Note: The meeting transcript indicates the date as December 4, 2023, but the provided timestamp is October 22, 2025. This summary uses the provided timestamp per instruction.
The meeting consisted of a special session to recognize new employees, Citizen Leadership Academy graduates, and outgoing board/commission members, followed by a regular session that addressed a rezoning, youth commission restructuring, legislative priorities, and a General Plan update. All agenda items were approved unanimously (7-0).
I'd like to call the special meeting to order for Monday, December 4th, 2023. Marcella, do you mind doing roll call? Councilmember Conde. Councilmember Malone. Councilmember Nielsen. Here. Councilmember Solario. Councilmember White. Here. Vice Mayor Paneda. Mayor Weiss. Here. Ron, item number two, please. Thank you, Mayor. Council. Up first is our uh director of finance and budget, Renee Weatherless. Hello, good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. Um, I would like to take the time to reintroduce one of our new employees, that's Stephanie George. Um, unfortunately, she was uh not able to make it here tonight. But Stephanie is a former City of Avondale employee who left us about a year ago and made her way back to the finance and budget department. Stephanie is a graduate of ASU with a bachelor's degree in accounting. She worked in the auditor general's office as a school district performance auditor before joining the city of Avondale as an accountant, where she primarily focused on the city's financial reporting for approximately 13 years. She's excited to return as the new grants coordinator where she will pursue and secure grant funding for the city's projects and ongoing services, and we are happy to have her back as part of our team. Thank you. I am pleased to introduce our new sustainability officer, Kimberly Anderson. Kim's a bit been with us now for about five weeks. She comes to us with a bachelor's degree from an of an invironmental and sustainability studies with an emphasis in global sustainability from NAU. She most recently worked for the City of Flagstaff Sustainability Office to help work towards their goal of reducing carbon emissions via community outreach campaigns to reduce single occupancy vehicle use and promote bicycling in the city. While she was there, she also worked with the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a red list assessor for the monitoring of native plant species in the Sonoran Desert. She's also worked with the Student Conservation Association and Americor in partnership with federal, state, and local government entities, including U.S. Forest Service, Arizona Bureau of Land Management, and Arizona Fish and Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, and the Audubon Society. She's gained hand-on field experience building trails, constructing enclosures for bighorn sheep, planting native plant species for land rehabilitation and a variety of other projects. She also worked in Alaska at the Chugach National Forest Cordova Ranger District, where she may maintain multi-use trails and provided educational community outreach for their annual salmon jam festival. Sustainability and environmental conservation are her passions, and she's excited to be here with the city of Avondale. And just a fun fact that she's pretty proud of. She's an angler. She caught a 77-pound halibut while she was in Alaska, and she's very proud of that. So please welcome Kim. Okay, were you in Flagstaff pretty much all your life? Did you grow up in Flagstaff? No, I'm actually here a native to the valley. So I'm born and raised in uh Phoenix, and I was up there for my studies. So how does your experience in Flagstaff transition to the city of Avondale? Yeah, so that was a great opportunity to work closely with their sustainability department over you know being a part of weekly meetings with the department heads and really collaborating and working not only with the community for the citizens but also working with local businesses to help our efforts with reducing the single occupancy vehicles. Sounds good. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council. And as usual, we have some early risers that can't be here this evening. They're at home getting ready for bed, putting on their PJs.