take into consideration some of the
inflationary impacts and other changes
that we've seen over the last couple of
years. So uh to keep it consistent with
cost of service, we may get ourselves
out of alignment again if we stick with
the 1920 data uh going forward. So we
have an alternative to that. What if we
did an implemented blended cost of
service and across the board? And really
what that does is it looks at the
revenue that we anticipated we would
need in 1920 for this next fiscal year
2526. We had planned rate adjustments
and we say let's say we needed $3
million. We will take our $3 million
requirement and we're going to allocate
it cost of service as prescribed in the
study. And then any balance remaining,
if there's another $2 million that needs
to be allocated, we'll allocate equally
across all of the classifications. So,
it's taking into account, yes, we knew
we would need some revenue requirements.
Let's keep that cost of service element
consistent, but with all the
inflationary impacts and other things,
we want to just allocate that to all of
the users. That's a blended rate. And
then we also have the third option which
is just across the board taking into
account that because of the significant
changes maybe now is the time to say
let's do a 15% for each of the
classifications generate the revenue
requirement and when we do our next cost
of service study we'll be able to
incorporate all of those impacts we've
seen over the last couple of years and
the significant increases in our capital
plan and make sure that we're in
alignment with our cost of service. So
those will be the three options we're
discussing more fully as we go
throughout the year.
Uh just as a reminder, Tempe each year
they they provide some in interesting
analysis on the costs of services that
cities provide to their residents. And
this is just looking at the water,
wastewater, and solid waste services for
their last study that they did in July
of 2024. We're looking forward to July
2025 when we'll have a new analysis, but
this shows kind of where Chandler is in
comparison for these three main uh
components of a resident's bill. Uh so
from a residential perspective, Chandler
is the lowest cost for the providing
those services and arguably, you know,
very good quality services that we
provide for a very low
cost. If we were to take that Chandler
rate and apply it across uh what this
change might look like for the different
classifications of customers, if you
look at a a sample residential bill uh
for the city of Chandler, there's a lot
of detail on this slide, so I'll try to
just hit some highlights. Each one will
be in a similar format, but you'll see
Chandler at our current rate kind of
further on the left hand side. Then we
have that option of a full cost of
service. The first percentage is what
that would go up for water. The next
percentage, so zero would be wastewater.
And then 6% represents the solid waste.
So it's water, waste water, solid waste
in that order. If we were to do that
blended approach, uh what those rates
would be. So a residential customer for
water would go up 9.8%. wastewater would
go up 5.8% and still the same 6% on
solid waste. And then if we did just
across the board 15% 15% and 6% and what
the differential would be for each of
those bills anywhere ranging from a $3
increase to about a $9 increase in total
for uh a Chandler resident in their
utility bill. That's the what's propo in
the proposed budget at that 15%. Uh we
also have an alternate rate. We've
looked at and been working with our f
our partners in public works at if we
were to slow some of that spending on
some of those capital needs to kind of
address that rate issue. Uh what could
we slow down and what would that do to
the rate? So we do have an alternate
rate where that uh 15% goes down to 14%
for water. The 15% on wastewater goes
down to a 13.5% revenue requirement on
wastewater. Uh no change to solid waste.
So that takes into account that
adjustment to bring those rates down.
Now, because this is rounded to the
nearest dollar, it looks like it's the
exact same no matter which one you do.
There is anywhere from a 5 cent to an 82
cent difference between these rates, but
because of the rounding, it just doesn't
really show up there, but there is a bit
a bit of a difference on a monthly. And
Matt, I I know except you've got Gilbert
because they've already posted, which
has been a a large increase,
but except I I've heard Scottsdale is
not tweaking this much this time. But
pretty much every other city is also
going to be uh if you if you showed us
this two months from now, the delta
between Chandler and whatever we do with
our projected rates is still going to be
extremely under every other because
they've not also included their rates.
Right. That's correct, Mayor. So, we
where we have known increases, we've
incorporated those into those um cities.
Uh but there are still other changes
that we know are coming in those in many
of these cities that will alter that. So
uh we'll still be well under uh the
average charge for these valley cities.
Council Rando. Thanks Mayor. Yeah. Um
you touched on my first question about
looking at other ways of modeling this.
I certainly appreciate that and I know
we're even looking at a further rate
potentially for solar and other things
that might drive this rate down. So, uh
this is more discussion on this I guess
that we have to understand. So, I don't
hope that doesn't go out say 15%
increase because we are working on
different ideas of how to do this. But
my second question is more importantly
is um are we looking at doing a cost of
service next year? Uh to the mayor
council member not next year in the
following year. So this next year is our
last cost of service alignment and then
we'll start that process again in the in
the year following. How long a cost
service survey take? They usually take
anywhere from 8 to 12 months. Uh the
last one took much longer because of
right in the middle of COVID and so that
put a slowdown on, you know, when we
could meet and how often we could meet
and all of that. So we anticipate about
an 8 to 12 month process for the next
one. Okay.
And maybe we could talk more about uh
another cost of service survey moving
that up a little bit because of the
inflationary times we're at, but then
we're looking at potentially recession
times. I don't know if that's a good
sweet spot to be doing something like
that or wait, but we're we're always
going to have to deal with an economy.
So whether we Well, we could talk more
about that in July and August, I would
think. Thanks. Thanks, Mayor.
All right. This next slide takes that
same information and looks from a a
multifamily uh customer's perspective
and what that change would be. Um
there's kind of one that stands out. We
triple checked using the calculator on
that uh town's website to verify that
information and that is their updated
rate as of April 1st. Um but you can see
that Chandler still is on the uh low end
of the scale for a multifamily unit. Uh
while this one does go up more
significantly, um this is a breakdown of
a you know average 500,000 gallons, 6 in
meter and 150 unit apartment complex,
let's say. Uh but Chandler still
maintaining its uh low cost of providing
services
there. If you look at at
non-residentidential and average
business in the city of Chandler, uh
this is where it you know changes a
little bit because we have a more
significant if we do full cost of
service uh on non-residential
uh the wastewater side will see an
almost 42 and a half% increase. So more
substantial increase on the cost of
service uh full cost of service in this
classification
uh and you know going down from blended
and then across the board. So across the
board is more uh beneficial in this
category just because of the higher cost
we are trying to attribute to this
category through cost of service.
Mayor
with the multif family that's really a
business and that typically would get
passed along to the residents. So you
answered that question that that's kind
of a typical 150 um unit. So, a quick
calculation on the lowest is like that's
about $9 a unit is. So, is it is that
what you're finding across the board
that it's fairly similar to what a
typical single family home increase
would be too? Correct. Through the
mayor, council member, that's correct.
Um, it it keeps it in line, but
recognizing that multifamily has some
additional adjustments that they or
impacts we're trying to correct with
cost of service. So, it's slightly
higher than on the residential side.
What kind of impacts? Uh the last cost
of service determined that some of their
impacts for the need of infrastructure
were different than a typical
residential customer. Um specifically on
the landscape side of their uh what they
do the um not landscape meters but the
portable meters that provide landscape
services to them. Um and I'd have to
review the cost of service study to pick
out some of the other criteria but you
know they evaluated the total impact of
this group and said they need to be
slightly paying higher. Okay. Thank you.
All right. So, when we go back to that
tempe cost of service and we look at
overall cost of services, so not only do
they look at water, wastewater, solid
waste, um costs for an average resident,
but they take into account the property
tax that a resident would pay and the
sales tax that a resident would pay.
Now, this hasn't been updated since uh
we we know some cities that are kind of
lower on the scale have increased their
transaction privilege tax rate. So that
will change uh their position or status
in this chart. Uh Chandler has not.
We're maintaining the lowest tax as uh
city manager mentioned of 1 and a.5% and
still as of 2024 Chandler a very low
cost to our residents to provide high
quality services uh as they uh pay for
the the costs of associated with those
services to the city. Matt, what I like
about this is that you know we
acknowledge that cost of service is
increasing. It's just it's just
expensive to provide clean potable water
and the services. But I I really like
that slide in the sense it still shows
that Chandler is uniquely poised to say
what we bring to our residents is the
lowest cost of service. And while
everything else is going up, it it's a
bit of a comparison game. And while
we're we're aware and cognizant of of
people's pain points, to me, this speaks
really loudly is we we hear you and but
we're still able to give you the lowest
cost of service regardless of uh of uh
raising costs. So, I I really like this
slide. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely,
Mayor. And and to piggy back off that, I
think, you know, one thing it does show
is that even though costs are increasing
and we want to make sure that those
enterprise funds stay solvent because
it's important for future residents that
we have quality infrastructure and
quality utilities in 10 years from now.
We want to make sure that today's paying
their share of that going forward. Um
but we are able to do it in a way that's
very uh user you know friendly from a
cost perspective. Uh there are costs
associated and but you know I was
talking with my sister just the other
day. She lives in Texas and she was
complaining about her water bill in
Texas. She lives on the green side of
Texas where there's lots of water and
her bill is $130 a month and she's like
oh it just went up. It's $130. I was
like you move out to Chandler because
ours is only you know $75. So save some
money, move out to Chandler. She's
almost convinced but she's not quite
there.
Um so one of the other components that
they look at when they do that analysis
is the um property tax rate for the city
of Chandler. Uh in the proposed budget
as it stands right now, we do have the
property tax remaining flat. Uh and the
median effect to home owner of a median
value home in Chandler would be about a
$110 per month uh based on the current
limited property values from the
assessor's office. Uh so in total
$1322 per year about $110 per
month of an increase. Uh with that
though we have uh heard that a property
tax reduction uh may be warranted and so
we looked at if we were to remove from
the primary property tax side any
increase that would come uh we would be
able to reduce the rate 0.00008
0008 and remove any of that net new
income from that and be able to reduce
the property tax. Uh even though it's a
very small amount, it removes that
excess revenue that we're receiving on
the primary side or additional revenue
received on the primary side. And the
net effect of that would be another
small discount or decrease uh to about
a$18 cent per month increase for the
median value homeowner in Chandler uh
based on limited property values. So, I
think from our perspective at this time,
mayor, we would look for some uh
direction on this as we move forward to
the proposed budget that we'll bring
forward to you uh in a couple of weeks
at council meeting. Would you like to us
to incorporate that reduction of
property tax into the budget? Uh or
shall we leave the budget as is the
proposed flat rate for our property tax?
Thank you, Council. We looked at this
earlier. I know um we're kind of all
over the map, but but many of you wisely
wanted to really wait till we came to
this point and have a better view of the
entire thing. Council, how would you
like to proceed?
Mayor, council member Poston. I actually
I I like this idea um and this plan and
I I do want to extend um a lot of
gratitude to staff because we said I had
asked for that and I think other council
members did too. Please find ways um to
mitigate some of the effects that I
think are coming with the current
economy um to our residents when we have
a budget of this size. And you guys got
creative and did it. So I appreciate
that and I'm in favor of this. I am too.
other council members.
Council member Orlando says he's good.
Um
others, Vice Mayor, thank you, Josh. I
when we sat down um in our one-on-one
and we went over this and looking at the
effort that has been made in order for
us to arrive at this was really uh what
impressed me. Uh first of all, to be
able to see it, it was not just, you
know, okay, we we'll just leave it flat.
That's what we decided uh we might be
able to do. What I really would like to
say this morning is um the people of
Chandler are
probably I mean you know the point
whatever we are giving them it's not
really going to affect him in such a
great manner than we expected it it will
be but what I think the message we are
sending is that we every penny that we
are looking at in order for us to put
this budget together has been through
pencil after pencil to make sure that
the people of Chandler get everything we
think that they deserve. So, thank you
for that. Thank you, Mayor. I'm for it.
Council member Martinez. Well said, Vice
Mayor. And I agree with that statement.
And Council Member Hawkins, I'm in favor
of it. Um it's easy for us to sit up
here and say, you know, bring it down.
Give us a lower number um for our
constituents, but you guys do the hard
work. So, we're really grateful for you
guys putting in that effort.
And I know uh Council Member Harris is
also part of this. So,
and if he's not, he is because he stated
this, but if he's not, it's a 61 vote
anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah. All right. All right. Let's keep
going. Very good, mayor. We will move
forward with making some adjustments to
the budget to bring forward a a reduced
uh property tax rate for our residents.
Thank you very much for that. And I I
would just say I I think it's
extraordinary step that we've asked for
this and this is will be the 10th year
in a row that we've been able to take
that down and and honestly candidate
really is as I I don't remember I think
perhaps I don't remember which council
member said it but it does take hard
work to to be able to look and to
streamline and and uh we love this
financial working relationship with you
that as we as we also listen to our
residents, but you guys have to make
this work. So, thank you.
Howard. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. All right. And just for
a reminder for residents that may be
watching as well that, you know, for the
every dollar that they pay on property
tax, uh just a reminder that the
majority of that goes to either public
schools and community college districts
or special districts in Maricopa County.
Uh about 11 cents of every dollar comes
to the city of Chandler. But that 11
cents really makes an impact because
with that we're able to do our capital
plan. So a vast majority of the property
tax we collect helps us fund our capital
plan uh and pay the debt service needed
for the bond sales that we have. Um from
a capital and debt perspective as we
look the capital budget for this year
that's appropriated will be 847 or
845.7 million which is an increase of
about 3 and a.5% compared to the prior
year. Uh overall the 10-year capital
plan as we add new programs uh change
costings to those programs uh is
increasing about 5% to 2.62 billion.
That does consider those inflationary
pressures we've continued to see however
at a lower rate um but as is increasing
about 5%. Uh from a debt management
perspective, we do uh ensure that we're
maximizing savings by meeting all of our
financial statements that we maintain
our financial policies that is uh to
maintain that AAA bond rating. Uh keep
that secondary tax rate low because our
our as we go out to bond, we get the
lowest interest rates possible for our
residents, keeping the costs low. Uh we
do anticipate a current year bond sale
as Don mentioned uh and no change now a
change a reduction in the prim the
secondary no change in secondary a
reduction in the primary tax rate in the
10-year plan. Uh we do follow a CIP
guidance that we received from mayor and
council in October at the kickoff uh
about maintaining that property tax rate
flat. Uh making sure that we're
reimagining some of those amenities that
are scheduled for replacement. You'll
see a picture here of of pickle ball
going in uh at Tumbleeed and that's
being funded as well with some bond
funding. Uh finishing planned
construction of streets, parks, fiber,
and our utility systems. Before we're
adding pickle ball courts, we're making
sure that we can fund from an ongoing
perspective the operating costs that are
going to be associated with the pickle
ball courts. Uh ensuring that for all of
those capital projects, any ongoing O
andM can be supported in our financial
planning. uh utilizing master plans to
build these and plan these capital
investments and ensure sufficient bond
authorization exists to compete pro
complete projects desired by our
residents. And uh thank you to mayor and
council for calling for the election in
November that will allow us to continue
our 10-year plan if the residents decide
that uh they want to vote yes on those
bonds. That will allow us to continue
that 10-year capital plan. Uh and then
balance timely completion and
coordination of these projects with
impacts to neighborhoods and businesses.
And as we've gone through the CIP
process, working with the departments,
we've been able to do all of these
items. Uh here's just a history of the
10-year CIP. You kind of see a big
bigger blip in the last two uh 10-year
capital plans as we've adjusted for
inflation and and realigned some of
those costs and estimates that are in
our
planning. The total CIP again that $2.6
billion about 129 million more than the
last CIP. uh and really that increased
focus on aging infrastructure especially
in the utility areas is what's some of
the drivers are for
that in the first five years of our
capital plan that you'll hear about some
of these projects today as department
directors speak uh these are some of the
projects that we anticipate in the first
five years anything with an asterisk
denotes that that project will require
additional bond authorization from the
2025 bond election that's
upcoming there are some really fantastic
fantastic projects and things that we've
been waiting for, our residents have
been waiting for for many years in
Chandler. We're especially excited about
Mosquite Groves uh getting that um out
of the ground
there. Uh from a voter bond
authorization perspective, this chart
shows us what our total remaining
authorization is. Uh so you'll see we
did not sell bonds in fall of 24 because
we sell every other year but we do
anticipate in fall of 2025 selling bonds
about $157 million worth of bonds in
those categories and then what the
remaining authorization in those
categories would be after that until
such a time that the voters um kind of
replenish some of those uh parks and
recreation will be out of bond
authorization after this sale.
uh for that total that we do appropriate
each year. Uh the biggest chunk of it
this year is our capital carry forward
projects we've already started. Uh maybe
they're not off the ground yet. Uh but
they're in process. Uh maybe they're
already in flight. Uh if Ryan Ree is
here, I'm taking some of his lingo. You
know, it's in flight. We're just ready
to land it at some point in the future.
We got to make sure we have that um
revenue available for them to finish out
those projects. about $277 million of
new funding and then a small contingency
in
reserve. With that, we're going to be
start now into our departments uh
sharing with you their operating and CIP
presentations. Uh they will show on the
slide some of their top accomplishments.
They're only going to share a couple of
them though. Uh the size of their
operating budget, the number of
employees that they have, and how the
department's funded, the decision
package recommendations. They're going
to share some highlights of those. If
there's one that they don't talk about
that you have an interest in, just just
ask. Um, but they're just going to be
kind of sharing some of the highlights
and then again some highlights of their
CIP projects planned. Not only those
appropriated in year one, but also
that's kind of coming soon in year two.
They'll share some of those. Uh, the
page numbers will be on the slides for
your book. If you have that beautiful
binder, looks something like this. Uh,
the page numbers are there. Uh, so you
can follow along with descriptions and
additional information. Uh any project
with an asterisk includes funding in
2526 and it'll also show the funding
source whether it's funded by bonds,
impact fees, grants or a combination of
those and uh fund balance. And with that
uh for those that are following along
online or uh guests that want to follow
along, the information is provided on
our website
chandleraz.govbudget and capital
improvement program. That's a long one.
Uh if you just go to
budgetbudget, you'll find it.
So with that, first up will be our
cultural development department, Kim
Moyers. And let me run this down
there. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Um
cultural development has had a busy
Thank you. fiscal year. Uh, in addition
to several downtown capital improvement
projects, the CCA celebrated its 35th
anniversary serving over 166,000 people,
the museum had over 40 exhibits with
over 12,000 people in attendance. And
Vision Gallery hosted 85 free events and
brought several public art projects to
the community. Finally, around 200,000
guests enjoyed special events produced
by the city and third-party
producers. Our budget is just shy of 5.8
million and we have 29 full-time
employees. The uh large majority of our
funding um does come from the general
fund. And you will find our decision
packages on page 41 and 42.
The first two packages are ongoing. The
first being the the uh July 4th
All-American Bash. The ongoing funding
for this event will be used to enhance
the pyro technic show, extending it to
15 minutes. The second one is the
enhanced municipal services district
increase of about
$18,600. Next week, city council will
see the enhanced municipal services
district public hearing and possible
approval of the DCCP annual contract.
This ongoing funding addresses the 5%
increase requested by the
district. The CCA equipment replacement
funding will replace the main stage
screen, hanging hardware, and 15
adjustable height tables. As a reminder,
the CUSD will provide a 50% offset for
this of about
$15,000. The museum has seen a continued
increase in general attendance and
programming since its inception. This
request will once again fund the gap for
museum temporary
staff and uh the temporary special
events senior
specialist. This position was an outcome
of moving the temporary sales and
promotional events tspe from
neighborhood resources to cultural
development to streamline the special
event process. This position also
assists with citywide special events and
provides general administration support
to the special events program manager.
Moving into our capital improvement
projects. Oh yes, Councilman Berlin.
Yeah. Before we go to CIP, can you go
back to your uh first slide in regards
to the decision package? All right.
Right there. Yes. Um can you explain the
Austrians festival 6004? Absolutely. Uh
the city partners with the Osters
Festival each year. Um they have moved
it from one weekend to two weekends. The
first weekend um the funding is in there
for all of the police, fire, and um
services provided. The second week would
be an offset. Um meaning the ostrich
festival will be responsible for paying
for the second week. Okay. That's what
you meant by offset. Yes. But Okay. Got
it. Thank you. And that's just an
estimate. Yes, it is a me estimate. We
always round up high because it's a
budget. So, you know, we uh if there's
any opportunities to lower that, we most
certainly would. But, um we do base this
upon last year and then small increases
for all of the uh staffing personnel.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you,
Mayor. Proceed. Thank
you. All right. going into our capital
improvement projects both for the Center
for the Arts facility improvements and
downtown uh redevelopment. We have
budget uh um budgets for repairs,
replacement, and infrastructure
improvements on a yearly or biyearly
basis for both of those uh
programs. The Dr. AJ Chandler master
plan was completed in fiscal year 1617
and updated in
2023. The funding for uh Dr. AJ Chandler
Park will be used for the completion of
phase 1, including improvements to the
park on both the east side and west side
of Arizona Avenue. The park includes six
programmable areas designed for
community and special events, farmers
markets, passive areas for residents,
and will feature amenities for the whole
family to
enjoy. The Tumbleeed Ranch master plan
was completed in 2023 and funding for
the next two years will include general
site improvements such as grading,
irrigation, and new trees throughout the
site. Additional improvements will
include relocating the red shed theater,
seating, shading, and upgrades to the
two farm
houses. And the last one that I'll
highlight is the downtown parking lots.
The Oregon Street parking garage was
built um to allow for an entrance on the
west side of the garage as development
continued to migrate to the west. City
Council approved the purchase of
property on California Street to allow
for the gradual parking solutions and
eventual entrance on that side. With the
continued growth downtown has
experienced with the completion of the
Boston Street improvements, DC Heights,
and Maple House, we've seen an increase
in vehicles parked throughout the
neighborhood area. This funding will be
used to convert two existing city-owned
vacant lots into a paved parking lot on
California Street that will include
safety lighting and perimeter walls
adjacent to the neighbors on both the
north and south side of the lot. And
with that, I'm happy to answer any
questions.
Yeah, Kim, I'm still going to need a lot
more information on that last um because
I realize the thought on this was to
alleviate the desire or the the
neighbors concerns of people parking in
front of them from like the Maple House
and others, but I I'm not convinced that
people still having to walk two blocks
next to the parking garage is any
different than walking to the parking
garage. So, um this is one I'm going to
be watching because I'm not sold on
that. I'm just putting it out there
early. Mayor, thank you, Mayor. Uh,
Council Member Orlando. Yeah. Uh, I I
like to talk more about this as well,
but the other question I have is how
much is overnight parking? Are we seeing
that or this just the events parking?
Uh, through the mayor, Council Member
Orlando, that's a great question. Um,
this the parking that we've experienced
is directly because of the migration. If
you go to Maple House and sit for any
given time, you see cars being parked
and people are walking blocks to get to
it. Um, so we're not seeing as much
overnight parking to your question as it
is just the use of of continually people
being there for an hour or two at a
time. Like like to take I'd like to get
a report on that because I have been by
there late at night and I have seen cars
late there at night. I don't know
whether they're leaving at 1:00 in the
morning or they're uh with the more uh
apartment complex or
multifamily. Um there are those that may
want to avoid paying for the fees to
park in the structures or any other
structures. So we need to be watching
that. So that's I agree with the mayor.
We need to take a look at that. The
second thing is um I want to go back to
your first slide on
CIP the center of the arts improvement.
Is that uh our portion of the funding
and the school has to pay the other
half. Is that what that is too? Through
the mayor, council member Orlando, that
is correct. So it's 200,000 every other
year and typically the CUSD does pay for
50% of those uh costs. So this
redevelopment 600 thou 600,000 here plus
the other dollars you have in here, this
is on top of the DCCP fee we play pay to
in in that area. The uh that is correct.
So the um the DCCP funding does come out
of our operation budget. This 600,000
that is designated each and every year
are for things such as our contracts for
cleaning, for redoing the sidewalks, for
uh the colonades, for all of the
uplighting that we put in this year.
Those type of things. All right. So
we'll talk more about the DCCP another
time. I know the effort's coming up. Um,
but some of the funds here, I guess my
point was over the years, some of the
funding here has been an offset that a
downtown TCCP would not have to pay
for during this like the cleaning of the
park, replacement of trees in other
areas, the DC authority or uh, you know,
the the program for downtowns, they're
responsible for that. Uh, the mayor,
council member Lando, that that is
absolutely true. in some areas um our
enhanced municipal services is up and
beyond typical city services. So
whatever level of service that this the
um city has decide decided it would be
up and beyond that. Understand?
Understand my my point is this. Our
investment is more than you know the
whatever the $150,000 to what that
dollar amount. That's all I'm suggesting
mayor. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thanks
mayor. Yeah. Kim, I got one more
comment. I'll just Sorry. Uh, real
quick, just back to the, um,
parking situation in downtown. Has there
been outreach to the neighborhoods or to
those residents yet? I've gotten any
feedback from that. Um, um, through the
mayor, council member and Cenus, um, we
have done some some outreach for that.
We would most certainly do additional
outreach. We haven't had the opportunity
to talk to the neighbors on both sides
because um, yet we most certainly do
that. Um but what we have heard is that
there's just a lot more cars um uh on
the streets and this was just our way to
try to relieve that. And the outreach
that you guys did, was that like through
a public meeting or how was that
conducted? Only it was not a public
meeting. It was just in talking with
resident neighbors. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
We'll get more information on that as
well too. And then back to your decision
packages. Um Kim here just for
clarification for uh the July 4th
American Bash that is additional funding
correct to increase the production.
Correct. That's at 20,000 additional to
um allow the pyrochnic show to go from
uh about 5 minutes to 15 minutes. Okay,
great. I just wanted to clarify just
because I had asked for uh to see a
larger production. Uh we used our
residents were used to a large
production that would go on at Tumbleeed
uh Park. uh we can't have it there
anymore. Um so I just wanted to make
sure that this was going to be something
that can unite our residents uh for
Fourth of July as well as maybe try and
reduce the use of personal fireworks at
home and having them come here in a
community sense. So I just wanted that
clarification on there. Thank you.
Thanks. And Kim, I I would like u uh
Kayling on on Council Member Incenus if
we could pursue resident parking only on
some of those that are close as well as
I'd like to understand how full our two
lots are. Uh and again and and maybe we
we have signs there for commercial
parking u do some more wayfair on those
spots where we're seeing. But I I'd like
to know how full are our parking lots
are during the day when these uh when
these fine institutions are open because
I I am concerned about I want to protect
uh people's ability and and reduce
eliminate their frustration of people
parking in front of them. I I have a
neighbor that anytime I park in front of
his house, he puts a code up the next
day in the street and he's very picky
about this. So, sorry if you're
watching, but uh but I I just I I I feel
the the desire and need to protect them,
but I'm just not convinced that
developing that is going to is going to
answer the the problem. So, I'd like to
see other remediations to see how can we
protect our neighbors as as well as
encourage people to park in that lot
rather than right next to the lot.
Mayor, I have a quick question. I know
with the apartments right across from
Maple House, they had put no parking in
front of there and we were going to work
on removing that.
We did. Okay. All right. Thank you.
Mayor and Harris. Yes. Um, I guess my my
concern about just parking in general is
that there is parking that I'm starting
to see private owners are starting to
utilize their personal property to
create um um dollars through parking and
um and some of those parking lots. I
don't know how we what does that look
like from a perspective of um are they
um are they up to whatever code that we
have as it pertains to that. Um, and
then there was some more questions that
I some concerns I had over there by the
San Marcos area about parking as well,
which is near the downtown, which what
I'm starting to see is a is an attempted
um change in how they want how private
business owner want to charge parking
when there's clearly enough parking in a
lot of different places. And my my last
concern about the parking is the the
city renting out for valet services to
be provided and permitting and and
allowing for them to encourage a charge
parking when we're simply just trying to
make sure our seniors should park close,
those that are disabled should park as
close as they can to the shopping areas.
We want to discourage um we want to
encourage people who who can utilize
those um parking those free parking lots
when we're in a busier time. So I just
kind of wanted to know is there any way
possible that we can look more into that
create more signage around that? Um and
then
um and then that way we can kind of
continue to make sure that we encourage
we built all this parking infrastructure
and I just kind of feel like there's
this ideal getting around that because
we're doing it for a quality of life
purpose for our community. did the
mayor, council member Harris, that is
something that we're parking is a huge
part of what we do and what we talk
about. And when we built um Boston
Street, that was the passenger drop off
and the idea that we could park
individuals there who may need some
extra assistance and let them off before
they go to the parking garages. So,
we're always trying to look at creative
ways that we can help um uh reduce some
of those issues. Thank you,
Clander. All right, we're off parking.
We get that one. All right. Tumble weed
Ranch. I know that's been in the works
for a while. Uh appreciate the effort
here. You got about $4 million put into
this program. Is this the last of it or
there's a third phase of this or second
phase of this? I guess the mayor,
Council Member Orlando, there are
additional phases. These are the first
two phases. It's really important for us
that we get those trees in there and let
them start maturing um as we are able to
get uh additional phases in in the
future. Okay. and start thinking about
um marketing for that area. I mean,
we're going to put a lot of investment
in there, so get get your heads
together, figure out how we're going to
market that. Okay. Absolutely. Thanks,
Mayor.
And Kim, before you take off, uh so
mayor and council, I failed to recognize
so our theme for the budget is strength
in numbers this year. And so, as part of
our all day activity, we thought it
would be nice to see kind of the
strength in numbers that support us that
are presenting. And so you will see some
family pictures. So Kim, if you could
scroll back up. I think we went really
fast through hers. Anytime you give me
an opportunity to show my grandchildren,
we'll take this all day long. So So
these are this is Kim's strength in
numbers right here. And then we'll see
some as we go throughout the day. So
thank you, Kim. And these grand this is
their personalities right here.
Thank you, Matt, for that opportunity.
Thank you. Uh next up, police. Chief
Chaplain.
Uh good morning um mayor and council.
We'll go back. Um so my family pictures
up here was just taken last weekend as
you can see.
Josh pointed out he said, "Man, public
safety hasn't been good to your
hairline." and uh I said, "Well, I had
plenty of hair when we had small kids,
but uh I'll let you be the judge." So,
uh I'm here today to talk um about some
of the uh great things with the Chandler
Police Department. Um, one of the things
I want to start off with though, you
know, with this this big of, uh, budget,
uh,
98,540 employees, I'm really blessed to
have Julie Built and Kathy Gura, um, in
this day-to-day, there's plenty of
things to worry about, uh, in this
department, but budget is not one of
them thanks to their professionalism,
attention to detail. Uh so when we talk
about the strength in numbers uh for the
police department, we want to talk about
the strength in decreasing numbers. And
with that, we're talking about the low
crime rate. Uh in in 2023, uh we were at
historic crime lows. Um and in 2024,
those lows came down an additional 25%
in crime across the board. We're a very
blessed community to have great police
community relations. Um, and we enjoy
incredible support from council and city
manager's office when it comes to our
technology, our training, and our tools.
Um, I will just say, um, I can sit here
and say I I think we're doing a really
good job based on the low crime rate.
Um, couple hundred years ago, modern
policing said that police should be
judged by the absence of crime, not the
prevalence of it. And when you see what
we have here in Chandler, we should all
all feel grateful for that. Um, how do
we know we're doing a good job? Well,
every person who interacts with the
Chandler Police Department actually gets
to rate us through a survey, whether
they're calling 911 or they have an
interaction on a traffic stop. Um, and
of the nearly 10,000 replies that we
have gotten on a five-star rating, we
are at
4.74 from direct feedback from our
community residents, which really uh I
think highlights the professionalism and
the interaction that that we see from
our employees every single day. Our
mission is to maintain a safe, vibrant
community through meaningful engagement
and continuous organizational
improvement. And we do that in a number
of areas. The other one I'd like to
highlight is the uh technological
advancements that we have had
specifically when it comes to our
real-time operations center. As council
is intimately aware, you provided
funding for this. We stood this up July
of last year. We continue to see winds
coming at on an everyday and an every
week basis. Um, we have the capacity now
based on those investments in technology
to intervene in violent calls like uh
aggressive driving in South Chandler
where people are brandishing firearms.
We're able to get officers there on
scene while we track people um uh
through our real time center and provide
uh instant justice to people uh
effective. Normally that would have been
a police report followed up with a
license plate number. So, it's stuff
like that that we're able to impact and
intervene on crime earlier rather than
later. In addition to that, the
real-time operations center has found
missing and endangered people. And we
know that's especially concerning here
uh as we get into the summer months if
we have elderly population out
wandering. Uh this uh can matter uh be
life and death within a matter of of of
minutes. So uh those investments uh
really start to uh highlight how we are
separating ourselves uh from other
agencies. I would also say um our
dispatch center receives a number of
calls 24 hours a day. Uh we have some
artificial intelligence there through a
a bot that kind of sifts those requests
for information. We have seen tens of
thousands of calls reduced based on
information. People are calling the
police department because we're open
247. Uh sometimes calls for other city
services, whether it's a water leak,
whether it's a lights out, those often
get filtered through the police
department and we're able to divert
those appropriately now to the correct
city departments without having that
human interaction. Uh which ultimately
makes us incredibly more efficient. Uh
I'd like to just talk about uh the
developing caring for our our our
personnel. Uh Chandler Police Department
is a department where people do not
leave, they seek to come here. Uh that
is evidenced by what we are doing in
terms of their day-to-day care. Uh we
have a number of initiatives from
embedded clinicians to critical incident
stress management, yoga and meditation,
stress relief tools um and struggle well
which is a preventionbased approach for
post-traumatic growth when our people
are subjected to um horrific incidents.
And so we uh our goal here is to have
people that leave our agency after 25 or
30 years to be stronger physically,
emotionally, and mentally than when they
came into that uh agency. So, I thank
the council for their continued support
in our employee wellness programs. Uh,
and we, uh, would not be anywhere in
this organization without the community
connection opportunities that we have
through partnerships, whether we're
helping train kids uh, 100 kids in CPR
through the Justice for Preston Lord and
YMCA uh, collaboration or we're running
a citizens police academy or we are
having um, a public safety fair. Uh we
are blessed to have strong community
partnerships and uh that and allows us
to have conversations that take care of
little things before they become big
things. Um switching over to our
financial highlights, you'll see that
for our proposed bud budget, um our
personnel take up a bulk of the costs,
$84 million of our 98 and the other 13
million coming in operations and
maintenance. Uh we are funded almost
exclusively through the general fund
operations there to carve out for 15,000
in domestic violence and then a $1.5
million uh balance in our uh RICO or
police forfeiture fund for which we can
find some um alternative uh funding uh
through the budgetary process is not
successful here. Our decision packages
um can be found pages 47 to 48 and 51
and 52 of your uh books that you have in
front of you. And then with that um I'm
going to switch it over to the rest of
this brilliant team starting off with
Assistant Chief Melissa Deanda who is
going to talk about some specific
decision packages within her purview and
we'll go down the line from there and
try and be brief. Thank you council very
much.
Thank you, Chief, and good morning,
Mayor and Council. Uh, I will be kicking
off our decision packages for the police
department. And I'm going to start with
the uh, business system support analyst.
So, this position, we're requesting a
position uh, which will help support the
networking and server equipment within
the police department. Uh this person
would help maintain 800 computers, 68
servers, 23 and 23 additional network
switches. Currently we only have one
employee who o who oversees all of the
network and server equipment within our
department and this has created delays
in daily operations and our
efficiencies. The addition of this
position will create a muchneeded
redundancy and improve overall network
reliability.
The next item I'd like to point your
attention to is our police internet
system, which we refer to as PD info.
So, this existing system is used by all
of our department members on a daily
basis for accessing important
information, resources, tools, training,
employee information. Uh we utilize it
for datadriven dashboards and more. Our
existing system is six years beyond end
of life and it's degrading at a rapid
pace. The proposed system is a
cloud-based system which offers all of
our existing services, but it also
includes encrypted data storage and new
features such as employee onboarding and
expanding our uh ticket servicing
options. Uh this is a vital resource
utilized by all of our department
members and it's a critical need for our
department. Moving on to the next slide,
our real-time operations center, the
technology needs. So, as the chief
mentioned before, we went live with our
real-time operations center of July of
2024, and it's a state-of-the-art
center, which serves as the department's
information and technology hub to
support public safety efforts to prevent
and reduce crime. The real-time
operations center supports our patrol
and investigations division and has
proven to be a successful tool in
providing critical intelligence that
leads to more effective and resource
deployments and increased case closures.
Uh over the past nine months, the
real-time operations center has assisted
patrol alone with over 8,000 calls for
service. Some of the investigative
technologies included in this package
are Briefcam, which is a video analytics
software. Expanding our license plate
reader program, which is Flock, from 14
cameras to 40 cameras. uh adding command
central aware. It's a community app
which allows communities uh community
members whether it's personal or
business cameras to submit their digital
evidence if we reach out to them um
involving a crime. And then expanding
our live 911 um expansion which allows
our real-time operators to listen to
incoming 911 calls.
The next item I'd like to speak to is uh
we're requesting to convert two of our
temporary civilian background
investigators to full-time employees. So
for several years, we have been
utilizing temporary civilian
investigators to support our hiring
units. They are responsible for
facilitating the entire hiring process
for all of our sworn and civilian
personnel. So due to uh the access of
sensitive information that's handled by
the police department, we conduct a very
uh extensive and thorough background
process. And currently right now we have
13 vacancies uh on our sworn side and
then 30 vacancies on our civilian
side. Are there any questions so far
before I turn it over to assistant
chief? Yes, assistant chief. Um I a
little more than yes we get along well
is I a first part of your presentation
was all it and do you guys what's and I
know I know you've got a strong
relationship with but just to make sure
that there's no unnecessary redundancy I
I I understand and appreciate the
uniqueness of the demands on it within
the police department just how how do
you interface with uh Sandep and his
department and what's the regular
communic communications and assurances
that
um that we're just not totally separate
uh in what we're doing and making sure
that we're the most efficient with what
we're doing as a city. Mayor, uh great
question. So, we actually have a very uh
intricate relationship with the city's
IT departments. Um they are speaking uh
daily, weekly, and we have standing
monthly uh meetings as well. Um we are
we are collectively intertwined. um you
know many the majority of our projects
cannot be completed without the
assistance of city IT. So this position
that we're requesting is just adding
redundancy within our own department. Uh
when this individual is not here, this
employee is not here, we uh are not able
to if they're on vacation or out sick,
um some of the network capabilities or
improvements need to be made come to a a
stop. Okay. Thank you. All right. Um,
thank you mayor council. Yeah, thanks J
and uh great job on getting that uh a
real time crime scene center operation.
I know you're in a transition period and
you did a great job in leading that.
Appreciate that. So and probably one of
the we have a lot of success stories in
channel but it's probably one of the few
that has immediate impact on return on
investment. So that's outstanding. Keep
up the good work there and I have no
problem with the additional funding. Um
but on the line of the uh the budget
increase for the uh the IT analyst. Yes.
Is that a net new position or is that
something you're transferring over as
you're doing the other two officers uh
through the mayor? Council member
Orlando. This will be a net new
position. Were you using a one-time
funding at the time or this is
previously? Were you using onetime
dollars to fill in for the a person was
off off of work or you just let it
operation go? No. uh through the mayor,
council member Lando that we do have one
uh network individual and we are
requesting a second person to help
support. My my question was when the
other per the original person you have
hired now when that person was off you
had no one to support is what you're
saying. That is correct. Okay. That's
what I'm saying. So this All right. So
it's a net new position and it's a
redundancy is what you're asking for.
All right. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor,
council member Harris. Yes. Just want to
um chief, thank you so much for the um
presentation thus far. I know you got a
little bit more to go. Um just kind of
want to understand um just in terms of
interfacing. I know that we're looking
at two FTEEs, but how does that how does
that interface with Ray Lynn's office um
because we talked about the the 13
additional sworn that needs to be hired
and and we're 30 um below. And I know I
was a big advocate to make sure that we
had u more protection there. But um but
my question about the internal once
those two individuals who we're using
now once those positions are filled how
how what's the interface between Ray
Lynn department which is the HR
department and whether those people fit
and why is it important to have two
additional people in which AR already
kind of HR already kind of do some of
that same work. So, I just kind of want
to know the difference so I can
understand the ongoing justification of
having two specialized individuals after
we fulfill those vacancies. Sure. That
are unfilled. Sure. Through the mayor,
Council Member Harris. Um, currently as
it stands, we have four uh temporary
civilian um background investigators
that are working in our in the police
department and they are being uh paid
for out of one-time funds. The request
is to move those uh two of them to
full-time employees. Um we do work very
closely with human resources uh on a
daily and weekly basis for the
onboarding of new employees. But what
our personnel specifically do is all of
the um recruitment uh hiring uh the
background investigations, polygraph
examinations. uh they also work very
closely with HR on medical scheduling
medical appointments or psychological
appointments for the hiring of all all
of the men and women uh sworn or
civilian within our department. So our
investigators, our background
investigators are specifically
conducting very extensive and thorough
background investigations outside of
what HR does um to onboard the employees
within our department. Um so this so so
so basically once those roles are
fulfilled um the critical aspect of
these two new additionals will also help
fill um the vacancies and and the voids
for all the other descriptions of what
that job would look like after those new
hires are brought on board and fully on
board. Uh, council, I just want to make
sure I understand. You're Are you asking
once we fill those two positions, will
they be helping to support the vacancies
that we have within our departments? No,
I'm saying once those 13 sworn and 30
unsworn is filled. Yes. I'm saying that
they will still have work to still do
after that because, you know, I just
want to make sure we're we're hiring the
two to help support this 43 to come on
board, which will move the process right
along. But after they're hired, after we
get
there, they have other responsibilities
that that will create that ongoing need
for them to still be on board. Because
what I don't want to do, I don't want to
hire and then um hire, you know,
individuals who's doing a great job.
Hire someone to to fulfill this this
need that needs to be taken care of. And
then after that need is taken care of,
we don't see where they fit within the
grand scheme. And I think that would
yeah to me that would say, okay,
council, we need to continue to look at
this from a temporary perspective versus
looking at it from an ongoing
perspective. That's what I'm trying to
make sure I'm not
misunderstanding that aspect of it.
Yeah, Council Member Harris, great
question. So, yes, the the individuals
that we will be converting to full-time
employees will absolutely have work um
to be done. The police department, like
I said, has 13 vacancies for sworn, uh
30 for our civilian, and we also have an
additional 18 overhires for the police
department that we still have yet to
fill. On top of that, uh, as we hire in
the police department, we also have
normal attrition that occurs. Um, we are
coming up into some of our largest drop
years where we know that there's going
to be a significant retirement uh group
over the next five years coming for many
of our swarm personnel. So, we're
constantly in a state of recruitment and
hiring um, which has not slowed down.
It's actually increased and we are
projecting for that to continue to
increase. Okay. So that so that drop
zone as well they'll be helping while
new while retirement is happening and
people are putting their names in for
drop these two new individuals or on
ongoing individuals will help continue
to look to fulfill those vacancies as we
move forward. So it so essentially it's
not just 43 it's essentially
ongoing regularly. Okay. I just I just
wanted to make sure just because I
wanted to make sure that the that the
people understand that this is not just
a we're hiring these people because
there is an ongoing need outside of the
43. There's an ongoing need that we're
regularly um moving forward. Correct.
Okay. Thank you.
Council member Poston,
uh Council Member Harris addressed a
couple of my questions, but I just
wanted to clarify. You had mentioned we
have the 13 sworn officers that is or
that is not getting into the overhire
that uh through the mayor council member
Poston that is not into the overhires
yet. So once we hit the 13 at that point
we would be even and then we would be
now hiring into our 18 overhires. Okay.
But overarchingly we're beginning to
address that gap. It seems like we are
getting closer to being fully staffed
and I know it's an ongoing target
because you have those retirements as
well. But is is that something you're
seeing fulfilled over the next year? It
is. Uh we actually have been seeing a
significant amount of u interest in our
agency. As Chief Chapman mentioned, this
is an agency that people want to come
and work for and we are seeing that
through uh recruit officers, but
specifically lateral personnel. So right
now that is probably some of the largest
um influx of applicants that we are
seeing is lateral officers wanting to
come to work for Chandler PD from other
agencies. and we're very hopeful by the
end of the year that we will be into our
overhires because of that. That is
fantastic news because that's something
I know we've all had an interest in in
tried to support the police department
in terms of being able to recruit. So I
appreciate that you all are actually
making some great inroads in that. So
the criminal background screeners though
just one additional question you had
mentioned there were four I thought four
temporary but we only have the two
positions here. We're not creating a
disparity in our background
investigators, are we? We're keeping two
temps. We are keeping two temporary.
So, yes. So, um through the mayor,
council member Poston, we currently have
four temporary civilian background
investigators. We are requesting to
convert two of them to full-time
employees and then we uh took two
full-time dispatcher positions and we
converted those. We reclassified them uh
into we will be requesting to reclassify
them to the two additional background
investigators. So all four will be four
time four four full-time employees.
Okay, that's good because I I think that
having the two different you know some
temporary and some full-time could
create some difficulties and is somebody
who else going to be addressing dispatch
or would that be a good question for
you? I can absolutely answer that
question. How are we doing in in filling
our dispatch positions? Because I know I
mean that's a very important job. Is
that part of that civilian employee that
we're looking at those 30 positions? It
is through the mayor, council member
Poston. Uh that is a really good
question. So the bulk of the 30
vacancies that we have for our civilian
staff is coming from dispatch. Uh right
now we have 12 vacancies in dispatch. So
that is the highest amount um of all of
our civilian positions. Uh so uh with
their recent uh increase in pay um and
some of the recruitment changes that
we're doing for um that specific area,
we are hoping to see an increase in um
applications for that for our
communications division. They play a
vital role uh in in the uh you know the
efficiencies and operations of our
department and helping to support our
community and our officers and it's
imperative that we get those positions
filled and help support our personnel
that are working in there on a daily
basis. Okay. Okay. Well, I'm very glad
to hear that you were making those
adjustments to recruit those dispatchers
because I think those are sort of unsung
heroes that we don't see all the time
and that's a really important and
stressful job. So, thank you. Thank you,
Mayor. Thank you, Chief. Really
appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for
asking that question. I was obviously
wrong. So, yeah. All right. Thank you.
And proceed. Thank you. And for the next
uh package, I'm going to turn it over to
Assistant Chief Perez.
Mayor, Council, City Manager, very uh
pleased to speak with you today and city
managers as well. Um my uh area of
um of coverage uh includes the uh
Criminal Investigations Bureau. And
within the Criminal Investigations
Bureau, there's a a number of detectives
that primarily focus on secondary
investigations that they receive from
our patrol division. Um and then they
get an in-depth uh inquiry into whether
a crime had occurred. Um and if a crime
does occur, then those officers will
take action. Based on the direction from
Chief Chapman, I've been advised to uh
streamline processes as well as um uh to
increase efficiencies within our area.
And part of that includes leveraging um
some of the softwares and some of the
technologies that you're going to hear
about today. Uh in essence, you're going
to hear about two uh essentially ongoing
um amounts and also a one-time amount
that we're asking for within the area of
um uh new investigative computer
hardwares and softwares. Primarily,
we're looking for softwares that involve
some technologies that allow us to um
address crimes against some of our most
vulnerable elderly as well as uh youth.
And so some of the technologies what
we're looking for is for uh ongoing
investigative cryptocurrency technology
software that allows us to identify
anonymous c criminals, bad actors. It
allows us quickly to identify who those
individuals are and um the ways and the
means as to how they're committing the
crime so that we can uh intervene much
quicker. In addition to that, we're
looking for additional softwares or uh
for forensic analysis for our financial
crimes teams in order to quickly
identify um some of the same bad actors
as well. And then we're also looking for
social media monitoring software that
allows us to use open source
technologies to quickly uh leverage what
is out there existing to help us
identify either threats or children that
could be um being uh abused.
And we're also asking for uh additional
operational budget increases within our
administrative needs and our field
operations as well. And then lastly, uh
the um excuse me, the onetime amount
that we're asking for is a purchase of
vehicles. Part of these efficiencies and
streamlining that we've been trying to
do is we've been hubbing uh existing
teams that we have to help direct their
mission. Some of those teams are are um
our criminal apprehension team, but also
our street crimes unit, which is a
former uh gang unit, which has been
hubbed with our neighborhood response
team in order to focus on street crimes
that are actively in progress. So, the
the reason for the ask for the vehicle
is that we have two vehicles we're
asking for. In the um amalgamation of
those two teams, uh there is a need for
one uh vehicle for the eighth detective.
And then in addition to that, we're
looking to replace a vehicle that was
previously funded by u the United States
Marshall Service.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.
You're wondering why did you get off so
easy where we mayor I followed your
direction to keep it brief. Thank you
very much.
Good morning, mayor, council, city
staff, certainly city manager's office.
My name is Jason Skowski, and the next
decision package I'll be talking about
today is a very exciting opportunity to
add one full-time employee to our
compliment, and that is a civilian crime
prevention officer. Um, as Chief Chapman
indicated, um, part of the foundation of
what we do at the Chandler Police
Department is have a robust ecosphere of
crime prevention opportunities to engage
our community before crime actually
occurs. We understand that this is the
foundation of how we prevent crime but
not only then respond to crime. Um so
this opportunity is um to expand our
compliment. Currently it's staffed by
one full-time sworn officer and one
full-time civilian employee. This adds
one civilian employee to that
compliment. Um the unit operates um all
of our our youth drone academy, senior
scam flyers, prescription drug
containers, crime prevention. Um and
then we also partnered with our friends
at fire for other outreach
opportunities. Um this employee will
also be responsible for managing some of
the social media aspect that comes with
crime prevention. So this is a very this
is a great opportunity. I want to thank
all of you for being supportive of
adding this one FTE to that compliment.
It's been long needed. Um the other
program I want to talk about while I'm
up here is the school educational
engagement program. As many of you most
likely remember in 2324 we requested
onetime funds for this new kind of pilot
program. It's been highly successful. It
was created utilizing some retired law
enforcement officers from the city of
Tempe and the city of Phoenix who wanted
to come over to Chandler and really make
an impact because they both live in this
community. So, a great opportunity for
them to give back. Um, these funds
continue to support their work of up to
19 hours per week um utilizing um
existing equipment. And then we're
adding another $5,000 um just to kind of
expand the equipment supplies that
they're utilizing. that includes flyers
and other, you know, kind of written
materials. Um, and then we first
delivered this program in April of 24
with Samborn Elementary and so far we've
been in 23 of the CUSD schools. Um,
before I move on, I'd be happy to take
any questions on either of these two
programs. Nice. Thank you. Um when you
said that the program this last program
you described has been very successful
uh with the past police uh officers. Can
you describe at least give me two
example or so of how they intervene in a
sense where uh an outcome was the best
for that student or the school itself
through the mayor vice mayor Ellis. I
don't have a specific example that I
could cite where we've been able to
directly correlate an intervention
measure, but the feedback we've gotten
from students and certainly from the
schools and school administration has
been overwhelmingly positive. Students
are discussing these programs in the
school. Um it's facilitated better
engagement with our students um in an
array of topics such as substance abuse,
social media, bullying, things like that
where they're seeing active
bystandership in the school increase.
So, while it may not be a tangible
percentage or a tangible intervention,
um it's things like that that are kind
of those those aspects that we're really
really excited about and we're very
happy to see um kind of take a hold in
the school system. Is there any way we
can measure that in uh tangibly in a
sense as far as like if let's say for
example we put one person in a school
and that school had a certain amount of
crime or things were happening with the
kids and then now because of this
officer we seen the turnaround that you
described. Is there a way that we can
actually measure it? Um I mean I know
the school might have to be involved
with you guys in order to do it because
everything at the end of the day is have
to be measurable. Yeah, of course
through the mayor, vice mayor else,
that's something we could certainly
explore. Um even if we had something to
the effect of maybe a QR code where
students could provide direct feedback
through an anonymous source to say, hey,
as a result of this class, you know, I
did this or I prevented this or we had
X. Um that's certainly something that we
can explore and I'll be directing back
to that chain too. I appreciate that.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor.
Council member Orlando. Yeah. Thank you
very much. I've heard from parents that
had the sixth graders, correct? These
are for sixth graders, fifth and sixth
graders through the mayor. Yes, sir.
Yeah. And I've heard from several
parents in so little schools that they
really enjoyed it. Uh we needed to deep
dive on that because it does more is
it's it's bullying, it's uh social
media, it's a whole aspect of of helping
kids cope with their current
environment. And I think u you guys
great job. Now we have two and I believe
we're looking to hire another third one
this year through the mayor council
member Orlando that is correct sir we
have the funding for three um the
current posture of the program it's
working with the two um but in
discussing with those two uh those two
staff and then also the school resource
chain there's a couple of things that
they're looking to expand into um and
those include um creating a class for
parent education obviously just
understanding hey this is what we're
teaching to your kids this is how you
can support them at home where they're
most of the time. Um there's also a plan
for a follow-up class to kids to assess
um where they're at and then also gauge
it as a long-term effectiveness measure.
And then lastly, um they're looking to
expand it potentially with the
partnership of CUSD into our junior high
schools as well. Just knowing as kids
grow and evolve, some of those things
change. um and really focusing on being
resilient students, resilient
adolesccents and coming into that those
adult ages where they're going to be
expanding and going out onto their own
in the next couple of years. So,
excellent. Great. Appreciate that. Yeah.
Um I believe this will be more than just
a pilot program. I know I've gotten
calls from Kyne School District as well
as, you know, officials there as well as
from Mesa. So, let's just work our
schools here. Let's get get this refined
a little bit before we start talking to
the next step. Right. Through the mayor.
Absolutely, sir. And again, thank you
for your support in this program. You
bet. Thank you, Council Member Menas.
Thank you, Mayor. Um, just for our
residents that may be watching online
and might not know exactly what this
pilot program is, can you kind of
explain the details of what the um
school engagement is? Is it assemblies?
Is it one-on-one interactions um with
these retired officers? Can you just
give a little bit more detail on that
through the mayor? Council member and
Cenus. Yes, absolutely. Great question.
Um, so the program is designed again
specifically for sixth grade students in
CUSD and it really focuses on equipping
them with essential tools and knowledge
to navigate the challenges that they
face in a complex society. This revolves
around one-on-one engagement in the
classroom. Um, there are potential for
assemblies. I don't think they're doing
very many of them. It's more tailored to
a more intimate setting where it's a
one-on-one interaction with students.
smaller, maybe they're more comfortable
speaking out and really having some of
those potentially challenging
conversations about being the active
bystander and taking a stand and
standing up for what is right in the
schools. Um, and that's it's a four-week
curriculum. Um, it discusses leadership,
respect, substance abuse, and cyber
bullying dilemmas. Those are kind of the
four main key topics. Is there anything
else that I could maybe potentially
answer for you in that? No, that was
great. That was great. Thank you for
explaining.
Council member Harris. Hey, how you
doing? Excellent, sir. Good. Um, I guess
my question is is that um, what I would
like to see, and I think everyone will
probably agree with this, and um,
Council Member Hawkins have been working
behind the scenes with this, and we
talked about this, but um, just more so
just putting more emphasis on um,
traffic and and school safety around
traffic around school zones in terms of
making sure that individuals are
um, meeting, you know, not speeding in
school zones. homes. We see that trend
happen during um the startup of schools.
We'll see a little bit more of it
towards when schools is ending. And I
think that every person is is definitely
concerned about making sure that that
incorporation of what we're doing with
this program would be incorporated. Uh
and the reason why I'm I I am mentioning
this, we get reached out all the time.
It's just a known thing and and I
appreciate when the police team like,
hey, if there's if this is happening, we
we do a two-week run to try to get it,
you know, to deter people from that
area. But more importantly, it's to me,
it's about making sure that we go to the
schools and making sure that they have
they have an understanding of how
traffic flow should work as well because
there's an education because some of the
teachers and administrators don't know
how to work their traffic. And so I just
kind of think it should be both ways.
number one, you know, making sure that
there's presence to stop speeders and
reckless driving in our school zones,
but on the other end, working with our
schools and our administrators to say,
"Hey, this is this may be a good way how
you should flow traffic um for backups
when you start out." So, I just kind of
wanted to see about would you be able to
incorporate that into that, you know,
into this uh program that you're talking
about this pilot through the mayor,
council member Harris. Uh I don't know
if it's necessarily appropriate to
integrate traffic education to this
simply by virtue of the age of the
students we're engaging here, but to go
off kind of on a different topic. Um we
have a robust relationship with our
traffic engineering department. We
regularly work with them to address
traffic flow issues around the school
system. Um understanding that again
going back to kind of that crime
prevention, the outreach aspect of this,
our traffic unit and that that bureau is
very good at doing outreach to the
schools annually. Um, just knowing that
especially at the beginning of the
school year, we're going to see an
increase in those traffic complaints and
then they kind of eb and flow too as the
year progresses as new students kind of
come in and maybe the the ways of doing
things get a little lost. Um, ultimately
we do work with traffic engineering, we
work with the schools. Um, we have a new
traffic management program um that AWS
has partnered with us on. um I'm very
happy to say free cost um to really show
in a heat map form where the traffic
complaints are so we can better direct
those those limited resources at times
to handling that. Um but if we do move
this program into like a middle school
or even a high school with a co-e
program with the SRO's potentially that
is certainly something that we would
want to engage into the program and just
knowing that traffic complaints are a
big problem in our community. Um, as
Chief Chapman kind of indicated, the
aggressive driving, especially in the
south area of our community, uh, we
understand that that is a challenge,
especially as new teenage drivers are on
the road, certainly something that we
would want to incorporate and just
highlighting all safety aspects of
operating a vehicle on the road. Thank
you, Chief. And, um, you guys keep keep
up the good work. Trying, sir. Thank
you. This program puts a smile on my
face as I'm as I think about and for
council here. It's uh your work is never
fully realized. I know council member
Row this was uh something very
passionate on his heart and uh you know
years after he's off council he would
smile to listen to you today. So thank
you. Oh well thank you again. Thank you
for all of your support
council member Poston. Sorry I did have
one additional question. I think you've
twice I I've heard twice now. We were
just mentioning it. There's aggressive
driving kind of in the south portion,
the southern portion of the city. Is it
is it speeding? Is it the wide roads?
What's I think I heard some the chief
mention it a little bit earlier that we
mitigated something through the real
time crime center and then you just
mentioned it as well. What's going on in
the south portion of Chandler through
the mayor, council member Poston? Um
it's not so much relegated to the south
side of Chandler. It's more those are
wider roads. Um there is less traffic on
them, less congestion, which is a recipe
for generally higher speeds. Um so we're
seeing significant speeds at times on
those roads. I'm not saying this is a
widespread problem, but it's certainly
isolated into pockets. Um and we track
those heavily. You'll see us deploying
resources into those areas most
definitely to kind of have a visual
deterrent. We also have a multi-layered
approach when we address these things
through outreach, social media
campaigns, PSAs. Um, at times we partner
with other East Valley agencies such as
in the East Valley DUI Task Force. So,
you'll see a significant influx of
visible deterrent into the community for
some of those some of those measures to
address speeding and other other factors
that lead to dangerous driving. Okay.
Thank you. Excellent. Thank you, Council
Member Anenas. Thank you, Mayor. I'm
jumping back, so I'm not sure if you can
answer this for uh for me or not, but
the mental health and wellness program
needs on there. Are we, it's been
probably a year and a half since I
visited over there and learning more
about those services. Are we increasing
services um for our police department
there or expanding them? Any new
services? Uh through the mayor, council
member C. That's actually the next slide
I'll be talking about is expanding our
mental health and wellness needs.
So, I'll jump right into your question
here. Uh we're seeking $100,000 this
year um to support and fund the mental
health and wellness needs of our
employees. Um, so as you know, we have a
mental health and wellness coordinator
on staff with us. She's doing a
phenomenal job. Um, and just an example
of some of those programs are, um, we
purchased cold plunges for advanced
physiological recovery, um, at all of
our stations, including our swap bay.
Um, the ongoing maintenance of those
cold plunges as well is covered in this.
Um, we've partnered recently with a
company um, called Butcherbe. Um, they
do meal prep. So understanding that our
officer's offices, at least in patrol,
are in a car on the road every day, we
want to try and break the habit of maybe
stopping at a convenience store or a
fast food restaurant and getting food.
So if we can bring high quality um you
know, real ingredient healthy food into
our department and then also I guess
supply those at a reasonable cost. We've
seen a great amount of success with our
officers. In fact, every Thursday
morning you can see a line for the
breakfast burritos that they're
bringing. Um, if you guys want to come
over, we'd be happy to let you uh
purchase some of them
through the mayor. It's Thursday
mornings. Council member Hawkins.
Um, we've also partnered with a private
yoga instructor um to do an online yoga
portal, understanding the multiple
aspects of health that come with the
practice of yoga. We've also
incorporated that into our annual
training for officers. So, that's going
to be a mandatory class. Uh again, just
rolling forward as we continue just
trying to really incorporate some of
those easy basic resilience and wellness
tools into their kits. Um another
another class that we've really taken a
heavy load to support is the struggle.
Well, I think Chief touched on that in
his opening. U this is for
post-traumatic growth. Understanding
that our officers are exposed to a
number of traumatic events every week
throughout their entire career. Um we've
seen a lot of our officers have really
great success coming back from this
class. really reframing some of that
mindset where, you know, they're able to
then pass those those tools onto others
and get them into those classes. These
are all just examples of what these
funds go to support. And what we're
always looking at is ways to maybe
sunset a program that's not being used
as much. Maybe something new has come
out and then really emphasize and focus
on that. That's what these funds allow
us to do. So again, thank you for your
support in that. I have a question here.
with I know that we embedded some um
mental health workers right there into
the police department into based on this
program. How accessible is it to the um
police officers and are they truly
accessing it right on site because it
was a problem for them to go to them but
now we put them right there. Are they
really are you seeing an increase of
visits and for those who are in need of
it or not? Through the mayor, vice mayor
else, we've gotten great feedback on our
embedded clinician program which I
believe is what you're referencing. Um
they have an office on site at our
training center um but not in the
training center building where our
officers are. It affords a level of
privacy and what we have seen as a great
success. A lot of people are talking
about using the program. Um uh
personally, I'll just say it. I've gone
in and done a check-in with them um just
to see how it's working. It's been it's
a great program. We're very blessed to
have it on site with us and there is a
lot of positive feedback coming out of
our constituency internally as far as
how that's being utilized. I know the uh
our constituents are really clearly very
happy when they hear and when I talk as
a mental health worker myself when I
mentioned that they were like wow this
is something amazing that Chen was
doing. So thank you for accessing it and
making it accessible. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Any other questions on this
slide? Council member Cust. Yes. I just
Are we seeing an increase in the level
of use overarchingly for our mental
health resources that we're offering?
I'm I'm glad to see that you're
monitoring and kind of removing some
that we aren't using as much and and
emphasizing the ones. But one, are we
seeing an increase? Are we seeing a good
use, you know, for our officers
utilizing the resources that are being
provided to them? And then are we doing
some things to encourage that through
the mayor? Council member Poston. Yeah,
it's tough to say that we're seeing an
overall increase. We're seeing great use
departmentwide. Um those numbers, they
always are going to fluctuate depending
on what programs are accessible and
available. We're seeing great use,
especially out of cold plunges right now
and the cold plunge therapy. Um that's a
big kind of topic, not only in law
enforcement, just in the public in
general. So, we're seeing great use out
of that. We have a number of sauna on
site and we're looking to expand that as
well, understanding the the therapeutic
um I guess benefits of utilizing those
tools. Um, but as far as we're looking
at, you know, embedded clinician, that
program just started. Um, it's getting
great use. It's numbers that we're very
happy to be seeing, um, as far as where
it is right now and the fact that we're
going to be re-uping that again. We only
continue to hope to grow that. Um, but
yes, we're seeing very good use
departmentwide. We're very heavy on the
emphasis side of that. Um, I'm on a
briefing tour right now. It's something
that I touch on in almost every
briefing. Hey, make sure you're
utilizing all the tools that are
available. We're unique in the fact that
our city offers such a robust complement
of tools that are available to you at no
cost. Um, even looking at, you know, we
have online apps that you get free
access to that everyone else is paying
for. Utilize that while you're in your
car. Take five minutes while you're on
your lunch. Do a meditation exercise. Do
a breathing exercise. And we've really
taken a a posture that a lot of our
leadership should be utilizing these
tools and then sharing them showing
that, hey, we're using it. You should be
too. and let us find ways to make sure
that you have access to them in a more
impactful manner. You just said the
magic words for me that leadership is
utilizing it and encouraging it because
you know if
if in any organization people look to
leadership to really see hey is this
something that you truly support. So I'm
really glad to hear that you're doing it
through those briefings and then
encouraging your officers because they
are looking to you. So, thank you for
doing that because I really think this
kind of implement the implementation of
this kind of program is really comes
from the top and so that's good to hear.
Thanks. Absolutely, ma'am.
All right. And the last one I'll be
discussing today before I kick it back
over to assistant chief Deanda is the uh
the allocation of forfeite funds. Um
this year we're looking to appropriate
1.5 million. Um and I'll be talking
about a number of the items that we'll
be looking to um really utilize with
these funds. So, as we discussed
earlier, it's the continuation of the
embedded clinician contract. Um, as
chief touched on earlier, this is our
Spytech victim notification. This is the
surveys that we send out um after almost
every call for service. Um, we're going
to look to enhance the paperless lab
project or finish that up. Um, we're
purchasing an asset management system.
And then we're spending some money on
updating our small unmanned aerial drone
systems. Um, again, as chief kind of
touched and so did Assistant Chief
Deanda, these are great tools when we're
out in the community utilizing them for
missing people. Our SWAT team utilizes
them frequently as far as overhead kind
of eye in the sky coverage, but we have
a lot of parameters in place to ensure
those are, you know, being used
appropriately. So, okay, wonderful. Any
questions on that? Thank you. All right,
assistant Chief
Deanda Council, just to manage
expectations. Our time is creeping
closer to four and uh feel free, this is
our time, ask questions, give
commentary, but realign your
expectations accordingly.
Thank you for remind
uh speaking about our capital
replacement fund. So the appropriation
of these funds uh for the next fiscal
year will be to replace our mobile data
computers which are the MDCs that are in
each of our patrol and police aid
vehicles. Uh the replacement of our
training weapons for our SWAT team and
then also replacement of our gas
masks. Moving on to the uh CIP for the
first the forensics service facility. Uh
we have uh $3 million for the first
fiscal year uh allocated for long lead
items such as a generator. Uh the
specifics for that is it's uh we need to
get it ordered and there's about an
18month lead time on that and then the
second year will be in the construction
phase. U moving on to uh police main
station renovations. Uh the first fiscal
year is just to frontload projects for
the renovation with the design phase in
the second year. And then for the bodywn
camera, we pay this over three years and
the first uh year will be the first
installment of three payments. And then
finally with our uh property and
evidence building, uh this uh funding is
to create a cohesive design to align the
exterior of our existing property and
evidence building with the new forensic
lab facility. And that completes our
presentation, unless there are any other
questions.
Thank you. Thank you.
All right. Next, we have Sand Deep with
it.
Good morning, Mayor and Council.
Morning, city management. Um, before I
start, I'd actually like to um say thank
you to a few folks. Right. So, city
management, thank you for your support,
your guidance. It's really, really um
much appreciated. As well as all of the
department directors, their leadership,
the partnerships. You heard a little bit
from police. Um that partnership is very
very healthy. It's one of the ones that
I'm most proud of. And of course I want
to thank uh Debbie, our budget analyst
in our department who works very closely
with Enrique and all the patient that
you your peers and of course Don has
with me as we go through our budget
preparation for the several months. Um I
just also wanted to highlight that the
network team that we talked about
earlier, there is actually two networks.
We have a city network and there's a
network within the city network which is
the PD network. Um if you recall we
talked about realtime crime center and
whatnot. All of those types of
advancements that you have in PD
actually um have more demand on the
network as well. So it's not only having
redundancy but it's also having
different aspects of the network which
they support. And so that's where you
see some of the growth on the network
side.
Yeah. Vice Mayor, did the chief tell you
to say that? He did not.
Just Just want to make sure. Okay. In
his ear and asked for permission to say
that actually just the other way around.
That's something the fire guys wouldn't
have you do, I'm sure. Right. Um we'll
talk about that later.
Okay. All righty. So, uh strength and
numbers as we mentioned earlier, I kind
of think of strength um in terms of
three kind of aspects. Resiliency, um
also your health, and then of course
your mind and soul. You kind of see some
members of the family. My son actually
has whether he knows this or not his
name is Nick Phil has taught me strength
in so many ways when it comes to
resiliency. Um with that said he's
pursuing a career in cyber security. U
when it comes to our health right um of
course you have to take care of your
health to keep going day by day.
Daughter is actually going to be she's
currently doing her residency in surgery
and of course has taught a lot to myself
and my family when it comes to health
matters. Um she's she's going to be my
future go-to when it comes to any kind
of health questions. Finally, when it
comes to mental health, heart and soul,
um that's something that you can see the
dogs picture, the top two are my clowns
in the family, and I watch them and kind
of get peace every single night. And of
course, there's a dog from the past in
his little subf family with guinea pigs,
and he actually thought those were his
um
babies. And so that also applies to
things that we do in technology. So,
it's really a good transition to um some
of the things that we've done here at
the city. Um really I want to highlight
um one of the accomplishments that
really um hit I think with not only our
employees but also the citizens
residents and the community that we
serve. Just recently, um Kristen Nold,
our chief technology officer, had an
opportunity to go to Texas with Nikki,
um who is our director for DEI to
receive an award. We placed number one
nationally with um regards to our our
interactions with our residents and our
community with the use of instant
language translation. Um we call it ILA,
instant language assistant. We used that
in several departments. We piloted it in
one or two in the beginning, but that
actually very quickly spread and it's
being used across several departments
here at the city. Uh we also through a
lot of the um accomplishments that we
did throughout the course of the past
year um we made huge advancements on the
cyber security front we refreshed four
data centers and one of the fastest
turnaround times four months. I've never
seen that in my entire career when a
tech from a technology perspective and
our teams did that. Um with that we
placed number two in two different um
with two different organizations
nationally. Um when they compared the
cities they compared things like the
population size and the de demographics
of the city that you serve and GovX is
one that um placed us number two. If you
recall for um some that have been here
for a number of years we usually rank in
the five or six range. I think about
seven eight years ago we were usually
closer to eight or nine. we've really
made strides forward and um again it
goes through the partnerships with the
city um all the city departments uh with
regards to how we serve our community.
Um the other one is digital cities.
Digital cities primarily focused on
things like uh growth in your digital um
ecosystem as well as the services that
you provide making it easier to interact
with the city and they also place us
number two um and nationally for um for
our city. So, those are some of the
accomplishments that I think that all
the departments and city management, of
course, all of us and mayor and council
should be really proud of for the for
the city here. Um, I'm going to start
off with talking about our financial
highlights and our operating budget. Of
course, our operating budget um is
primarily uh personnel and benefits with
65 employees. Uh that makes up about
$1.7 million of the budget. And then of
course our O andM budget which um really
consists of things like software and
hardware maintenance uh contracted
services that support operations and at
sometimes also project work as well as
um remediation or shoring up um things u
from a cyber security perspective and
that of course makes up about $17.1
million for the department.
[Applause]
So for the next several slides actually
you're going to see a lot of um
contractors that we also complement our
city IT department with. Um that budget
is primarily funded from the general
fund with the um and I actually jumped
one slide ahead. I apologize. I'm going
to actually talk about our general fund
and our enterprise fund. So our IT
budget is about 97%
um comprised of the general fund and
then a small portion of that for the
enterprise fund. And we'll talk on that
and touch on that in a couple minutes
here with upcoming slides.
Yeah. Thank you.
There we go. And so you can find our
decision package descriptions on pages
44 through 46 and 51 of the budget
policies and process and decision
section. And so I'll go ahead and start
right jump right into it.
For this site, I'd like to highlight
that we're going to be asking for one
FTE position for this upcoming fiscal
year, FY25. Um, that's going to be
somebody that will work on a full-time
employee that will work with our um web
development team. Um, our web
development team supports our intranet
as well as our internet. So Chan web for
the inter in internet and of course um
chanrazi.gov with the both of those
presences we work very closely with
kappa. One of the things that um you may
recall when in the last five years we've
really strengthened ourselves on the
cyber security front. As we did that, we
found things that actually impacted all
the other divisions and we needed
resources in those divisions to work
with the cyber security team to continue
to do things like remediation efforts um
tightening up the code and just making
sure each and every application or
anything on the infrastructure network
side, data center side, and of course
our website um is able to keep up with
the trends on cyber security. So for
this reason, we're going to be asking
for an FTE position on the excuse me, on
the web team.
We're also continuing to make progress
on our Wi-Fi refresh. Um the past year
we made progress with new installs, for
example, at the community center and our
senior center. And so we're going to
continue to do that. We've got about 20
more different facilities that we're
trying to um also get going on in the
Wi-Fi side. I think that was yeah, still
um that we'll be focusing on fiscal year
25. that includes um new installs as
well as refreshes and a lot of the
facilities the technology needs and the
demand on the network actually increase.
So we had to actually in some cases
double and quadruple the infrastructure
things like access points on the Wi-Fi.
So we'll see that in the upcoming fiscal
year. All right. On this slide I'd like
to highlight the infrastructure
monitoring. Infrastructure monitoring
allows us to have 24 by7 um monitoring
of our network, our data centers, our
systems like software and solutions that
tax both of those environments. Um this
will allow us for rapid recovery if
there are anything anything that goes
wrong with any of our technologies after
hours. This goes seven days a week, 365
days a year. Um and this really takes a
look at all aspects of technology and
ensures that we have the performance and
the stability and of course the security
that we need on all of those um uh
technologies. We're also um investing
heavily in our citywide technology
project portfolio related to the ongoing
and this includes ongoing cost for the
new ERP system. And so we're actually
moving that from um that'll be the cost
for the new one because as we're
developing it, the cost actually starts
or the tab actually starts when we stand
up the environment. And so you'll kind
of see that happening in parallel with
the current environments that we're
in. Now for the next few slides, we um I
will be talking about contractors. I
won't necessarily go through each
contractor, so I'll kind of go through
the slide and just call out the number
of contractors we're using. I might call
out some of the focus areas for one or
two of them as I go through them. Um,
these contractors are actually used to
supplement our full-time uh staff u with
maintenance, with upgrades, software
enhancements, uh, including cyber
security, um, you know, enhancements
that we have to put in there, as well
as, um, doing some work on some of the
projects that we work on. Um, this will
be covered through the next five slides.
On this slide, you'll actually notice
that we have contractors for Quartz uh
systems. We have an a contractor for
Oracle and then we also have a
contractor that'll be coming in for
integration
management. Have three more contractors
on this one. I'll highlight that we've
made huge steps forward on the 0365
side. Um, as we do that though, that
also takes more demand on our network.
So you'll see contractors kind of coming
in complement to one another when we
talk about this. Of course, the third
one is a support analyst. This is an
individual that will be helping with
everything from receiving phone calls
when staff needs help in all of the
other departments to imaging laptops and
things like that. We will be refreshing
close to about 75 to 80% of our laptop
fleet in the next 18 uh 12 to 18 months.
We have on this slide three more
contractors around um our databases. One
of the things that we're going to be
doing um in the next 12 to 18 months
also is putting a heavy uh amount of
concentration on converting our
databases from the Oracle platform to
the SQL platform. That'll make it more
modern, more robust and you'll see a lot
more performance as
well. Excuse me. We have about three
more contractors on this side. These
contractors will do everything from
project coordination um to helping our
project managers as we go through um
exercises with um multiple projects on
process mapping and doing business
analysis how we will regarding how we
will evolve our processes with the um
new technologies that come into
play. This will be our final slide when
it comes to the contractor resources. So
here you'll see two more contractor
resources. Um this one again focuses
heavily on cyber security and network.
With the expansion of all the different
technologies you've heard from and you
will hear from from some of the other
departments that puts an extra load on
our network. That extra load also the
new technologies will bring in extra
vulnerabilities with more and more
technologies. We just have to keep in
front of that. And so you'll see a lot
of concentration with these two
contractors on the network side and the
cyber security side. We also partner up
with a consulting agency that provides
us with multitudes of um channels when
it comes to expert analysis. If we have
a question regarding any kind of new
technology or emerging technology, we
turn to our partners and this one with
technology insights. We also go to they
with that partnership we get access to
conferences literature and we can
actually talk to experts that have gone
through transformation in organizations
with various technologies that we're
also looking to do the same thing
with as I was talking about in terms of
database conversions from Oracle to SQL.
This final one here is for our GIS
database. Um and this will be converting
the Oracle um platform for our GIS into
SQL. Okay. Okay. So on decision packages
on on this slide reflect the portion of
the funded um fund the portion of the
projects that are funded by funds other
than general funds. This case it's
enterprise funds. U primarily focused on
wastewater. Um this will be resources
that will go into um the creation or
excuse me the upgrade of our um utility
billing platform as well as um upgrading
our current refuse management system RMS
um into a a platform that is current and
also meets all of the cyber security
standards that we're trying to achieve
for the city as
well. Okay. And this is where we start
into our CIP portion of our technology
department. Um, we have a robust
information technology project
portfolio. And this covers a multitude
of projects. Two of the big ones, three
of the big ones actually that I'll call
out um that make up the amount of
8,600,000 for the upcoming fiscal year
would be the utility billing platform
that I just talked about as well as the
ERP um ERP replacement. We're currently
on currently on Oracle and we are
pursuing a new ERP. We've been spending
the first couple years on this analysis
and we are in the process of basically
identifying specific requirements for
the new ERP system and then we'll start
working on the um replacement of that
when we stand up the environment for us
to start working on. That's when the
cost of that ongoing will start and
therefore you'll see that embedded into
in the um cost of the 5.5. And so with
that said, I'm happy to answer any
questions.
Questions? Yes, Mayor. Council member
Harris. Yes. Um, thank you for a great
presentation. Um, I know that you have a
lot um, as you're kind of going through
this process of making sure that our
security is safe and secure. Um with
these new added adjustments, software,
FTE, all these different um um budgetary
items, our city is pretty safe already.
Um how much more confident does this put
our team in a place where we feel we are
working to stay above the curve, never
getting behind, always trying to advance
and and and and move forward.
To the mayor, uh Council Member Harris,
that's a great question. And when it
comes to cyber security, I like to try
to frame that as it's a cat and mouse,
you know, type of a game. Um, we're
always looking at the cy, excuse me, the
cyber security threat actors are always
coming up with more and more creative,
innovative ways to penetrate any
organization. Um, we're no different
than any organization, whether it's
public or private sector. And in the
last five years, what I am really
pleased to say is that we actually built
a cyber security program, a
vulnerability management program. We
also have the cyber security governance
committee with participation from
members of multiple departments here at
the city. Um we recently completed 16
policies that are about ready to be
published once this the final vetting is
done for city management. um with that
team coming up a lot of the resources
that you talked about that I talked
about in my presentation those are the
resources now now that will be coming in
and continue to help us to just stay
ahead or at least stay up with the
current trends in cyber security um if
you ask me the question of am I
comfortable that we're there um I would
never be comfortable that we're there
because that's when we'll probably be
most at risk
thank you so much I know your team is
doing a great job and I just always
appreciate that um Your team continues
to bring new projects, continue to
explore how cyber security is just, you
know, we talk about threats on the
ground and we use law enforcement to
talk to to um activate those law
enforcement areas, but this is just in
today's technological age. this is just
as equally as important as crime is not
just happening physically but it's also
happening um uh on on the cyber on the
cyber end of it. So I just wanted to
tell you um good job and and appreciate
the work that your team is doing. So
thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Thank you sir. Thank you. Thank you
Cindy. Thank you.
All right. Next up we have uh Matt
Berdick, communication and public
affairs. Here we go. Good morning.
All
right. Since we're heading to summer, I
thought you might like a little iceberg.
And then we've got a lot of different
photos here of uh mayor and council. So,
I'll let you admire that for a minute.
Thank you. I was going to say mayor's
right there in the middle, right?
All right, we'll jump in. Okay. Um, want
to thank council again. U, just a couple
months back, we celebrated our annual
tradition of the state of the city. I
appreciate your ongoing support and
participation and involvement in that.
Um, mayor, you did a a great speech
about how the communities uh reflects
courage, brains, and heart. Um, we also
appreciate your support uh earlier this
I guess it was last year in the fall.
you, several of you have joined us um as
we had three Emmy nominations and we're
fortunate to bring one of those home for
the uh Struthio video from 2024. Um so
we're proud that's the city's first ever
um Emmy award-winning production. We're
going to be continuing to seek those in
the future, but again, I appreciate the
council support. Um and then again
appreciate your support in terms of the
ongoing things that we do on your behalf
and for departments in terms of uh
public appearances and proclamations and
helping departments connect with
residents through various means of
communication and all the different um
productions that go into making that
happen. And uh this past year we also
celebrated the completion of the digital
media studio upgrade which takes us to a
completely different um era of where we
can help communicate in a video and
digital
format. Kappa is uh entirely funded
through the general fund. Uh we share a
position with economic development. So
we are 20 and a half
strong. Uh again all funded through the
general fund. You can find our decision
packages on pages 40 and
50. So I'll go through those quickly
here. Um first translation services. We
um assist departments when they need to
translate materials into different
languages. We provide that for all the
city departments. So that's an ongoing
amount for that. The joint team Chandler
talent recruitment website, we moved
into a maintenance mode this past year.
Um this essentially the 50,000 of
ongoing will support maintenance of the
website going forward. And the 75,000 is
again same amount as we're currently
spending on different media ti tactics
in terms of search engine optimizations,
retargeting fe people that come uh visit
the web page to look at job
opportunities and career opportunities.
So we continue to have good success with
that. Um marketing and promotions, the
ongoing amount here is associated with
technology. Um part of the marketing and
promotions budget is some temporary
staff to help us with social media and
graphic design to support departments.
Um and the balance of that is for
various um marketing efforts, support
services for our website, social media
efforts. Um so if there's questions
about that, let me know. But uh
essentially this is continuing on our
marketing efforts that we've had in
previous years.
uh Cityscope. This offset the cost of
printing cityscope and distributing
that. The cable access channel uh this
is essentially offset with cable license
revenue. But this continues the support
for equipment and vendor support
services as well as temporary staff that
help us with video and photography
production. And then the temporary print
mill graphics technicians. Again, we
currently have three uh full-time
positions there. We have one temporary.
This will and we have one part-time
temporary. This will take us to two
part-time temporary to help with
everything from print production,
utility bill processing, all incoming
and outgoing mail, and about 700 graphic
design projects that they produce
annually for departments. Mayor, council
Poston. Um, just a quick question, Matt.
City Scopes been around forever. Is that
always been a one-time is is that or is
this just additional due to the reason
Yeah, the reason we do one-time is um
for a couple reasons. One, we're we're
going to be preparing for the transition
in the near future for a different
vendor to produce the utility bills. Um
so we don't want to have an ongoing and
then our hope is that with that
transition, we'll have more and more
people move to the electronic billing,
which would reduce the volume of pieces
that we would need to produce. So, we've
done this annually as a as a one-time
based on the the amount of um
newsletters that would be printed. Okay.
Thank you.
Yep. And then community engagement. Uh
this is a there's a few things that are
referenced here. One is um our process
to handle constituent inquiries, as you
all know, is a very manual process. So
part of this is an investment in a uh
platform that can help us more
effectively and efficiently and quite
frankly in a more sophisticated way
manage constituent inquiries that come
into the mayor council office to track
those and follow up with our residents.
Um another is to continue we have a
part-time position that helps uh with
remarks and organization of city council
events and speaking engagements and
those things. So that will continue that
part-time person. And then um council's
involved in a a variety of different uh
policy and business forums that you come
and represent the city at locally and
regionally. And so this would continue
that in an ongoing amount of 9,000. And
then mayor the US Conference of Mayors,
this is the annual dues associated with
participation in your participation in
that
organization. So with that, I'll take
any
questions. Sorry, there's one more here.
I forgot. uh John Kenson we do have for
the water conservation program um this
is funded out of the enterprise fund so
this is continuing at the same level
that we've done in the last couple of
years to educate people about water
conservation programs and rebates
well we had no questions until that one
okay
John
I think we're good thank you sir thank
you appreciate all you guys absolutely
It's time for the fun to begin.
Good morning, Mayor and Council. So
happy to be here. I'm going to be doing
part of our presentation today and then
Ryan will also be doing some presenting
on our decision packages. So, to get
started, um you can see our our family
pictures
here. And I just want to go back. Where
was that?
I
tried. Okay. See Ryan's beautiful family
there. And it might create children.
Just ignore
mine. All right. We're gonna I'm just
going to touch on and our
accomplishments. Um you can see the
tremendous amount of work that's
happening out in our community and our
neighborhoods. You see the numbers there
and of course you're very familiar with
the services that we provide for
residents in need. You can see over
2,000 residents in crisis connecting to
our services last year and that's just
through the car's team. The one I really
want to highlight is the exciting villas
on McQueen. I am so proud to tell you
that we are at 50% completion on
construction. We are right on target to
be done in May of 26. So we'll start
that uh ribbon cutting planning sometime
early next year. And um along those
lines, we will we will move in the 78
households that we're going from
existing sites. We'll get those move in
started in as soon as we're able to that
summer, right after we get our
certificate of occupancy. We will start
a wait list for the LITC units probably
in about February of 26. So everything
is moving right on track with that
project. I'm really pleased with that.
Going into our operating budget, um we
with this with the decision packages
this year, we're up to 67 positions and
you can see the breakdown here between
our personnel and operations and
maintenance. And of course, we always
like to share that we are about 82%
grant funded. That has gone up a little
bit through the years by a couple
percent, but as you know, we can always
watch what is happening on the federal
level with the grant funds. Now more
than ever, we continue to track and look
at everything that we're hearing about
federal budgets and um obviously working
with Don and Josh will be giving you
updates as we get updated
information. With that, we're ready to
kick off into our decision packages,
which you can see are start on page 46.
I am going to have Ryan go ahead and do
the general fund packages, and then I
will come back up to do those that are
funded with other
funding. All right.
Good morning, mayor and council. Great
to see you. Today, we are going to start
um again, we're just going to highlight
a couple here, but please feel free to
ask questions on any of them. So, we're
going to start with our community
resources senior specialist. You might
know this position as our cares team. Um
this is the position that fields all
sort of non-medical, non-emergency calls
coming to the city for basic needs. So,
someone might be calling for food or
rental assistance or even something
like, you know, my father has dementia
and I don't know what to do. Um, this
position has been uh temporarily funded
for the last 5 years, so we're looking
to convert it to full-time regular
position. Um, this position generally
receives about seven new calls a day,
averaging about 160 per month. Um, the
person refers to nonprofit organizations
and also other governmental um,
organizations. That's and there she is
in the middle there,
Kendall. So, moving
on, I'm going to highlight on this slide
our housing stability senior
specialists. These folks are also known
as the H housing stability team. These
are the folks that really um both
prevent people from becoming homeless if
they're having a crisis in their current
home or rehouse people and work back
towards self-sufficiency by getting them
re-employed, reconnected to the
community and um just visiting their you
know stabilizing them in their crisis
situation. Um these positions have been
uh temporarily funded for the last three
years through grants and other onetime
funds. Again, we're looking to convert
these positions to full-time positions.
We often refer to this team as our
secret sauce. It's really what separates
our programs from other programs and
really um helping people maintain their
stability once they've lost
it. The last thing I want to say about
this team is that this team really
engages landlords in our community. So,
they engage them to be part of our
housing programs and then they really
support them throughout the process.
Uh moving on to this slide, the the one
I'm going to highlight here is our
operation open door. That is our non-
congregate shelter. We have 25 units uh
running at any one time. That's about 45
rooms because 10 of our units are
two-bedroom units to support families.
Um we are projecting about a 20%
increase in the numbers of people we
serve both in this program and our other
homeless programs this year. We've just
been really analyzing the numbers and it
looks like we're going to serve about
20% more people. This program is very
successful. We have a 98%
um positive exit rate from this
program. And last on this page, I'd like
to um look at our heat relief program.
So, as you know, each year we we uh
provide a series of services to make
sure people are safe um either in their
homes or if there are people who are
living unsheltered. We have day respit
center services. So, those are during
the day you can rest or sleep. We also
have are adding thanks to your
leadership this year. We will be adding
overnight services on the days that um
the National Weather Service alerts us
that it is an extreme emergency.
We will also have eight cooling stations
throughout the center and continue to
operate our emergency portable lend um
AC lending program this year for people
who have crisis in their
homes. Any questions about those before
I turn it back over to Leah? I'll just
make a comment. I'm appreciative with
the heat relief. I know this overnight
is the only one that will be operating
this year in the East Valley and there's
only two across the entire valley. So,
I'm appreciative of of us stepping up
and um you know, when it's a 95 and
that's your cool point at night, it is
extremely dangerous to uh be on the
street or even be a senior and and
experiencing issues because your AC
isn't working. So, I I'm very
appreciative of this program. We really
appreciate your support in launching it.
Council Martinez. Thank you, mayor.
Couple questions here. Um
here for the illegal dumping, the
part-time code inspector, is that a
position that is already the temporary
one? Is that
already happening or is this going to be
a new temporary position for this? So I
might call on Leah for this. Um yeah,
I'm gonna let Leah answer that question.
The mayor, council member and Cena, this
program is still considered in a pilot
stage. So yes, we do already have a
temporary person on. We've spent a big
portion of this year developing the
program. So, we want to continue with
that temporary position for this next
year to really get a good handle on the
statistics, the need, the causes, all of
those type of things. Um, and then we
may be asking in the future for
something more permanent, but we really
want to continue to do analysis this
next year. So, what is the difference
between the actual the duties of code
enforcers compared to this one
specifically through the mayor, council
member? idea behind this is this gives
us a person who can focus and and get
out to illegal dumping situations more
quickly but also work with our alley
technician. A lot of the illegal dumping
that we see in the city is with alleys
and then u so it relieves that from the
code inspectors and actually will allow
us to it allows us to um react a little
quicker. They will have the or they do
have the contact with our hauling
contractor. Often we will use our
hauling contractor to take care of
issues. Also through this program is
where we work on any encampment
cleanups. Encampment cleanups involve
the work of the navigation team, the
police department at times, and
certainly code enforcement. So, this is
a body that's also dedicated to that
piece of it, and it just allows us to be
able to respond quicker. So, are code
enforcers um not going through alleyways
or inspecting or is that just not I
don't want to say not a priority, but do
they do some portion of that? Yeah.
through the mayor, council member Cas,
we have an alley program where we this
one technician, the alley technician
focuses strictly on the alleys and is
able to get through the alleys multiple
times a year. Prior to having that
dedicated program, it was really only if
a code inspector would see something in
the alley as they were looking for
something else or if they got if they it
wasn't proactive. It was reactive if we
got a complaint about an alley. Both um
the alley technician program is is
really all proactive. And so what they
do is they're the ones that mail out the
letters to the residents to say, "We're
going to be coming out looking your
alley. Remember, this is your
responsibility to this point." They'll
go back and then eventually if we have
cases that don't get cleaned up, then
those will actually get referred to an
inspector to go through that process.
But it's really a proactive program.
What we're doing with illegal dumping is
kind of along those lines. We're trying
to be a little bit more proactive with
it because the longer you let something
sit there, the more likely it is that
more items will get dumped with it. So,
this gives us the ability to be to to
help the alley technician, to help the
inspectors, but also to be more
proactive with it. Okay, thanks for that
clarification. If you can send not um in
a rush or anything, but some statistics
on um whether there's hot spots in
certain areas and the alleys and just to
get some more information on that
illegal dumping in alleys. I know
Ellie's are very important to our
residents. Um, jumping over to you as
well, um, the Envision program here. Um,
I know you guys did a great job in the
Galveastston neighborhood and you guys
are moving over to the Hartford area
school that area is the funding that you
guys have allocated right here, the
30,000. Do you think that's sufficient
enough for the program for that area? um
through the mayor, council member in
Cenus, we do have that the the decision
package you see here covers really the
entire envision program. Um I know that
it was suggested that there was a
council amendment that to cover
specifically for Hartford and that is
something it depends on the extent that
we want to go with Hartford. One of the
things that was that we were looking at
is do we want to do some placemaking
things similar to what we did in
Galveston. I will say though that timing
comes into play as well that you know we
have to build a relationship with the
neighborhoods. So I think that's a piece
of what the consideration should be with
that is that are we going to be at the
point during this next fiscal year to be
able to start that placemaking process.
Every neighborhood is different. So a
lot of what you're starting with is just
building the relationship that's unique
to that area. So, um, that is that's
part of the reason why you see saw that
that got really, um, divided into two
different packages because it's also a
timing issue. Gotcha. Thanks for
clarifying that just because I know this
area is probably going to be bigger than
what you guys were dealing with in
Galveston. So, just making sure you guys
had um, you know, adequate funds there,
but it does make sense when you're
saying this is going to be over um, a
few period to establish that
relationship. And lastly is on the trap,
neuter, and release uh, the TNR program
here that we have allocated. Do you
think that is going to be enough
funding? I know we went through a pilot
program and um I don't know if you have
any feedback as far as the results of
that. Sure. Through the mayor, council
member and Cena. So where we are with
that program is we had actually started
it the pre previous fiscal year. So the
contract is actually gone over two
fiscal years. We started the contract
with $20,000. We still have $10,000 left
in this fiscal year's funding. and we
will be meeting with the agency
hopefully in the next two weeks to
establish um where where they are. We we
know that they have at this point about
$5,000 less, but we left, but we haven't
received the billing for April.
[Music]
[Music]
Oh, I guess
[Music]
[Music]
Yeah, both. I'm still
I don't know. Hopefully this
favorite
when they did
my I respond to rel
The first
We can afford a little bit.
That's a lot. And our guys are
making a
balance. We do not only got
and we're
bringing
Christmas. So the idea is if I stay
on
South, one of my best
buddies opportunities
He retired last
July. He really wanted me to sign his
check. I've been working with it
forever. It's a significant
amount. So if I stay
around, we have
And then plus I've been saving on my
host point. So I I'm there financially.
It's just the
timing. I
want you know I'm 66 now. I'll be 67. My
best friend died at 74.
for a while.
Hey, how are you? How are you? Good.
How's
[Music]
your It's not too much.
I'll probably go
for an hour long break.
[Music]
Testing. Testing. One, two, three. Yeah,
we lost audio for a little bit, but it
seems like it's back. just but no one's
in here anymore. So, wanted to test it.
It's working. Hello. Julie's back there
listening. Testing. Testing. One, two,
three. It sounds good in here. Yeah.
Test. Test. One, two, three. Test.
going back and
forth. Where is the
They don't want that.
Oh my gosh. And that's special. That
fall.
the only I know.
Thank you.
You see how big?
I don't know.
[Music]
bathroom and I was like,
[Music]
There
Thank you.
She's all the time.
All All right, now everyone comes
scrambling. It's that time. The gavvel
has fallen.
Next is uh city manage street,
Judge Scoop.
Good afternoon, mayor and council. So,
fun fact about judges. There has been a
study done on judges and whether or not
you're sentenced before or after lunch.
Turns out that if you are sentenced
before lunch, more likely to get a
harsher sentence because judges are
hungry. So I think I have the benefit in
this case. So
that's your family. Yeah. So what I did
is I took a family photo of our backyard
dinner and I made it into a cartoon
using AI just for fun. I love it. Yeah.
My husband begrudges the white beard. It
was black when I married him, but um a
wife, five kids, and several pets later,
it's great.
Yeah, I love it.
All right, so for the court, um all of
our accomplishments are really are
surrounded or revolve around three main
functions. We want to increase access to
the uh courts and the justice system. We
want to cultivate relationships with our
community and build trust with our court
users. And we want to invest back into
our personnel, our court team members
and make sure that they are
professionals not only for our sake
because the city does provide excellent
customer service and uh services but for
their sake and so they get skills
continuing education and I'm happy to
say and a little sad to say the last
couple of people that we've lost from
our port um team have gone on to bigger
and better things because of the skills
that they've received with us. So those
are the things that we've accomplished
so far. One of the the things that here
is listed is that we've increased our
training on staff over 900 hours over
the last fiscal year and that included
cyber security, active shooter
awareness, and just better uh
functioning processes in the court
system to make it more efficient.
We have 42 employees and we have a
budget of just over 5.7 or 5.7
million and we're all 100% general fund
uh
funded. And our decision packages are on
page 39 and 40. They should not be
unfamiliar. I tried to review them with
each of you individually so that I could
answer your questions. But just briefly,
we have two that are um one-time event
uh funds for our uh court security
contract and our uh part-time uh
temporary employee that helps with extra
work. And then two are just slight
increases because of cost of living and
general increases in um contract amounts
for our public defender services and our
prom judges that come in to substitute
for our judges when they're out.
What I'm excited about though is to talk
to you about our uh capital improvement
project. I know I've mentioned it to
some of you. We want to increase our
access to the court. We've tried
different ways uh online access, virtual
hearings. Um we have an online
reservation system now on our website.
So if you want to see a judge and you
don't want to wait and see how long it's
going to take, you can go to the screen
on the web page and pick a time and a
date that you want to see a judge and
we'll be ready to see you then. So
that's kind of like when you schedule an
urgent care visit with your um hospital.
We can do that now with the court. This
actual um upgrade to the building is one
of our windows that faces outside to the
courtyard. We want to convert it into a
customer service window which eliminates
a lot of the hassle that people need to
do to come into the building. So, we can
we can uh shorten the time people come
to see a a clerk for either a payment
plan or cancel a warrant or ask a
question about their case, but also it
gives us some agility and flexibility to
possibly service people after hours or
on weekends if we ever get to that
point. So, let's say we had a window
open from 5 to 6:00 p.m. when people get
off of work and they want to see someone
about their case. we would have that
functionality that would eliminate the
need to open a whole courthouse, have
security staff, a supervisor and
additional clerks there. So, it's a way
to main uh mainstream the uh access to
the court to more people, but also make
it very uh streamlined and functional.
Um I don't have anything else to add at
this time, but I'm happy to answer any
questions.
Thank you so much. Just one quick
question. So the the step that was part
of the contractual thing that was the
two-year contract, right? In terms of
the the cola for the presiding.
Well, I'm sorry. I don't understand the
question. Go back a couple slides if you
could.
The
Oh, the pro. Okay. No, I understand my
question. I I'm fine. Thank you. Yes,
that that's for the uh substitute judges
that come in just a minor increase.
Yeah. Thank you. Any other any
questions? Thank you. Thank you so much.
Next up, uh Nikki Tapia from Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion. Good afternoon,
council. Um first, I want to say this is
the miracle of my family actually taking
this picture in March. We never take any
family photos, but um one of my uncles
just uh retired from Freeport after 50
years of service. Um, and I have a
couple retired city employees in there,
too.
Um, so, um, thank you for the
opportunity to present our
FY2526DI budget. As we begin, I want to
take a moment to frame our approach.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion works
to support a Chandler where all
residents, employees, and community feel
welcome, connected, and informed. As you
read through our accomplishments, I want
to share that our work f focuses on
building equitable and inclusive city
practices, strengthening community
partnerships, supporting employee
development, and creating a space for
shared understanding and civic
participation across all backgrounds.
There's a lot of conversations
nationally about what DEI is and what it
isn't. Here in Chandler, our approach is
thoughtful, practical, and grounded in
community needs. We support engagement,
accessibility, collaboration, and we
stay focused on solutions that serve
everyone. Our annual budget is a little
over 772,000 and that is for three
FTEES. We are 100% generally funded and
you can find our decision packages on
page
43. So our first decision package ask is
strategic plan initiatives. It's the
most impactful and flexible investment
in our budget. Unlike other line items
that are tied to fixed events or
programs, this funding allows us to act
on opportunity to respond quickly to new
ideas, partnerships, or needs that align
with our award-winning DEI strategic
plan. Some of those opportunities
include base camp software for improved
communications with our nonprofits,
legacy partners, interfaith leaders, and
Latino and immigrant outreach. Um, we've
brought together city uh citywide
volunteer coordinators who've requested
employee training on topics like
difficult volunteers and difficult
conversations. These kind of training
will ensure confidence and consistency
citywide in our volunteer programming.
Um, we've piloted a small business
ambassador program and we're working
with 25 businesses to promote city
resources and DEI initiatives to reach
more residents. We've gone beyond social
media and placed printed posters in
businesses quarterly featuring cityscope
updates and DEI events. These posters
are provided in English, Spanish,
Vietnamese, and more, and they include
QR codes linking to the full digital
version of the city scope. We
collaborate with Kappa to ensure the
information is accurate and
up-to-date. We're working with a
Chandler interfaith connection. It's a
growing network of faith leaders
dedicated to fostering unity,
collaboration, and mutual understanding
among Chandler's diverse faith-based
organizations. We're also working on the
creation of a lead Chandler Young adult
program in collaboration with Chandler
Gilbert Community College and CUSD,
launching in the fall of 2025. It's
designed to empower young adults, build
leadership skills, and encourage civic
involvement. Um, this funding will also
support our internal city employee
development. We had an internal speaker
series that so far has had 13 sessions
and 300 employees. We serve attending we
survey employees for their feedback and
topics they would specifically like to
hear about and we um this series is
directly of what employees want to hear.
Some of those examples are
microaggressions and women in
nontraditional
roles. This is how we stay aligned with
our strategic plan while staying nimble
and responsive. Our next ask is for the
temporary DEI program specialist. The
specialist plays a key role in
delivering on our mission. The position
manages our major DEI events like the
multicultural festival, Diwali,
quantiggo fiesta and cultural music in
the park. It also serves as our liaison
to our legacy cultural partners and
Chandler sister cities. The position
continues to build trusted relationships
with cultural organizations that have
served Chandler for decades. We've built
deep trust and connections with these
legacy groups, many of whom now serve as
messengers of broader city services,
helping their communities access
support, programming, and opportunities
beyond just
events. Our next ask is for DEI legacy
partner organization support and event
sponsorship. We continue to support more
than a dozen legacy partners including
Miss Indian Arizona, Sema Turkish
Festival, Chandler Men of Action, East
Valley Jewish Community Center, Chandler
Pride, and others. This funding will
help increase our annual allocations to
legacy partners. With increased cost
across the board, many partners
appreciate a small bump in their city
sponsorship
amounts. These organizations do more
than host cultural events. They help
celebrate and educate our communities,
connect attendees to city services,
promote civic engagement, and build
bridges that ampl amplify Chandler's
broader goals. This funding also
includes our pilot event sponsorship
program. We offer up to
$2,500 and DEI staff support to five new
or emerging community events that
reflect underrepresented aspects of DEI
or something not covered by our legacy
partners. Some examples of some groups
that have been funded are Archwood Black
Marketplace, Korean Cultural Festival,
Land and Legacy Inclusive CPR and
Seizure Seizure Training, and the fourth
annual South Pacific Island Festival
that moved from Chandler to Tempee. The
organizers of this event live in
Chandler and were thrilled by the city's
show of support. Together, DEI produced
events, Legacy, and our partner events
reached over 44,000 residents this year,
demonstrating um impact and
reach. Uh to close, the budget supports
inclusion as a practice. It provides
tools and resources of city staff,
trust, and support of our community
partners, and opportunity to residents
who want to contri contribute to
Chandler's future. Thank you for your
continued support and investment in
building a city where everyone belongs.
With that, I'll take any questions.
questions.
Wow, you get the after lunch uh benefit
after lunch.
Thank you, Nikki.
The word's going to get out. Um you're
gonna have people fighting to go away
after lunch now. Really? Yeah. Council,
we should be done by 1:15.
All right. Human resources. Rayan
Nelson. Good afternoon. So, I like Kim
and Dana will take every opportunity to
showcase my grandkids. And I love it
that I don't think we're old enough to
be grandmas and when people call them my
kids, I don't argue. So, that's good.
So, thank you for allowing me to present
the HR budget this year. It's we've been
very busy this year supporting all the
amazing departments that you've heard
from uh today. We we are involved in
everything from recruitment to
retirement and everything in between.
So, two things that I wanted to
highlight. Um I once again want to shine
the light on our internship program and
our on ongoing partnership with Chandler
Gilbert Community College. Really
helping develop and launch this
initiative has been one of the most
rewarding things I've done since I've
been employed with the city. So, some
stats for you. Um, six internships have
been completed um, processes since we
piloted this in 2023. We're wrapping up
the sixth one this month. Over 40
departments, divisions, cost centers,
however you want to break that out, have
participated in the program. Thus far,
we've had 69 individual interns who have
completed 106 internships. So this
includes um the original internship and
then if they extend to a second one. I I
love it when a department calls and says
we love our intern. Can we please keep
them? So we allow that for one
additional internship program. So 82% of
our interns go on to a second
internship. Um of that 16 or 28% of our
interns have found city employment. So
they've went on to be temporary
employees. We're grooming them to
continue to um follow along in our
footsteps. And we will be kicking off
number seven in September. And the word
is out at the community college. We got
553 applications
from 280 different individuals. So, some
apply for different internships, more
than one, and we've already conducted
252 interviews for those placements in
September. So, it's really cool. It's so
amazing. Um the second one that I want
to highlight is the launch of our new
citywide parental leave benefit. So this
was a key milestone for our city's
overall um benefits roadmap and it's
really exciting to see this initiative
um come to fruition. So this policy
provides up to 160 hours of paid leave
or 240 hours for fire employees for the
birth or the adoption of a child. And
this is separate from any acred sick or
vacation time that they have. So far,
we've had 18 employees who have taken
advantage of it with eight more slated
um coming up soon. Um it's been very
wellreceived and I think it stands as a
another strong example of our commitment
to supporting our Chandler employees and
we're very grateful to Mayor and Council
for the support and making this um come
come to fruition.
So, so we have 25 FTE. The majority of
our budget is personnel and benefits.
Um, we are split between the general
fund and three self- insurance funds
that we
manage. And in the interest of time, I
pulled all of my decision packages, so I
have nothing to show today.
But with that, I'll take any questions
that you have. Mayor, thank you, Ralin.
Council member Rando, just a comment,
Ralin. You guys are doing a great job.
And sometimes I and maybe the other
council members will come to city hall
and we'll see an orientation and of
course I have to stop and say hello,
right? Yes. And I cannot tell you at
least once or two, maybe even three
people said, "Oh, I used to work in
Chandler, but I'm back." And that says
it all right there. That extra nickel
or$150 doesn't equate to the cultural
aspect and what we do here in the city.
So kudos to you and your department for
helping us drive that. Thank you. I
appreciate that.
Thank you. Thank you.
Next up, economic development with uh
Micah Robert Miranda.
Robert,
that the alias is Roberto.
All right. So, these are my roommates.
Um, they eat all my food. They leave a
mess everywhere, but they're my crew and
I wouldn't have it any other way. So,
there's the the six of us. Um, 2024 25
year to date has been really an amazing
year for the economic development team
in the city of Chandler. As you know,
we've had a major emphasis on
backfilling empty office space. So,
we've had some great locates with Dr.
Horn Mahoney Group and some of our other
locates as well. Um we've also talked
extensively about redevelopment filling
big box space and you can see through
this list Round One U Carolina's Moxorn
House some of these projects that are
bringing new life to older areas of the
city. Very important to us. Part of our
charge is to always get out and meet
with our businesses. We've had 55 uh
market assessment meetings with Chandler
Companies year to date. um which is
really is rolling into um the Chandler
Career Center, what we have going on in
that capacity. Uh two years ago, mayor
and council provided funding for a
temporary position to focus on workforce
development. Um we'll talk a little bit
more about that, but part of our BREEs
and market assessment uh meetings have
really discussed labor issues and what's
going on there and how we can help these
companies. So that's proven to be very
very positive with the Chandler Career
Center platform and looking to take that
to the next level this year. And
obviously um a couple council meetings
ago, we recognized the Chandler
Innovation Fair Science Exhibitor
winners. So that's always a great event.
Appreciate Mayor and council support on
that and also for bringing in some of
the sponsorship dollars associated with
that. So we are a U
8.5 FTE team total uh operating and
personnel of 2.4 million
um 100% general funded. and page 43 of
your package, we'll talk about some of
our DPS. So, the first one we have is uh
ongoing adjustment for digit targeted
digital marketing campaigns. Last year,
council appropriated onetime amount of
$24,000. We've seen a lot of success
with that. Um so, we're looking to uh
continue that going forward. We're also
looking to add 12,000 to do some
additional um targeted u ad buys as
well, which we historically haven't
done. We're looking to drive more more
traction to the website. Um software
subscription increases like everything
else we've seen a increase in those. So
just trying to stay ahead of those costs
that goes towards our uh databases for
market information
um real estate databases, Adobe software
as well that we use to put together our
RFP response packages. We do have a
request for onetime amount for
continuing the tempor temporary
workforce development position which um
is going extremely well. Um to date uh
we have approximately 50 businesses
onboarded into the Chandler Career
Center. Uh that includes
approximately 600 job seekers for 800
Chandler 800 jobs available in Chandler.
Those 800 jobs are physical um positions
that were posted by City of Chandler
staff to get that up and running. So,
seen a lot of momentum there, a lot of
participation. It's been really fun to
watch um individuals come in. We're
helping them with their resumes, getting
them on career centers, and then finding
them employment throughout the city. And
we had one um job seeker who needed help
with their resume. They ended up getting
a job at Gummy World here in Chandler as
a result of it. So those are the
anecdotal stories and the successes
we're seeing there which which we love
to hear. We're really affecting people's
lives. Um we have an ongoing or onetime
amount for the Chandler Career Center
hosting and maintenance which is the
platform that that lives on. Um two
years ago we offered uh business courses
for Spanish speaking entrepreneurs. It
was wildly successful. We didn't offer
it this year. We have received a request
for resuming that programming. So, uh,
we're coming before council asking for
$6,200 for that and then the offset of
$50,000 for the Chandler Innovation
Fair, which is obviously, um, supported
by sponsorship. So, that's just a
placeholder in the budget. The other uh,
two items we have are entrepreneurial
and small business development services.
This is generally our funding that we
contract with ASU for the Chandler
Endeavor project. Uh this year has been
really a kind of a banner year for the
Endeavor clients. We've had three go on
to present at Venture Madness, our
highest amount ever. Um really
interesting to see the success of those
companies start to take shape here and
the engagement that we're seeing across
those entrepreneurs. And then we have a
one-time amount of
$51,450 for a temporary economic
development research associate. You guys
all probably see Joe sitting out there.
Um he was actually one of our interns
that we got through Raylin. So thank you
for uh Raylin and uh her team there to
help us uh snag him. But this is to keep
him on um to uh really help with some of
the additional projects we have coming
up this year that we were actually able
to receive funding through the Chandler
IDA. So Josh, good idea. Got that IDA
funding for a couple of those major
projects mayor and council asked us to
bring forward. So um that research
associate will help implement some of
those projects.
Um, we don't have anything in fiscal
year 2526 plan for the infill incentive,
but we do have an amount of
$325,000 for new monument signages in
Uptown Chandler. I think council member
Harris was asking about that at our
retreat on Monday. So, I told you we're
going to be for you on the budget. Uh,
700 or excuse me,
225,000 is for those monument signs. The
remaining 50,000 goes towards
maintenance of the existing monument
signs we have in West Chandler Price
corridor um to keep those looking sharp
and not run down. And that's it for me.
Any
questions? No. Council member Orlando.
Thank you. Um where's the funding for
the next 20 for the strategic economic
strategic vision? Is that already in the
budget or through the mayor? Council
member Orlando. We received grant
funding for that. That was one of the
two items I I briefly just mentioned.
So, we've secured that through grant
funding. Okay. And we're going to be
bringing that coun or that contract to
council in June. Okay. Great. Thank you.
Oh, thanks.
Thank you, Micah.
Next up, Mike Collinssworth from
buildings and
facilities. Good afternoon, Parent
Council. I'm pleased to present to you
our
2526 budget for building facilities as
well as fleet.
And this is who keeps me busy on the
weekends. Um, notably my my mom and dad
are are uh still with me fortunately.
Dad hits 90 this year and um mom hits 86
so she's close
behind. And picture of me and my
girlfriend were that was actually Hawaii
this year. So that's a favorite spot for
us. Accomplishments for facilities in
2425. We completed um believe it was six
roofing projects. We actually I know it
has rained at least six times in Arizona
this year because it rains every time we
do a roof project. I've even held off on
washing my car on roof days. So there's
uh it's just a bad luck thing. I think
it it never fails. We did complete a
citywide camera assessment uh throughout
the whole city in effort to give us a
more strategic uh guidance with our with
our camera system. We did restore uh
flooring and carpet. I believe it was
three fac or yeah five facilities. Uh
most of that was epoxy flooring um and a
little bit of carpet. We also replaced
uh fire alarm systems at three
facilities. As you recall maybe for
previous years, we try to do a few of
those every every year and that's as a
result of our facility condition
assessment from prior years. And lastly,
we install key management system
hardware and software um at certain
facilities. This is an effort to cut
down on the amount of keys that we that
we issued. The keys are stored in in
these secured uh boxes and are activated
with our our XR key fobs and key card
access. And our proposed uh operating
budget for business facilities u total
of $9.8 million with 47 FTE and that's
divided between our personal benefits
and operations and maintenance and we
are 100% uh funded by the general
fund. You can find our decision packages
on page 39.
And for the we have three decision
packages. The first one is the AED
program in which we are we are taking
that from fire. It's being transferred
to
us. And then the buildings and
facilities prevented a maintenance
budget adjustment amount of $250,000 and
utility budget adjustment of half a
million for u cost
increases. And then our CIP these CIP uh
categories should look familiar. our
existing city building renovation
repairs uh line item is our normal uh
bucket so to speak where we extract
funding for major projects and
renovations throughout the city and
again that's based on our current
facility condition assessment uh that
was performed in
2021 and again the building security
enhancements that's also a carryover
from previous years and that's where we
make all of our camera uh hardware uh
improvements and our it'll be part of
the our camera assessment will be
included in that
Any questions on building facilities?
Thank you. Wow. Thank you so much. We'll
move on to fleet.
All right.
So, accomplishments for fleet in 2425.
We continue to to enhance our faster
fleet management software. Seems like
every year we we try to implement
another feature that allows us to give
us more usability and and tracking and
and data for managing our fleet. We also
rolled out a customer portal that uh is
on Chan web which is being used by all
departments to better input and request
service of
vehicles. In addition to implementing
faster, it also changed our processes, a
lot of them. So we went ahead and and
completed all standard operating
procedures for our fleet management
software. That way if any one of my
staff leaves, they can open up a
book in theory and um someone else can
pick up where we left
off. We did complete our vehicle
replacement order for fiscal year 2425.
Always a challenge uh throughout every
year and we're maintaining our aging
fleet through supply chain issues. We
still have supply chain issues we do
navigate. They are getting better. I
will say they're a lot better than they
were probably a couple years ago. Uh and
we have caught up substantially on our
vehicle replacement program. At one time
we were probably two years behind, but I
think we're we're in good shape now
based on our our vehicle order that's
proposed for uh
2526. And notable uh the staff, which is
very remarkable the amount of staff that
we have, we completed uh 1,739 work
orders in the fiscal year and 961 of
those were prevented maintenance. So
we're we're going to see probably that
number hopefully flip-flop after a while
where we're doing a lot more preventive
maintenance than we are actual workers.
And then our operating budget is 1.5
million with uh 12 FTE. And again, we
are 100% funded by the
general. And that is it. Any questions
on fleet?
Thank you. Thank
you. Next up, Ryan Reeds. And as he is
coming up, Ryan was recently named the
2025 airport executive of the year by
the Arizona Airports Association.
But wait, there's more.
He was also selected as the recipient of
the Arizona Airports Association's 2025
President's Award, recognizing his
outstanding leadership and service to
Arizona aviation community. So, I think
we can clearly say in terms of the
aviation community, he's a top gun and
we're glad you can be our wingman
anytime. And just remember, council
here, we have a need for speed in
presentations.
Well done, Sarah. I know who was
responsible for that, but that was
excellent. Thank you. We'll get him.
Um, it should come as no surprise to you
that uh my backup crew also kind of
likes what I like just a little bit.
That's my family in our spare time um
doing what we do in our work time. Um
but um proud to say I'm as many of you
know third generation aviation and it
does appear I'm raising the fourth. So
keep your fingers
crossed. At the airport I'll just
highlight a couple of these. Um, one of
the things we're super proud of this
year is we completed the design of 100%
ADOT funded taxiway extension at the
airport, fixing a 40-year traffic jam on
our northern side. Um, and fixing a
tremendous number of efficiency problems
uh with the field's daily flow. So, very
excited for that. And we also replace
the entirety of all lighting and
modernized the lighting on taxiway
Charlie as well as all electrical feeds.
Um and uh the tenants would be very
unhappy indeed if I did not mention the
fact that we also um have received their
buyin and have received 100% design on
the runway or on the uh hangar area
pavement reconstruction project where
we'll reconstruct uh taxiways and taxi
lanes at the airfield around our hangar
environment that literally get transited
hundreds of times a day. So very excited
for those accomplishments this year. Um,
and more to come from from each of
them. We have seven full-time employees.
Our budget is uh $1.7 million. And we
are 100% airport operating
fund. Our decision packages may be found
on page 50 of your packets. And diving
into a couple of these, I will uh I will
highlight right out of the gate the
airport subscriptions and memberships.
that is for professional aviation
centered organizations that also provide
um training and certifications to
airport staff that we will be enrolling
in uh throughout the year and then
maintaining our certifications.
Next, um I will note that airport
business development that is
specifically dedicated to sending staff
to national um conferences that deal
with aviation suppliers, operators um
and developers. That is to put us in
conferences with folks at the National
Business Aviation Associations, possibly
helicopter association
international and other trade
organizations so that we can focus on um
future business development and
operational development of our
field. Airport community engagement.
Happy to report we're bringing this
forward again to uh in January host
another airport day and grow it. We will
in addition to this be seeking
sponsorships from the community as well.
Already have a significant amount of
interest in in that sector. Um and I
will also note the airport master plan
and airport layout plan update uh must
be undertaken because of all of the
projects that are currently underway at
the field per federal regulations. We
have to update all of the improvements
we have made to date and also
reconfigure one section specifically the
south side of the field on the airport
uh master plan to reflect said changes.
So very very exciting
there. And the airport minimum operating
standards update in an effort to remain
um current with the times as it were and
remain fair and equitable as well as
keeping up with all of the changes in
our industry. We are going to go out and
update all of the minimum standards and
operating um uh requirements we have for
commercial and recreational uh users at
the airfield in order to ensure that uh
we always maintain as safe and efficient
and uh as self- sustaining operations as
at the airport as we can. Um with that
I'll take questions on decision
packages. Thank you Mr. Reefs. Council
members, any questions?
Oh, well, there you go again. It's
another one after lunch. Well, thank
you. I do have some CIPs, ma'am. Let's
continue to do that.
Let's push that through. I thought you
were done. Um um I'll draw your
attention um to the runway for right 22
left extension community impact study.
This is entirely predicated on the
results of our ongoing, as council is
all aware, uh, community impact study on
a possible runway extension. This is in
no way a guarantee that we're going to
do said runway in extension, but as Dawn
noted earlier today, should we receive
counsel and more importantly community
direction in the future to pursue a
runway extension of the south runway, we
need to be budgetarily prepared for
such. So what is represented here is
specifically the engineer or the
environmental assessment and engineering
services in the coming years but again
entirely predicated upon the direction
we receive um from the community and
council in in future. Um I would also
like to express the aviation community
and certainly the airport's heartfelt
gratitude for the annual pavement
maintenance management CIP line which
you have funded for many years. uh it
has become the model in the state on how
to handle civic airport pavement. Um
very appreciated there.
Moving along um I will note the re
rehabilitation of runway 4 right 22 left
pavement. Um this is to be an FAA grant
and happy to say it's no longer a 90 91%
grant. It is a 95% grant with a two and
a half% state match and accompanying
city match. Um this is only to
rehabilitate the existing pavement at
its existing dimensions. Um and again a
federally uh driven grant
there. Next um we will look at the
hangar area pavement reconstruction.
That is um as you'll recall a twoyear
two fiscal year project that is
currently underway. I already addressed
earlier. This will be the uh the second
year's funding to completely
rehabilitate all of the city of
Chandler's hangar area pavement. With
that, I'll take any questions on capital
projects. Thank you, Mr. Reeves. Any
questions? Council may go ahead. M go
back to
um what's the
uh armory a pavement. What's that all
about? Oh, excellent question. uh
through the vice mayor, council member
Orlando, that is the pavement that is
adjacent to the armory and the main
entrance road. Um that based upon AOT
and federal funding, it'll be a two-year
project. Again, that will be grant
funded. Um but we had to break it up in
two years because of the area it covers
as well as state and federal funding
constraints.
Um, okay. So, we're we're still parking
using that a as an active a that's I
guess rephrase the question that at one
time we're not using as an apron. We're
we're using it now, but we have to re
repave it. What you're saying? Oh, yes,
sir. We are very much using it now.
There are many parking spaces there.
This is to just rehabilitate it so that
it remains useful. Okay. Got it. There's
a lot of aircraft parked there. It's one
of our busiest ramps. And the armory
still there? Yes, it is. Yeah. Thank
you. Yes, sir. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks,
Vice Mayor.
Mayor,
question.
Sorry. Could you go to the next? Yeah.
Is that a on the bottom right? Is that a
current photo? And is that what we're
going to be fixing? True. The mayor,
Council Member Poston. Yes, ma'am. That
is excellent. I want to see a much
better picture next year, please. It
will be a beautiful sea of black
asphalt. Thank you. Okay. I That's
That's just a great visual for what's
going on out there. Thank you.
Additional comments. All right. Thank
you. Thank you, Ryan.
Next up, we have Ryan Peters for
Transportation Policy.
I won't be disclosing your middle name.
Sorry. I was hoping to hear all my
accolades before I started.
So Ryan, so Ryan, something you worked
on is that uh Ed Zurker just texted me
and uh they uh they've approved that we
will uh not be moving to severe and
they've also rolled back the the
industry mandates related to severe
ozone. So that that's going to be a
release today. And thank you for your
work and policy and government
relationships to help make that happen.
There's I'm done on the fly.
Thank you, mayor, council. Happy to
speak with you today about the
transportation policy division's budget.
This is my family. Cody is almost eight
years old and he is always asking, "Why
is my picture not on the wall yet?" So,
he took family pictures late last year
and of course he has the smile to
represent
that. Uh, transportation policy had a
number of notable accomplishments last
year. I'm really proud of the flex
Chandler flex record. Um, we just
eclipsed our 100,000th ride in February
of this year. Uh, the service also added
two additional square miles thanks to
some work that we've done with
Congressman Stanton and securing a
million-dollar grant to continue those
flex operations and expand some service.
Um, continuing on with the grant theme,
uh, we secured nearly $9 million in
funding for five different projects,
including over $6 million to help with
Lindsay Road widening project. And then
the much awaited, much anticipated Fry
Road bike project has finished design
and has actually initiated construction
sometime within the last two weeks. So,
we're really excited about that. We did
receive a $13 million grant to help us
fund that project.
So we have a small but mighty team over
in transportation policy and most of our
budget goes actually towards operations
and maintenance which includes um paying
various contractors through valley metro
for services related to fixed route
transit ride choice and um and
paratransit as well as flex
operations. We are funded in two parts.
won by the general fund by about 70% and
30% through ELTA, which as a reminder is
lottery proceeds. It gets shared with
the city and can only be used for
transit
services. Our decision packages can be
found on page 49 and
53. Uh we're asking for onetime money
for transit services and this will help
us um ensure that we have um our first
mile last mile program which is a
program we initiated a couple years ago.
Um it's been really popular um getting
great utilization. We're actually
examining ways to expand that program to
see how we might be able to complement
our ride choice services to help maybe
potentially save some additional dollars
in ride
choice road protected bike lanes and
national trail. These are onetime
maintenance dollars um for those and we
expect uh ongoing support in future
budget requests. But um in the in the in
the intermediate we're looking for
onetime dollars to help support the
maintenance of those um routes.
We're seeking LTA decision packages
related to uh part-time management
assistant. This is someone we've had in
place for a couple years that help
support our our boards and commission,
our transportation commission, as well
as support all the administrative
functions of the transportation policy
division. And then a onetime amount of
$200,000 for transit services. This is
for contingencies in case the billing
from Valley Metro comes in a little
higher than anticipated.
our CIPs. Um it's annual request for bus
stops and pullout um maintenance. Um we
have 375 bus stops throughout the city
and as you can imagine, you know, cars
crashing into them or just regular
routine maintenance. We have to spend a
lot of time and effort um ensuring those
are in a state of good repair. Americans
with Disabilities upgrades. Um this is a
continuation of our transition plan that
council adopted a number of years ago to
ensure that we have compliance with um
ADA law and make sure that all of our
facilities are accessible to our
residents. And then we have uh bike lane
path improvements. Um these are to help
design and install improvements such as
green paint which we actually just
implemented over on uh Lake View um just
on the west side of Fry Road or to the
west on Fry Road where it nearly ends.
Cale Trail Crossing Improvements. We're
seeking $1 and a half million dollars um
in capital project funding for this to
help us design um some crossing
improvements over on Cooper Road as well
as Chandler Road. Um so we're excited to
see how we can increase safety and
connectivity throughout that popular
canal. And then finally, a sidewalk gap
construction ask of $150,000. This is
the result of a of a year-long sidewalk
study that we undertook to see where
there might be gaps in throughout the
city for additional sidewalk
improvements. And then we're going to,
you know, use that study to identify the
the first opportunities to actually fill
in those gaps. We're going to focus on
areas near transit stops and other areas
that might have a lot of pedestrian
traffic, but not necessarily the
sidewalk infrastructure to support that.
And with that, I'm available for
questions.
Thank you. Um, Council Member Orlando,
can you go back to the uh bike lane
slide, Brian? What
um the the bike lanes? How many of those
you plan on looking at? You're doing
that $30,000
uh I don't know off the top of my head
how many miles. It's it's an annual
exercise that we look at. Um we're
focusing on some of the low hanging
fruit ones like green paint and an
additional study will go into
identifying some potential collector
streets that could use um a very variety
of products that um install some sort of
um protective barrier or uh separation
barrier between
um street traffic and and bicycle
traffic. So some of this money is for a
study is what you said. I missed that.
The study was undertaken a few years
ago, but we have to do additional design
work to to make sure that the concepts
that were identified in the study are
actually buildable on on the road. Okay.
Yeah, I know we have a a bike committee
I know has been meeting with your staff
a couple times and I don't know if
there's any, you know, inputs that we
need to get those, but keep working with
the group and um, you know, making this
safer and safer. Appreciate that.
Thanks. Noted.
Council member Harris. Just wanted um
concerned that I represent Valley Metro
on transportation and I've been able to
have awesome pleasure to work with you,
your team, Jason, more closely on
transportation issues. And not to
mention that you guys are award-winning.
Uh I think that's important. But it's
been a great honor and I think you guys
are doing such a good job and thank you
for bringing this forward and continuing
to stay on it. transportation does
matter and your team along with Jason
Sheree and everyone is doing a very good
job. So, thank you mayor. Appreciate
that. And council member Harris, we
appreciate your leadership as chair of
Valley Metro and you know, I know we're
kind of in a transition stage as we move
from Prop 400 funding cycle to Prop 479
and figuring that out. So, the work that
you're doing there is helpful as well.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you, R. Thank you.
Next up, Matt Dumbber. management
services with a mid-after afternoon joke
perhaps.
Well, I got some grief from my morning
joke already, but um I I just wanted to
point out when Ryan was up here, they
talked about he he skipped over that
they're they're replacing some of the
furniture at the airport. We've been out
there, but it's in pretty bad shape. in
their what they submitted as part of
their decision package, they had
information on kind of the the types of
materials and they said leather was one
of the preferred because it's easily
wipable because of all the mechanics and
grease and things that can be out there.
And it was interesting that you know any
leather that comes from the Midwest is
typically
agraded leather and if it comes from a
desert area like Arizona, it's usually
dehydrated.
So, we want to
avoid Arizona.
That's right. Where's Where's Jason at?
That was for Jason. Let's take a ripple.
That's right. Yeah.
And bring it home. That's right. So,
here is uh the Dunar crew. I was told at
lunchtime, I was asked, you know, how
old are my kids? My oldest is 22. And
they're like, you have a 22 year old? I
do. And it's shocking to me as well. 22
down to 14. Uh that's the Dunar crew.
Are they twins? Uh they are not twins.
They get confused as twins. He's
actually almost 18 uh in the middle and
then the the son right next to him is 14
and they're the same height and Bryce
now the youngest is just a half inch
taller than Kyle which is very upsetting
to uh Kyle.
Uh so some of the accomplishments for
management services I think first and
foremost uh the the awards that we apply
for and have been uh lucky enough to
receive through hard work and dedication
of staff and management services
offices. Uh both the certificate of
achievement for excellence in financial
reporting for the 42nd year we're
awarded that they've already submitted
their act for this year for the 43rd uh
time and believe that it meets all of
the criteria for to receive that
certificate of achievement. And then we
also our budget division was able to
receive the 37th GFO distinguished
budget presentation award. Uh we
anticipate submitting again for the 38th
consecutive year. And then our
procurement award 20th annual uh receipt
of that procurement award. So we do a
lot of diligence to make sure that
management services is meeting the
expectations of the industry standards
and exceeding those. Um, some of the
other things that we've helped with, I
think the bottom one is one that I'll
highlight on, partnering with IT and
human resources to really analyze and
choose a cloud replacement for the
city's uh ERP system. That's been a huge
endeavor and will continue to be in the
next several years for management
services. For management services, we
have a a budget of just about $10.3
million. 72 a little over 72 FTE uh is
the complement for us. Uh the vast
majority of that $10 million is
personnel and
benefits. We have some split funding
split funding, but we are primarily
general fund funded uh 87% almost uh
with some workers comp, medical self-
insurance, and uninsured liability trust
fund payments as
well. The proposed budget for non-EP
departmental uh is $95.5 million. Uh 48
million of that is general fund and 47
million of that is other funds. Uh it's
I know it's weird to have a department
that's called non-dep departmental uh
but it is one that we have here at the
city of Chandler and it houses a variety
of of payments and things that we make
on behalf of multiple departments across
the city primarily medical and dental
self- insurance funds. All those
fundings are housed in that 1290 uh area
as well as some of the personnel
payments, the PSPRS payment that Don
mentioned earlier, that $25 million is
housed in there as well. um with some of
the um memberships and subscriptions. Uh
we also have dedicated money in there
for the fire academy and paramedic
schools that uh fire chief talked about.
And we have some funding in there to
make sure that our door to balloon rate
is very high. That's we make sure we
Sorry that Tom said that phrase door to
balloon and I just I wanted to throw
that in there at some point in my
presentation. It's just such a stellar
door to balloon stage. We're going to
have that
somewhere. Uh for decision packages,
management services department does not
have any ongoing or one-time decision
packages, but we do have a couple for
non-EP departmental. They're on page
47. Uh first off, uh we are we we were
told that we should pay into the ADOR
tax software system as they prepare and
replace that system. We've been doing
this uh for many years now. This is the
third or fourth year of payment going
into uh completely revamping the AD
ADOR's tax software system. All cities
are paying into that since they collect
the taxes for us now. Uh that's the
payment for the new year. And then
additionally, a comprehensive fee study
is planned in the next year to look at
the policy and and guidelines around all
fees citywide. Um and doing kind of a
comprehensive review of all of those
fees. And with that, I'll answer any
questions you may have.
Council questions.
All right. Thank you.
Next up, the other Kevin from
developmental services.
Good afternoon uh mayor and city
council. Um my name is Ja Valapuri. Uh
I'm the digital delivery administrator
for the development services department
and it is my uh pleasure to present the
proposed uh budget for the department
along with uh a couple of my uh
colleagues
here. Yeah,
that's that's our crew at home who keeps
us busy for the weekend, I guess. Yeah,
for all of us. Uh I I do want to point
out my crew is all Sundevil, ASU,
including my younger son who is
graduating high school this year and
will be going to ASU this fall. Um u
just talk about a couple of
accomplishments. Uh this year uh we
issued about uh 3,300 building permits u
in about 1.5 1.1 billion in construction
valuation. Um and then we completed
upgrade of vehicle detection at
signalized intersections and
approximately 40% of that was grant
funded and also we're pretty much
wrapping up the downtown regional area
plan update and South Arizona Avenue uh
area
plan. Um for budget um we are about 86
uh full-time employees and uh for
personnel and benefits it's close to 12
million and operations and maintenance
it's about 4
million. Uh funding sources we're
primarily general funded uh about 93 94%
of it and then we do have highway user
revenue funds in about uh 1 million
about 6%. and our addition packages are
in uh page
42. So we are asking for one-time
funding for temporary and contracted
staff uh for departmentwide uh about 3.5
million. Uh out of this 3.2 is uh
reimburseable so that's revenue neutral
and only 300 is uh uh non-reimburseable.
And then we are also requesting for uh
40,000 to replace some outdated
equipment in the department some copers
and printers uh and also uh for training
funds for continued education. Uh to
keep up with the licensing and
professional certifications about 30,000
uh to continue further to present next
slides I would like to invite
Dana. Our next decision package is for
an FTE. This position represents the uh
council approved work zone management
policies and fees that you guys saw
before you this year. Um and hopefully
you'll remember that those are intended
to incentivize contractors that are
completing, you know, to complete their
work within the roadway and and move on
expeditiously. So, this position will
provide that necessary oversight of
those new fees as well as daily
inspections, documentation, and
determination of the deposit fee
refunds. Um, this position is
anticipated to be uh offset by the
permit fees that we are collecting as
part of this
program. The next decision package for
the video detection replacement study is
um for our signal equipment. The
manufacturer of our detection cameras
has discontinued that line of equipment.
So we are looking for a replacement
product and as such we need to evaluate
the accuracy of the detection, the
reliability of the data that it is
collecting, the capabilities of the
advanced analytics and then the ease of
integration with into our current
system. We originally requested $140,000
to partner with NAU for the study.
However, we have since reduced that to
the 40,000 that you see before you to do
the data collection part and then we are
going to do the analysis inhouse with
the help of some
interns. With that, I will pass it off
to Dennis.
I will say real quick in my family
photo, I've got two daughters. One of
them is 26 year old that's a senior at
ASU and my 20-year-old is a sophomore at
UVA. So, I'm a kind of a house divided
situation.
Yeah. So, lots of internal fun
conversations with that. Uh, I'm here to
talk to you about uh first of all the
development services admin and tough
area improvements. Uh, this is a
decision package to do a a small remodel
of the development services building.
Uh, as we've done our city fiber master
plan and implemented our 10-year CIP
program with our uh city fiber program,
uh, we've grown a couple of FTEEs with
that. uh to the uh 300 or $3.2 million
of uh reimburseable uh uh temporary and
contract staffing. Uh most of that is to
help ensure that we're overseeing the
vast amounts of fiber to the homework
that's going on throughout the city. and
uh so having lots of additional staff to
help cover that uh requires some space
sometimes to get together and uh look at
plans and those sorts of things. So if
you you come into our building in the
mornings, there's about eight people
sitting around about a three-foot
diameter table. Um it's it's lots of
fun. So, uh, this is to rearrange that,
put like a little bullpen area where the
folks can come in and they can
participate in the meetings and things
like that and, uh, bring the other folks
in the team closer to the area.
So, that I'll go to our capital
improvements program. Uh, really the the
continuation of our 10-year CIP in terms
of uh, our city fiber and our our
traffic signal uh, upgrades hasn't
really changed since what you've seen
previously. We're just continuing that
on to the future years. With that, are
there any questions?
Okay. Hey, Dennis, the the uh fiber
program and obviously it's essential,
it's going well. Um about how much of
the city is covered with this and what's
the timeline for the continuation? So,
it I would say it feels like about half
of the city is under construction at any
given time. It's not quite that bad. Um,
we've got uh a number of different
providers, some of them working kind of
over top of each other. The the timeline
is is var various for different
providers. All of them are still looking
at trying to finish building the entire
city within five years. Um, obviously
we're two to three years into that
build, about two and a half from when
they started working with us. and
they're one of the providers is saying
they're trying to finish in the next
three years or so, but most of them it's
we're probably looking at still closer
to five to 10 years before that all of
that construction is really wrapped up.
Yeah. And so related to that, I've we we
get a lot of calls for this and whether
it's the disruption
um with traffic or perhaps more so the
disruption of people feel that things
aren't put together correctly on the you
know on the latter end and it seems like
the providers are are pretty good at
fixing once once challenged. Is is there
any way that a message can be sent just
to anticipate
uh a better response before people
complain or you know whether it's the
laying of asphalt it it almost seems
like the complaints are more so they
just haven't put things together and I
realize the complaints are a small
fraction of the work done which means
that so much is done correctly but is
there any way that we can send a message
or to uh I I guess be more customer aare
with this. You know what I'm asking?
Mayor, I understand your your question.
I believe uh I think some of the things
that some of the other cities have done
is looked at uh doing uh a contract for
some consulting for uh city-driven
public relations um to help with some of
this stuff kind of like we did with the
202 stuff um with the the consultant for
that kind of thing. I I think that's one
of the things that I I would throw out
there is uh something I'm seeing other
cities do that might help us get that
message out there. Um I'm currently
working on putting together an update to
our website that provides some more
information about this so that uh
residents have a place to go get some
information similar to what some of the
other cities have. Um one of the the
complaints we get is people feel like
they weren't notified. Uh so the door
hangers, we we did a notification policy
during the small cell build stuff that
uh that that required them to do
notifications in certain time frames
that we worked with the council
subcommittee on ironing out what was
appropriate for that uh so that people
weren't getting over notified or not
notified soon enough. And uh we're
looking at that policy puts door hangers
on homes uh that people look at them and
they think it's an advertisement for the
service and they throw it away. And a
lot of times they intermingle the
advertisement with the construction
notice. Um so we're working on revising
that to make those door hangers perhaps
look like uh they're just construction
notices. There's we're we're working
with uh staff and industry on revising
that. So that's the first part of my
question. The second part is I'd say um
not restoring pavement to quality or or
um and I understand the right of way
extends into people's yards and at times
we need to go there and people have
different responses but I'm more uh my
second part of my question is more just
the quality of of uh road restoration at
the end and and again seemingly when
challenged if there's actual work that
needs needs to be done. They do it well,
but it it sometimes seems like there's a
gap that should they
um is there a way to get them to and
again them is I I realize what I'm
saying. It's uh but is there a way to
get some
quality better improvement work in the
in the road restoration after they've
been laying the the cable out? That's
the second part of my question.
Mayor, to your to your point, I think
what I see personally is a lot of uh
residents expect very quick uh they come
in and do the work and they restore the
pavement immediately. And it it takes
time. The the the residents see them
come through, trench their street, do a
temporary patch while they continue to
work through the rest of the
neighborhood, and then they bring the
restoration crews out to do the
permanent restoration a few weeks later.
and it's that few weeks lag where they
don't see immediate permanent
restoration where they see that the
pavement uh needs to be taken care of.
Uh there are things that perhaps we can
look at to see about speeding up, not
giving them as much time perhaps to do
in between that. Uh I know we've we've
had these conversations with the
industry uh before on it. Ultimately,
when they finish the restoration, after
they come back with their permanent
restoration, it meets city requirements.
And uh it it generally looks much
better. At that point, we don't get a
whole lot of complaints compared to it's
really that time gap where when we get
most of the complaints is when they
leave and they think they're done, but
they haven't come back and done the
permanent restoration. Well, that's
helpful because I I wasn't aware of that
either. So, we can be better messenger
purveyors as well. So, thank you. Um
Council Member Blando. Yes.
All right. Any additional questions?
Thank
you. All right. Next up, we have John
Septton, Community
Services, and Mickey Olent. What a team
there.
How many years?
Oh, easy now.
Well, good morning
Good morning. Good morning. Good
morning,
Mayor and Council. What an honor it is.
See, do we have a clicker? Do we have a
tab? Hey, look at that.
Is that you and Mickey as children? That
could very well have been us uh five
years ago.
All right. So yes, my lovely family and
um our sticking with our theme
strengthen
numbers. Just a couple of years ago, my
wife participated in a public art
project that the prompt was built around
family and she wrote these words and I
have these on my my desk in my room and
I thought how appropriate. So I'm going
to share because it's appropriate for
all of us. Our family is small in
numbers but large in love. There are
only three of us, not even a full set of
dinner plates. Yet those plates spill
over with creativity, compassion, and
courage. And her words were engraved in
a public art project. But if I think
about your families and the creativity,
compassion, and courage that they have
to exhibit to support all of us as
public uh servants in in our roles and
what we do for community. Um I felt that
that appropriate to take just a moment.
Now, I also want to um recognize my
family staff. Uh my staff and work
family. Uh Mickey's here. He's going to
do our CIP. Uh Michelle and Corey are
out there. I want to recognize the hard
work that our uh superintendent and uh
Josh Adams and the business services
team did to help put this together. And
of course, all of our support
departments from the budget team, HR,
and all the others. So, thank you
everyone. And as we jump into some of
our uh highlevel accomplishments through
the year, the library continues to
rocket. I hear over and over again how
instrumental they are with a lot of the
other departments teams initiatives and
the way that they play an integral role
into the community. But Contigo had over
5,000 in attendance. The summer reading
program continues to flourish. Added
3,000 participants this past year. On
the park side, our urban forestry team
uh completed the urban forestry
inventory for our parks area that was
supported by a grant uh that Ryan uh
secured. Additionally, uh we've
completed and opened and we've had play
out at the Tumbleweed Park Diamond
Fields thanks to the leadership and
support through the years for coun from
council and we uh the recreation team uh
another council initiative initiative
inspired by you all. uh the community
nights out at the PBLO middle school. We
had over 347 participants and great
stories when you can see the
grandmothers bring the grandkids or the
moms uh some of the kids that showed up
there. Just something to do on a Friday
night and a lot of fun. So, converting
those school uh
caftorium into uh to a recreational
space that's good old school fashioned
rock or parks and recreation or rock and
roll.
uh personnel we have
uh 190 and 375 uh employees. I think
they attribute the 375 to my
contributions
uh about 24 million just north of and
our operations and programming and
maintenance about 16 16 almost 17
million mostly funded by the general
fund. Uh we have a couple of unique
programs that come through the
recreation trust fund and then uh the
capacity here that we have through the
library trust fund. They are always
supporting us and that's primarily the
money dedicated from the friends of the
Chandler Public
Library. And if you pay attention to
page 41, uh we've got the majority of
our decision packages. And through the
years, we do our best to synergies
synergize these down to just a few. And
again, through the leadership of the
city manager's office and the budget
team, uh, this year we've got a handful
rather than a big old bookful. So, uh,
we've got a little bit here. I wanted to
highlight our, um, focus here on the
aquatic supplies. It's a pretty big
number, but we've recognized some pretty
significant increases over the years
with respect to anything from our
band-aids and rubber gloves all the way
up to our backboards and our CPR
mannequins. This is a capacity that will
be spread across the six different
facilities. And if you think about the
types of emergencies that we must be
prepared for, uh Chris and the team have
done a great job preparing this roster
and we'll need this additional capacity.
Any other questions on those others that
are pretty pretty
straightforward? Moving along, we've got
a handful of here uh additional
programmatic. Now, the pickle ball uh we
wanted to highlight here is a capacity
that will have some revenue offsite. And
I know that many of our staff and many
many many more of our community uh truly
relish the fact that pickle ball is
coming in in Great Rowes.
Any questions?
All right. Um, you've heard the theme.
We've heard it a lot uh through the
through the year with respect to even
the bond committee taking care of the
taking care of our assets. Uh, these
items within the parks area take uh
increasing a capacity for electrical
maintenance. A lot of our infrastructure
is aging. Uh lights are are not lasting
as long, electrical systems at the
different parks. Now that we'll have 70
parks here real soon. Uh this is a a
capacity for us to get ahead of and
respond to those electrical issues as
well as our contract maintenance.
Contract maintenance in three different
primary areas. We saw some significant
increases though not extensive around 5%
in our landscape contract or mowing
contract and about a percent and a half
in our herbicide contract. But just
those uh having the number of acres that
we do that we take care of these areas.
These are uh slight increases but still
significant when you look at the
individual numbers. Any questions
there? Great. We're so excited,
extremely excited to see that we've got
the uh the Discovery Library coming on
board here real soon. Rochelle's got
pictures of it. It's in production. Uh
we're hopeful to have it by the
beginning of summer. I'm not going to
pick a specific date because it's not
here in Arizona. Uh but there it's it's
we've got proof that it's uh getting
done. Uh this capacity will uh give us
the gas necessary to take it from place
to place. The insurance and the vehicle
related vehicle expenses. Uh also a
little bit of an expansion for our
collection developments. We have some
good resources on that uh awesome
vehicle. And then also we have a little
bit of extra the Tumbleeed Park is the
expansion associated with our uh the the
pickle ball courts out there. So, a high
level of maintenance necessary to keep
those looking well and performing well.
It could be anything from nets to
cleaning the surfaces.
Mayor,
where will that um the mobile library be
going this like this summer? Do you kind
of have a schedule? Can you request it?
Mayor Coun Council member Poston, that's
a great question. Uh I do have Michelle
here in the audience. I know that
they've been working on a whole litany
of ways to be out and involved. If you
just consider the amount of events that
we do in the city, it's going to be a
busy vehicle. So, it'll be a feature
opportunity, but a lot of the things
that we're capturing data from and like
working with Leah's group and the
building blocks team like knowing where
our uh current library card holders are
or where they aren't, we will be
strategic. Yeah, we will be very
strategic in the neighborhoods and
activities that we can take this vehicle
to when we talk about doing um envision
events or some of the other types of
activities that are out and about. This
is going to be on wheels and I'll tell
you Joelle and the team really excited
to see what they've done from a
programmatic standpoint to ensure that
we're able to be moved but at the same
time nimble and that if we have requests
or opportunities to connect I know that
they're going to be super eager to make
that a reality for many. So a lot of
events will it also be going to maybe
some of our nonprofit organizations that
serve children that kind of thing.
Exactly. Okay. That's right in the same
realm. um a lot of those places that
might have our adults the uh assisted
living facilities if you think about
right so a lot of different ways that we
can connect with the community we see it
as a huge resource um you know remember
back in the day uh we had the bookmobile
and um it was all over the place so uh
many of us grew up with it coming up to
the park on Saturday or whenever so yeah
there's the theme is is still old school
but very high-tech and very connected in
those ways and certainly we look to your
interests as well. If there's things
that you hear or partners that you think
about, we're happy to make those
connections. Thanks. Makes me a little
nostalgic, but I really love it. Thank
you. Excellent. Thank you. I' I've got a
bazillion ideas that's just kind of
coming through my head when you
mentioned that, but at least one to
consider if it works is the game night
where we're in neighborhoods across the
city and we they kind of roundroin or
lottery for other police or fire
services. Perhaps this could enter into
that too for a couple neighborhoods uh
that maybe would have less exposure to
the thought.
A jillion ideas. Keep them coming.
That's a good one.
We need driving practice.
Yeah, it'll be uh it'll be a good one
for staff. Uh the landscape compliance
program. Uh we've got well over half of
our parks under uh contract labor. It's
very very important part of our
operation. Uh the compliance program is
going to help us put eyeballs on those
contract the work that's being done
doing that audit. um both being
proactive as well as reactive for
incidents out in the park area. Slight
bit of utility costs as well. And the
big one big ticket item here is the the
contract maintenance for our arborare.
So right along with the work that Ryan's
done, this is the labor associated with
um getting the work done, taking care of
our trees from the planting right down
to the removal. Uh and the better job we
do in that first, second, and third
year, we're going to have a much
healthier urban
forest. And this last one is uh for for
the operation side are both tied to the
expansion of uh the the multi-gen. Now
what we've done put by putting these
into one time the expansion with that
additional 11,000 square feet. We're
just two weeks away from our grand
opening on the 17th. Uh this will give
us the capacity uh as a one-time for
this year to really get us to figure out
what we need from staffing, from
support, from uh equipment and things to
just make sure that we get the right
size uh right place uh for that program.
And then an ongoing but uh we've funded
this the past couple of years uh is the
irrigation contract for parks. And with
that, I'll hand it over to Mr. Olan.
first down. Okay.
All right. Next. So, this is my why for
the most part. Um, a lot of you in this
room understand and realize what it
takes to put up with me for eight hours
a day. Now, put yourself in their shoes
247, 52 weeks. So, um, mayor, members of
the council, um, what I'd like to do is,
uh, briefly go over, and I say briefly,
you're asking a guy that's very
passionate about this to talk briefly
about park development. So, we'll do the
best I can, um, about our capital
improvement program that includes, um,
funding for parks, recreation, and the
library
division. Uh, the first, uh, program
here is liaway and landscape maintenance
improvements. Um this is not new to the
city CIP but it's new to our uh
department CIP. Come July 1st um the
response uh maintenance responsibilities
of the uh uh rideaways and medians will
be transferred over to the community
services department. Um so this is
funding to go in and and revge and
replant um the medians and rideaways
from damage or trees that have died. So
hopefully we will continue to do the
excellent job that John Kudson and his
crew have done over the years or maybe
even enhance that that program as
well. Didn't need to do that yet. Um
existing neighborhood park improvements.
This goes along kind of with uh existing
community park improvements. Uh those
two programs are bed bread and butter of
our CIP program. Um, as you probably are
aware, back in the 2000s, actually, city
council recommended that we create these
two programs because back in the day,
we're building parks like just to keep
up with with development, but we didn't
want to forget about our existing parks.
And so, we created these two programs to
do that. Um what it does is uh um let uh
provides funding to replace playgrounds,
ramadas, uh ball field lights, all the
amenities found in in our parks. And
over the past couple um years, I know
council and councilman Harris, you've
you've wanted to make a point that we're
spreading this throughout the city,
making sure we hit as many parks we can.
We are doing that for sure. So, uh we
will continue to do that.
Uh another another pro project that uh
mentioned earlier, long time coming,
Mosquite Groves uh down by Basha High
School, 100 acres down there. Um we just
completed um a very extensive uh public
meeting uh process, had a lot of
residents come out where we um uh
created the the master plan for the
park. Uh thanks to uh Council Member
Poston and I know you were at a couple
of those meetings. uh very patient um
citizens down there and I think they're
very happy
um yes um and I think they're very happy
with the the um master plan that we
developed. So this this just provides
funding for phase one and phase two of
the park which will be about 60 acres um
phasing that we still will um we still
have to determine. We'll do that with
the residents and then when we have a
contractor on
board. Uh talked about existing
community parks. Um existing community
and recreation center improvements.
Similar to our neighborhood parks and
community park program. This provides
funding for our 12 um recreation and
pools uh to keep those up to date. Um
like me, they're all getting older as as
we go and need updates. Uh, so that's
what that
does. Um, let's see
here. Uh, Wind Park, as you know, um,
there's there's discussions about
improving Southside neighborhood and and
to the south of city uh, hall here. Um,
this is a placeholder. So whatever
whenever those um decisions are made
about Washington Street and the rest of
the development down there, if it does
have any impact on on the park, we have
funding in there uh to respond to that
or make improvements to the park at that
time. And then Foley Park, I keep moving
that. Foley Park, um that's going to be
a big one as well. Um it was originally
developed in
1979. I was not here when we developed
it. I wasn't the one. Um, believe it or
not.
Um, were you? Okay.
Okay. All
right. Um, so anyway, so that that that
park is is central to our community. Um,
it it needs an update. What we want to
do is work with the residents and almost
reimagine the park. Um, things that were
done 49 years ago, right? Who would have
thought pickle ball back in the day, but
that's that's the thing now. So, what we
want to do is work with the residents
and and go in and and renovate that park
and the pool as well. That pool doesn't
have the amenities that our other pools
uh have and it shows it
here. Harris. Yeah. Just one thing about
Foley Park. I noticed that there's a
splash pad that happens every time it
rains. How are we addressing
That's being
innovative. That's innovative.
We're trying to conserve our
water.
Seriously.
Um I'll have to get back with you. I got
I think Well, yeah, it floods a lot in
that park when it rains. It seemed like
there's not a lot of irrigation. I mean,
ways that the water can flow out of the
park. I was just recently there and it
rained and there was this layer of water
that was still there after it had
rained. I want to say that it had been
like some hours since it had rain and
and I'm noticing that there is some
drainage issues that is happening
creating the splash pad that I was
talking about. Uh, but I want us to kind
of look look into that as well when
we're upgrading that park and making
sure that the drainage is happening a
little bit more fluidly because I I
don't think it's happening as fluidly as
I as I think it is. And then the last
thing was just the um um you know
finding a way to innovatively I know
that we have trash containers there and
things of that nature but I would like
to see a little bit more innovation
around those trash containers because
when it um when the wind has blown
multiple times there's like about eight
trash can individual trash cans that sit
there. Um they typically you know fall
over. I was picking some up one time and
just we just need to kind of figure out
let's get a little more innovative how
we want to um place those or maybe build
a fixture while we're doing these um
upgrades. Yeah, for sure. Excellent. And
we're open to all that. Looking for
that. And and as far as the drainage
concerns, you know, we don't have to
wait till we renovate the whole park. If
there's things that we need to do now,
we have funding that we can go in and
look at that. So, we will do so for
sure.
Um and then uh aging parks similar to
the other programs just provides funding
um to replace vegetation in our
parks. And then the last one I'll talk
about a little bit is existing athletic
field improvements. Uh we have 64
natural uh uh natural turf fields out in
the parks. Um, you know, several years
ago, I know it was important to council
and still is that we maintain our
fields. Um, this is the fourth year of
this program. I think we're starting to
see the fruits of the labor that that
we've done. We do get compliments. Um,
and Snedigger last year was um was one
of the bout voted one of the valley best
sports complexes. So, it's starting to
uh show in the work that our that our
staff does with this funding.
So with that, do you have any questions?
Question. Council member Orlando. Yeah,
Kicki, what what's happening at
Tumbleeed? Uh the first slide, I was
going to wait till you're done, but So
there there's a lot of things happening
at Tumble Weed, right? So 760. Yeah. So
that that is actually for Half Street
improvements to Ryan Road. A portion of
that, just like any other developer, we
have to make any uh half street
improvements um adjacent to our
property. So Ryan Road is our southern
boundary of of Tumbleeed Park. So
there's a portion just west of
McQueen, couple hundred feet or whatever
that's in the county um that we're
working with the county that will
eventually annex. Um but we will then
that that's for that portion. We already
have the rest from McQueen to the
railroad tracks funded. Um, and we're
working with the railroad, um, SRP, all
the different agencies that are involved
in that. Um, and hopefully we can start
on that probably in the spring is what
we're hoping. Spring, late spring.
That'll get a better circulation of
traffic. Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. So,
um, I know we spoke uh about this a few
years
ago and, um, I'm becoming more and more
high schools. I I just was at one last
week on Piring. They have artificial
turf and they have them on their
football field. They have them in their
soccer fields. Um in fact, you know,
they're designed that way. Are we
looking at again? And I I did ask one of
the athletic directors, one of the
fields I was at, how is this hold up in
the summertime? And he said, we water it
and we can get a football game in here
um with the heat. And so, and I don't
know how Chandler Unified have the same
have they gotten any feedback on their
fields? I'm not sure of that, but we are
we are continuing to look at that. Um,
you know, the first time we we tried it,
it was a cost thing, right? I think we
had a little sticker shock when we were
trying to convert some of the fields
down at Snedgar and just didn't think it
was um feasible to do it at that time.
Um, like at Mosquite Groves, we've got
we have multi-use fields down there that
we may or may not use uh synthetic turf.
Um, you know, the more we look into
this, the more we learn about it, right?
So, you have heat, everything else that
comes with it. Um, what we found is, you
know, if we're putting it in a and I
don't know how the schools are doing it,
but if we're putting it in a park where
we use reclaimed water, then you can't
use that water to cool the fields, which
creates an issue. There's other ways of
doing it, but we want to be water. it
almost, you know, it almost takes as
much water to cool that as a regular
turf field. You're just not getting
you're not getting the playability of of
of the synthetic turf. So, we've got to
look at that
from it was a cost standpoint. Now, it's
actually from a water efficiency
standpoint as well, but we will continue
to do so. So, I guess the trade-off is
this. Um, and I go out to the fields on
Saturdays, watch the kids play soccer,
and they're little dust bowls. Mh. So,
either we tell the sports if we have to
re regrow this grass or leave it alone.
So, then we lose the sports teams
because we have to regenerate the grass,
right? Or we have this dust bowl and and
there literally are just dust bowls some
of these fields. And again, it's not a
criticism, it's just a reality. So maybe
we should take a look at the tradeoffs
over the next this next year of of what
we could do. Either we throttle back on
sports, which I that's not my first
choice, or we continue having um this
potential health hazard for some of
these kids out there because this dust
is going, you know, all over the place.
So maybe we need to take a look at that
holistically and figure out there's
something we can do to keep the
athletics going because we do want to
keep the kids going, but how do we get
these fields because you have to
regenerate them. Yeah. And I get that.
Yeah. And you know, our fields are love
to death, right? And you know the the
catch 22 when the when the grass is
growing when you're watching it in the
summer, it's too hot to play on it.
Right. Right. you know, and so and then
when we play on it, the grass is
dormant, so it wears it down to nothing
like you're saying. So, it's it's just a
constant battle. But we're we're still
definitely open and we'll continue to
look at the synthetic field. It's just a
challenge. Yeah. Mayor, council member
Orlando, I also wanted to point out that
we have literally just received RFQS
from consultants for us to launch the
libraries and recreation master plan. in
that recreation component. I foresee
having stakeholder meetings with all of
the user groups to start to have those
types of discussions. So it will be a
good feeder for us to really get their
flexibility, their interest, their
projections on usage and measuring
against what we have been using and a
good chance for us to look into and
continue to monitor how like the school
districts are using their facilities and
the expenses associated with those. But
yeah, that master planning process will
be open and very much a public
engagement component. Thank you. Thank
you, mayor. Additional questions.
All right. Thank you.
Next up, John Kenudson.
Public Works and Utilities. John and
Jeremy.
Okay, I'd like to introduce you to my
crew. Uh, my son Matthew, my son James,
and the foundation to the crew. Uh, my
wife of 37 years, Evelyn.
Where you at?
Well, this was I think we took this we
took this picture last week. We were in
Hawaii. So, uh kind of like Chief
Chapman. Um notice uh I might be a
little younger than I appear today, but
you know.
Uh good afternoon, Mayor and Council.
It's my pleasure to present today the
2526 budget for public works utilities.
Um when I first saw the agenda for
today, I was a little upset because you
know here we are at the end of the whole
program for today and then I thought to
myself, you know, batting cleanup for
team Chandler is not a bad place to be.
Save the best for last.
So, uh, public works utilities had
another great year completing several
segments of key roadway, rehabilitating
aging streets and utility
infrastructure, and commissioning our
reclaimed water interconnect facility to
help us recharge and maintain
groundwater aquifer beneath
Chandler. Uh, financial highlights for
our our department. um personnel and
benefits of about
$36.5 million. Operations and
maintenance uh $83 million for a total
uh approximately $120 million of
operating budget for the for the
department. The public works side of the
the department is funded through general
fund and partially through the highway
users revenue fund.
uh as well as a small portion of grant
funding. The utility uh is funded
through operating funds through solid
waste, reclaimed water, water operating
and wastewater as well as a contribution
from our wastewater industrial
uh process treatment
fund. This year we have 10 decision
packages. Two are routine requests and
appear each year for on call temporary
services and city rightaway maintenance
with the remainder of these decision
packages for new vehicles, staff
training, and additional funding to
cover increases in operational
costs. So, the first decision package
I'd like to cover with you is a storm
water for a new storm water maintenance
vehicle. Uh currently the stormwater
group uses a very large F550 truck uh
extended cab. Uh it's used to carry all
their large heavy equipment, formwork,
all the things needed for their largest
of projects. Um, what we'd like to do is
rightsize the vehicle down to a small
F250 with a with a a tailgate on it and
a little crane so they can get in,
maneuver, lift off the the uh the storm
drain grates that they need to uh in the
smaller for the smaller projects that
they do on a daily basis.
The next one I'd like to point out for
you is our the item at the bottom of
this one, the third uh city-owned
parking lot maintenance and res
resurfacing program as part of the
formation of a parking lot maintenance
program. A slurry tanker and a spray bar
assembly had been purchased for use on
the city-owned parking lots, streets,
and alleys. This funding is necessary
for the annual maintenance for this new
new machinery.
The next I'd like to point out here is
certifications and licenses. Um, we are
asking this year to reinstate both
one-time and ongoing funding for
training and licensing required for
staff for many of the specialty duties
covered by the streets and traffic
divisions. These include work zone
barricade training, pesticide training,
and reertification for traffic signal
technicians. This also includes funding
for staff to attend industry related
classes and
conferences. The next one I'd like to
cover with you is traffic signs and
markings. So thermoplastic striping is
used in place of paint for the
transverse markings on our roadways such
as crosswalks, stop bars, holding bars,
and turn arrows. The condition of these
markings in the roadways are
increasingly poor shape and are in need
of a higher level of replacement. This
additional funding will allow for that
increased level of thermal replacement
needed to maintain adequate visible
markings.
That is the last of the DPS. Uh were
there any questions? I know I blew
through those fairly
quick.
Okay, now on to capital
program. Um public works side of this uh
presentation. Uh we have 25 CIP programs
shown this year. I'll briefly cover
several of those and if you have any
questions on the ones that I don't
cover, please please jump
in. So, the first one I'd like to cover
is uh street repaving. Our street repave
program funds the rehabilitation and
repaving of over 2100 lane miles of
roadway. This program also funds
concrete replacement necessary for
compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act. work this year has
improved our pavement quality score by
two points from a 61- 63 PQI. The
continuation of the increased funding
each year will bring us closer to our
goal of 70 for the pavement quality
index for the
city.
And next one I'd like to cover is
and is uh the second one on that on that
page is the streets master plan. So the
transportation master plan is updated
every 10 years. This update will
coordinate with the city's new general
plan to reflect the anticipated growth,
changing needs in technology, and
recommend necessary future
transportation needs. So, we move this
one up in our schedule to coordinate
with the general plan. We are also doing
that, as Jeremy will tell you, uh with
our water and wastewater master plans.
We're bringing those forward also to do
the very same thing. So when the general
plan is completed, it'll be followed on
directly by both a water wastewater
master plan and a transportation master
plan to bring it all
together. The next one I'd like to touch
on is uh our street sweeper replacement
program which is the third number 182
there. The streets department currently
operates 12 sweepers. uh our fleet
services division is recommended uh
replacement of one sweeper next year and
two the year after that. All these
sweepers are grant funded and the city
needs to come up with about a 5.7%
match. So it's uh very economical for
us. The next one I'd like to cover would
be the Kyne Road uh widening. Uh the
design for the widening of Kyne Road
from Chandler Boulevard south to the 202
will be will begin next year. Uh work
will include double left turn lanes,
right turn lanes at Chandler Boulevard
and Kyne, widening to the south to three
lanes in each direction. Uh and then the
construction should follow um in year
three uh
2728. And we do expect to receive about
$15.9 million in grant funding for that
project.
on this page. Um, I'd like to cover the
first two projects. Uh, Elma School Road
and Ray Road both are projects that are
in design right now and will be going to
construction next year. So, we
anticipate both projects to be moving to
construction. Alma School Road phase
three will pick it up from about
Kingberg and extend south to Queen Creek
Road. So we'll get three lanes through
all the way to Queen Creek with Alma
School Road phase three. And then the
Ray Road and Dobson intersection is a
full rebuild of that intersection. Um
and it will bring in dual left turn
lanes, right turn lanes, lighting
signals, all of the all the bells and
whistles for that uh intersection as
well.
And there we go. Um, the next program
I'd like to discuss would be the
city-owned parking lot maintenance and
resurfacing program. Uh, as mentioned
earlier in the decision packages, um, we
have started a parking lot program. Um
and this parking lot program uh will be
centered in the streets division. Um the
parking lot program started off with an
assessment of uh about a hundred uh
city-owned parking lots and and roads.
Now with the implementation of the
program, the assessment, preventative
maintenance and resurfacing efforts of
all of our cityowned parking lots will
be centralized within that group. Uh
currently we have seated uh for the next
two years about $2.7 million per year
for that
work. On this one, I'd like to cover the
turf to zeroscape program. Um, in
alignment with our uh, increased water
conservation efforts, this program will
convert about 56 acres of non-functional
turf um, in retention areas uh, adjacent
to our roadways to lower water uh, to
lower water used uh, use zeroscape as we
have done in other areas. Uh, it's a
three-year program to convert these 21
individual sites. Um, work is underway.
Uh, designs are complete. We just
yesterday we uh posted the revised
u designs back onto the websites and
we're contacting all of the neighbors
that attended those uh those meetings
and so they'll be able to go on uh the
websites and see what the what the
revisions have been. So um it's moving
forward here. Uh we do have grant
funding on that program uh of about $3
[Applause]
million. Uh on this one, I'd like to
cover our railroad quiet zone uh
improvement program. Um and this is to
maintain our railroad crossings in
accordance with the federal railroad
administration policies. The city
currently has two quiet zones, one in
the western part of the city and one in
central Chandler. We are required to
reaffirm our quiet zone status every two
and a half years through an inspection
by the uh uh by the FRA. Funding is to
maintain our quiet a quiet zone status
in case additional work needs to be
completed. Funding is also provided to
create a third quiet zone from Okato to
rigs. And when improvements are
completed at Ryan and Applebee, then we
will merge all of those quiet zones
together from uh Elliot all the way up
to Rigs. So that's the intent with this
program
and last
program for public works which is only
half of the show because Jeremy's
following um Price Road. So, uh, Price
Road and Queen Creek intersection. Um,
this program will fund, uh, some minor
safety improvements recommended as part
of a safety study that was recently
completed. Modifications are going to
include, um, signal timing, ADA mods,
new signal heads, up, and upgrades to
pedestrian crossings, uh, crossing
equipment. Um this uh particular
intersection uh a year or so ago was
rated um by some studies to be a a high
incident intersection. And so the safety
uh study was done. These items were
found uh for improvement. And so we're
going ahead and getting that taken care
of. And with that, I think we're moving
on to Mr.
Abbott. Any
questions? Thank you.
Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Um, so
this is my family, my wife and my uh our
two uh broke best friends.
So, um I will say maybe I'm a little
biased. I I think this might be the the
favored presentation of the day. Not
because of my my uh presentation skills
or the intriguing topics I'm going to
cover, but it is truly the last
presentation.
So, so with that, we will jump right in.
Um this year uh the department is asking
for one FTE uh senior water quality uh
technician. There's a really small group
of uh water professionals, three and a
half to be exact and they provide the
support to the entire department. uh
they they pull thousands of samples uh
throughout the year uh to provide
information for the day-to-day
operations and also to meet uh the
regulatory requirements. Uh last year
the EPA announced a uh a new uh rule
regarding POS. So those are ongoing
regulations that we have to constantly
stay on top of and be able to respond
to. This FTE will help us maintain that
and ensure that we provide good safe
drinking
water. On this slide, uh I'd like to
talk about uh PAC, not Pac-Man, but
powder activated carbon. This is a DP
for um powder activated carbon, which we
use at our surface water treatment
plant. It helps us deal with changing
water quality. Uh it is a one-time uh DP
and and you you may recognize it from
previous years. Uh we do expect with the
completion of the upgrades uh to the POS
plant in 2027 that our reliance on these
chemicals will greatly be reduced uh
going forward.
So on this slide, I'd like to highlight
water conservation. Uh this program and
this DP request is also similar to uh a
request last year and and really to the
success of this program specifically
related to uh turf removal and and our
rebate programs. Uh to date uh an
estimation of about 16 million gallons
of water has been saved due to turf
removal uh which equates to about
300,000
uh square feet or just shy of seven
acres. So um it is a a um active and and
and effective program. We do realize
that eventually the the the program will
reach a point where there won't be any
further viable uh opportunities for turf
removal. And you know in future years
we'll have to shift our our efforts in
terms of ongoing conservation. But as of
now it is still being it is still a
productive and active um program.
On this slide, I'd like to highlight uh
RWIF uh and the DP that's associated
with that. ARWIF, as you may recall, is
our reclaimed water uh interconnect
facility. We just started this facility
up last fall. So, it's been up and
running for for approximately six months
now. And as we uh continue to push the
this treatment system to its max
capacity of 10 MGD every year
incrementally it requires additional
power and and obviously additional
chemicals uh as we approach that 10 m
MGD production. So this DP uh is being
requested to support that those
additional needs.
The DP on this slide I'd like to
highlight is related to our OR facility.
Um, and this is really more specific to
uh a recent uh rate increase coming from
SRP. We evaluated that rate increase as
across all of our facilities and u we
were able to absorb that uh within most
of the operating budgets with the
exception of our octet facility which uh
was a little imbalanced last year. So
this DP will actually get us back on
track and give us the funding to ensure
that we um can operate with that
increased electrical rate.
So moving along, this is our last uh DP
request for for the department
uh for solid waste. We have a disposal
agreement as you all know with waste
management and that agreement allows for
an annual rate adjustment based on the
uh CPI or consumer price index
adjustment. So essentially this uh um
amount allows us to meet our ongoing
contractual obligation uh with waste
management for those services.
Council member Orlando. Hey Jeremy.
Thank you mayor. Um, how is the
conversion of their trucks going in
regards to some of the older trucks, you
know, leaking the recyclables and, you
know, the glass and the activity? I know
we've had a few incidents there. Have
they converted all their trucks now? I I
believe most of them have been
converted. Um, I I can get back to you
um on their schedule, but I I believe
most of them have been converted. And we
haven't and double check if we're
getting any more concerns about the
glass being in the street, things like
that. Oh, okay. Yeah, I can do that.
Appreciate that. Thank you.
Uh, any other questions before I move on
to our capital program?
Keep moving. Okay. All
right. All right. So, first of all,
we'll we'll start with wastewater. And
and just for some context to to to give
you an idea of the size of our
wastewater
system, we we manage almost a thousand
miles of collection mains. Uh we have
three reclamation facilities, eight lift
stations, and uh 20 uh ASRs as well as a
recovery or excuse me, a recharge
facility. ASRs are aquafer storage and
recovery
wells. just for uh some context there.
So the program I want to uh focus on oh
let's
see advanced too far on this slide is
our uh collection system or sewer
assessment and rehabilitation program.
So as as Matt mentioned earlier today,
this program is really focused on our
manhole rehab and and main lines. We
know today that we have about 7,000
manholes that need rehabilitation and
about 10 miles of our collection system
that need lining and or rehabilitation.
Uh that that equates to about a third of
our overall system uh in
comparison. And and we we are with this
program we'll be looking at
opportunities to combine that work with
other projects like our main
replacement. So if we are in an area and
we're carrying up a road, we're doing as
much of that work at the same time um as
possible. So on this slide, I'd like to
highlight our water reclamation facility
improvement
program. This uh program right now is
focused on the third phase um attributed
to our octio and our airport water
reclamation facilities. So we're we're
uh in the process of uh design right
now. It's about the 50% level and we are
going to be looking at some major STA
improvements as well as some error and
process improvements, improvements to
our clarifiers, a lot of our internal uh
treatment processes again as these
facilities continue to age. They also
will incorporate last year council
approved um in our CIP the ability for
us to move forward with two 10,000galon
fuel storage tanks and those are being
incorporated into these projects and
will be constructed at each one of the
our facilities. And if you recall that
the purpose for those fuel storage tanks
are to ensure that in the event of a a
long power outage, we will be able to
sustain and provide wastewater service
for uh up to 72 hours or duration of uh
three
days.
Mor um yeah, so how long is this project
uh what's the timeline for this project?
Is just be two years. That's it. So, uh,
currently, yes, we're we're in the
design phase. It's it's probably closer
to two and a half years. And and if you
look, we actually there there's $45
million in year two. So, between now and
and this time next year, we will be
completing the design and we will be
procuring a lot of the lead long lead
equipment in order to start that
construction in the following fiscal
year. Thank you.
So on this slide I want to focus on our
reclaimed water infrastructure
improvement program.
Uh not to be mistaken with ARWIFT but
obviously they they are um intertwined
there. And going back to the 20 ASRs
that I mentioned earlier, those aquifer
storage recovery wells, those wells are
extremely important for our water
resource portfolio in terms of storing
and recovering that water uh in time of
higher demand and or lower demand. And
those wells have have a have a a life as
well. And some of their capacities are
diminishing as they age. And so we have
to plan for that. uh replacing that
capacity. And so in the future, we will
be um replacing and are rehabbing these
wells as that capacity declines. We do
have uh a well currently that has was
rehabbed about three years ago and and
even with that rehab, the capacity is
declining. So we are at the point where
we're going to be replacing that well.
So, the the last uh wastewater CIP I'd
like to cover and as John mentioned
related to the transportation master
plan, we're asking council to allow us
to move our master planning efforts up a
year. Uh this is again will allow us to
get a little bit of a jump start on the
mass amount of data collection that has
to go into the master planning effort
and will closely coincide with the
wrap-up of the general plan. A lot of
the information that comes from the
general plan will drive what again the
future of Chandler looks like and our
ability to meet that future in terms of
redevelopment or development and the
capacities in our system to meet that
need. All right, switching gears to the
water side and our water capital
program. Uh so again just for a little
bit of context on the water side we have
about 1,200 miles of of water
distribution mains. We have two surface
water treatment plants. One we we uh
co-own with the town of Gilbert. We have
19 reservoir sites and over 30 active
wells. And on an average day we provide
uh up to about 60 million gallons a day
of water to our customers.
So, the program I want to highlight here
is our main and valve uh
replacements. With those 1,200 miles of
main, we have again uh as Matt mentioned
earlier today, just under 200 miles of
of what we have deemed as high-risisk
mains. These are mains that that are are
very old. Um and we need to start
addressing that aging infrastructure uh
with planned
replacements. So this program is focused
on uh strategically replacing those uh
almost 200 miles of mains over the next
few
decades. So on this side I want to focus
on the water treatment plant
improvements. Uh this is a uh
substantial uh program and
project. If you recall, council awarded
a design contract last fall uh to a
consultant and uh we just received 30%
design plans from them actually this
week. Uh so progress is being made.
Really the purpose of this program is is
to add uh some treatment processes to
the plant to ensure that you know we can
address um water quality challenges with
the surface water qual uh that we're
receiving as well as dis disinfection
byproducts and with the I'll say the
organics in in the water we have to be
able to remove those uh to ensure that
we don't unnecessarily create those DBPS
or those dis disinfection byproducts. So
it is a huge investment but allows us to
continue to meet those demands and to
ensure that that plant and that facility
can treat and produce 60 million gallons
of good quality
water. That project um is expected to be
completed by the end of uh 2027. So
we're two and a half years away from
that. seems like a long time, but
considering again the effort and and the
massive amount of construction that will
be taking place, it'll it'll go by
pretty
quickly, at least for us
anyways. Uh so the uh uh program I want
to focus on this slide is our water
purchase
program. You'll see we have a couple
hundred thousand spread out over the
next two fiscal years. And you know, the
department
uh we're always looking to take
advantage of any opportunities for new
water sources, especially out here in
the dry arid southwest. Uh and and this
uh program related to purchases, most of
the investment currently is focused on
the Bartlett Dam modifications. Some of
you may uh be familiar with that
project. It's actually a very large
project managed by SRP with support from
the Bureau of Reclamation and about 23
uh uh Arizona municipalities uh tribes
as well as some agricultural partners.
And essentially the uh they're in the
feasibility stage right now of that of
this project.
uh and they're looking to build a dam in
front of the existing Bartlett dam and
raising the height of that about 100 ft
which will add additional capacity to
that reservoir. Doesn't necessarily
guarantee water but it guarantees space
for that water. So, we're we're
definitely um you know, keeping our eyes
and we're at the table to ensure that
that if the opportunity arises, we can
get some share of that that
water. And then the last slide I have
for this afternoon, uh and the the
program I want to focus on is our water,
uh quality compliance program. Council's
been very supportive of this program and
right now all of our efforts are focused
on uh addressing and meeting the the
requirements of the lead and copper rule
revision that was enacted by the EPA.
And essentially we we developed our
inventory. We identified that we have
approximately 27,000
uh private side mostly private side
service line materials that are unknown
and we're obligated to go out and do
field verifications to ensure that we
know the actual materials of those
services.
The field verification
um actually just started on Monday and
as of today we've verified 300 uh
service lines. That effort will be uh
continued over the next six months with
a goal to verify the remaining
27,000 before the deadline um in October
that requires us to send out another
notification to any residents that have
yet to be
uh service lines yet to be determined.
So, so, uh, that actually, uh, concludes
my presentation. I'm happy to answer any
questions you might have. Thank you,
Jeremy. It's, boy, there's nothing cheap
about water, but it's our it's our
lifeblood, that's for sure. Liquid gold.
Yeah, council questions.
Thank you. And, you know, one question I
had from earlier is what is what's the
what is our life still at Lomute? And I
know that we're we've been talking for
years and I know we continue to extend
it. So what is the what's the viability
there for? What are we still looking at?
So contractually um that that contract
expires in 2027. So we have a couple of
years left. Um we have been in
communication with the tribe and they
are actively looking at um designing and
constructing their own wastewater
facility.
But as you know and as we know, the the
time to design and construct something
like that takes takes a long time. So
we're we're definitely anticipating
future conversations to probably and
most likely extend that contract to
provide that operational support while
they continue through that effort until
they get their facility built. And
that's continuing in our benefit and
their benefit to continue it until
they're ready to do something different.
Correct. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you.
Additional questions.
Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you,
Jeremy. Council, that is our last
presentation before we uh have closing
comments and words from city manager. I
do have one speaker card from Dwayne
Lidman. So, Dwayne, um I'm going to
treat this like an unscheduled. So,
we're here to listen to you. You have up
to three minutes. And uh the what are we
able to do the lights?
There you go. The floor is yours, sir.
Dwayne Arthur Lidman, 23 01 West
Palamino Drive. Chandler. This is my
family. Hopefully we can get the
overhead up. Four generations.
My highest priority in life is being the
caregiver for my mother who's 103 years
old and she's at Brookdale on railroad.
So my tax dollars are going to Champ.
So, uh, I appreciate the city manager's
efforts and the the, uh, pro, you know,
our department director's efforts and
getting the most we could out of the
this Khog redevelopment to help our
older neighborhood and get a little bit
of a park and then at the fence basin.
Uh, during my September 9th appearance,
we had about 120 people attended. 41
comment cards were left. Uh, one of them
was okay with Vince. Don't need to spend
money. He's good with that. Uh there
were several that marked opposed, but
they were opposed to the fence and they
wanted more improvements. The rest of
them are asking for more improvements.
Uh by the time the 2025 26 budget goes
into effects, the city will own this
land and uh the neighbors are already
enjoying that little park. I see them
playing in it all the time. So, and
we're just asking to for the city's help
in trying to move forward with the uh
the third the final phase of this
redevelopment. So, uh, I guess in saying
that, uh, you know, I'd like to request
some kind of seed money in the 2526
budget just to maybe look at a
feasibility set of your study options,
get some kind of price to see what we're
going to take to move forward on this.
And thank you for my uh my comments,
considering my comments. Thank you.
And city manager, when is our ri we've
not even had our ribbon cutting yet, so
much less consider improvements coming
up soon, right? Mr. Members of council,
we are tenatively scheduled for June 7th
to do the ribbon cutting on that park.
And we're looking at kind of a park
ribbon cutting day, aren't we? Don't
That's correct. You might have up to
three facilities to cut the ribbon on
that same day. Oh, yeah. All right.
That'll be fun. Thank you, Mr. Lman. Um,
let me uh let's start with uh Council
Member Brinus, and I'm going to go last
this time. Um, but any comments you'd
like to offer? We'll work our way this
way.
Um, yes, Mayor. Um, I just wanted to say
that this 2526 um, budget truly reflects
the shared commitment and reinforces our
commitment to the quality of life of our
residents. It prioritizes essential
services, invests in community safety
and infrastructure. It supports our
neighborhoods and ensures that every
dollar is spent with purpose and
accountability. Um, I wanted to thank
all of our members of staff for putting
this together, especially our budget
team and making this possible today. I
want to thank um our council members and
mayor as well for putting this together
and yeah look forward to our next coming
year. Thank you
counc. Sure. Just very quickly I wanted
to say that um I appreciate the process.
You know, we've been working on this
budget since back in October, I believe.
And which means that it was very easy to
prepare. Every, you know, there were
very no surprises really when, you know,
we went and took a look at the budget
book. It's, I mean, if you see it, I
think everybody has seen kind of how
huge it is. It's a little intimidating
to get that and to take that home for
some light reading, but you know, you've
done such an excellent job. And they
always say that you really know
something if you can teach it. And I
think our budget staff does an excellent
job of explaining the budget in a way
where if there are items that whether
it's council doesn't understand, but
also making it understandable to the
public where their tax dollars are going
and making it a very transparent
process. And then just as a final note,
I would like to thank um my fellow
council members because for agreeing to
get this one televised because again I
think that speaks to the transparency of
our city and this is really the most
important thing we do is managing that
budget and where those tax dollars are
going and how we're going to find ways
to serve our residents and they should
be able to have this accessible and easy
and I think we've done that. So I
appreciate that too. Thank you, Vice
Mayor. Thank you, mayor. Well, today
really speak to the fact that together
we are truly stronger and so we saw the
demonstration of that with every
department that came before us today.
They were well prepared and to give us
the information we needed. I appreciate
the process because the fact is that I
was able to see everything on here even
though I have my book colorcoded. I
didn't have to go to every page that I
intended to do because it came straight
onto the screen. Thank you again for
putting it in that format. It was really
truly enjoyable to do out of the last
five years that I've been here. This is
the most enjoyable one that I have ever
had. So, I appreciate that. Thank you,
Matt. And to my colleagues here, thank
you again for allowing me to be voiceful
sometimes when we were discussing these
things in the background and then to
come up here today and see that we are
pretty much have a consensus on how we
want to move this city forward. That
really truly is a testament that
together we are stronger. Thank you,
Mayor. Council Berinda.
Thank you, Mayor. Um, I was telling the
city manager and Dawn the other day,
we're going over some budget, last
minute budget stuff, how it used to be.
I'm going to take you down memory lane a
little bit. We only saw the budget uh
late May. It was a two four hour
session, two days between five and nine.
And my first budget, what I I
participated in went to 11:30 one night
and then at 12 something or two o'clock
the next night. That's the first time we
saw it. And I'm not saying that was a
bad process or a good process, but to
look at how this process has developed
in all these years, it's truly a much
better process. As several council
members alluded to the mayor earlier, we
spent about 12 to 15 hours going over
this budget, not to mention any sidebar
meetings or hourly, you know, followup
questions. And I would say we're
probably about 20 hours in this budget
before we got here today. The council as
a whole, it's it's great. So whether I
spent my 20 hours over a ninemonth
period or my 20 hours over two days, I
rather spent it this way. So thanks
thanks staff for that. The other thing
um as several council member mentioned
already is um you don't have to pick up
a news article today that to see that
cities are struggling particularly in
our valley and there's myriad of reasons
why they're struggling. Um I can
honestly say to our residents as I've
been talking to them over the last year
that we are in great financial shape and
we alluded to earlier today with that
curve of the next five years. that curve
did not look good in year number three,
which would have been next year uh when
we looked at two years ago. So, we're
doing the right things. We have the
right fiscal uh uh policies in place and
we're adhering to those policies and I
know our staff is rigorously looking at
our budget. So, again, um I'm glad it's
being televised. Thank Council Member
Poston for for pushing hard on that. I
think it's fair that they could get this
televised and folks could look at it and
uh any positive calls you could call me,
but any negative ones, give the mayor a
call.
Um I was Thank you. I was thinking about
when Matt was talking about the budget
process and I was just trying to figure
out if it was written on stone or was it
written on paper.
Papyrus compromise.
No, I love Matt. He's good people. Um,
all right. Um, but getting back to
business, um, first of all, um, the
passing, you know, the working of this
budget, it really signifies the
commitment that staff has made to making
sure that our residents are being put
first. And each department took time,
hours, days on end to work together to
put together something that is sound
that really is reflective of what our
communities really is. And they do this
by being fiscally prudent uh punit and
they do this they do this by also making
sure that our customers, our residents
are first. Um, and one of the particular
things that I really appreciate about
what staff does during this process, it
really is a sacrifice to their families
and the other parts of their life
because they're spending time making
sure that every every eye is dotted,
every te is crossed. and you seen today
a very thoughtful
um very focused uh a very um I like to
think a very committed dedicated um
approach and and very much our community
needs that. Um and
so the the budget demonstrates fiscal
responsibility and
transparency and it's it's crucial that
we manage our resources wisely while
still providing essential services for
those that is here and the collaboration
as you can see that some some
departments are collaborating together
to make sure that these needs are are
are being met but I want to commend the
collaboration among on the city, my city
colleagues who's here today and the
community stakeholders as you guys just
heard from Dwayne uh today, which is
great. Uh but it reflects a united
effort to make our city a better place
uh to live. And there are some
challenges that that will come up in the
future, but I do believe that our budget
is so solid, it will be able to address
those issues that may come up no matter
what because we have such an outstanding
budget team um led by our amazing CFO
and uh and and managed by our city
manager. Uh, so I'm really just really
proud to be in this process. And after
eight months of doing this, I just want
to tell the staff, thank you so much um
for making my job a little bit easier,
making it so simple, and I want to thank
the directors for getting back with me
very quickly about questions that I had
um through the process. But again, what
an amazing process to go through. And um
I will say this as I land the plane. Um
uh city manager, thank you for making
sure that there were more meetings for
us to have to talk about the budget. So
it's not just a one-time process, but we
get a chance to see this information
multiple times. Uh and we had multiple
times to answer to have questions
answered. And some days we were doubling
uh where Dawn was talking to us about it
and then you know it was that. So, thank
you so much. Appreciate you,
Council Member Hawkins.
All right. Um, I just want to say today
has been great. It's first time around
and you guys are setting the baseline
for next year. So, no
20our days, please. Um, but no, thank
you. I feel that this year's budget um
really just follows all of our previous
years reflecting the commitment of the
fiscal responsibility. I know you guys
have spent a million hours trying to
find fine tooth um comb through this and
make sure that everything looks um as
good as it possibly can. So, it seems
well thought out for our staff, by our
staff, and specifically for our
residents, which is very easy for us to
represent. Um the investments that were
presented, they seem timely and most
importantly prioritized, which I
appreciate. So, thank you for doing that
for us. Um, and I want to say one of the
things that I really value is that
Chandler is a leader in so many of the
different areas. So, um, Team Chandler,
thank you guys for everything and
appreciate all the time and energy you
put into it.
Yeah, council, thank you for insightful
comments
and you know, Matt, you were I I agree
with you is we're I I think the process
is continues to improve and and if we
put 20 hours into this, I suspect Don
has probably put a hundred hours if not
more or Matt plus Matt's had to hone his
jokes continually.
But we're appreciative
and of all the work that goes on behind
the scenes so to give us good
information to be able to actively
listen and have input. And speaking of
input, I'm really appreciative. There's
been a couple times on this budget where
we've, you know, at one point we said,
are we going to leave the property tax
the same or or or whatever? And and you
guys came up with more solutions. And
when we talked about water, wastewater,
some other models and u you guys
responded quickly with some more models
of for consideration and and we're
grateful for this. We as political
leaders and community leaders, we we
want to be responsive to the community,
but candidly um with the wastewater,
etc., we are far from experts and we
need the valuable input. And as I look
at this budget and just the state of the
city, I mean, we're in the good spot we
are. It's there there's a there's a some
natural graces like a deep aquafer, but
I I really attribute the uh this budget
is is good because we've had a lot of
good budgets and there's been fiscal
restraint on this council and previous
council. this council recently at our
our recent uh retreat really embraced
and expressed a desire to continue to
look longterm at issues and problems and
budgets reflect those kind of things.
When we look long term, we're not
kicking the can down the road uh with
this
budget. The city to our west is doubling
their impact fees this year. The city to
our east is having to do incredible
increases to catch up with water,
wastewater, and other things. And I've
appreciated this council and previous
councils by really addressing and and
wanting to resolve things rather than
get to them in the future. I I and it's
my challenge to other cities is make the
hard decisions today because they will
bring the rewards tomorrow. And I think
that's I I think that's one of the
greatest superpowers or lessons that we
have to others is is bite the bullet
today and and make hard decisions. And
these these water decisions that we're
making with uh hundreds of thousands of
dollars are those are those are hard
pills to swallow in terms of the overall
amount. But we know that it's the right
decision because we will be benefiting
not only future councils but but future
residents that uh we'll just take for
granted that there's water and there's
no problem with these things because of
the right decisions council that you are
making today and and staff is bringing
to this. So, I'm very grateful to
council for wanting to look longterm,
for staff for bringing us great
solutions, but also giving us uh
alternatives when we're asking for them
as well. So Chandler's a leader, but
it's because of prudent fiscal policies,
fiscal restraint, not chasing a lot of
shiny items, but sticking to the core
things like water and safety and and
streets that that really uh give us the
ability to be able to make have a
variety of choices rather than be stuck
with just some bad choices in front of
us. And I'm grateful for staff for
continuing to put us in that spot that
we can make these good decisions. And as
I mentioned by mentioning uh council
member row is you know the decisions and
the conversations that we're having up
here today
uh future councils a decade from now are
going to reflect maybe not on the
conversations we're having but the
decisions that we're making will benefit
them and will will continue to
reverberate. So, I appreciate you all
and the staff behind it. City manager,
thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of
council. I want to thank you for all the
comments, all the kind uh words for
staff, and want to commend you as well.
This is a big process for all of you.
You all have lives, you all have jobs,
you all have other things that take up
your time. And so, to dedicate this much
effort over the last eight months is
truly remarkable. And we are so
appreciative for all the feedback that
you provided us helping us get to this
point today. Um, you are absolutely
correct, Mr. Mayor. Chandler is in such
a unique spot. We all talk as
professionals with our colleagues in
other cities, and they don't get to have
meetings that are quite as enjoyable as
this one because they are facing some
difficult decisions about revenues and
expenditures and how to keep things in
line. And it really is because of good
decision- making you've made these last
few years, especially things like the
way we used those one-time dollars from
ARPA and AC Cares and didn't get ahead
of ourselves with those things. We've
reinvested one-time dollars into ongoing
savings like PSPRS. Those decisions were
hard at the time because there were
always temptations to do something more.
And yet, you made those hard decisions
that have taken us to this day. And so,
we are incredibly appreciative because
it makes our jobs easier now that we are
facing this next era of the economy. So,
thank you for doing the hard work. And
uh I hope you can see today from our
staff how passionate they are and how
much they enjoy meeting your vision and
your expectations, bringing you
innovative ideas and just serving this
great community of Chandler. Um even we
could even get excited about
self-contained breathing apparatus for
goodness sake, right? So I thought Tom
was going to say lasers were going to
shoot out of it next if uh we let them
keep going. So we just we love the work
that we do. Uh we're so excited to
continue to support you and your great
vision for this city. And again, thank
you so much for your leadership uh today
and throughout this entire process.
Thank you. And council, we've got a few
decisions left in the upcoming months
related to this budget. And soon as
we're done with that, I guess we'll
start on the next one. That's right. The
next month. But for tonight, there's
only one thing left to do.