I'd like to call the regular meeting of December 18th, 2023 to order.

Would you all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of reflection?

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under T and Justice Raw.

Thank you all.

Chris, do you do mind doing roll call?

Councilmember Condi.

Councilmember Malone.

Councilmember Nielsen.

Councilmember White.

Here.

Vice Mayor Pineda.

Here.

Mayor Weiss.

Here.

And Councilmember Solorio has an excused absence tonight.

For this meeting and for the budget session.

Chris, we have any uh comment cards on schedule public appearances.

Uh no, Mayor, we do not.

Item number three is the consent agenda.

Are there any counselors who wish to have an item removed for separate consideration?

Seeing and hearing none, can I get a motion, please?

I have a motion from Councilmember White, a second from our vice mayor.

Please vote.

Thank you, members.

It passes 6-0.

Ron, item 4A, please.

Ron, will 4A and 4B put together?

That is correct, Mr.

Mayor.

Council uh Michelle, our senior planner with development services will present both items for your consideration tonight.

I'm good.

How are you?

All right.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council members.

Tonight I'm presenting items 4A and 4B, Ashley Furniture, Minor General Plan Amendment and Rezone, applications PL 21-0140 and 0141.

There we go.

So the purpose of these items are to review a proposed minor general plan amendment and rezone for Ashley Furniture, conduct separate public hearings for each item, and take action on each item.

So the site, it's located at the northwest corner of 107th Avenue and Roosevelt Street.

It's outlined in red on the left.

It's about 75 gross acres and was annexed into the city limits in 1986.

It is currently being used for farming.

The applicant is requesting to rezone the site from the Avondale Gateway PAD to the Ashley Furniture PAD.

We also have a request for a comprehensive sign plan that does include a freeway pylon sign that's included as an exhibit in the staff report.

And then in terms of the surrounding zoning districts and land uses north of the I-10 freeway from west to east, there's some vacant land, zone C2, a hospital zone C3, two medical facilities, zoned PAD, and a site with some future commercial uses, zone both C3 and PAD.

And then east of 107th Avenue, there are vehicle dealerships on the Avondale Automal PAD, south of Roosevelt Street, their single family homes zoned the Roosevelt Park PAD, some vacant land zone PAD, and then there's a multifamily community zone to Boulevard, and then to the west of the project is some vacant land in the Avondale Gateway PAD.

So here's a couple of photos of the site.

The first is looking southeast from the I-10 freeway, and the second is looking northwest from 107th Avenue.

In terms of the uses, the applicant is requesting custom uses for the Ashley Furniture component of the project.

This does include a call center, office, late manufacturing and assembly, retail sales, and warehousing and distribution.

And then for the remaining vacant paths, the applicant is requesting the C3 freeway commercial uses.

So for the Ashley Furniture component, the applicant is requesting the commerce park standards with the following deviations.

The first is reducing the minimum rear building yard setback, which is the west building setback in this case from 15 feet to 10 feet to accommodate a security building.

And then proposing a zero-foot internal building setback in case the project does remain as two parcels.

And then lastly, they are requesting to increase the parking permitted for the site.

So they're asking for an increase of 388 parking spaces.

This is in consideration of needs of other similar large format furniture warehouse users as well as their number of employees.

And for the vacant pads, the applicant is requesting the C3 freeway commercial standards.

So the applicant is also requesting a minor general plan amendment.

So the top map shows the three current designations for the property, which is high intensity office, mixed use and freeway commercial.

And then the bottom map shows the proposed land uses of business park in purple and the freeway commercial in red.

So business park is intended to allow for large-scale campus development, and it does allow light manufacturing and corporate commerce uses.

And then the freeway commercial is a land use category to accommodate the more intense uses of the freeways in Avondale.

So the business park component will be about 65.7 acres, and then the freeway commercial component will be 9.3 acres.

And now I will walk you through the site plan.

So this is building one, includes a showroom located here, a second floor call center where housing and distribution and office uses.

This is building two.

It includes manufacturing warehousing, distribution, and office uses.

This is the location of truck parking, as well as here and here.

These are both right in, right out only, and the northern driveway will have a deceleration lane.

There will also be a right turn lane at the intersection.

And then there will be four driveways on Roosevelt Street.

So most of these are designed to prevent right outs and left ins.

And there is a stipulation in the report of approval that semi-tractor trailers and heavy trucks should enter the property on Roosevelt Street from 107th Avenue and shall not use Roosevelt Street west of 111th Avenue to enter and exit the property.

This will prevent trucks from heading westbound on Roosevelt Street towards Avondale Boulevard.

And there will also be several deceleration lanes on Roosevelt Street as well.

So here's some renderings of the project.

The first is from the I-10 freeway looking southwest, and the second is from Roosevelt Street looking northwest.

This is a perspective from Roosevelt Street and 111th Avenue looking northwest, and the buffer will be in excess of 80 feet wide.

That does include other business parks, warehouses, and car dealerships, and it does provide an adequate buffer to the residential to the south of Roosevelt Street.

The project will meet the commerce park standards with the requested deviations I went over, as well as the C3 standards for the freeway commercial portion.

There are a few alternative sites, business park sites in the city to accommodate this development, and the site's proximity to the freeway is ideal for the use.

The rezoning and the general plan amendment do meet all the required findings as listed in the staff report.

And lastly, it is consistent with many of the goals in the general plan and freeway corridor specific plan that does include prioritizing the city's parents from the I-10 freeway, as well as growing Avondale's economy and employment base.

The neighborhood meeting was held on Zoom on February 21st.

We had no attendees aside from the applicant's team, city staff, and two council members.

We did receive one comment on the Avondale Connect platform.

They were not in favor of the use and suggested a grocery store.

And then we did receive one public comment to date.

This was from a representative of a neighboring property, the village at the boulevard.

They did have some suggestions for buffering as well as concerns with concerns with truck traffic heading west on Roosevelt Street towards Avondale Boulevard.

Those concerns were addressed with a meeting with the representative city staff and the developer.

And lastly, the planning commission did vote three to one to recommend approval on November 15th.

So with that, for item 4A, staff recommends approval of application 21 PL21-0140.

I request for a minor amendment to the general plan.

2030 land use map, changing the land use designation of the subject property from freeway commercial, high-intensity office, and mixed use to business park.

And then for item 4B, staff recommends approval of application PL21-0141, Ashley Furniture, a request to rezone approximately 75.7 gross acres of land look at it at the northwest corner of Roosevelt Street and 107th Avenue from the Avondale Gateway PAD to the Ashley Furniture PAD, subject to the eight conditions of approval as listed in the staff report.

And that concludes my presentation and I'm a bill for any questions.

Michelle, thank you for that.

Let me go ahead and open up the public hearing on item 4A.

Is there anybody in the audience or online who'd like to speak on this issue?

Seeing and hearing none, I'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing in item 4A and open it up to council questions.

Does council have any questions on this?

Any comments?

Not the first time we've seen this.

Tina?

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Michelle.

I just had a question.

Can you go back to the slide where it shows the different buildings?

Yeah, that one.

And so building one will be the retail, the sh and the showroom floor.

So that's probably just gonna do like normal business hours, correct?

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Condi.

Yes, the this is the building for the public.

Okay.

Um then the second building, is that where all the the docks and the bays will be?

So the the loading docks will be on both buildings on both the east and the west.

Okay.

And then are they is there hours that they're able to load and unload on those docks.

Um thank you, Mayor.

Um, Councilmember Condi.

Um I can defer to the applicant.

I don't Adam, do you mind coming up?

I don't think there were hours listed in the narrative.

And I mean, do you mind uh stating your name and the address for the record, please?

Thank you for your time.

My name is Adam Baugh, uh 2525 East Arizona Built More Circle.

When I moved to Arizona in 2003, the first piece of furniture I bought as a sort of an adult was at Ashley Furniture.

So it's kind of fun to come back 20 years later, actually, and be representing Ashley today.

With regard to your question, um we're hoping to run multiple shifts through that building.

That's a manufacturing building, fabrication, assembly, and then obviously once the products finished, they'll likely send out for distribution at their other Ashley stores.

So while hours of operation haven't been defined, we hope that we are being able to run uh two, three shifts a day through there.

I think for me, my concern was just addressing um because just south of it, there's quite a few um residential homes in that area.

So of course the sound, I'm just concerned about the trucks, you know, unloading you know different hours of the night.

Yeah.

Um hours of operation inside is probably different than trucks leaving during the day or during the night.

So I think for the most part, I don't think you'll see a lot of that heavy traffic of trucks coming in the evening overnight hours as much as you might see employee cars coming for a shift change, but that shouldn't create the type of noise that would um disturb a neighbor nearby.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Max.

Thank you so much, uh Michelle, for the presentation.

Um, this slide is exactly where I wanted to go as well.

Thank you, um Adam, for being here to answer additional questions.

Um as a resident in one of the neighborhoods in this area.

I I wanted to address kind of how the setback instead of 15 feet, you said it's gonna be 10 feet.

Can you show me where on this slide we'd see the security gate, or is it just the actual gating around it for security you were referring to?

Um thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, um, council member White.

The the 10-foot setback, that's for the security building.

Um you can't see it, but it's located here.

Um, but that's that's only for the security building, not for the main buildings.

So there will be a 15-foot setback other.

Um no, those are larger setbacks.

Okay.

So this one is just 10 instead of the 15 where we can't really see it.

Yeah.

I can I mean I I'm looking at that just considering I don't think we should make that shorter in that space.

I think it should be the standard.

Um let's look at the um the furthest south of these buildings because these buildings are facing east and west.

Load is east to west, west to east.

So those doors are going to be hidden.

What is the setback from the Roosevelt Park and it's not Waterford?

What's the other subdivision right now?

Uh it is Waterford.

It's Waterford.

What is the what is the setback from that building from the property line back?

Is there an 85 foot setback or landscape offer, and then what else?

The villages over there too.

Yeah, the villages.

Um thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor.

Um so the setback on the the west side, it's 312 feet.

Then the setback from Roosevelt Street, it looks like it's well over a hundred.

And then I know that you said we won't have any westbound traffic off of Roosevelt.

Uh will we have eastbound traffic off of Avondale Boulevard?

Because we don't have no truck signs off of Avondale Boulevard going eastbound on Roosevelt at this point, and it'll become a through street, whereas there is no through street at this point.

Um can you repeat the question?

So when you come down 107th Avenue going south and then take a right going west on Roosevelt, you said there will be no um through traffic going all the way west through the neighborhoods.

But currently, if you um is that correct?

Um Michelle.

Right.

So um there's a stipulation in the staff report that the trucks need to enter the property from 107th Avenue and not enter um the property on Roosevelt Street from 111th Avenue.

So these driveways, uh most of them have a little median to um force the trucks to turn a certain way.

I guess the concern, Max, to R if I'm wrong, I don't want to speak for you, but the concern is right now there right now there's no through traffic between Avondale Boulevard and 107th.

Roosevelt does not go all the way through it, but it will go through.

So traffic on Avondale Boulevard could drive east on Roosevelt to get to 107th, and vice versa.

The only traffic that would be restricted is truck traffic specifically for the Ashley furniture warehouses and manufacturing, correct?

Is that a is that what the concern is?

That is, but I think we have a lot of truck parking in that area anyway, and I think trucks, other trucks might behoove themselves to go that way to catch on to the highway.

So I think saying it's only those vehicles that are prohibited are bringing much more truck traffic because there's none now.

And there's trucks that park back there, but there's no through way to get over to 107th Avenue.

That will only be prohibited for Ashley, not for all truck drivers.

Ron.

Mr.

Mayor Council, I'm trying to understand the question.

So once we build the through street, we will not be able to limit trucks.

Our state legislatures have warned uh cities and towns that if we continue to prohibit truck traffic on public right-of-ways, um, they're um have proposed in the last two sessions to limit our ability to do that.

So we want to be real careful to prohibit the use of roads by trucks.

So I would, as your city manager hesitant against that.

So once you build the road, um, we couldn't prohibit.

Well, we can do is enforce there'll be no parking in that area for trucks.

Ashley, of course, will not have their parking.

They'll have parking on their site.

You won't be able to make a left-hand turn on Roosevelt into the Ashley, so their trucks won't be using it.

I would argue that um for those of us who go through the intersection at uh Avondale in the highway versus 107 in the highway, it's not gonna be conducive for trucks to, it's not any shorter or better for trucks to use Avondale.

So I think we have other um mechanisms in place.

There's also uh currently at least no other plans for any type of uh industrial work, no warehouse in that area.

This will take up the majority of it.

As you know, south is school property, uh residential property.

The boulevard will have no commercial, uh will have no um warehouse, industrial, that kind of work.

So there won't be any uh other attraction for other businesses to put it in there.

So I'm not as worried about additional traffic.

If it turns out to to be more than we thought, then we'll address it as needed in and through other mechanisms.

But I don't think Ashley in of itself will bring additional traffic, but whenever we build that road, whenever it becomes a through road, which is gonna happen someday, right?

I mean, um this way someone else is helping us pay for it.

Thank you.

Um but it the road is gonna go through at some point.

But we'll do what we can to pre really for us is protecting the boulevard from truck traffic.

I guess I I am I appreciate that.

Thank you so much.

I guess when I think about it, having Ashley here is very important.

I think any prohibitive road to the roadway is the concern I wanted to discuss.

So that was a healthy discussion to refer to the fact we shouldn't prohibit that, but it could be a problem.

I think when we look at it too, and m Michelle, you touched on it um as an alternative to this.

Ideally a high intensity business park commercial retail would bring more traffic than what we're talking about here in traffic later on in in the nighttime.

I appreciate Adam, I appreciate when you talk about truck traffic going there.

I think there is a concern, especially for the neighborhood to the south that there's not trucks going there twenty-four-seven, and I think you can understand that.

I think we can mitigate that with with what we're seeing in the manufacturing building where there'll be employees there, but they're not gonna get deliveries at two o'clock in the morning to unload those vehicles.

That's just we don't see that at other Ashley locations.

We don't see it honestly at your competitor American family up on nine and ninth Avenue.

Uh we don't see truck traffic there at 24-7.

We see a very specific time of day where truck where trucks are in that area.

Max, anything else?

Curtis?

No, I just had one quick question just to satisfy my curiosity.

What's the difference between a detention basin and a retention basin?

This is trouble one's not.

That's what I thought.

Aren't we building a detention center over in Yes?

This one's much cheaper.

I almost went and sat back down here.

Mayor, Vice Mayor.

Uh yes, surprisingly, quite a few times.

That was my brother.

Uh uh detention basin detains the water retention.

Let's sit out slowly.

Thank you.

So much for an engineering explanation.

You know, I I think anyone and Moronica Mike.

I think any time we talk about a project this big, uh a million square feet, the amount of jobs, the amount of what we're gonna see here, a lot of times it's unknown.

But we can look at a neighboring city that has had a facility very similar to this.

Maybe not the manufacturing part of it, but the retail operation, the office operation, the distribution, we've seen that.

And honestly, I would argue that when this first came to us, Adam, it's been a two years, four years.

At a certain point of the day, this traffic really does truly drop off, and especially when the d retail facility is closed.

There's always going to be employees, but those are going to be Avondale employees who are working there.

So I'm excited about this project.

Um over 900 employees uh at build out, and we're expecting about a million dollars of annual um tax revenue.

Okay.

So yeah, and and I I think when we try and look at neighborhoods to the south, we look at that buffer zone and it's over 300 feet on one along with the landscape offer.

So I feel pretty good about that.

I also think it's incumbent about people who move into a city to understand what could possibly get built around them.

And I think when you look at the public on this, one person replied to play me, two people replied, they understand.

And I think this is much better than having the noise from the freeway or having a large intensity commercial development there.

So I don't see any more comments.

Can I get a motion on this item?

I have a motion from our vice mayor, a second from Councilmember Nielsen.

Any further discussion?

Please vote.

And mayor, just a reminder to open and close item 4B.

Yes, I will.

Was that Chris or was that you?

Okay.

Councilmember Conde?

Passes 5-1.

Thank you, Council.

Michelle, do you mind going to 4B for me?

Um I'd like to open up the public hearing on item 4B.

Is there anybody in the audience who'd like to speak to this issue?

Seeing and hearing none.

Can I get a motion on this item?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Let me open it.

Let me close it.

All right.

Council, any discussion on this item?

Can I get a motion?

I have a motion from our vice mayor, a second from Councilmember Malone.

Any further discussion?

Please vote.

Passes 6-0.

Thank you.

Adam, I'm assuming those your clients are right there.

Yes.

This is breaking protocol, but I do have to share this.

I do a lot of work in a lot of cities across the state.

A project of this value is very significant for me as much as for the city.

But what doesn't get stated in here is the level of effort that your staff has put into this case.

Michelle, Jody, Ken, Ron.

I mean, we have felt the love on behalf of Ashley, and you guys have really gone above and beyond to help us be able to succeed.

So we're looking forward to being a long-term community partner with that.

I think I think Adam, I think you and I had a discussion with Ken Choppa and Shirleen maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago when this project was dead.

And I think through the education and working with our council members on this, showing the importance of this facility, we were able to bring it back to life, and we're excited to have Ashley in our city.

And I can't wait for you guys to break ground.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for investing in our city.

We appreciate it.

Item number five is the summary of events from council.

Does council have anything they'd like to share from this past week?

Anyone?

You want to get right on to the budget?

Okay.

Ron, do we uh Mr.

Mayor, if we could take a break and uh we need to adjourn from this or just go directly into that?

No, I think a recess or just a break, a five-minute break to move down here.

Let's take 10 minutes and we'll move down into the pit.

Someone come up with another name for this area and we'll use it.

The four-year.

Veronica to that probably this budget is going to be different than any budget we've probably seen in the last few years.

And I know I've been saying that.

I I've always taken a really conservative approach to the budget.

And I think part of that is just um kind of that 2006, 7, 8 budget cycle that we went through that kind of prepared me and kind of um kind of set the way that I look at things.

Going forward, I for me, um, I think the next two or three years it's gonna it is gonna be different.

I think you've already seen some cities tightening up.

There's some unknowns coming from the legislature.

Uh we had a mayors and managers meeting last week, and there's a lot of cities out there that are worried about what's going to happen at the legislature going forward in election year.

So we've had one other budget meeting, but I think as we go forward on this, this one right now will set kind of that view that that feeling of how we go forward.

Ron, any thoughts on the budget going forward?

Mr.

Mayor, no, I I agree it's not gonna be the same as last year, but that doesn't mean we're in a bad place.

Oh no.

Uh we're we're in a good place as you'll see from uh the presentation today, but um I'll save my comments for later.

Renee, is it gonna be you?

And there's snacks, so make sure we all get snacks.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council.

Um thank you for allowing me to begin our conversations about the fiscal 2025 budget.

So for tonight's agenda, we have four parts.

The first, um, I'll be providing a financial update.

And then Mr.

Barr will be following up with an economic indicators portion.

Uh Mr.

Milanese will present CIP update, and then Mr.

Corbin will um finish up with some budget priorities.

So, with that, where we wanted to start was fiscal twenty-three.

I know we have all moved on from that year, but we're actually still closing that fiscal year.

And so we wanted to provide you a comparison on where our actuals are trended at compared to our last forecast that we presented to council back in March of this year.

So these are revenues in major revenue categories.

So you're looking left to right.

You're looking at the estimate that we provided to you last March and where we are right now with closing the fiscal 2023 year.

So in our general fund, we are ended up the year a little bit higher to the tune of 2.7 million or two percent.

Um public safety, that's a dedicated sales tax, the portion of the sales tax that goes into that different fund for public safety, ended up 1.5 million over our projection.

Here on water, you're seeing some red numbers.

So here is where we were projecting um the prior rate increases.

We had just implemented the new utility billing system.

So we didn't have a lot of data at that time in our forecast model.

So what we have found is that those revenues have trended a little bit lower than where we started projecting them back last spring.

And we have been monitoring those, and you'll see that we'll we'll look at that in fiscal year 24.

And then sewer and solid waste are pretty close to our estimates.

Now, if we take um a look at general fund, this is what we kind of dive into when we're talking about budgets.

You're seeing our actual at about 600,000 and our estimate at 2.6.

What that is, and I think we had this last year, we have to revalue our investments.

So that's a market rate adjustment that we're taking in the end of the fiscal year.

So going back to to sales tax, what's driving that sales tax?

It's our contracting sales tax revenue.

And that's been pretty consistent for us, and we're going to look at that even further as we look at fiscal year 24.

And keep in mind, these monies are considered one-time.

We can't always count on them.

And so therefore, when we're building ongoing revenues and ongoing expenditures, we can't count on contracting sales tax revenue to build budgets off of.

So that money goes into one-time funds.

And then we have the story of residential rental, which we all know will be soon going away.

But these are your actuals reported through fiscal 23.

So if we move to operating expenses by major fund, um looking left to right, what we presented to you in March of 23, where we are, and that variance.

So on this side, although our spending may be lower, it could be we carried money over, we built that into the 24 budget, um, or in some cases maybe we just had a little bit of underspending.

And lastly, when we close out 23, it's our general fund balance.

So you see in fiscal 23, it's the highest point on this chart.

It's 120 million.

This does include our stabilization.

This does include monies on the other charts I present to you all the time.

We usually set that money aside and show you everything else.

So you are seeing a large fund balance here.

But that does not mean we have cash to add new projects, because as you will see in the following slides, a lot of this money is already earmarked in our CIP plan going forward, and we will show you where our fund balances are trending.

So let's turn to where we are this year.

So this is just the highlights of what was presented in the 2024 budget with FTEs, supplementals, projects, etc.

So if we dive into fiscal 24, let's take a look at revenue.

And these are actuals through November.

So you're looking at what last year was through November compared to our budget through November and our current year actuals through November.

So general fund, we are trending higher than last year and higher than budget.

But again, we'll dive into that number and see what's driving that.

So here you're seeing in water, that number is higher than last year, but lower than budget, and that's due to the adjustments we're making in our forecast going forward.

Council.

If we're something that's getting one major, when you say one, we look at water.

If you can please talk into the microphone so swaggate can pick it up.

So we would look at water.

Is it the fact that there's fewer users?

Is it a fact that people are getting further behind on their bills if that's a case?

Kind of explain why those numbers deviate.

Where we don't see it that much in sewer, we don't see it at all in solid waste, which we never do, but kind of give us some idea why that costs that.

So we're actually over last year, prior year revenue.

Um so in this case, I don't think it's so much that people aren't paying their bills.

It's more about where we set our budget based on that forecast when we change systems, and we have since adjusted our forecasting model, so we will look at that on a go forward basis.

Now we are monitoring our rates.

Um we do have the two years of rate increase built in.

We are okay through those years, but we will keep an eye on it, and if anything is necessary going forward, we will bring that back to you.

But for right now, um, based on our forecast, we think we're good through our two-year rate increase.

Yes.

Not on revenue, but how about about usage?

Is there any way to track not usage?

Yeah, you water usage.

I'm thinking of HOAs and some things like that, at least in our HOA, we've done a lot to reduce water there.

Is there a way to compare residential water usage and other water usage and see where that's going?

And if it is, in fact, we're conserving sufficient amount of that because if you conserve too much, you're not gonna get the revenue, and in turn you're gonna have to jack up the rates, but just the idea of the water, not the value of it, but the consumption or usage of it.

So can we track the usage?

Yes, we can.

Um usage is on our monthly financial report.

Yes.

So we do have a monthly financial report where we do give you a little bit more detail on our enterprise funds, and so usage is available there.

But yes, that is one thing that we talked about is our our sustainability and saving of water.

Yes, that would affect our revenues going forward, but again, right now we don't think it's significant enough to make any changes.

Mr.

Mr.

Mayor Counsel, if I can clarify, um, because I think we're getting maybe hooked on the wrong number.

So on the uh in the mid it's probably in the middle of your monthly data reports that we send out.

As a matter of fact, I think uh uh the team sent it out today or Thursday, Thursday I think it was.

It shows uh year over year water usage, and it's not that significantly different uh from what I know.

But I think this number is really about um our IT system, our change in our um application, our systems application versus and so we now that we're ha have used this application for a couple years.

Next year's budget that we're creating right now will be based on better numbers.

So it's not really this deficit isn't um should not lead this council to believe that there's been any significant change in water use.

It's really uh a systems issue, not a not an actual water uh thing.

Um we are gonna be doing a water presentation in the uh winter, I think February.

And so we'll have more details on that kind of stuff in February.

Yep.

Okay.

All right.

So now we're going to um take a little bit of a deeper dive into general fund revenue.

So again, what is our largest revenue source?

It's sales tax.

So you can see we're trending just above last year and above the budget.

Um we'll kind of take another look into sales tax in just a second.

But for right now, um, what is driving that 4.1 million over budget, and that is primarily real estate sales that was not included in our original adopted budget.

So sales tax.

What's driving that number?

Our variance to budget is a total of 2.3 million.

Well, if you look at the middle of that, contracting again is holding strong, which is great.

But um look at the retail.

We're seeing some more red than we did in prior years.

Now on the retail side, we have seen um some dip in retail for a few months, but the contracting category has been holding us.

Um so again, it's something that would just continue monitoring.

However, when it's contracting, that affects that's all one-time revenue.

So if we start seeing all of our categories start going down and other, then we might have to make some adjustments in our ongoing um expenditures in that budget, and that's something that we will talk about.

So let's look at the history.

So a five-year trend of sales tax, this is for all funding sources.

Typically I say, just look at the top line.

Well, this is the first year with that blue.

That's the current year.

So although it is a little bit lower in some months, we did expect it to be down.

We did trend our budget to be down.

Um however, contracting is just holding strong, and that's what is driving a variance to be positive to budget.

Any questions?

I think what's interesting about this graph is you're seeing a pretty standard up down paying on the month.

So you can look, see when kids go back to school, you can see Christmas, you can see all that.

When we worry, I think, is when you see a drop when there shouldn't be a drop.

And we're not seeing that right now.

The first few months of the year, even though it's lower, it's kind of still following that trend.

So Mr.

Mayor Renee, if I could, can you go back one slide?

Um I really want to hit this home.

So um the two columns I'm looking at is year-to-date actuals, the first column, and the third column year-to-date actuals uh through November.

If you look at that, we're only up um uh 0.4.

Um that's flat.

So um we're in the last few years um we've had forward a seven to eight percent increase in sales tax.

So um this is where um we can't use the total number of all of our revenue.

When we look at reoccurring revenue, this looks flat to me.

So we have to be real careful about adding uh reoccurring expenses because uh of that uh what I call a flat number.

I'm not the math person in the room, but that's not that big of a percent from what I can tell.

Renee, the rent, the rentals right there.

That's the one that's gonna drop out next year.

Zero.

Yes.

So you got it through there, that eventually it will be zero and we won't have that line in the middle.

Eventually it will be zero.

Actually, in FY26.

No, twenty six.

January twenty-five, yes, in fiscal.

It'll phase out, it's not going to be a January one, it's gone.

It'll no January one, it disappears.

So that's half of this budget year.

So we're missing two million dollars in FY25 and over four million in FY26.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um and to Mr.

Corbin's point about it being flat.

Um, yes, in that peak that you see in September, we did actually have some high contracting in that month as well.

Um we just continue to monitor those trends.

Um, and then lastly, let's see, state shared revenue.

Um, just looking at our historical trends.

Um, last year we came in at 34.3 million, we budgeted 42.3.

This includes um the sales, uh state sales tax, urban share revenue, and the auto loo tax uh or her for VLT.

Um we are trending to be uh higher over fiscal year 23.

And single family permits.

This is something that we really saw last year.

Um we hit that peak in the early spring.

Um what you're looking at is a calendar year chart, so going from January to December.

The solid line is for calendar year 23, so that's going through November.

The dotted blue line was last year, 22, and the orange line is our budget, which we just straight line, take total permits and and so you'll see it change slightly there between June and July, that's just the fiscal year, um, where we brought our assumptions down a little bit and straightlined it just over 50 permits per month.

Moving into operating expenses.

Now we are looking at um through November again, looking at last year, looking at this year's budget and looking at this year's actuals.

So in this case, um our spending is uh over last year, but down to budget.

Not a whole lot to say here.

It's just the timing of things, nothing significant.

Um as we go through the budget process, we will find out how much we will spend by the end of the year, how much we plan to carry over into next fiscal year, um, and if we have any monies that won't be spent that will be built into the assumptions that we project for fiscal year 25.

So when we put together our five-year forecast, what are some of the highlights that are included in that?

Um the first is, and I think we talked about this before, is 5% pay increases for staff.

That's just a constant uh assumption that's built into our forecast.

Oops.

Only I can see that do we want to keep going or there we go.

Okay.

Um so the 5% pay increases for staff are included in our five-year forecast.

Um we've also included some compensation increases for sworn staff.

We've updated revenue, so we just went through all of that.

Uh, there is a take-home vehicle program that was previously presented to you, and then just projected capital increases in general.

So now we're getting into the slides that you would normally see in a financial forecast.

The first being ongoing revenue and expenses.

This is just for the general fund.

Blue line revenue, orange line is expenses.

So this is the first time you're gonna start seeing our revenue be less than our expenses.

Think about your budgets at home.

You're paying more bills than the money that's coming in.

So, what is this?

Now you're seeing the loss of the residential rental sales tax revenue.

So in this case, a portion of our sales tax is an ongoing.

We like we talked about contracting, that falls into one time.

So in this ongoing, we're projecting to be um to have a deficit in fiscal years 26 and 27.

Now for ongoing expenditures and revenue, you see that come back and revenues will are projected to increase in 28 and 29.

So there's some things that we have to take in mind as we move into this budget cycle.

If we had a crystal ball and knew exactly that these revenues were going to hold and stay right here, well then we could decide this may be a short-term issue.

This may be something that we have to figure out what is the answer for the next two years.

But fiscal 28 and 29, we still don't know.

So going back to Mayor's comment about being conservative, that's something we have to take into account on the decisions that get made this year.

And you'll see that in um in a little bit.

So the next one is one-time revenue.

So with this one, you always see that peak.

You always see the peak because we have projects that have been appropriated that have been budgeted that are still ongoing, and we need those funds.

So go back to the fund balance I showed you earlier in the presentation in fiscal 23, because we have that money appropriated to capital projects.

So we will be spending those monies.

The difference here, which you're seeing, and you maybe didn't see in the past was the trend continues.

So right now, our CIP plan has expenses exceeding one time dollars.

So you're going to see the impact of that on the next slide.

This is the fund balance that we have shown.

So in the past, you've not seen something as low as 1.8 million.

So one thing to take into account is that we have started with staff putting in their supplemental ass for fiscal 25.

This forecast, we've started work on what will need to go in there, what are our priorities going to be?

We're going to talk about that tonight.

So there's a little bit of assumption built into this, but the point being we're gonna have to make some hard decisions through this budget cycle.

Because 1.8 million out in 29 is probably not where we want to be.

Ongoing, think salary, think contracted services, things that have inflation that have raises that cost more every single year, and that compound.

So a dollar today is three dollars down the road.

That's something we will have to take into account when we prioritize and make decisions in this budget cycle.

Renee, can you go back?

I think it's one screen.

Uh go back one.

Okay.

So for council, you look at that, let's look at 23, 94.3 million dollars in revenue, 78 million dollars in expenses.

Look at how quickly that increases just in three or four years.

And that's what you see when you see salary increases, you see all those things, adding up new employees.

And it's something that this council has been open to do, and there's no we we needed to do it.

But a lot of these things are out of our control as the economy as inflation hits us, we have to keep up with it.

But in fact, it may not affect us right away, but you see the you see what happens five, six years down the road.

Any other questions there?

Okay.

So continuing on, we move our conversations into fiscal year 25.

So what are our budget objectives?

So I couldn't be in the finance department if I don't tell you about our financial policies, which state we present a balanced budget.

Now, we've just seen an ongoing revenue and expense show a deficit in those years.

But we have to make sure that the total budget is balanced.

So just like you saw fund balances are high, we have a lot of capital infrastructure yet to be completed.

We could make some decisions if we knew it was a two-year gap.

Could we take some one-time dollars set it aside for those years and cover us only if we're 100% confident that it's a two-year gap?

Because otherwise, we need to look at what are the other investments that need to be made in these upcoming years.

There's gonna be a lot of competing interests this year in this budget cycle.

What the decisions that we make this year are going to impact the city for the next couple of years.

So moving on, maintaining fund balance and reserves, that's what we'll be doing as when we end up presenting the final budget.

Smoothing CIP projects.

This is something we've kind of started talking about is how do we make sure we don't end up with that large peak every single year?

Is there a way that we can adjust to make sure that we can spend what we're appropriating and plan ahead to our capacity?

That's an ongoing task to ask for, but it's something I think that's a good goal to have and try to manage our cash flow.

Addressing employee compensation and retention.

These are issues that haven't gone away.

Wages are still a competing factor, they're ongoing, they increase every year, and that's something that we'll have to address to retain our employees.

Budget decisions based off the five years, we've kind of touched on that.

And then the last one of developing long-term financial plans for future projects.

What does that mean?

It means we have to look ahead.

We have to see where our high priorities are, what can we push out maybe, what do we look more long-term, what other financing options are there?

Um we've presented to council a bond, what that what our debt looks like for the city.

I've presented our our secondary sales tax, where we show in fiscal year 29, we are anticipating our secondary property tax rate to drop because some debt is going to get paid off.

We should be planning ahead.

Where can we take advantage of that type of financing?

Grants.

We we just hired a new grant coordinator to help bring and generate some more revenue into the city.

These are some of the things we're going to have to start thinking about now.

And with that, um Mr.

Melanese will be going further into CIP projects, so I won't go too much into this.

Is it bad that James is just rubbing his temples?

It's worse than I am.

All right.

So some other budget considerations.

These are some things you've seen before, but they are still worth keeping top of mind.

And the first is pensions.

Looking at our PSPRS and ASRS.

You will hear a lot of cities that are have or are prepaying their unfunded liabilities.

For the city of Avondale, we have looked at these and these numbers for both plans, PSPRS and ASRS, and we feel pretty comfortable and confident we're in a good place right now.

We're funded at a percentage that is appropriate, and we don't think, especially given the competing interest based on the cash flow that we have in the city, that that would be a priority that we would be putting money into.

Legislation, we put this one on last year, you know, and then we we saw the the loss of rental sales tax.

This is another one.

Our forecasts aren't really forecasting a loss of a new revenue source.

So this is going to be important this session.

And then lastly, inflationary increases.

This is always ongoing.

So we have a five-year plan.

We actually put in projects even further, out to 10 years.

And we are making adjustments to those each and every year.

So going back to that investment chart with the high peak, we put projects in five years out.

Do we know exactly when inflation is going to be for five years out?

We make our best guess.

But we have to adjust those prices along the way.

And lastly, again, we were really concerned about this when we were building the FY24 budget.

So it's worthy to just leave you for this thought.

We did not factor any economic downturns into our forecast, and we don't plan to for the budget.

We do, however, plan to be a little bit conservative in our estimates.

But this is just here for you to know that in this case, a five to fifteen percent decrease in sales tax would be about four to eleven and a half million dollars.

What does that represent?

And then the last one, the development revenue, that's that cyclical revenue source, which falls into one-time funding.

So, you know, that's about what, 10, 12 million dollars annually that we're seeing and getting the benefit of in one-time funding to be able to fund projects.

So where's the rest of this budget cycle go from here?

Um we will come back in March and have another budget discussion similar to like we did last spring before we present the city manager's recommended budget to council in April, and then we'll be back for adoption of the tentative budget in May and the final budget in June.

Um so with that, I'll take any other comments or questions.

I think there's I think there's some things to be aware of, and where's Liz?

Hi.

If you want to jump in on the spell-free, please.

So I I think you're looking at two things that could affect us.

Renee, do you mind going back to that?

So the state income tax, they've lowered the down to a flat tax.

I'm guessing those numbers have kicked in already.

We kind of have an idea of where they're gonna fall out.

I think there's two things where it comes to to the state budget that could impact us.

One is that right now there is a 900 million dollar budget deficit for the state, having to do with the scholarship uh program.

And there's some prison issues too, but they're looking at 900 million dollars as a deficit.

That money is gonna come off the backs of cities.

So it's gonna come out of highway user revenue fund, HERF.

And it could come out of a food tax, but I think the governor would be to it.

But I think I think there's things that we really need to look out over for the next few months on this to see how these revenue issues with the state play out and how they impact the cities.

So the first one that always gets swept is the HERF funds.

There's some other ones that could get swept too, but just keep an eye on that, because that's the one that I look at and I go, that probably is more realistic, more drastic than what I would look at our local sales tax to be.

And that's one that could impact us the most.

Let me go down the line and just see if there's comments from council.

We're gonna have more bites at this apple.

Ron, anything for you first?

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

Yeah, yes, sir.

The um food tax, uh, Renee or Rob or Keith is how much?

10 million.

10 million.

So if you and that's reoccurring revenue.

So you would take that deficit in 26 and 27 and add 10 million to it.

It would, as I told my staff, result in uh cuts to our budget.

Um, not flat.

It would it would result in cuts.

So we will need um everybody on board to help us uh fight that.

I do believe the governor has our back on that, but at the end of the day, we don't want to count on it.

And then the the only thing that I want to add, you're gonna see a lot tonight.

Um you have what you're not seeing tonight is an HR presentation on benefits and other issues.

That'll be in March, just to give council a heads up that that um Andy gets to move down here and help present in in March, and he's excited about it.

He's smiling right now.

I know he is.

I can feel it.

But with that, we'll take questions.

One of the one of the things I think that's interesting is if you we're not alone in this.

We're not the only city that's dealing with this.

And and uh and our friends in Gilbert, and in the mayor and I have a really good relationship there, but their budget's big.

There are 230,000 people in their city, but they're looking right now that they don't have 165 million dollars in their CIP right now that they have to cut.

Part of the issue with that is that Gilbert's pretty much built out at this point, and you probably know this coming from Chandler, probably more than anybody in the room, you and Jody.

They're about probably 96, 95 percent built out.

And what you're seeing with those budget issues with Gilbert is that how did they continue revenue?

Because they don't have the contracting like we do.

That's also something to look at over the next four or five years because the SR 30, if it gets passed by the voters, you're not gonna see that phase in Avindle until 2030, 2029, which will spur economic development along that corridor.

But at that point, we're gonna be moving further and further, further and further toward build out.

You're gonna see those contracting numbers come down.

What's the plan for that?

And again, that's that five year, six-year plan that Renee talks about, but it's something that council should be aware of.

Max, let me start with you.

Any comments, any things that you saw that yes, thank you so much, Renee, for awesome presentation.

I wanted to um let you know it's great to see that the stabilization fund is consistent and that we're general funds nowhere kind of near dipping to that.

Um Mr.

Corbin, I really appreciate that as well.

Um you can see the shortfall.

Um and I guess um when I look at that for FY25 and 26, uh, you know, just the first instinct I could think of is we just have to limit our use and make sure that we're really decreasing some of the one-time spending after we get that aquatic center up and running um and be very I I I I agree with the conservative approach because I think when we see that um we're gonna have less contractor tax coming in and all those other things going down over time.

I I would hate for us to you know find out we're gonna have to lose something um like uh the food tax or anything like that, and let's have to bear the brunt of that on on our on our backs, and that's gonna be tough for the city to manage through.

So um I commend the work that you're doing right now.

I think we're all gonna get a haircut, and it's just uh that I don't have a better way to say it.

Thanks, Max.

Curtis?

I'm good.

Thank you very much, Renee.

Tina.

Thank you for the presentation, Renee.

That was great.

No questions.

What I what I've asked Veronica and Mike to do is kind of talk about kind of their priorities tonight.

This you've got me for another year.

And while this will be halfway through my budget, this council is gonna have to deal with the other six months, and then going forward, like Renee said, a budget that is this budget's just down to one year budget.

This is setting the standard and the precedent for what we do over the next two, three, four years.

What does that look like for this council?

That's uh that's a new council.

You all have two years left, you have three years left.

What does this look like for you?

Are your priorities going forward?

I mean, what do you look at and say you see this?

What are your priorities?

Max is right.

Thank you for the presentation.

We are gonna have to trim back.

We're gonna have to really be cognizant of what we um do with our um our funding and and making sure that yeah, you said we we might have the her funds that are gonna be scaled back.

We have to make sure that we are saving in our rainy day and we do balance the budget.

Um it's gonna be a tough couple of years.

Do you look at sorry, and Marshall, tell me if I'm good.

Do you look at I I've always had our priorities, and our priorities have been public safety.

Mr.

Mayor, if I can interrupt, is there any way we can save the priority discussion to the very end?

Um because we actually have some slides on that that I think I can also help guide the conversation.

Um this is really just the beginning of the revenue and whatnot.

You get to hear even better news from Rob and uh then you get to hear about uh a lot of those projects we're talking about from uh James.

So stay tuned, there's more good news to come.

All right.

So with that, I will go ahead and turn it over to Rob.

It's not questions and comments, and I'm not ready to go.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council.

So I wouldn't say I have good news.

I wouldn't say I have bad news.

I think I just have news when it comes to the economy.

So just kind of to set the picture and why we pay attention to this stuff.

All the major revenue sources here in the city, sales tax, the monies we receive from state income tax, state sales tax, our development related revenues, are dependent on the overall health of the economy.

So when times are good, we generate more revenue.

And when times are tough, we see our revenue decreases, as that one uh recession slide showed.

So the question is where are we currently with our economy?

And one of the big things that we're seeing and we're monitoring is the fact that the state is facing a budget shortfall, not because of revenues declining at the state, but because of additional programs that they've added there.

They're also experiencing the impact of the flat tax that they implemented.

Um so there was a delayed implementation of that, and that's now affecting revenues collected by the state.

In terms of personal income growth, we're still seeing that positive, which is great news.

It's slowing as the Fed has raised interest rates, that slows down economic um activity overall, which slows economic personal income growth, but we're still seeing that positive.

Unemployment in the Phoenix metropolitan area has remained pretty steady.

Um last year it was 3.7%, this year it's 4%, so a little slight increase, but not a significant increase.

Um one of the big economic headlines is the fact that inflation is falling back in line here at the state.

We're falling back in line with where it was nationally.

And overall, as a nation, we're seeing um lower inflation than we saw a couple of years ago, which is good news.

Um single family home permits are slowing, though we are starting to see that perk up in the metropolitan area and probably soon here in Avondale.

Um 30-year mortgage interest rates are the highest that they have been in a couple decades because of the Fed's tightening of monetary policy, which wasn't reaction to the high inflation.

So going through a few economic indicators, so with personal income.

Um here in Arizona, we have seen that 1.5% growth year over year, which is below our five and ten year average.

Um personal income here in Arizona remains below the rest of the United States.

With medium home prices, so um we saw that massive spike in home prices here in Arizona and in the nation, our spike was greater than the uh the rest of the country.

Um we have seen that decline a little bit from that historic high, but they do remain high overall.

And overall, our Arizona home median home price is higher than the nation.

Here is single family home permits.

So what this graph does is it compares the metropolitan area overall with um also Avondale data.

So metropolitan area overall is a little smoother.

Um Avondel data is a little bit more dependent on local factors, local developments, gain shovel ready.

Um in the metropolitan area, we saw that um really ramp up in 21, 22, and then decrease when the first Fed tightening happened, and then the metropolitan area, we are seeing that spike up again.

So Avondel remains a little noisy, but um we still remain pretty good compared to where we were five, ten years ago in terms of single family home permits.

30-year mortgage rates, which does drive a lot of economic activity, um, those are still the highest we've seen in two decades.

So not a lot of relief out there for any new home purchasers.

I feel sorry for anyone that is looking to buy a home right now, but um the Fed has indicated that they are not going to continue to raise interest rates.

Um so we might see some decreases, but I wouldn't necessarily hold your breath because this next slide, where the Fed's target for inflation is two percent.

And right now we remain above two percent.

So we have seen that decrease.

We're not seeing 10 percent, 12 percent year over year inflation numbers that we were seeing here in the state uh metropolitan area a couple of years ago, but that still remains pretty elevated.

And I think one note with inflation is I think people have this perception of well, if a gallon of milk in 2019 costs $3, that when the Fed finally gets inflation under control, that will return to $3.

It's gonna remain at the current prices, it's just that the price is gonna, you know, it's gonna be $4, it's not gonna be $5.

That's the Fed's goal.

Um, and then you hear with unemployment, you can see that unemployment has not spiked up despite the Fed increasing interest rates.

So that is a good piece of news here in Phoenix and for the country overall.

Finally, the last slide I like to show is um hotel room sales here in the uh here in Arizona, and you can see that that is pretty much at the highest it's ever been.

So Arizona remains a place that people want to come to both as tourists, and we also see that with a lot of the economic development that's happening here at the state.

So with that, any questions?

Any questions for Rob?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, city council.

Once this gets going.

He's working on it.

So I'll be giving you an update on the current FY24, going over some projects, how we're doing with the projects to date, and going forward to complete the rest of the year.

And then we'll segue into talk about FY25 that Mr.

Corbin talked about.

We'll talk about some of the projects that have already been programmed, and I'll even lead off with some possible ads to the projects.

So with that, we can start out with um projects that are already completed.

So we want to start out with wins.

It's always a great way to start a presentation.

And this is a good one, Avendale Boulevard at Lower Buckeye.

You can see the dollar amount there, right around $7 million.

Obviously, made a huge impact to the safety and capacity of that intersection.

I know leaving the race, it was a lot faster.

Um, but yes, just general safety and the general improvement of it.

This also included a millin overlay all the way up to Wyman.

Uh so just keep that in mind for another project later on.

And next one is uh Mountain View Community Center.

Thank you to all of council who were there for the ribbon cutting.

That was a great uh event, and we really believe this is a tremendous resource for Ivan Hill uh residents moving forward and generations moving forward.

Obviously, huge change going over to an esports room, gaming room, um, and a just general multi-purpose room.

We know we have more needs for that kind of space without the city.

We've seen what's happened at the at the VIC with birthday parties and Kinseniers over there, so it's nice that we have another location for our residents to take advantage of those facilities.

And then just really quick uh a few other highlights Dysart Road Sure improvements.

This is the big one that went down Dysart Road and crossed over MC 85 and the railroad.

Um it really involved pretty much every department in the city to make sure this is a successful project.

And we're really grateful to the businesses in Old Town for their patience during that time.

Uh another project would be the 10th Street Lift Station.

You might know this more of what that work was happening on Van Buren between Alicio C.

Felix and Van Buren.

If you saw crews going in, they were replacing a transmission line.

The added challenge for this was hanging part of that transmission line along the bridge, um, which was done successfully.

Uh that's so that'll help continue development in the area.

And then Fire Station 172, though I got to apologize to the chief over there.

We he calls that North PD substation.

Um again, thank you all for attending that uh those of you that are able to attend the ribbon cutting.

Obviously, it was an investment in protecting equipment and staff.

Uh we put a lot of valuable equipment inside our squad vehicles, and by having them covered during the day, we can keep them going longer.

And then, of course, it protects our officers.

And then on the similar note, the moss security and workspace improvements.

Uh, this improved the security around the mosque by putting up additional fencing, cameras.

We store a lot of materials on site, a lot of it outdoors.

We want to make sure it's protected.

But then on the interior, we can make sure that the staff were sitting in ergonomic seats, we give them sit-stand desks.

Um, we want to make sure that they can continue to be healthy employees for a long time.

And then the last one here just wanted to touch on is the court lobby expansion.

Obviously, we had a need to add additional space to make sure that security can monitor the entrance and protect both the staff but and our visitors to the court.

Then we have some projects that are currently underway that we want to complete by June 30th.

And the first of these is the old town phase two.

If you recall, we have six phases of old town.

This is number two.

So this is in the neighborhood just to the northwest of western and central.

And the work includes doing a complete reconstruction of the streets, all new water lines.

A lot of the houses actually had water lines in the back.

The uh the water meters to the front.

Um and this image there, you can see uh it's a very narrow street.

Um it's not a lot of room to work.

Uh so we're really grateful to the residents there who have been fantastic while we've been going through and making these improvements.

Uh the Sam Garcia Library, and sorry, Cernas Plaza Park Improvements.

I want to highlight this is a C D BG community development block grant.

So as a reminder, we're constantly looking for ways that we can engage federal or state funds to take care of these projects to relieve the general fund from some of those inflationary uh uh pressures that Ms.

Wethos was talking about.

In this project, we're gonna be removing those plot those large panels that are blocking off the plaza.

We want to make sure that people know the plazas there.

We're gonna put some more signage up so they can uh utilize it.

It's an underutilized park in our city.

Um but we're also making improvements inside the library for better circulation, more cameras, and then doing some better controls out in the children's playground.

Mr.

Mayor James, if I can interrupt, uh we've received a couple public questions about that park, including the uh putting uh the um uh uh name of the park back up.

Um we're committed to doing that.

Um again, we hope it to be done by the end of this fiscal year where his name will be displayed displayed again.

Uh apologies for the delay on the uh replacing of his name.

We're gonna put it in a place, hopefully, where it won't get stolen this time, I hope.

Yes, and uh the bid was complete and it what came in within budget.

Um we actually hope the work will be completed in April.

I I have a question.

Yes, ma'am.

I noticed that you said we're gonna remove the panels there, James.

Will we uh repurpose those panels?

I know that's like shade in the area.

We haven't had a plan to repurpose them, but that's a wonderful idea if we can always reuse rather than throw something away.

Thank you.

We can look into that.

And Brian's taking notes right now.

We have a storage facility that we can set it in for a little while.

Thanks, Kirk.

Just a few more highlights of projects we want to complete by June 30th.

Please, if you can't attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the Sand Volleyball Courts, that is this Wednesday.

Um the work won't actually start until January.

We timed it so that we could do a long lead items, we'll be ready in January.

Um, but that allows the contractor to hit the ground running, complete keep going without any pauses and work and be done by the end of the fiscal year.

Uh another highlighted project here is the distribution pressure improvements.

Uh obviously we had some neighborhoods in the north that suffered from low pressure, especially on their second floor bathrooms.

Um the work has been generally completed.

What we're seeing is that residents should be having about 8% increase in their pressure or 8 PSI.

8 PSI, thank you.

Um, an 8 PSI increase in their pressure.

They're still tweaking and adjusting things, but we we're pretty confident this project will be completely wrapped up here in the next month.

And then the water reclamation facility odor control project.

This is us being good neighbors, especially to our city manager who runs by there.

Um the materials are in.

There was a long lead supply chain issues, but everything's in, and we're starting the construction on that.

Thank you, James.

Uh Ms.

Mayor, yeah, that's the item you tried to remove from the budget last year.

So I was trying to remove the volleyball courts last year.

Oh, is that what it was?

Oh, yes.

It's fine.

We can spend the night.

Yeah, it's sad.

It's a sad story.

How does that impact anybody else?

That doesn't.

Uh and then we have the city hall furniture.

So in uh at the end of January, we're gonna be moving uh a lot of people in and out of City Hall, replacing the cubicle furniture.

Um it's gonna take about two months to complete um just because we want to minimize the impact to our services.

And how old is that furniture?

Because we've updated some of the furniture, but how some of it's updated, some of it's original.

This original.

Yeah, some of it's original.

2002, 2003.

2002, 2003, yeah.

It's made out of lead.

Yes.

And then um there's a small project on there for the aquatic center.

Um also should be done here soon.

Although I do have to note unfortunately we continue to deal with supply chain issues with the aquatic center.

Um months and months ago, I told you that the um the aquatic center electrical supply would take 55 weeks to arrive.

It took 58.

It arrived in around Thanksgiving, just after Thanksgiving.

So it's in, it's been installed, now we're just waiting for SRP to turn the power on.

Once they turn the power on, we can fill the pool, we can finish and fill the pools.

The good news is with the way that we've stacked the scheduling for the aquatic center, we don't expect any negative impact to opening in April.

And that 32.4 million dollars is the hard number, or we think we come in better than that.

That's the current budget number, and it's gonna come in less than that.

You want to put your neck on the line and say how much?

I do not.

Ask me again in six months.

And with that, uh let's talk about some projects that are breaking ground this fiscal year.

So the first of these is Civic Center Park.

Um I know I've been promising this park for several times standing up.

Um but if you recall, this is actually one of those two grant compliance projects.

So when Cold Water Park across the street from the resource center had to be closed and everything removed, the Fed said you can't do that because we paid for it.

So we had to come up with two parks to replace it.

This and Donatella Park.

This has basically been approved by the feds to be a replacement park, but because of the red tape through the federal government, the Native tribes, and every other layer of layer cake that goes into it.

Um not everyone has dotted their I's and crossed their T's yet.

As soon as they do and we get that okay to go, we're gonna be ready to bid this thing out and get it going.

We're very confident it's gonna start this spring.

And then the Western Avenue Reconstruction project.

I uh should note this was an earmark from Repcohala.

Um this is the reconstruction of Western Avenue from Central to Fourth Avenue.

So basically our good year, uh the city limits with Goodyear.

And it will uh it'll happen.

It's being staged, of course, to the most of the work to happen during the summertime.

So we hope to break ground around April, May.

Um, but really we want to make sure the school is out for the summer because they have they have their bus drop-off right there on Western Avenue.

Couple other highlights.

The Boulevard well and transmission line.

This is a partnership with SRP, another way that we're working to save money where we can and engage our our local partners.

SRP is constructing the well, and then we're installing a transmission line for a shared well.

So that transmission line is gonna run from I-10 to Van Buren.

It's gonna help make sure we have the appropriate water for all the development there along Van Buren.

And then the Hawk signals.

So this is our I always got to remember what it is, high visibility activated crosswalk.

I don't know how they came up with Hawk.

But um, this is what we installed there at Littleton Elementary on Avendale Boulevard.

We currently have those locations identified.

We are going to break ground with one or two of them this year.

It's just a matter of which one we can work with the utilities, APS and SRP to get started first.

So that's why I I can't commit to which one, but we are definitely working on all of them at the same time.

And then uh we still are dealing with the inflationary pressures.

Uh we've made the promise to come back to you on a regular basis.

We're not surprising you every other council meeting and try to give you that whole picture.

This will be our third one.

It's scheduled right now for January.

We currently are eyeballing possibly three projects on there.

The first of these is Deaconsini Park, so that's the park next to the YMCA on Western Avenue.

Um most of the cost increase on that is just inflationary.

Um then we also didn't realize until we really got into design that we actually had to purchase land, which council approved a couple meetings ago, um, and that has affected the cost.

The other project on here is the Crystal Garden Sediment Removal.

So I don't know how old Crystal Gardens is, but I don't think they've ever cleaned out those cells.

Um we had a quote several years ago, we inflated it.

We didn't inflate it enough.

Um so that's another one we'll be coming back to.

And then the last one on there is Mountain View Park expansion.

We have the bids, it's within budget.

We just want to make sure it's within budget before we proceed, but it's likely you're not gonna see this one in January.

And then, of course, if we have to, which we're gonna do everything we can so we don't, we would come back in April if we continue to have other projects having this impact.

And with that being said, um, I know Miss Weather has talked a lot about the general fund.

My uh chart here is fund agnostic.

So it's all the funds in there with CIP projects.

You can see the total value is 190 million dollars.

And we've only spent two date, a little under 18 million as of December 12th.

Now, a couple things about that number.

Unlike an operating where we can assume a normal spend throughout the year, construction generally doesn't work like that.

Um construction tends to be higher when it's not 115 degrees outside, and just the nature of construction, it's gonna have starts and stops, as you saw in some of the charts that Ms.

Wetless showed.

Um but the other the other thing that I want to talk about is we uh this concept of the smoothing out.

So for a long time, the city would take their projects and we would budget it in all in one year, right?

So we'd say we'd design, construct it all in one year.

And this idea of cash flow is where you stretch that out to where you're actually gonna spend the dollars.

What this represents is a lot of that kind of catching up, right?

So it's our goal and our commitment to get this so we're not trying to carry large sums of money over year to year to make it easier on the finance team to program out and to make it easier for you to know how much money you need to spend in future years.

And with that, as we look to FY25 and we look to the CIP, you can see that first one.

We got to complete what we've said we're gonna do.

So we're making sure that if we've made a commitment to do a project, if councils made a commitment to do a project, we're gonna complete those projects.

We're gonna continue to search for grant funding.

I already mentioned that we'd be coming back on Deacon City, or did I not mention that?

We're gonna be coming back on Deacon City Park.

Hopefully in January as well.

I said we were coming for an increase, but there's also a grant we're hoping to do the same meeting to decrease that a little bit.

Parks is great about that, but we have regular meetings with our new grant coordinator, engineering, public works to talk about how can we obtain more grants.

We're gonna continue to expand sales and uh trails and sidewalks.

We've invested in a study to look at how we complete the Awa Freya multi-use trail.

We've got a pretty good idea, and so we've got projects coming up that are gonna complete that to get underneath Lower Buckeye and MC85.

And then we're closing off those sidewalk gaps, especially in the older parts of the Avondale to make sure that people can walk safely around their neighborhoods.

We're gonna continue treating our roadways.

Um council's made a commitment to apply a lot of dollars to paint the streets black.

So there's a pause right now because of the cold, but they'll be kicking back up again here very soon to start hitting those roads quite often.

We're gonna continue to enhance our facilities.

Uh as Mr.

Corbin puts it, we don't gold plate it, but we make sure that they're sustainable, they're built to last, and they're built to be able to be maintained.

And then we're gonna we're looking at ways we can enhance community pride.

This is how do we uh rephrase it, how we reflect community pride, right?

That's not the the job's not to enhance it, it's to reflect it.

So the community has a pride in their community and what Avondale is, we should show that in what we build.

And then we are continually looking for ways that we can continue to improve recreational opportunities and tourism opportunities for the city.

So let's we know some projects are ready to break ground next FY.

First of these is old town phase three.

When the presentation was made five, six years ago on these old town projects, it was delivered in a way that said we'll go from old town one, then we'll go right to two and three, and so on and so forth.

So it's three wraps up here in March.

We are wrapping up the design, or sorry, it's two wraps up in March.

We're wrapping up the design on three with the hope we can bid it right after two is done and we can start that work early in the summertime once they are able to get all their materials in place.

Donatella Park, so that was the other grant compliance project.

Donatello Park is a new park located uh northeast of Phoenix Children's Hospital.

Again, grant compliance to try to close that up.

Fire station 171.

This project now, of course, is dependent on getting the detention center built.

As you know, the detention, if you've driven by there, the detention center, all the underground uh utilities are in place, the site walls are going up, the masonry walls and the building are going up.

We're trending to have that project complete in November.

Rather than delay and wait for it to be complete, staff are looking for how can we accelerate Fire Station 171 to keep it going when it's supposed to be going.

And so we're thinking of how we can get in utilities, how can we order supplies?

Since that usually tends to be the thing that's still biting us, is that supplies have not the supply chain has not gotten fixed yet since COVID.

We're still dealing with long late items.

And then the traffic signal at Lower Buckeye and El Mirage, this is a little bit smaller than what we did at Lower Buckeye and Avondale.

But again, same goal.

How can we make this intersection safer and how can we get people through it better?

We're also gonna be doing some sidewalk enhancements around there because it's uh in need of it.

And for that, we're just waiting on SRP to finish what they are have promised to do in that area first.

We do have some adjustments to deal with.

Um, fire station 171 is currently or the pricing we're getting from our contractor we have now lines up on a square foot basis with other fire stations that have started recently in the valley.

Unfortunately, that's higher than our current budget number.

So we're gonna be coming back and talking to you about that.

Similar thing on the water reclamation facility expansion.

There's very expensive components on that, but personally, what I think one of the large uh drivers of the cost increase is with projects like uh in Chandler with the Intel plant and the TSMC, the cost of labor for pipe fitters is really high right now.

Um they are being very well compensated for what they're doing.

They don't expect those prices to go down.

Um, and then generally we asked all the departments, hey, look at all your projects.

We don't want to come back in a year and say, hey, we didn't look at this project that's been in the CIP for two and three years and now it's more expensive.

No, we need to look at them now.

If we look at public works, you're seeing almost 25 million dollars over their currently programmed projects.

Now, part of that is they're also smoothing those projects out.

And so rather than saying it's all one number and next year, if it's over two years, it might have to go up simply because it's being more realistic about when it will be spent.

And then those other projects, parks, public safety, an additional 2.9 million dollars.

There's a fun part.

New asks.

This is a highlight of some new asks and some other things we're looking at.

We're trying to figure out can they work?

How can they work?

First of these is a court expansion.

So this would be phase two of the court expansion.

This is really the jury room, does not really meet the needs of a jury room.

It's hard though for us to commit so much money to a project that may not be used on a regular basis.

That thing's booked constantly.

There's clearly a need in the city and by staff for more meeting space, more convention space.

So that's what it would be used for.

The resource center expansion.

This is really a huge success story.

It is so positive, so overwhelming that they are breaking down Chris's door to try to get in there and do provide more services to our residents.

So this would provide more programming space for our partners to get in there and help out our residents.

We have that land next to the aquatic center.

What would go there?

Um somebody let slip possible pickleball court.

Um but there would be trails and some other things we'd be doing out there.

Uh and then uh down at the mosque, uh it's municipal operations center, right?

So there's lots of city f uh departments that are in the mosque.

Some of them parks, facilities, traffic maintenance.

They're growing because we have a lot more parks, we have a lot more special events, we have more buildings, and we have more signals.

And so their storage needs are growing.

The spaces are dated, they're not the best spaces for them.

So we're trying to figure out a way we can uh get them a facility that makes sure that they're safe, they have the maintenance needs that they need.

One of the things we're looking at is we have that vacant land across Lower Buckeye.

It would be a perfect site to do something like this.

Uh and then uh mill and overlay, Avondale Boulevard.

So I mentioned before that we when we did Avondale Boulevard in Lower Buckeye, we milled and overlaid the road to Wyman.

And I don't know if you've driven it, but it makes a huge difference when you go like once you cross under the new black asphalt, it's a tremendous difference.

And it's that way all the way down to I-10.

So we're trying to figure out a way, uh, Mr.

Beatty's team is looking at that.

What's the best way to treat that to keep it going for a long time?

I want to touch on uh the fire training tower, that facility that fire has used in the past is condemned.

Um so our option now is to try to find a way to um I'm sorry, Councilmember.

I was just Oh, okay.

Sorry.

Um so yes, uh the the fire department has asked for a new facility to replace that condemned facility.

And then the last one I touched on earlier, this is the Awa Fria multi-use path.

We figured out a way in theory to get us underneath Lower Buckeye and MC85.

Now it's the hard work of actually designing and then constructing it.

And with that, I'm available for any questions or comments.

There's a lot here.

And I will tell you that I appreciate the honesty.

I appreciate the forthrightness.

I think that helps council make the decisions and set priorities.

Um let's go back to a couple of those.

Let's go back to the 25 asks.

I think I I think I think council's very familiar with what we have going on, what's under construction, what's planned.

Is there anything out of this slide that you have questions on that you have comments on that are priorities for this council?

Question.

The uh fire training tower.

So what what what is what's the plans for that?

Are we trying to tear it down?

Restructure it.

So, Mr.

Mayor Council, uh uh council member.

Um Fire Chief and I met today talk about this.

We actually have another option.

Apparently, we can contribute about 120 million to another city and they'll help us uh build a joint center, just a few dollars.

120 million.

Or um, we can spend a few million um on this.

And um we're currently at about two and a half million originally, we thought about three and a half, we're down to about two uh point five, and it will include tearing down the one that can't be used currently and rebuilding, figuring out how to share those.

It's actually um we're it's a priority.

We'll we'll we'll make it work.

That that's not even a we would put a new uh training tower in place in the area.

Yes, ma'am.

Have we ever thought about doing um I think I did like um some research on uh training facility, but it's more of like uh almost like how police has like you guys have a training facility where you have the um I think it's like a video game and I don't mean it to be sarcastic, but it's a video type of simulation, yes.

Have we uh have we ever looked into a simulation for our fire?

So the wear and tear on their bodies um wouldn't be so bad when they're um going into the towers and stuff like that.

Yes, Mayor and Council.

So um last year it was in the CIP to have those simulations uh for fire tactics, which was granted and we're currently purchasing now.

Um and also what the paramedic uh simulation lab.

And so those are those are in place now, and we're we're going to implement those.

Okay.

What facility will they be at?

Are they uh going to be at a particular fire station facility, or would they be in the area where the training center is?

Both of them are mobile, so we can move them to our different training sites, uh fire station 172, the training room there, as well as fire station 175, that training room.

And then we also have the modular down at the mosque.

Okay.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Yeah, James, just a question on two of these that stick out in my mind.

The use Source Center expansion and the uh mill and overlay work on Avendale Boulevard.

You said earlier that those projects could be, and I see those two particularly in my mind, something where you got a design, you got an engineering, and you got a construction.

And I don't think you're gonna get that done in 12 months.

No, and that work if you wanted to do one of those.

Could you put some money here and some money there?

I mean, that's what you had talked about, and it that might be good.

But how does that work on project like that?

Yes, yes, Mayor, Vice Mayor, uh Councilmember.

Um that's entirely true.

When I meant FY25 asked, this will in this budget cycle is the first time you'll see these projects.

We would not fund all the money for either of those projects in next year.

We'd take a look at how long it would take to design, set aside a cash amount for that year to design it, and then look at construction.

Mr.

Mayor, counsel, I can add part of the responsibility of the five-year CIP or 10, how dependent on it for you, is to make sure that we fund that we can afford what we fund.

So we don't want to um do something that we don't have enough money to complete.

You know, you have to enter into contracts and those kinds of things.

So it does often encumber the whole uh cost.

I can tell you that um right now the resource center would not be a top priority for expansion for that, but I will find a way to fund Avondale Boulevard.

So we will um uh based on the input from Kim and Kirk, we'll put uh currently um the Avondale improvement at four, I think the current estimate is a little over four million dollars uh for that section of road uh on top of the other road um preservation commitments we made with last year's plan.

Um but given the um uh needs of our facilities, uh that one would not for me, unless I'm told differently wouldn't rate the top.

We are also doing a couple different things.

So for example, um Kirk asked for uh needs assessment for space, which I think is a much smarter thing to do before we just start building facilities.

So we're gonna um probably try to fund that study, and it was six figures, I don't remember the exact number.

And we'll look at our parks, we'll look at our engineering, we'll look at our um public works needs and facility needs and determine what the actual square footage, what type of building we can use and those kinds of things.

So some of these are just uh to begin for us to think about um for the long term if we end up better off, um, you know, because like salary savings sometimes ends up as one-time money if it's not spent, there's other things that happen.

So we're just keeping these in line and we'll begin the process as money uh becomes available.

Thank you.

Next thank you, um James, for the presentation.

As I look at um the new ask, I do believe most of these are in alignment with our city's strategic outcomes, so it makes sense that they're available.

Um I just have a couple of questions.

I think the first one's probably more um for um Your Honor Judge Jennings.

What what uses would you feel comfortable with for an enhanced jury room?

We were just making a bet earlier that this will be the first year he gets a question.

Um I I think the the plan is a traditional uh uh jury room with bathroom access, and then we'll also make it available for training.

So when it's not being used on jury days, then we'll have um audio visual equipment in there, we'll have uh tables in there, we'll have a way to use it as uh uh a training room is what we're currently thinking, knowing that the jury trials are usually scheduled ahead of time and we can plan around those.

And of course, his his jury would take uh top priority.

The current space is not uh advantageous um for our citizens to use as a as a jury room.

What is that space currently?

Small.

Yeah.

I was gonna say tiny.

We have to be like cleaning equipment out of the closet and use it there.

Is it a stand-up room?

Well, so we would have people when when we have jury trials, we would have anywhere from twenty to thirty people in there, and then when COVID hit and I'm supposed to space people out, I can put about eight or nine in there.

And so it's it's off courtroom one if you folks remember, and it's it would be going out to the east, kind of along that uh Sally Port area where the prisoners are brought in where there's room out there where the inch where the new exit to the court is off in that area.

Okay.

And and Mayor, Councilmember White, this is one of those that I would um design first to get a better price estimate because you're extending the current building out and you'll have to do some leveling of the ground and some other issues.

So this is one of those where I probably wouldn't budget construction because I don't know the right number, but I would do the design if possible.

I I just want to I'm I that sounds awesome.

And I'm I'm just making sure that the alignment is something that the courts are comfortable with having in that facility because that just that that alignment.

I just want uh level of comfort.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And and Ron and I have had several conversations about this.

I see that.

Mr.

Mayor, Councilman White, it's not like I threatened him or anything.

Like I said, either we use it or you don't get it.

I didn't say that at all.

No, I I think no, I've been in the jury room, so it is very awkwardly shaped, and we would need more space if we had a jury trial.

Um, Judge, when was the last jury trial?

Two thousand and seventeen or eighteen, I think.

It's been a few years.

Uh we want to make sure that's ready for the next time our residents have to be there.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

And then the next question as I move further down, I love seeing that there might be a potential indoor recreational facility.

I think that's more along um Brian's lines there with the possible gym I can foresee.

Um really nice, nice locker rooms that that might accommodate, you know, hot tubs and coal plunges.

Thank you, Councilmember White.

It sounds like the same discussion of a pool at the resource center.

Yes, sir, all the time.

Always water.

Tina?

Any priorities on here?

Any questions?

Uh no, I'm just I'm just looking at the uh resource center expansion needing to be expanded so quickly.

Item right now.

Yeah.

Um Mr.

Mayor, if I can, this is only a partial list of our ass.

This is only a partial list.

I have another whole couple slides to go through for priorities.

And so the I'm trying to be very careful not to ask council specific projects.

Um I know this council is dedicated to our nonprofits.

I know that this council is dedicated to addressing homelessness, but there are some other um expenses that that aren't on here that will uh have a significant impact on our reserves that I need to talk about outside the CIP.

Well then we're done asking questions.

Go ahead, Ron.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Do you have something else, Tina?

Seriously.

No, I'm done.

Thanks.

There'll be there'll be time.

I'm almost done.

I know I've I keep pushing you off, Mr.

Mayor.

I apologize.

We'll get to the question.

It's like there's one thing after another.

It's like when my This is my life, Mr.

Mayor, yes.

This is the budget.

And I love it.

Thank you, James.

Thank you, James.

Oops, if I can have my slides up.

So this one, um, Mr.

Mayor, let's not wait till the end.

Um this next section is mine talking about priorities.

And I really would like input as you guys have questions or as you uh provide direction, um, feel free.

That's why I'm sit seated on this just in case I need to take notes.

Um this is really meant to be a discussion.

I'll try not to repeat a lot that's already been said um given given the time frame.

I don't want to keep here everybody all night.

Um, it worked a second ago.

I told Ted we'd be out of here in an hour.

He didn't believe me.

He's like, there's no way.

No way.

Uh thank you, Marcella.

So I just this is um a good time to remind you of the um uh $10 million gap if they take our food.

Just imagine that line with 10 million less.

But that's kind of uh what we're we're working with currently.

So when we talk about uh um budget ask and what we have to balance for this next year, these this is how I've started my prioritization.

I've started with personnel, and I start with our current uh employees attracting and retaining.

You see the 5% um budget uh merit increases that you saw from Rene.

Um then you we also have um uh additional uh money set aside for the fire MOU, which we'll be bringing to council.

Hopefully in April, I can't see Andy, but I hope he's shaking his head.

In January, we'll hopefully bring that.

Um we have some uh items for PD that we'll be working with our public safety team on in addition to that.

It is uh making sure um that we are competitive.

There's also a few other programs that we'll be uh possibly introducing to attract and retain.

Uh workload gaps.

We have several um areas in the city where we fill uh uh vacancy, not vacancies, we fill duties with overtime with extra work for others, and so we're gonna try if possible this year to fill some of those uh gaps.

Um there's been there's a significant ask for increases in overtime and uh positions really not to expand anything but to do better with what we're we're currently doing.

Um I promise you we continually look at our vacancies, and um I have uh promised for a year that any position that wasn't filled at this time, we would begin to discuss their need um during the budget time.

So I saw a report this morning um from HR.

Um we currently have um down to 60 vacancies.

Um when I started, we were closer to 100 if I remember correctly, Ted, uh we're about a hundred when I started.

So we're down 40.

In addition to that, there were over about a dozen that are already um agreed to start, just haven't started yet.

They're either in the background or or waiting for them to start after the holidays.

So we could be uh around 50 vacancies.

Um below 10% vacancies, a couple outliers for no particular reason other than turnover, but we continually uh look at that.

I think that we are an employer of choice and are becoming even more so as the word of our culture and the the way that um our organization runs.

Very excited about that.

And then there are some requests in there to address um new or expanded programs.

Um those um are asked, but I don't know that I'll be able to fund many um expansions or new programs with staffing.

Um it's really about uh meeting our demands.

So when that comes to planning, inspecting, plans review, permit review, those kinds of things to make sure we're meeting the demands of our customers or um front desks or um IT as an internal service, making sure that IT can uh support um things like this meeting here tonight, um all take personnel.

So really that's my first priority, and that's kind of how I rank those asks.

And then it's really about making sure that we can maintain our current programs, and we have some big changes to our budget coming up uh that is programmed, is programmed in the number you saw, but that includes the loss of ARPA dollars and other federal programs.

So for example, um we have a um sonar coordinator, that's probably not the exact title, but we have a sonar position that has been funded out of um ARPA dollars.

Um it's moving into the general fund, no questions asked.

But technically that's a new ask on the general fund, but it's a priority for the city, so that'll be that'll be moving over.

Um there are other um uh ask uh specifically out of addressing homelessness over about almost 300,000 that have been funded in other ways that we'll need to pick up in the general fund.

Um there are other uh um ARPA, but I'm drawing a blink.

Sustainable uh recycling program.

This is really me letting council know that I'm concerned about our I think they're called tipping fees or the fees um uh to recycling.

It costs more money to recycle than it does to um other options, including the landfill.

Currently, we're able to uh meet those day uh demands at our current rates.

Um, but that um if the trend continues with the increases in the cost of recycling, um we'll have to make uh a decision on what to recommend.

And I can tell you that um I'm leaning um depending on what that ask is.

I'm it so it's harder and harder for me to ask our citizens to bear the cost of a recycling program that isn't paying for itself.

So um there's a couple options.

One is to not recycle, which is not I know a favor.

I'm just putting this in the back of your head.

The other is to pass the increase on, it costs what it costs, and our our citizens are willing to pay that cost for the environment.

Um the other is to supplement it from the general fund, which I am 100% against because it's an enterprise fund and um trash should pay for itself.

It should not be subsidized by uh sales tax or state shared revenues or other kinds of things.

So but maintaining our current programs is uh is a priority for for me.

And then we go on to um new and expanding programs.

So again, making sure that we can do our inspections, do our plan reviews, uh transportation, um the we uh program we ride program is a great program that our city provides.

I know that uh during the last set of presentations, council is like when are we gonna have it on the weekends?

When are we gonna go later?

When are we gonna go earlier?

Um that's been proposed and it's a cost.

And so we're gonna see if we can um fit it in there.

Um I think um about uh six hundred thousand dollars in ongoing operating increase in cost for expanded hours and services, a couple vehicles uh over three hundred thousand dollars for those kinds of things.

Um we've been asked uh to look at a summer uh youth program, um camp, summer camp for for youth in our community.

Um that would be a new ask.

Um uh ballpark uh was about 350,000 for that program.

Um I've asked them, this was me before we were in our current state.

Let's increase our special events, let's add a little more to the fireworks, let's add a little more to Winterfest, let's you know, do a little bit more, let's add a few events.

Um so the budget asked came in at you know six figures um to to increase some of those.

So those all compete with ongoing costs.

Of course, I talked to you've heard from others on the streets.

Um trails, um uh blanket number was about 10 million dollars for trails.

So the bridge over um connecting to um Friendship Park uh is uh between four and six million dollars.

Um we put in for a raise grant and some other direct funding.

Thank you, Liz and James and team for that help.

So uh today we had a meeting, we we uh hinted around with uh MAG and um uh Rio Imag uh Imagine Rio Reimagination.

Rio Reimagined and ASU about maybe helping us find some funding, and they're committed to looking for some of that.

Uh the underpass overpass along down the the river, another two to four million dollars there to make those those connections.

So a big ask for trails, um, a lot of little ask as well.

Um we don't have to do it all, we'll do bits as we can, but uh another uh big ask.

And then uh one time I'm not gonna go through all these.

You heard a lot from James tonight, but we did uh there was a couple left off that I want to make sure brought up.

So for example, our fire apparatuses, uh, the budget ask is about 4.2 million dollars for next year's ask.

Uh I'm getting a nod, I think that's close uh to the ass.

Um IT programs, um we are um in dire needs of a uh better payroll system.

Um over the time it would be about a million dollar uh ask.

Anybody um I see a few headshaking on that one.

Anybody who deals with our payroll system knows that we could do better, but it would be a specific NIT.

Um there uh a CELA which says our uh plans and our permits and stuff like that.

We need probably about another half a million dollars there in that program.

Umfrastructure, we talked about Avondale Boulevard.

Um we've got uh an intersection capacity just to improve our capacities.

If you've tried to make a left-hand turn at some of our intersections, you might be waiting a couple cycles, depending on which intersection you're at.

Um there's an ask for about um $2.1 million to improve some of our intersections there.

Uh sidewalks, two and a uh uh $250,000.

Um you heard about uh the inflation increase, $25 million for uh public works.

And then we went through uh most of the list that uh James went through for your your uh CIP, really, the the items on the right up there.

Um we're doing some needs assessment.

So one of the things that I've asked about was um a um performing arts center.

Doesn't look like we'll be able to afford it based on tonight's conversation.

Um but I've asked the team to do a needs assessment to really compare.

You know, we have the uh community college, Solison has a nice high school one, there's some others around here, so we're gonna do a needs assessment to see if we even really need one.

Um I think it would be a gym for our community, um, especially if we were able to get it somewhere near either the Civic Center or uh the Boulevard, um, it'd be a nice little uh feather for us to have a beautiful program art center.

But um the fire training tower, uh don't worry about that, that'll happen.

Um we need our firefighters to be trained.

Chief and I talked about what happens when they're not trained or not busy training.

Um the one that hasn't been mentioned tonight was not on James List is the base and meridian wildlife area restoration.

So that was the area where we do our festival, our um trace Rios festival.

Uh this next one is not in Avondale because it's not usable.

It was uh blown out of the last uh release of water during the the last uh rain issues we had.

Um so um we've been trying to get grants, trying to been work uh we've been trying to work with state parks, with uh Arizona uh fish and game and others.

Um I think this is one of those that if it's gonna be a priority for this council to work on the river and to work on natural resources, we're gonna have to go first.

So for about a half a million dollars of supplies, we believe that um we have partners including possibly Arizona Game and Fish would do some of the work and create an upgrade so that it could survive a water release of the of the upstream dam.

Um but if that is a priority for council, the the the uh scenic corridor along the river, then we're gonna have to start the we're gonna have to go first.

And I think that would provide us matching grant monies.

Uh there it would give us more options than we currently have.

Right now we don't really have any money programmed to help fix that area.

We're counting on others to do it, and there's a lot of needs throughout throughout the state.

So um before I turn it back over to Renee, um actually that whole slide is is Renee, sorry.

So before I turn it back over to Renee, now I would be happy um given that you have a little bit more information.

Again, marches, um the goal here is just high level.

If we've missed something, if there's something that you that we haven't thought about, um I've kind of laid out what I'm currently thinking.

Our goal is we'll we'll uh start our department meetings in um January.

We're gonna start personnel meetings in January.

Later in the process, we start having our CIP meetings and putting all this together.

We'll have a better idea of what the uh state is doing, hopefully as the budget comes along.

So then when we come back in March, we'll have more of a a program to present uh the beginnings of a balanced budget in March.

We'll talk more about benefits and HR matters in March.

This is really just meant to be a high level.

What did I miss?

What did we miss?

Um is there something I I need to hear before we begin our uh budget deliberations?

Well, I think it's important for you to hear from council.

Yep.

What priorities are, give some direction on this.

Um I've been through council meetings and many, many, many years ago where it was just blank stairs from council, and I was telling Renee this earlier, the city manager at the time was like we had to stop the meeting and say we need in point because we can't because we can't make these decisions on our own.

I look at everything that I've heard here tonight, whether it's CIP, whether it's ongoing costs, whether it's new personnel, whatever that is.

And for me, it it's very simple is what is absolutely necessary, especially in an economy like this.

What is absolutely necessary to get things done?

We talk about the fire tower.

Absolutely necessary.

I would use large vehicle replacement, IT programs, things that help our employees, things that smooth the process, the acella process for Jody's area.

Even the court jury training room, that's a necessity for me.

I'd love to expand the resource center.

I would love to expand and have indoor pickle wall courts.

Corey and I were talking about this a couple weeks ago.

I'd love to be able to have those things.

That's not a necessity.

Sidewalks are roads, our water, wastewater, all those things are necessities.

We're talking about James is talking about furniture at City Hall in this building that is the original furniture.

Think about that.

That's 21 years old.

We get good use out of our stuff.

We do not waste taxpayer dollars, sir.

We do.

But we also can't say to our employees that you matter, can't say to new employees, we're what are the best cities to work for, and their desks, their cubicles, their chairs, they they the things that they use every day fall apart or just in disrepair.

So those are kind of my priorities.

And I and I would when I was going over the packet this weekend, it really comes down to kind of the same things that always does.

Public safety, infrastructure for our residents, parks and wreck quality of life.

And how do how do we fit 20 pounds of sausage in a five-pound casing?

And that's what we're talking about here.

I can do it.

I can do it, right?

So I want to kind of we've heard a lot from council on kind of where their priorities are at.

I know Veronica, you touched on some of the stuff, but I kind of cut you off.

Is there any else that you saw in these last slides that you think man, I I priority for me.

Well I think I think our staff got it right.

We know what we know the priorities, right?

We know that our large vehicles, our apparatuses are what, 20 years old.

Uh when I first got on council, our sidewalks and our infrastructure and old town historic Avendell, Las Legos and Cash, and we we weren't the infrastructure had been where that wore out and we had to put the money in there.

I remember when uh Ron came on board, we went around this entire city, and I said, How do we get our roads up to par in every part of Avondale?

He says we need to put money away.

We weren't doing that.

So we pro I mean, as as you've been on here on council or with the city for the last year, you've heard majority of us tell you what our priorities are.

So infrastructure is definitely um priority, the roads are priority.

The safety of our um our fire um with the large vehicles, and I'm not sure if we're um on the large vehicles, we're only talking to apparatuses.

We're not talking about uh the large uh vehicles for Kurt's team.

Um Mr.

Mayor, Council members, that'll be in a uh separate area.

Um I honestly a lot of that's funded out of a different fund.

This would be general funds, so I'm not as um concerned.

We have a lot of those programmed into the uh five years, and no disrespect intended, but public works has done a fantastic job in long-term planning, and a lot of their stuff is on our uh replacement plan already.

So we're we're now going to put all the other things on a replacement.

Yeah, again, there's there's uh yes, yes, he has a uh the chief presented to us in last year's budget a plan.

It will be tweaked this year, but yes, the fire department has a a uh replacement plan.

We hired a um vehicle coordinator, that's not the right title, but to help us make sure we manage our large vehicles better.

Perfect.

And when we got on council, I know uh councilwoman Conde and I, well, along with our uh previous council member uh Dennis, we went around the parks because we just knew that we have a young uh we have a young um uh yeah, demographics, and what we wanted to do was we wanted to make sure that their parks were safe and they were clear and you guys do an amazing job.

I know that Brian's team does an amazing job with the resources and getting out grants and and stuff like that.

So I know that our parks are in really good hands.

We just got to continue with that.

So I think what the layout here is really what we need.

And you're right, Mayor, we don't um I I mean I love the resource center, but I always say we have to build a little bit bigger because we're gonna run out of space as soon as we move into it.

And I think that's what we've done, right?

And it's very po it's very popular, right?

But I knew going into doing the resource center, I was like, I always said we have to build bigger, and everybody's like, no, we really should scale back.

But here we are again.

So that right now has to take a back.

See, even though I love our nonprofits, and I love the work that Chris and all his team does, but we have a lot of other priorities that um have to come to the front.

Chris, did you want to say something?

Uh yeah, I I did want to say that what we're looking to do with this is we're looking to do a space needs analysis.

We have not outgrown the resource center.

Okay.

I don't see us outgrowing the resource center in the immediate future.

We want to think ahead.

We want to level things out.

Um so what we're asking for is some funding to do a space needs analysis.

I think maybe 2029 is when we might reach that point.

We do have capacity currently.

Okay.

All right.

I was like, well, we already uh outgrew it.

And I think when we did um I we could be wrong, but I remember uh speaking about the resource expansion was if we had to, we'd go up.

Is that even still a possibility?

We might not know that, and we don't have to address that now, but um that was part of when we did the uh resource center, we wanted to do the expansion.

It's unfortunately we have to come back to um courts jury training room because we had already discussed it that was in our budget, it got pulled out, but at least we can come and revisit and make sure that we do get the jury um jury and the training room that's needed for um the court.

And this is that balancing act that we talk about, and not having gone through this for a few years, it really is a balancing act.

And I think we've done a remarkable job.

The amount of growth that we have dealt with, the amount of change we've dealt with, budget constraints in some cases when it comes to the state, we've done a remarkable job, and inflation has really killed us.

And I mean look at our how big our CIP is for a city our size, being able to manage that inflation and coming within.

I I know you said we're gonna come in ten million dollars less for the aquatic center, which I think is great.

So write that from the record.

I heard that somewhere.

Mike might have told me that, I'm not sure.

What?

James, you know I'm kidding you.

Mike, your priorities when you look at this, your thoughts.

Thank you.

Um a lot of uh what you've all said is kind of um some of the things that I had, but you know, I really do w want to be mindful when I was looking at um the strategic plan, because that's how I looked at the priorities was how do we balance, and that's the key word or balance between our priorities, but more importantly, the priorities of the tr uh the street the strategic plan and where do each one of these things fall into place there.

So for me, it's uh kind of what some of you have already alluded to, and that is the inside out approach for me.

That is looking inside this organization and determining through leadership uh where that money needs to be spent, whether it be on technology, whether it be on tools, platforms, um uh other property, equipment, things of that nature to make this organization a well-run machine.

Uh not that it's not now, but in this, let's call it a two-year hesitation uh to see where things shake out, I think this would be a perfect opportunity to get all those ducks in a row to make sure again that this organization is running at max capacity and as efficient as possible.

um uh other property equipment things of that nature to make this organization a well-run machine uh not that it's not now but in this let's call it a two-year hesitation uh to see where things shake out I think this would be a perfect opportunity to get all those ducts in a row to make sure again that this organization is running at max capacity and as efficient as possible so in in this two-year period I'm gonna use two years although that's not a hard uh time frame but a two-year period to really uh do those needs assessments to determine what is required what is what is something we could put on to the back burner because when things come back online when we learn whether inflation is going to go long our interest rates going to go down or all those who are locked right now into their homes uh and not exercising uh the equity in them um because of the high interest rates and so there now there's a lot of buying and selling and things of that nature happening and moving moving I want to make sure that this organization is equipped to handle the added strain on the system.

And so if we can make sure during this period of time to prepare for that then we're ready.

We don't have to what happen what the variables all the unknowns it yes it'll matter but if we're prepared as much as possible our employees have the tools they need uh when we're efficient then we can we can deal with those things later the next thing is infrastructure is so important whether it be the roads whether it be our pipes whether it be access to water services anything related to infrastructure is definitely a priority to me.

We owe it to our residents number one but number two again in terms of preparation for the future roadways that aren't congested that our traffic signals aren't taking forever again a lot of real just proactive activities.

Another thing in terms of priority is our economic development team and organization is very aggressive and I love it.

And but one of the things I really love more importantly than that is the fact that we're not necessarily competing with other cities around us for the sake of compete competition because we're a different animal and so it's okay if we're not um uh developing and being aggressive with large projects like I would love nothing more than to come here to go to a gym or to play indoor pickleball and I don't I'm not playing pickleball right now but I'd learn if we had a facility however prior to having a gym or a facility I want to make sure that our infrastructure is up to par.

I want to make sure that when development and business comes to the boulevard or anywhere else that we're not having traffic and congestion problems and some of those things.

So before I would ever set foot in a gym to lift weights or offer that to the community I would rather look the community in the eyes and in the face and say are your streets better now are your services better now when you call in a pay a bill is it handled the way it's supposed to be because of our new application platform technology that's been set up and so you know I want to make sure that that is is taking a priority as well.

So while I'm really looking forward to some of these big ticket items coming to fruition and even those that are currently on the docket really to me I think that priority number one is to determine out of all of those seven um strategic uh items or areas of focus on our strategic plan that we are hitting each one of those in terms of being proactive.

So um at least for me over the next two years I would love to be at peace knowing that we're not actively engaged in building any multimillion dollar projects but more importantly investing a couple million dollars into a better organization that's gonna be prepared to serve who we have living here today and who we're going to uh get to move into our city and utilize our services in the next five years.

I'll I will tell you that the biggest mistake I've made as mayor the biggest mistake that previous councils made was not investing in roads and infrastructure.

When we looked at our budget and we thought where do we get this money from how do we do this we kept on putting it off and putting it off when we talk about streets we talk about old town when we talk about water we talk about all these things biggest mistake we ever made don't make that mistake as we go into a budget reset.

Because I don't think we're looking at a five or six year recession.

I think what we're looking at is a two-year slowdown you said it perfectly revenues are flat how do you keep that going and prepare for what's going to happen in the in the future and that's much different than going into a budget crisis where and I've told the story where it's May and our budget's pretty much done and they're looking at going we have a problem and now you're resetting your budget within the next 30 days and you're cutting 10% of your staff and you're doing a bunch of stuff trying to get through that's a hard thing.

Mr Sorry go ahead.

No Mr.

Mayor Council um a couple things not mentioned up here things already programmed into our plan didn't even make this list tonight but doesn't mean we're not doing them.

So there's a lot of projects um that are included in and you guys talked about uh Mr.

And a lot of the things that we currently doing, the that we are currently doing have to do with investing in our current infrastructure, in our current buildings and our current uses, and we have prioritized uh a lot of those, whether it's our AC replacements or electrical upgrades or um all those kinds of things that that you guys don't see, including the furniture replacement or the painting and all that that we have taken um long before I got here, um, this was started.

I I don't this is not me, this is the the organization, really investing in what already exists.

So and I can tell you we're not um uh uh roads will continue to be a priority for the city.

The other thing you didn't see a lot of up here was a lot of the utility work.

It's kind of in a separate budget.

Uh we have those requests in, and we'll figure out a way to prioritize and make sure that Kirk's priorities for um delivery of services and water and all those kinds of things continue.

Um so you'll see more of that uh uh as uh the process moves on.

But there was a lot, this is just high level that you didn't see tonight that my team has been working on on behind the scenes.

Anything else for us tonight?

That is it.

I'm thank you for your patience, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate everything.

I think uh keeping in line with our strategic outcome areas.

I just wanted to make a recommendation, um, Mr.

Corbin.

We do such a great job in where we're going from here.

One of the uh as um Vice Mayor Pineda was talking about the strategic outcome areas.

All I could think about was the connected community, community-oriented lifelong learning opportunities, and then our natural resource and open spaces.

Um recently I did actually learn something at our NLC summit in Atlanta.

I promise I didn't waste the city's money.

I went on a cool thing called a mobile workshop.

Um for those of you who haven't gone on a mobile workshop.

Basically, what you do is you get the opportunity to go around and look at the infrastructure live and and and kind of in real time, and I did that at the beltway.

Um that's kind of Atlanta's way of getting around the community without being in a car.

So it's a walkable trail-based area.

And I was just thinking that if we could kind of build out something like that with our connected community ver vision, um, it would take all all of you, all of us at the table because each department has some type of input in that.

But I think that would serve the ultimate client, which is the resident, and then we would show off our employees.

And I think that's another thing.

We have to find incremental ways of providing recognition for all the hard work that our people do here, because sometimes it's not anything more than just saying they did this, you know, and and let's enjoy it together.

But I think we need to put something together um like that first for council to see and then maybe make it available on AviWise as an app tour, people can do on their own in their own time.

Um as I think about our digital city survey awards.

Um there's so many incremental things that we could do to highlight um all of these beautiful things going on in Avondale technology-wise.

So I just want to link everything back and commend you on the work and planning that you're doing, sir.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor uh Mr.

Mayor, Councilmember White.

Uh we actually were talking about that today.

We're on it.

That that's actually one of our priorities with our trail system is a connected community.

Um, park to park uh festival fields to friendship park um along the river is one of our priorities.

But uh when we were speaking with Mag and um the other people in the room, it's really about connecting the valley.

So whether it's uh up the river with Phoenix or out uh west with Goodyear and Buckeye, but really making sure that people can get throughout our region uh without getting in the car.

I think I'd just like to say thank you to all of the staff and everybody who's put this together tonight.

It's an opportunity for us now to think as we begin a new year, what really is important.

I think we've all voiced that.

I think the other thing that comes to my mind right now is the most important resource we have is your people.

And we do need to see do those things that would keep them here, keep them employed, keep them happy.

Ron, your smile going around has added a million million bucks just to the people that are here.

I think we as council really appreciate you and all that you have done.

And there's no money involved with that smile of yours or anybody else's.

It's just the opportunity to see and feel that it's the feeling that you can't pay for or touch or anything else that when you go and rub up to next somebody else and say they tell you thank you, or just smile at them or whatever else.

I think this is a great start.

I mean, I'd like to see March come along here and have some maybe numbers.

I one would like to see with you know uh lead times associated with some of these things.

Some of them will maybe we want right now, but with a 52 or a 58-week lead time, uh you don't plan it for now, you plan it for later or whatever might be.

So I'd like to see some of those numbers come in.

And as we've said, we want to make sure that our employees are taken care of.

Secondary, our citizens are taken care of.

And I guess from my school board background, I appreciate the money that at least we would be looking at for the schools.

These school kids really need help.

They're going to be us in the next 20 years or something like that.

And whatever little bit we can do to help them and let them know that the community is involved with that.

Many times parents aren't involved with those kids, and they just need to know an opportunity to go up the mountains to go to Washington to wherever those little field trips are.

And if we have some opportunity to fund some of that, I think that's great.

And from that, then we can start looking at some of these other things, the infrastructure and whatever else that will fall apart.

Desks or whatever else after 20 years.

I just got a 20-year-old, 21-year-old daughter married last week, okay.

So that's great.

She was born when this furniture was put in here.

She was not born when this march was put enough.

But again, thank you all so very much for what you've done.

We anticipate that in March, when you do come back, there'll be some little bit more details.

This just gives just is amazing again for all that you've done, and we appreciate it.

Tina, uh Curtis, you said everything I was gonna say.

Yeah, I want to just really just say I I love what uh what councilmember White said is that our ultimate client is our resident.

I I love that because that's who we are here to serve, right?

And so, in order to do so to serve them to our best, is we need to make sure that our staff and our personnel are taken care of.

And so for me, that's so important to make sure that we have um enough um employees, they have enough coverage, and we talked about retaining and attracting employees.

So I think you have stepped in, Ron, and you changed the culture.

And I think that our city is a city that people want to come work to.

You know, there's always great things that they say um about Avondell, and so I do appreciate you for bringing that to our city.

Um, but again, I just want to just say thank you and all to all the staff.

I love the needs assessments.

I think that we need to do that first before we pull the trigger on a lot of these projects.

But I think looking at some of the things, these are things that we've we've expressed to you, and so thank you for listening to us and um putting those up for us.

Mr.

Mayor, if I can end up real quick.

Um I appreciate the um the nice comments, but um I am the fortunate one.

Um look to my left and my right, and around the table, whether it be our chiefs or our parks director, we are surrounded with professionals that um do an amazing job, even with my um direction, they still find ways to be successful.

So I appreciate them.

I interact very little with uh employees on a daily basis.

It's them out there leading the department, setting the tone, setting the culture.

So I'm very appreciative of everyone out there doing the work.

So thank you.

And then just to clarify, I think I heard Councilmember Nelson uh was uh sort of a little vote for the uh uh um summer uh school program to help our kids give them something to do.

Is that kind of what I heard a little bit?

Let me just wish you all a merry Christmas from from this entire city council.

However, you celebrate Christmas, however you celebrate the holidays.

Thank you for being here tonight.

Thank you for being away from your families for so many meetings, for so many events, for so many things that the city asks for you to do.

Um I've said this before, it's the greatest organization I've ever worked for.

The best counsel I've ever worked with in my 20 years of doing this.

Um I look forward to the next year.

Um I look forward to putting this plan as we see this plan develop.

Um I look forward to the exciting things that are coming forward.

And um I hope you get a chance to spend time with your families and your friends and enjoy the Christmas season.

So thank you very much.

Can I get a motion?

I have a motion from Councilman Malone, a second from the vice mayor.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Is that what you needed?

No.

No.

There's none opposed.

We're adjourned.