I know, isn't that fun?

That was fast.

Yeah.

And I would have that one.

We need to use the small team.

No, plug leave that plugged in to where it was.

Okay.

Really?

I I just did mine.

Does it matter which one?

Where's these what was that network folder?

That's what we were looking for.

No.

The problem is is it was right here.

Oh, that's right.

It's right there.

Somebody opened up music.

Oh that's the first one.

This one?

Can we just save it to the desktop?

Yeah, that's fine.

I'm gonna inject it now.

Should be good.

Okay, yours is right.

Right there on top.

I think I think so.

Mayor when you're ready.

Welcome tonight's Eloy City Council meeting.

It is Monday, August 11th, and the time is 6 p.m.

Madam Clerk.

May I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Vandraska.

Present.

Councilmember Curtis.

Here.

Vice Mayor Torango.

Here.

Councilmember Schneider.

Here.

Councilmember Garcia.

Present.

Councilmember Galindo.

Here.

Mayor Sutton.

Here.

Okay, I'd like to please rise for a moment of silence and the Pledge of Allegiance led off by Councilmember Curtis.

One nation.

Undergisible.

Liberties.

Okay, that brings us to item number five, public appearances.

First, I have Beverly.

Please come up, state your name, tell us where you live.

My name is Beverly Seekas.

I live at the Valley Village of Grand Valley Ranch off of Toltec by the TA and the love to be truck stop.

I'm here tonight, first of many future meetings.

We have many concerns over the Peterson Group and their development plans for the 300 acres, which was the San Miguel Golf Course.

And next to that is the Century Complete Homes.

And in the future, we are just looking for guidance, some navigation through all this with city, county, whether it's flood, housing, zoning, planning.

So that's going forward is that we will have people from the community at each meeting, whether it's planning and zoning and council meetings, so that we can keep apprised of the changes that come.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We welcome your input.

Next up, I have Donna.

Just please state your name and tell us where you live.

My name is Donna Keeler.

I've lived at the Village of Grand Valley Ranch for 20 years.

Also, with the increase in traffic, has there been any consideration in making Toll Tech four lanes to Pataglia?

Thank you for listening to me and for my concerns.

Thank you.

And thank you for addressing this council, Donna.

Thank you, guys.

You did great.

Next, I have a Larry Fink.

Would you rather wait to come up?

Because it's a public hearing during your thing.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Thank you, sir.

And that brings us to our favorite portion.

Mayor's announcements.

But respecting everyone's time tonight, because we do have a full agenda.

I'm I'm going to keep this brief.

We had three public input sessions on our Eloy listens portion of the construction of our general plan.

Attendance was sporadic.

Not including council of staff.

I think we had like eight people at the first one.

We had nobody show up at the second one, but then we had over 50 people at our last one, which was really good.

We got a ton of really great information from the public, and it's all being taken into consideration and being logged and put up.

On Thursday, I attended the Habitat for Humanity Open House in Arizona City.

It was a brand new build by Habitat for Humanity.

So we had some really great conversations with the people for Habitat for Humanity because we want to do some of that down here.

We have a real need for that in our community.

And I'm looking forward to working with them in the future.

On Tuesday, 8 5, our neighbors in Santan Valley voted to and cooperate.

The vote passed, and we're gonna see how this shakes out because they're gonna grab a big piece of the state shared revenue right out right away from all the cities and towns in our area.

And it wasn't a narrow margin.

That vote passed two to one.

So they they're gonna get what they wanted, and I wish them well at that.

And is tomorrow the meeting at for the 505?

All right, just in FYI tomorrow evening at 5 o'clock, there will be a meeting about the proposed 505 freeway.

Going from Gold Canyon to Eloy, there'll be a second phase meeting of that tomorrow.

That will be at the uh Santa Cruz Valley Union High School at 5 p.m.

Come out, learn about the project, and let your voices be heard, like our members down here today, letting their voices be heard.

So that's about it from the Mayors side.

Any council member announcements?

Council member announces.

Come on, Joanne.

I know you got that one.

Yes, I was fortunate to attend the Morris Institute at ASU's uh downtown campus on water and housing.

Um was jam-packed.

I was um also uh councilmember Vadoxra and um Vice Mayor Tarango and Councilmember Snyder, myself, along with the city manager.

It was jam-packed with information both days.

I mean, literally, we we had no time to break.

It was one speaker after another after another.

Um we go to these trainings and we're offered this information, and one of the things that I felt that was very helpful was that I learned about data centers, and I learned about there's two kinds of data centers.

There's data centers that just store the cloud data, and then there's data centers that actually receive data from the satellites and stuff, and it makes a big difference to uh bringing those into your community because of the amount uh how much they rely on on the local cities, and especially how much water they use and how much electricity goes into them and stuff.

So I mean, I I have gone down a rabbit hole now and learned so much more about data centers, and I think that uh we're very fortunate that we had council members there attending, and now we can make educated decisions when it comes because we do have a data center coming into Eloy.

Um, I also wanted to thank uh Tori Hernandez and Celine because the registration, the checking into the hotel, checking out everything went so smooth, and I thank you for that as well.

Thank you, Councilwoman, and you guys go ahead.

Yeah, I would uh was fortunate enough as uh councilman Glendo said to attend the councillors, but there's a couple things I wanted to bring up uh and share with uh folks here tonight.

Um was on water, and of course, water is a big topic, and those people who live at the ropes ranch, of course, are right in the middle of it because of the increased rates there.

But a couple of things came out of the uh Kyle Institute.

Uh the state of Arizona, 36% of the water usage in the state of Arizona comes from the Colorado River, which I didn't know.

And 41% of its groundwater.

So here I'm talking about the Colorado River and the importance of it.

It's uh essentially uh a big input to the cities.

Uh Phoenix and some of the other cities draw water from the Colorado River and the canal to the purple water.

So uh that was interesting.

The other thing was interesting is that of the water usage in the state, 72% of it is agricultural.

72%.

And domestic use is 16.

So that's where the big uh nut is, I think, is uh the crops.

And the other interesting thing was I thought it was okay the cotton usage.

No, the big crop is alfalfa, which I was not aware of.

So that was something I learned.

But anyway, it was uh the other interesting thing is because uh I being a resident of ropes, and they're worried about the increase in the uh water and water rates, and I think even tonight we're gonna be talking about water rates.

Uh in the state of Arizona, 76 percent of the people buying water in the state of Arizona, it's more affordable than the national average.

So we pay less for our water here than the people doing the national average, which was surprising to me because I keep hearing about how much water is gonna cost and so forth.

So I guess we have to prepare to pay more, even to get to the national average.

The other interesting thing that I picked up and I wanted to share was had to do with education.

And this was uh studies comparing the education of students of Arizona compared to the rest of the country, and they looked at third grade, they looked at eighth grade, they looked at high school and uh beyond high school.

They looked at uh where Arizona ranked relative to the third grade and eighth grade to right about the middle of the pack.

So we weren't doing too bad of the job at third grade and eighth grade.

But we're I think we're next to last in number of people graduate with the with high school degrees, and likewise that low when people are going on to secondary educate beyond in the college.

So something happens.

It seems like we've got uh students are engaged and doing quite well on in the uh grade schools, and something happens, we lose them in the high schools.

So it's something I think we need to pay attention to and look forward because I think that's where the real issue is how do we keep the high school students engaged and go on and get more education because in order to survive in the future world, you have to have education.

So somehow we're gonna have to address that elephant in a room.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you for all those points.

Okay, so council good, Mr.

City Manager.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, members of council.

Just a couple things on my docket for today.

Um, first off, I want to give a shout out to our public works business manager, Christina Wozniak.

She has officially received her grade three certification for wastewater treatment plant for the state of Arizona.

As you guys recall, she came over from Ohio with the certification, but took a little bit to get everything transferred over.

So just goes to help show what we're doing in Matt's operation with wastewater, getting everybody up to speed and getting those grades.

Grade four is the highest.

That is one of the most difficult.

But she's I think she's gonna work towards that, right?

Yep.

Matt shaking his head, yes.

So big kudos to Christina.

We're happy that she's got that certification for Arizona.

Um, secondly, as to uh piggyback off what the mayor said with the general plan meetings that were just recently held, all that is now available online.

So anybody that wasn't able to attend those meetings would like to go online and fill out that questionnaire.

We welcome that, we encourage that.

So please go to the city of Eloy website.

You'll see in one of our main bubbles that says Eloy General Plan.

Click on the general plan, takes you to where you need to go.

Go through, fill that out, get that in so that we can use it more data the better.

We can see the bigger picture for where we're gonna go with Eloy.

And of course, if you have any questions, reach out to City Hall.

We'll be more than happy to help out with that.

Uh, we have on the 14th, we have police graduates.

New officer will be graduating and starting on Monday, we believe Tuesday.

So happy to have a new officer joining our ranks.

And additionally, we hired a new dispatcher.

Dispatch has been a rough is is always depending on you know, doesn't matter where you are, it's a tough position to fill.

So we're happy to have another officer helping out in dispatch and helping our first responders keep going where they're supposed to go.

So and you know, we've got a lot of activities going on in community services, so just encourage all the public to check the community services web page regularly.

You can sign up for different events, youth soccer and after school programs.

And then we're you know, we're building a board of appeals is having a little trouble getting new members to join on.

As such, we don't have enough folks that are willing to sign up and fill out an application for the Building of Appeals Commission.

So we don't have one.

Um moving forward, in order to help us continue along with our new development and our processes, we're more than likely gonna have to look at a code amendment to allow the city council to act in the place of the board of a peat building board of appeals so that we can continue our operations without it.

You know, we we could have issues.

So be prepared to see that we're in this amendment in the near future.

But in order to avoid that, again, if if you there's anybody in the audience listening or council members, know folks that would be willing to submit an application.

Please go online, get that application in because it would be better to have a board of the public.

I believe it's seven, five five members, five members out of seven.

It's a seven-member board.

How many do you have now?

Two five member board.

Oh, I'm sorry, five member board.

We have nobody.

The term is how long?

Three years.

Three years, okay.

Thanks, Dan.

Can we be sure that we're not just using social media to put this information out?

Um can we be sure we have two electric boards in town, one here in Eloy proper and one in Toltec.

And we do a lot of things that we rely so solely on social media, and it's not getting out to our public because not everybody is on social media.

We I believe we put that out in the paper as well a couple of times too.

So we're using the paper, we're using social.

We have to pay for the paper to be able to see it because they don't give us a paper anymore except for one day a week.

Yeah.

And so, like I said, it's just like the meetings that we went to last week.

Nobody showed up.

And right.

We could have put it on those electric boards we paid so much money for.

So if we could put that stuff on there, thank you.

Talk to Matt and his team.

Yeah, we can we can see what we can do for that.

Thank you.

Oh there used to be a newsletter too that came out uh quarterly or something in uh with a water sewer bills, but that went away.

But that's another way.

Maybe we ought to start thinking about getting information out to people.

So it doesn't have to do every every month, but maybe on a quarterly basis or something like that.

We gotta look into that again.

Okay.

Yeah, we'll do that.

Absolutely.

Quarterly, maybe.

And last up is sanitation trash service.

So as you know, we switched over to WM.

We've got a whole new recycling and trash program, new cans.

Unfortunately, as noted in uh in the missive to council, we're having issues with recycling.

Lots of people just aren't getting it or wanting to get it.

Uh this is not new.

Similar incident that we had when uh a rad, as everybody knows, was doing our trash too.

So we're doing another push.

We've got flyers that we're gonna be sending out in the monthly utility bill that includes what's recyclable, going back through, doing another education push.

Um, because as you know, as we talked about, the the trucks have cameras on them, they know.

So if you're not if you're contaminating your trash bin and you dump it, they will know who you are.

And WM is notifying those residents, and they have a three-strike rule.

You do it three times, and you can no longer be a resident uh recycling customer.

Uh they've had a talk to Matt with the public works department.

He said they have received several phone calls of folks just not wanting to deal with it.

Like, you know what, never mind, I'm done.

Uh, I'm not gonna be a recycler.

But uh please you know, spread the word.

We're gonna be like we're gonna get this out into the public more, but it'd be helped is talking to your neighbors, letting everybody know.

Um, if you desire a PDF copy of this, we'll be happy to sign it.

Just let me know, and we'll get that over to you.

But really, you know, that's not not hard struggle, but it's noticeable, and and we definitely want to make sure that the folks that are recycling properly can continue to maintain it, and WM doesn't pull it completely.

Yeah, I I would just suggest that we uh also talk to the resident, because I know what happens to me is when I put a lot of times I'll put my dumpster out there on the curb because I have to put them on the curve, and people will just walk by and throw stuff in there.

Oh, that's so that's no fault of the residents.

Nope.

And I I believe that they there should be an appeal process to let them know like this isn't I'm not doing this.

This is what's happening in the public and stuff, so that people are not just you know being fined or penalized without you know giving some kind of explanation as to why we can look into it, but as the contract clearly stated violations of the recycling policy are solely on the back of the resident, so it's the residents trash, the residents gotta be careful to maintain it.

I mean, we'll we'll talk to them and see what they say about um.

I know that they're pretty strict on this because it does mess up their systems pretty bad.

But we'll follow up with them.

We'll we're Matt and his team are really paying attention to this and working with them to make it work.

Everybody wants to make this work.

We really want to turn this one around and get everybody on board.

I think the education portion is the way to go because I know people want to do this and they want to do it right, and just the educate more than the sticker.

So putting that uh putting that out in the water, bowl that's gonna be a big help.

Yep, we'll keep on.

Thank you.

Unless there's any questions, that's all I have for tonight.

Thank you, Mayor, council members.

Don't you have uh presentations?

Oh, yeah.

Presentations from folks.

Who's up just saying just chief's coming first?

I think he I think he won the rock paper scissors against uh Sylvia, HR director.

So welcome, Chief.

Thank you.

Thank you.

How soon they forget about me.

Um good evening, mayor, vice mayor, um, council members, assistant senior manager, city manager, our city attorney, and the city clerk.

Um continuing with the effort to come before you guys once a month.

It's kind of highlight the the great work our police department's doing and community collaboration as well and transparency and just continue that going on.

So for those of you who haven't seen this before, this is something I will do on the first meeting, council meeting of each month.

Dan, thank you for getting the TV screens up there.

First, I want to touch on uh I'm gonna touch on internal department updates, community engagement activities, and then notable enforcement activity and some key statistics.

First thing is department updates for recruitment.

Our recruitment is continuous as city manager talked about.

We just recently hired a dispatcher.

We have a second dispatcher hired uh starting on August 20th.

So that's great to start filling those ranks.

We're authorized a total of uh six dispatchers, so that'll bring us up to five.

And we have another best batcher that's in backgrounds right now.

So hopefully, I guess all the way up to full complement of six dispatchers.

City manager also mentioned we have one academy graduate that's graduating on the 14th of this month out of the Gilbert Regional Academy.

So we're happy to have Officer Lindsay that's going to be joining us next week to start the training program.

And then we currently have two police recruits that are in background, so hopefully we can get them hired into the September Academy with Gilbert as well.

Um, secondly, talk about police vehicles.

Um, each year we're authorized to purchase a new vehicles when when the budget's allow for, and we are authorized to get uh three new vehicles for the fiscal year 25-26.

And uh those vehicles were delivered in July.

And they just happened to be pretty lucky.

They had some vehicles that came available really quick.

Enterprise rental that we work with, was able to locate those vehicles, and we're happy to say we got those three vehicles.

So thank you very much, uh council and everybody for uh um funding those funding for those vehicles.

Some training in keeping with cooperation with our city attorney and collaboration with them.

I've worked with their office to get uh the city our city prosecutor Elizabeth Reuter out to the police department on July 31st.

She came out and provided some training to the police department on case preparation, courtroom testimony, demeanor, and criminal case processing.

So it's very valuable, especially when we have new officers that don't really understand the court process.

So thank you for having Liz come out and help us with that.

Also on July 31st, we hosted a blue envelope autism awareness training presented by the University of Arizona here in the city hall at the community room.

Um, and that's a bring awareness to autism and just train our officers how to deal with people, and that that works in collaboration with the Blue Envelope Program, which we also launched in July, which is a program that uh people who suffering from autism.

Uh it has the uh notes on this envelope saying that I have autism, and inside that envelope has a registration, um, vehicle insurance information, and when uh a vehicle stop is made, that envelope will be handed directly to the officer.

So they're they're uh giving that information right off the bat.

And that is a voluntary program for those citizens who decided to participate.

So in that training, we had 23 Eloy PD officers that participated, three officers from Florence, one Oral Valley police officer, and one officer from South Tucson.

So it was a great showing and a good training.

Community engagement um in line with uh being engaged with our community on July 10th.

I attended the Eloy Junior High, and I was met up there with um Councilman Garcia for the um back to school.

It's actually a meet the teacher night, I think, and kind of a back to school before school started.

So that was a great opportunity to walk around and see some of the kids and uh see meet some of the new teachers.

Also on July 30th, the captains and I, my two captains, Captain Jerome and Captain Um Gualtney attended the core civic sagual community relations luncheon, and that just helps with keeping those those relationships with our local prisons.

And then also an initiative I mentioned, I believe last meeting I came up to was the cops and clergy initiative that I'm starting with the PD to build relationships with our um faith-based leaders in the community.

Um I've decided to have a schedule our first meeting on September 17th.

Invites have been sent out.

Um, so hopefully we have a good showing for our first meeting.

That's something we'll be meeting quarterly with the faith-based leaders.

Next one is gonna be uh notable enforcement activity.

Um, as you know, we implemented our flock safety technologies, which is our license plate readers throughout the city of Eloy.

Currently, we have approximately 10 to 11 cameras in the community.

We still have about four or five cameras that are pending, but we're already using the system, and it's already um proven to be a success.

I'm gonna highlight a couple cases really quick here on the screen.

Hopefully it opens up.

Uh the first one here is on July 14th.

Eloy PD responded to a circle K theft of a wallet.

Security footage delayed offers to the suspect's vehicle, and flock helped locate the vehicle description and color and cameras were able to obtain the license plate.

Officers contacted the suspect who admitted taking the wallet and returned it.

By way of the license plate, the cameras, our flock cameras located the vehicle as it was exiting the city and confirmed the information that was given at the at the circle K, and we're able to locate the the driver, the um license plate information and registration, make contact with the suspect.

If you'd had a case like that in the past, um say that there would probably be no information, little information provided at the circle K, and nothing really to follow up on.

So somebody would have lost their wallet, and probably could have been a victim of ID theft in the future.

So that we were able to uh get that information and make us uh an arrest really quickly.

Next one is on July 15th.

Vehicle information mail suspected of disorderly conduct was entered to a flock system and was able to locate the vehicle by make a model and provide investigators with the license plate information, which investigators used to ID the registered owner and the suspect.

Suspect was arrested.

So if you see the pictures up on the screen there, um information we were provided at the scene, uh give a description of the vehicle, and we were able to use the flock cameras to locate the vehicle.

Number one, confirm the direction of travel and see where the location they were coming from.

Uh so using that information, they confirmed all the license plate and they got the registered owner's information.

We're able to ultimately contact the suspect and make an arrest.

So this is an example of how it's already coming um coming in uh handy to have that technology.

Last one on July 26th, a stolen vehicle recovery, a pilot travel center on Sunshine Boulevard officers received an alert through Flock that a stolen vehicle in Nissan Ultima entered Sunshine Boulevard from the I-10 freeway.

Officers located the vehicle unoccupied at the gas station, parked at the gas parked at a gas pump.

Officers conducted surveillance on the vehicle and took the driver into custody when he returned to the vehicle.

Investigation revealed that Glendale PD was actively looking for the same suspect for stealing his mother's car, credit cards, and assault upon his mother.

So just a great example of how we leverage technology to locate these suspects, um, conduct investigations and make arrest.

Now talk about a couple other matters.

Uh, there's one other case here that's uh involved our city attorney, uh prosecutor, and also our local magistrate, which was kind of concerning.

On July 29th, an unknown male left a voicemail with the police department claiming people were under his home discussing killing the Eloy magistrate and prosecutor if charges were not dismissed.

Officers identified the caller, located and detained him.

PD coordinating with mental health services and was and the subject was admitted for evaluation with a petition from the police department.

Upon release, suspect was rearrested by the police department and booked in the county jail for threats.

As of last week, that person was still in custody, but one thing I'm happy was was a thorough investigation done with all our investigators and our officers, and they did keep uh those threatened and good communication with them during the uh entire investigation.

Another thing we had was a at Santa Cruz Valley Union High School on July 31st.

School staff saw a student with what appeared to be a firearm and quickly notified administrators and law enforcement.

Officers arrived within minutes, determined it was a BB gun and confiscated without incident.

Student was arrested, and there were no injuries or threats to the community.

The juvenile was ultimately booked into juvenile detention on that matter.

And lastly, I'll share some interesting stats with you guys.

This is for the month of July.

The police department received 1,617 calls for service.

That includes police and fire calls.

Approximately 77% of those calls were for police, and 23 of those percent of those calls were for fire.

1970 and incidents were handled by police officers in the month of July.

334 civil traffic citations were issued in the month of July.

19 traffic collisions were investigated.

And lastly, 261 public records act requests were received by the police department.

So all our guys are staying busy out there.

So these numbers reflect all the activity that's through the month of July.

And those numbers are pretty consistent through each month.

So the guys stay busy out there.

And uh, with that, that is my presentation.

I'm open to any questions that you may have regarding any of the activity we've discussed.

Well, thank you, Chief.

That was very that that was really good.

And I'm glad to hear the flock is working as it's working way better than I think most of us thought it was gonna work.

I really do.

And I did happen through uh through City Hall here when they were doing the blue envelope training, and the officers were on break and we chatted, and they seemed really positive about that and having some dealings with people with autism.

I just think that's a wonderful program.

It's so ingenious.

It could just save so much heartache down the line just by knowing what to do.

Well, thank you.

So, any counsel on my left have anything?

Counsel on my right.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you very much.

Please state your name, tell us where you live.

It is me, Sylvia Lopez.

I'm your HR director.

And I think it's my excited about this because we have been working on a project now for some time.

If I can pull it up, I apologize.

Okay, here we go.

Um I don't know what's happening.

What's happening right now?

Okay.

I'm sorry, I apologize.

I'm sorry.

Oh, here we go.

Thank you.

So I'm excited to be here because um we are here to present uh the launch of our new uh City of Eloy online job opportunities platform.

Um, as some of you may be aware, we had uh an old system that was through um civic HR transitioned over to another company uh criterion, and uh we were receiving a lot of problems.

We we we were experiencing a lot of problems with the system.

So I'm pleased to say that we we transfer that over.

Um the reason being is because we are now looking to being streamlined a little easier, we're able to receive applications much um faster.

Um applicants are able to use the system much easier.

We went over to NeoGov.

Um, NeoGov is a uh company that's trusted with uh with over 7,000 um city government and um multiple government agencies nationwide.

Um they enable us to do a seamless job of job posting, uh tracking the applications, and hiring workflows go much faster.

Um, our hiring managers are gonna love it, those that have uh haven't already used it.

Um, so we're excited about that.

So, what the new system offers.

Um, it has 24-7 online access to job listings.

Um, we streamline the application process much faster.

Uh, the data is secure and it's safe for the applicants, of course.

Um, we have the uh applicants have the ability to save their applications and then reapply when they're ready to come in.

They also get um real-time um tracking on their application status, um, and they also have the ability to have now text messages sent to them on the status of their application, and um they are able to receive text messages when a job of interest comes up that they're interested in the line of the say they're interested in HR or they're interested in police.

Every time there's a new position that's open that they get a message received that that is open now.

Um it is easy, accessible, secure.

Um the uh applicants will visit the opportunities page, they select the apply, they create their secure account, which is a one-time um registration.

Uh they upload enter the resume and details, uh, they submit their application, and the profile is saved for future applications or um positions that we have open.

It's a much better experience for our applicants.

We're finding that more and more.

We're getting uh positive feedback feet uh feedback.

It's it's been really great.

So the the fact that it saves their profiles is a real plus.

So the strategic of uh strategic advantages for for us in Eloy is that we have a broader applicant um reach.

Um we have consistent screening, uh better data tracking and reporting, and secure and compliant record keeping, which unfortunately we didn't have with the last program.

We've received positive responses from not only members of the public but professionals that are using our website um and the applicants themselves.

Um it's like I said, it's it's night and day, completely different.

Um we are promoting the new platform uh through the city website, social media, uh community bulletin boards, um, and of course, events like this.

So we want to share the information out with everyone in the public.

I'd like to show you a demonstration of this, uh, the website.

This is goes straight into the HR portion.

We proceed to the site, which is through NeoGov.

And I'm gonna show up a um position um as an example.

Uh currently we're advertising for a chief building official.

As you can see, if you hover over the salary um portion, it gives the applicant their um hourly rate of a range and also the annual rate.

The full description is posted here.

We also have the opportunity to add promotional brochures, which is really nice, so they can get a uh a clear um idea of not only our city, but also the position and the department that they're gonna be working in and all the great stuff that we have to offer.

Um, in addition, we also have um if it's open and continuous, um, we do have a little blurb that says that's gonna be open up until a certain date, and then we'll be able to review.

So they're always aware of what's going on in the process.

They're not just blinded by it's gonna be open until filled, but there's no review date or no idea of when uh the applications are gonna be reviewed.

We also have um a tab for benefits, and in this benefits tab, they're able to go straight into the portion of HR that explains all of this um Eloy benefits um for the employees.

Um it goes through the the full um holidays, stipends, how P2 hours are accrued, and what that accrual looks like, and in addition, they can go one step further and see our actual brochure, which outlines the costs for employees that work with us and how great our benefits are because we do have a very rich um insurance plan.

So we want to showcase that.

We want to we want to be able to show everybody um just what a great place this is to come and work for.

Um there is one little other blurb um that is uh our our police department, they like um because police officers have a little bit more uh intricate uh questionnaires, and so those questionnaires get placed into the initial part of the application process, which is important if they're certified and not certified.

So it's a really really nice tool.

Um, we're gonna be doing um training for our uh hiring managers.

Um that's gonna be happening in the next couple weeks.

Um, they will be live with um a representative from NeoGov, and so everyone's gonna if they haven't used the uh portal before, they're gonna learn a lot about it.

So it's been a great process.

Do you have any questions?

Yes.

Yes.

I signed up for NeoGov probably 10 years ago.

It's still free, right?

It is.

It's it's a wonderful thing.

NeoGov, yes, it is it's really a great tool because I signed up about 10 years ago, and I wound up getting my job over in Valley Metro up in Phoenix through NeoGov.

And while I was on that job, it would notify me when promotional opportunities and everything else came available.

And it's just it's just what all the cities are pretty much using right now.

And it's a great it's a one-stop shop if you're looking for a job, it really is.

So thank you for going this route.

Thank you for making our whole user experience better on the internet.

Because somebody asked me tonight about our user experience on the internet, and we're gonna try to make that a whole lot better.

Thank you.

Anyone on council questions, comments?

Is this uh provide you any input on what the maybe average job should go for?

The salary, yeah.

I mean, you've got posted here, but is there any data collection by uh by them to kind of give you some feedback on where you are when you post the job?

So uh Mayor Councilmember Snyder, we we do get some feedback just from our own data.

So we're able to create reports and download that data.

We can then use that with our compet class study um if they want to see the statistics.

What they're gonna be looking for is they're gonna be able to, and they're gonna be able to gather is how many, and that I track that as well.

How many positions are open throughout the year, how many positions are filled, how many applicants do we receive, um, how many did we process, um, how many uh were were hired and not hired versus not being hired or not being filled.

So all that data is stored.

Unfortunately, we didn't have that capacity with the prior um database that we were using.

So this one gives us a whole lot more ability to get so much more information and capture it, and and we can then use that in the future.

However, I don't believe we're able, they're able to gather data from other entities.

That is what our our consultants do.

Council right, go ahead, Mr.

Vodroska.

Comment and question.

Congratulations.

It seems to be a very uh robust type of programming.

Um question, uh, when do you expect it to go live?

Uh Mayor Sudden, Councilmember Votaska.

Uh it is like now.

Yeah, that this what I just showed you is on our current website now.

These are the current positions we have listed.

We're accepting applications, we're accepting them now.

So it went live about a week and a half ago uh or so.

Yes.

Yes.

So we we are live.

And it was very seamless.

It was wonderful.

Anyone else?

Mayor.

Go ahead, sir.

How often is the candidate expected to either submit a new application or update the current application because their information is not gonna last forever.

Yes, Mayor, Mayor Sun, uh, Councilmember Garcia.

They are um they keep the stored information on on the platform, but as the applicant reapplies, like say they they apply for another entity within NEOCAV, that application is still uh valid, their resume is there, but they are able to update information as they're going along.

So if they've changed jobs or if they've uh moved and have to update their addresses, any of those things.

Uh they have the ability to go in there and update that.

Thank you.

Okay, good.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Glad to see this movement in the right direction.

So happy.

Okay, that brings us to number seven consent agenda.

All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine manners and will be enacted by one motion and one roll call vote of the council.

There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a council member request in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered in its normal sequence in the agenda.

Is there any council member who would like to remove anything for discussion from the consent agenda?

Okay, hearing none, I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Mayor, I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as the presented.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Madam Clerk, may I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Garcia.

Yes.

Councilmember Galindo.

Yes.

Councilmember Vodraska.

Yes.

Councilmember Curtis.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Tarango.

Yes.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, that brings us into item number eight.

Business and possible discussion and/or action on the following.

Thank you guys for showing up, by the way.

Good luck out there.

All right.

First is item A.

Conduct a public hearing for the water and wastewater system increases.

So let me open a public hearing.

Mr.

Wright.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor, members of the council, members of the public.

Tonight's public hearing is on the water wastewater increases.

We the city did a notice of intent.

On May 27th, the notice of intent just went out.

It went to the note uh was in the newspaper.

It was also online.

Uh we put it out on social media as well.

Um during the time it was out there, we received no comments on it.

Uh just to remind council um the Dan Jackson's here.

He'll come up, do a presentation and get over the uh scenarios, talk about the the utility rates after the public hearing.

There is uh the next item is a discussion decision on this, but we did follow Arizona revised statute on the notice of intent.

So um at this time I'll turn over to Dan for the uh the presentation with that.

Thank you.

Welcome, Dan.

Thank you.

Um Brian.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor, members of the council.

I am Dan Jackson, vice president of Will D and Financial Services.

Um we're the firm that did the latest water and wastewater rate study for the city of Eloy.

I've had the privilege of being your water and wastewater rate consultant for the past 20 years now.

So uh I've been before this council many times to talk about a very unpleasant topic, and that is the increasing cost of providing water and sewer service.

We prepared our latest rate study this past summer.

We present we gave a presentation to the council approximately two months ago.

And as Brian said, in accordance with state of Arizona law, we are conducting a public hearing tonight.

A lot of the numbers that I'm going to go over with you tonight are the same numbers that you saw a couple of months ago, but so for that reason I'm going to go through this presentation relatively quickly.

Nobody wants to pay more for anything at any time for any reason.

We're here to talk about a new water and wastewater long-term rate plan.

It is a it is a topic that many cities, not only in Arizona but across the country are addressing right now, and that is the general increase in the cost of providing water service.

Water is a precious and diminishing natural resource.

I'm from Texas, and in Texas, we've we've got a phrase, and that is whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.

In the 21st century, water is going to become a much more precious resource.

And as a matter of fact, according to the American Waterworks Association, the cost of water and sewer service and rates are going to triple in the next 15 years.

Water is simply becoming a more expensive commodity.

Why is this?

Well, rate adjustments and water cost increases are due to a lot of reasons that are really outside of your control.

You try to run your water operation like a business.

You want the revenues from your rates to cover all the costs of providing that service.

And water is a product, just like a McDonald's hamburger or a gallon of gasoline or anything else.

When the cost goes up, you have to pass those costs through to your ratepayers.

Guess what?

Cost of everything goes up by at least three to four percent a year just due to inflation.

And you've got an additional challenge, and that is it costs millions of dollars to build and operate and maintain a water system.

Costs a lot of money to push that water through your city and to get it to the point where if anybody wants to get up at three o'clock in the morning and turn that faucet on, water will come out of it.

And guess what?

Like any asset, it wears out over time, and you've got to continually reinvest in it to ensure that you have an adequate level and quality of service.

And those reinvestment costs are really what's driving your rates right now.

The average utility here in Arizona and across the United States has been raising its rates five to six percent every year.

And that trend is expected to continue.

Unfortunately, what we're talking about tonight is something we're that uh many, many cities are facing.

Now, I'm gonna present to you some rate comparisons that show how what people here in Eloy pay for water service as compared to what is being paid for by other cities.

But when you look at this, keep a very important thing in mind, and that is 30 to 40 percent of utilities charge rates that don't cover their costs.

So just because a neighboring utility's rates are lower, that doesn't necessarily mean that they run a more efficient operation.

It might mean they're using their general fund to subsidize their water and sewer rates.

You do not do that here in Eloy.

Your water rates are self-funding, and so it's not always fair to do these rate comparisons, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

Um, we've talked a little bit about what's going on in the general industry.

Let's talk about city Eloy.

You last implemented a multi-year rate plan in the year 2022.

I know that because you hired us to do it.

Um you did uh annual set of rate adjustments for each of the next five years.

Now, what's expected to happen in the future?

Well, your costs are gonna continue to go up.

They're gonna continue to go up by three to five percent a year.

But more importantly, your city's engineers have identified the need to invest as much as 95 million dollars in uh water and wastewater capital improvement projects over the next decade.

Now now we're not necessarily saying you're going to invest that much, but there is a significant need for capital improvements.

One of the things that we've noticed in our work for other cities here in Arizona and across the country is that capital costs are going up at an alarming rate.

It costs so much more today to lay a water line than it did even five years ago.

And that the need to make those investments are what's driving the need to have a new water rate plan.

Okay, this chart right here shows what people here in Eloy pay for water and sewer service.

You pay for water service in two ways.

You pay a monthly minimum charge, and then you pay a rate for every thousand gallons of water that you use.

For most of your um, most of your the vast majority of your customers have a three-quarter inch meter.

That's a small meter, and that's what your water goes through.

And those customers pay a base rate of 21.52 cents a month.

And then they pay a volumetric rate that's called an inverted block rate.

The more you use, the more you pay.

The idea is to encourage conservation.

On the wastewater side, you also pay a base charge for most customers.

It's 40 and 23 cents.

And they also pay a volumetric rate for every thousand gallons of wastewater service that's produced.

Now, the key question most people ask is what do we pay a month?

Um, well, this chart right here answers that question, and it also compares your rates here in Eloy to other neighboring communities here in Arizona.

The average residential customer here in the city uses about 7,000 to 7500 gallons of water and sewer service a month.

That's very typical residential usage level.

But it is an average, means some people use more, some people use less.

Here in Eloy, a customer that uses that amount pays $87.57 a month.

This chart compares you to many of your neighbors.

As you can see, your rates are right about where you would expect them to be.

You're higher than some, you're lower than others.

You're within a couple of dollars of most of the other cities here.

You're a tad higher than Shiolo and San Luis, you're a tad higher than Casa Grande, but only a couple of dollars.

You're lower than Wilcox, Florence, you're significantly lower than Mirana.

So as you can see, you're the main purpose of a chart like this is to answer the question of are people in Eloy paying a disproportionate amount for water and sewer service compared to other cities in this area?

And the answer obviously is no, you're not.

You're within a few dollars of the most most cities, and you're less than a significant number of other cities.

So your rates are right about where you would expect them to be.

Okay, just a couple of quick background charts.

In the current year, you are uh you've sold about 411 million gallons of water.

To no great surprise, that the majority of that is residential.

About 55% of it is residential usage, but you've got a pretty robust commercial base here.

Your commercial customers use about 22% of your uh total water, and then your multifamily and other customers use the rest.

Now, in developing this new long-term rate plan, we looked at not just where your utility is today, but where we expect it to be five and 10 years from now.

We did a forecast for 10 years.

Now, a forecast is not a guarantee, it's a prediction based on a series of reasonable assumptions.

Well, one of the assumptions we made is that growth would be pretty modest here in the city.

In the current year, you've got about uh in 2025, you have about 2,943 water accounts.

We are projecting that's going to increase, probably by about 50 to 60 accounts a year to about 3,400 accounts by 2034.

On the wastewater side, you've got about 1,900 accounts in the current year, and we all we project that'll hit about 2,078 accounts.

In other words, we're not projecting a lot of growth.

Now, if growth comes, then that will have a very significant impact on your water and sewer sewer business, but we're not counting on that happening.

Okay, what are the other assumptions that we're using as part of this long-term plan?

Well, any reasonable plan has to assume that your costs are going to go up by about three to four percent a year.

We also are assuming that certain expenses like insurance, chemicals, utilities, workers' comp, those are probably going to go up at a rate higher than inflation.

But your electricity costs are actually decreasing a little bit, and that's due to the installation of fairly aggressive program of installing solar panels.

So that is actually modded, modified or or or reduced some of your electric costs.

We're also assuming that you're going to add some additional personnel as you grow, you're going to have to add a few more people.

Um your cap water costs and your CAGRD costs are going to increase significantly in the next uh several years.

But the biggest factor driving the rate plan that we're about to present you is the need to do capital improvements to maintain and improve the quality of water sewer and sewer service.

Now, while it's never easy to ask rate payers to pay more, the idea the the thing that people need to keep in mind is that these are direct investments in the future of the city of Eloy.

Because the capital improvement plans are going to build new assets that are going to service not just you, but your children, your grandchildren, and maybe even your great grandchildren.

So this is an investment in the future of the city.

Now, what we did in our rate study after a consultation with city staff is that we presented several different alternatives.

Really, you know, in a sense, rates are not really that complicated.

You tell us how much you want to spend, and we'll tell you what the rates have to be.

Now, capital improvement plans have some wiggle room in them for how much you're actually going to end up spending.

The more you spend on capital improvements, the higher your rates have to be.

So we're presenting four different alternatives.

The first alternative is that it assumes that you spend about $13 million in capital improvements over the next five years.

The second scenario assumes that you spend $23 million.

The third scenario assumes that you spend $33 million.

And the fourth scenario assumes that you spend $63 million.

So, like anything else in life, you have to prioritize what your projects are going to be and determine how much you're going to fund, and then the rate plan will present itself.

So this rather colorful chart right here shows the expected increase in your water and wastewater costs over the next decade.

The bar chart is broken down into operating costs, which are your blue, the blue portion, as you can see, just steadily goes up over the next several years.

And your current debt is the yellow, uh is the orangeish yellow portion.

Now, the big X factor is the debt.

As you can see, right now in the current year, it's costing you about $5.3 million to run your water and sewer system.

Well, if you do scenario one, where you add where you issue $13 million of new debt, your total cost will hit $7.5 million by 2034.

If you do scenario two, where you do $23 million in debt, your total costs are going to be $8.1 million, because that's an additional $600,000 in annual debt service that you'll have to spend.

If you do scenario three, your total cost will be $8.7 million.

And if you do scenario four, your total cost will be $10.6 million by 2034.

So it's very clear the more debt you issue, the higher your cost of services, and the higher the rates have to be in order to fund it.

So in these next few charts, I'm just going to go kind of quickly through the rates themselves, and then I'll show you the more important chart in, and that is what the impact is going to be on ratepayers of each of the alternatives.

This is the scenario one rate plan for your water and your wastewater system.

Now, as you recall, I told you earlier that you you implemented a new rate plan in 2023, 2022 that actually does not end up being uh fully implemented until November of 2026.

So if you do scenario one, you can keep the rate adjustments that you've already implemented for November of 2025 and November of 2026.

That would be an 11% adjustment in your water and sewer rates in each year.

Then after that, you would have to do a 9% water adjustment and a 3%, I'm sorry, 5% wastewater adjustment, followed by 3% adjustments in 2028 and 2029.

So as you can see, under scenario one, you could keep the same rate plan and then do additional adjustments in 27 through 2029.

If you do scenario two, you would have to you would have to do a 13% water adjustment in 2025 and a 13% adjustment in 2026 and a 13% adjustment in 2027, followed by 4% adjustments in 2028 and 2029.

You would also have to do higher wastewater adjustments in the same period as well.

You would also have to do 11% wastewater adjustments for each of the next three years.

And then finally, if you did scenario four where you did 63 million dollars of investment in the future of the city, you would have to do 18% water adjustments for each of the next three years, followed by 16 and 14% adjustments.

Okay, that's a lot of numbers.

So what's the bottom line?

What does it really mean?

Well, this is probably the most important chart in the entire presentation because it shows the impact on what the impact would be on a typical residential ratepayer.

Let's say you use 5,000 gallons of water and sewer service a month, and I would say at least 50% of your residential bills are 5,000 gallons or less.

Under this plan, currently, customers pay $78.96.

They would see their under scenario one, their bill would go up by $9 a month in 2025.

It's an 11% increase.

And then it would go up by $7 a month in 2027, followed by $3 a month increases in 2028 and 2029.

If you did scenario two, the increase would be slightly higher.

It would be a $10 a month increase in 2025 and an $11 a month increase in 2026, followed by a $10 a month increase in 2027 and smaller increases in 2028 and 2029.

If you did scenario three, your increase would be $10 a month in the first year from $78 to $88, followed by an $11 a month increase in 2020 6, followed by an $11 a month increase in 2027, and then higher increases in 2028 and 2029.

So you could see as you issue more debt, your increases are larger in the out years.

And then finally, if you did scenario four, you'd have to do a much greater increase in 202 through 2029.

I also have the same chart for 10,000 gallon uh you know per uh per month user.

But as you can see, the adjustments, the percentage increases are pretty much the same.

So as you can see, the decision to be made is it's it is it is an offset between how much debt you want to issue to fund capital improvements versus how much your increase you want your increases to be for your ratepayers.

So what I would suggest you do is take this take these charts, these last two charts, and use these as the guideline for what the ultimate rate adjustment plan you would like to implement.

Scenario one, scenario two, scenario three, or scenario four.

Regardless, adjustments have to come in the future for a variety of reasons, not just implement not just um um limited to capital improvements, but the capital improvement plan you decide will lead to the rate plan that you decide to implement.

With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have at this time.

Any council questions?

Oh, sure.

Go ahead then.

Uh how much of this rate is uh volume-driven.

So, in other words, uh, if we get lucky and we a major developer come in and build uh 500 homes in four years, how might that affect this?

It would significantly reduce the magnitude of the rate increases.

Water is a classic bulk commodity.

The more you produce, the more you uh the more you sell, the less you have to charge to everybody.

And so properly managed growth can be very beneficial for a water utility.

Now, of course, if that developer came in and built 500 homes, you'd have to sign a development agreement with them to make sure that they pay for the infrastructure necessary to service their development, and that's pretty standard, usually happens.

But as long as you do that, properly managed growth can be very, very good.

If you get that development, all bets are off in terms of the future rate adjustments.

I can guarantee you that they will be significantly less.

Uh you probably could uh start doing some infrastructure to maybe attract some of that development that you don't have now.

Absolutely.

Wow.

You guys.

Okay, thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Anybody from the public want to come up?

Be even this is a public hearing.

Yep.

Okay.

Right.

So, Mr.

Mayor, uh, members of the council, uh, with that, that will conclude this public hearing at this time.

Um, and then we can go into the next item.

Okay, at this time, nobody else, so I'm gonna close the public hearing.

Okay, that brings us to item B discussion of possible action on selection of funding scenario for the proposed water wastewater rate adjustments.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, members of the council.

Um, as you just heard, uh, Mr.

Jackson given the uh presentation on water, wastewater, uh the the four funding scenarios.

Um funding scenario one, that 13 million, that's already currently in our current rate plan that we have right now.

So in the current rate plan that we have through uh 2027, it is already addresses the 13 million in debt.

So option one is really no new debt, it's just giving us uh some ability to grow due to some of the um areas that Mr.

Jackson presented with utility costs going up operational.

That's where the the first scenario is.

Second scenario, that's when we start issuing the new debt in scenarios two, three, and four.

Um based upon those four scenarios, staff's recommendation is um the option number two, scenario two, issuing another 10 million in debt to giving us a capacity over the next several years is issuing up to 23 million dollars in water and wastewater utility debt.

Um so if we tonight, um we're kind of looking for guidance from council to which model that council wishes for staff to proceed with.

Um matter what currently we November 1st, right now we do have the 11% going in place.

If council directs staff to go with the other options, you know, one, two, or three, we would be doing public outreach after that because we would have to go through and address with council because we would be bringing forth at the next council meeting a new five-year rate plan for that uh council adopt for water and wastewater.

Those have to sit for 60 days on public hearings, yeah, between the adoption of the resolution and before it comes uh effective.

So that we look we're looking at a November first um implementation date if we bring a new rate plan to council next council meeting.

So at this time, Mr.

Mayor, members of the council, um kind of looking for the guidance after hearing them from the public hearing and um the presentation to which direction council.

Absolutely absolutely thank you, Brian.

So it would be staff's recommendation that we went with scenario number two.

Does anybody on council have a pension for any other scenario other than two?

Anyone looking for a three or a four thank you, Mayor.

So I just want to um clarify.

City council approved a rate increase in 2022.

That would sund down in five years.

Yeah, uh, it wouldn't sunset it the resolution.

Yeah, the the rates that were adopted back in 22 was a five-year rate plan.

Right now we're on year three, we're starting to year four.

If right our current rate plan after 2027, there's no more rate increases on the books.

So by doing this, when we first did the one in 22, we said we're gonna come back mid-year and give an update, have rate study looked at to see where we're at.

And that's where we're at today.

Um, even after hearing uh Mr.

Jackson's presentation, I think it should be standard.

If we update, if we do a rate plan uh and council passes option scenario two, I think it should be standard.

Come back in two years as an adjustment.

Don't wait five, because that's where we've gotten into probably trouble in the past.

We waited until year five.

Oh, that's year seven, year eight.

Now we're looking to play catch up.

We just have to be more consistent on our updates to bring council.

So if there is a housing development comes in or a major commercial customer that uses water, we throw that in the study, we can then adjust or modify at that point.

Okay.

Um so but this plan is not only go this is piggybacking or increasing the increase that they approved in 2022.

So it's not just merely adding on at 27 when that first increase was approved in 22.

This is adding on an additional increase in November of this year, correct?

Yes, uh, council uh Mayor Sutton, uh, Vice Mayor Trangler on option one, it does not.

Options two, three, and four, it will modify that rate increase for 25, 26, like it's on our current one and forward.

Scenario one.

If uh if I bring it up, if you want me to um I think that's what it looks like this one right here.

So this one right here you'll see that under this one where it says adopted, those are the ones that council adopted back in 2022.

That won't change under scenario one that stays at 11%.

And then option scenario one, then in 27, 28, and 29, those would be the part of the new five-year rate plan.

We would just kind of modify that one under scenario two, the water will increase from 11% to 13.

So a 2% increase to what the original one was.

However, under the wastewater, that stays at 11% for the next two years, then the years three, four, and five it'd be 11 and 3 and 3.

So it depends on which scenario we're looking at with all the maintenance, the growth issues, the so what's going on with the wastewater and water systems, the 10 million would give that capacity to give up to 23 million dollars on.

I I guess that's my biggest heartache.

It's unfortunate that this council is having to answer for what city councils the last 10 years haven't done.

But I guess my biggest heartache is is adding on to the increase that that council already approved in the next two years.

Yeah, instead of just looking at we need to continue the increases at the end of that of what the past city council approved.

Yeah, one of the reasons why it was beneficial to review it again is that capital costs have gone up significantly, and the capital obligations are projected to be significantly higher now than they were back in 2022.

And but however, if you look at this chart right here, the difference between scenario one and scenario two is only one dollar a month for uh for a 5,000 gallon user.

Yeah, even yeah, even three is only in the first couple of years.

Now it's not until with scenario three, you see the increases are a little higher in the out years because you're issuing more debt in the later years.

So um the the difference between scenarios one, two, and three are very, very nominal.

I mean, they are a little higher, there's no question about that, but it's only a dollar or two a month.

I guess it's easy for us to sit up here and say it's nominal when the average citizen is not seeing that's an additional dollar two or three that on top of every other bill that is increasing every year.

So um, I guess my biggest heartache with this is it was there was an increase approved in 2022, and now we're asking for an additional increase on top of that, which was approved back in 2022.

So um, I have no problem with continuing to well, I do, but I I we all hate to increase it, but we know we have to have money to be able to fix when issues come up.

I guess my biggest heartache is is adding an increase to what was already asked to be increased.

Um starting in November of this year.

I mean, I I get in 27 we need to continue to increase over the next however many years we need to increase, but I guess it's adding on to that increase that was already approved, if that even makes sense.

I'm sorry.

Michelle, just to let you know, in in 2022, we all sat together and got the same presentation.

Um and we were warned.

We were warned by both of you that this meeting would happen in three years, and that though that five years that we modified the rates to might change based on how many households come to Eloy, what the situation is with new businesses, what the water consumption will be, and what the cost of infrastructure will be at that time, and how what we have is fairing.

So to me, it's no surprise that we're having this meeting again and that there's new updated numbers, as crappy as that is to have to increase rates.

Um, but I it wasn't it's not like they sprung this on us and you know, said we're doing five years and we're keeping these for five years, and then we're gonna do five years.

We we were told at that time, and the public was told in the public hearing that this would happen.

So um my heart is bleeding as well as my fellow council members because uh at the as soon as the recent report that we received from the city manager, you stated that there was what 65 services that were were not paid and disconnected in I don't know if it was this quarter or if it was this month.

I don't last month.

It was last month.

Last month.

And if is that average, because what I see is that we're continuing to raise prices, and I understand that.

But my concern is that we're being asked to pick a plan that's gonna consistently increase water rates and stuff, where we're having people in our community that are not even being able to pay the rates as they are today.

Apparently, is that an average is like 65 an average a month that gets turned utilities that get turned off?

And I know that I was part of the council when we had that aggressive um policy for you know having people having to reinstate their services once they got turned off.

But that was you know, that was a a different scenario because we were losing money.

We were we were constantly losing money from people going as far as they could without paying their utilities, and then never recouping that service that we were providing.

Now that we have a more aggressive uh policy, I mean, has it changed?

Has it improved?

Because you know, like I said, I'm my heart is bleeding as well because I I see the need and I see the importance of providing quality service, but I also see that people are also not even being able to pay the service that they have today.

Um Mr.

Mayor, Councilman Glinda.

Um the last month is uh was a little higher than the average.

The higher average is usually around 50 to 55 uh non-delinquents uh delinquent accounts that we have to shut off on a monthly basis.

So last month was a little higher than normal.

Um but that's kind of normal when you get to the summertime months when people are using to fill up their pools doing stuff.

You do see higher uses on on some of those months.

So but 50 55 is the normal that we encounter on a monthly basis.

And then I I I believe it's what 120 days that they can go without paying their their bill before the uh no uh the city code it's actually 45, but we shut them off after 60.

60.

Two months.

Okay.

So after two months, it's uh it's an if you haven't made a payment in two months, it's an automatic shutoff.

Okay, and we're not recouping any of that 60 days in any way, they're not I mean probably about 90 to 95 percent term right on that same day.

Oh so they just don't pay the bill until they get the water shut off, and a lot of them um I'd say a little more than half are repeaters, which you all see them on there at least twice or three times a year.

And I mean, we offer assistance through CARA.

And I think we do we do if somebody needs help, we do point them to CARA or sometimes Panel Hispanic might help out, but we do point them to uh CARA because we know we give them assistance on that.

Right.

So okay, and um this in in this last summit that we went to on Thursday and Friday, it was pretty much pound into us that utilities in in cities are are all are running in a deficit.

They just can't they just can't meet the needs to serve the community with the cost of living that and and the jobs uh rates that are being provided in Arizona.

And and it was statewide, they they told us statewide that utilities just can't function with the average salary that most Arizonians are getting, you know.

So I understand like I said, we have to make these tough decisions, but my heart is just breaking right now.

Anyone else have anything?

Go ahead, Mike.

Oh, go ahead then.

Right, that's 55 or 60.

Uh what how many users do we have?

What percentage of of the user population is that?

Uh we have about 2900 water accounts just under three.

So I mean say three thousand and you're tongue sixty, so you're talking less than one percent.

Yeah, so it's a very small percentage, it's not like the total populations of uh I'm looking at this, and there's a couple things going through my mind, mayor is number one is I'm nervous about the three percent inflation.

You know, looking at everybody in the country, as you mentioned, is in a similar situation, and to my mind, all it's gonna do is keep driving costs up because of supply and demand and equipment, available equipment and manpower to do all this and so forth.

So I'm nervous about the three percent.

Uh and I'm also looking at the difference between uh two and three scenarios.

Uh and you're looking at in uh November 25, you're looking at uh what 60 cents, no 30 cent, seven.

Uh I can't say 40 cents.

And then the next year you're looking at uh less than a dollar again.

And so but you're getting another 10 million dollars in uh yeah, debt, but that's 10 million dollars that probably could be used uh to kind of grow some volume too.

And and so I just to my mind, I know yeah, it's more expensive, but it's going up for everybody.

And and I just look at man, here's an opportunity for not a lot more monthly charge to get another 10 million dollars that we could do something with.

So I I don't know, I'm kind of leaning that way.

Anybody else from council have anything?

I see my vice mayor thinking very come on.

What do you think, Mike?

Yeah, I'm just three years or down.

No, what's the scenario going to be?

Yeah, excuse me.

Yeah, I'm just thinking three years, we're doing this again, and we go with scenario one or two, and all of a sudden we're looking at what the infrastructure costs have gone up quite a bit in three years, and you know, maybe at that point we're gonna have to go all in and have you know, a number four or five scenario at that point.

So we really gotta think about yes, we've got uh balance, you know, what's right for our residents, but we also in doing that, we also have to think, okay, future expansion, what we can do, you know, if we don't take care of the water and wastewater at this point, and we have an emergency, you know, and we don't have the funds to do it.

We're gonna be in a situation where it's not gonna be good at that point either.

So you're gonna there's a lot to think about in what scenario we choose at this point.

Yeah, I I'm really personally leaning toward that scenario three because in the first year or two, it's only a dollar or so raise.

And then by 27, 28, yeah, we could have landed that huge subdivision, and all this goes right out the window.

All this goes right out the window to a completely new set of numbers.

So that's that's where I would I would lean personally.

So how should we do this as far as taking uh Steve?

Is there a recommendation how we should do this on a vote?

Uh Mayor Council members, you're just basically giving direction to staff to come forward.

What I would suggest to you is that um if you're not sure what scenario you're gonna have, I would I would suggest that perhaps you sugg have maybe you know two scenarios to come back to the council where we would create two resolutions or ordinances on there.

My concern is this is that right now, if you were to say, for example, let's go forward with exhibit with uh scenario number two.

We get to the council meeting and you find you decide that you want to go to three because we haven't noticed a higher rate and it's expenditure of funds, it could be subject to some challenge saying that we didn't, you know, basically we approved more than what we had put on on the you know our open meeting law requirement of the record.

So what I would suggest to you is that if you're thinking about exhibit as scenario number three, you're not deciding that tonight, you're just having it brought to you so that you can make a determination.

But if you want to also do scenario two as well, we can submit those to you and you can pick it.

You could even go four, but I would suggest to you, I don't think the council's gonna be that difference out there.

So I had mentioned, I think to um Mr.

Mallowitz, I wanted a number or an idea of um because these water rates are for Eloy proper and toll tech.

Um rope and does not use our water um nor our sewer, they do use our trash.

Um and sewer is all of Eloy proper and um some of Toltec, right?

And um mostly commercial, right?

Commercial out on Sunland Gen, Toltec, and Sunshine.

Um, I wanted some clarification on that on the number of users in um Eloy and Toltec, and then uh for sewer and for water.

But I and I thought we had agreed on number two the last time we met on this issue, but I could be wrong.

So um, Brian, you're saying that staff is recommending scenario two.

Uh Mr.

Mayor, Council Member Glinda, that was our staff's recommendation is on that, you know, based upon uh the scenarios presented.

And if so I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, it's just it was scenario two.

And and your recommendation is that um these uh rates should be looked at annually rather than setting a five-year plan, but looking at them annually.

Um my recommendation that and even talking with uh the city manager today is we'd be coming back.

I think every two years we'd come back to council, initiate a contract with Will Down to do that, because that takes about four or five months to go through the process.

So by the time it comes back to council, it'll probably be in some time in 27, you know, calendar year on it.

And so at that time, we would be given an update of this is our current rates, right where we're standing.

I mean, because when we did back in 22, the inflation and all the prices, we we didn't account for the sometimes eight, nine percent inflation on it.

So I mean, those prices have gone up on everything from you know, with construction to electric to just OM costs.

So by doing this, and that's where we went back, and you'll see it in scenario one.

That just uh keeping debt the same, we're asking for to extending the rate increase, especially in 27 by 9% to get some of these the prices back up to where it needs to be for operating.

So, yes, I mean my recommendation is we come back every two years, bring it to council for approval to relook at it, and that way we stay on top of it.

We're not we're not playing behind the game with if it's in between councils or elections.

No, we're coming back looking at that on a buy, you know, every two years we initiate it to bring council an updated rate plan.

Go ahead, Mr.

Mellowitz.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, just to give an example, put it in perspective.

We're investing heavily uh through the budget and CIP to expand the sewer line from uh the so we're playing to love a mile corner, love a mile corner down but taggingly and bataglia down to sunshine.

That's a two, two and a half year process.

And since we have announced that commitment that council approved the budget to do this project, we've already had several landowners in that vicinity highly interested in doing residential and commercial based projects.

Um this is a city manager Latcher has been working with several of them.

So you know, to Brian's point, as we look at our outgrowth and we do these updates every two years.

We're in two years, we could know whether or not we have potential future development, either in the zombie mesquite um Esperanza site, or we've got a new developer that's looking to do something just on the other set of sunshine.

Uh, in either case, we're actively looking at this area as our next residential growth.

So hopefully in two, maybe five years estimate, rough estimates are you know, eighteen hundred homes potentially in that area, which to Mr.

Jackson's point would substantially drop that rate.

But that's why, like Mr.

Wright said, having doing this exercise every two years, seeing where the market is, seeing what housing is actually gonna happen, because I know it, you know, in Ely, we've heard the story.

It's coming, it's coming, then nothing comes.

But this is our conscience offer to be more diligent on it on a bi-yearly basis to review these rates, review where we are with development, see what projects are in the hopper so that you know we do have a better picture of what rate structures look like.

So we're not falling behind.

We're not like Mr.

Right said, five, seven years, we're like, oh crap, you know, we're still having these higher rates when we could have lowered them.

But give give me an example of what's in what's working as we're expanding our infrastructure systems and people are noticing us and looking at Eloy and going, hey, okay, because you know, like Mr.

Jackson pointed out, development's gonna pay for development, but at the same time, if it's in the right-of-way, we're seeing that consistently across uh our Panel County area where the development wants us, the cities to pay for it.

Um, and Arizona water pays for it, global water pays for it.

It's just it's that cost is spread out more when you've got another utility in your city.

We just hold the burden for all of it.

It's great because we have the control, it's our utilities.

We we have this type of control, or we can have these discussions openly and in public, but you know, to do the infrastructure costs, it's it's a lot.

So I know that I promised not to look in the past and my past service for the city of Ely, but um, I remember having this discussion back when I served on the council, and again, the there was more um there was recommendations to increase utility rates to increase the sewer rates to increase the water rates, and one of the one of the things that held me back was the fact that we hadn't shown any growth.

How are we expecting you know our residents back then to to pay this added amount and this extra amount when we as a city council had not served them by by creating more growth?

Since I've been off and and have come back, I've seen a lot more growth.

I've seen a lot more um progress done for the city of Eloy and for the citizens, and um that's kind of where, like I said, I feel like the infrastructure is so much better now.

I feel like there's an investment in serving the people of Veloy using this growth that that we've seen and this progress that we've seen and put it into the service of the people of Eloy and Toltec.

So I um so and that means I'm encouraged by uh scenario two, possibly scenario three.

I'm also encouraged with with your recommendation that we come back every two years.

Um, but it yeah, I I'm concerned about as council member Schneider said, the inflation rates going up, and you know, will people be able to survive living in the city of Eloy?

So that's kind of where my quandary is.

Mayor?

Mayor.

Um, I kind of like the uh suggestion that we got from our city attorney um putting out two scenarios there, scenario two and three, and then have them present that to the public.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm kind of going with you on that.

Do we have to take a vote on that, Steve?

Or can we just give direction?

Uh mayor, council members.

Um if you take a vote on it tonight, it's non-binding, it's not gonna happen until you get a resolution in front of you.

If you give us direction, basically the the purpose of that is bringing something to you that you're telling us that you're willing to look at and decide, and so that you basically you have options.

So I think if you just give direction, it should be sufficient.

But if there's anybody else that has a concern, please let us know now so that we make sure that we can address every concern of every council member.

So I think we're gonna go to the direct staff to present us with scenario two and three.

Everybody good with that, so we'll make our decision in the future on that.

You got thank you guys, Mrs.

Jackson.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good to see you again.

It's always great to be here.

All right.

Thank you.

All right, next up, item C authorization to award contract to dance construction, LLC, Phoenix, Arizona for improvements to the Toll Tech Center via job order number contract, PW24 J O C 01, and finance through fiscal year 24 C B C D B G Penell County subscript agreement, project number 312, and the community service FYI, 2526 budget, and the amount of 195,000 205.

Yeah, mayor, good evening, mayor, members of the council.

I believe the mayor's covered it all so if we want to go right to a vote, we can do that.

I think our city manager intentionally uh schedules me to go right after our finance director, actually, because he casts a dark light on the room, and then hopefully I brings some positivity to the evening here.

Um, October 28, 2024, uh the city council authorized staff to apply for a grant with Penau County uh utilizing the 2024 community development block grant funds to support facility upgrades at the Taltic Senior Center.

Uh with that in mind, we come here before you to request council approval to enter into an agreement with dance and construction in the amount of 195,205 dollars for facility improvements at the center.

Uh, if approved, uh the city will be piggybacking off El Moraz's job order contract for general contracting services to complete this project.

Uh proposed improvements include parking lot, silk coat, and restriping, uh, all demolition work associated with this puck project, uh, the installation of new concrete sidewalk around the perimeter of the building, uh, construction of a dumpster enclosure and the installation of an ADA door operator.

As the mayor mentioned, the project will be funded uh via the FY24 community block grant in the amount of 187,090 and also supplemented by the facility maintenance budget in the amount of $8,000.

Uh happy to address any questions you may have regarding the project at this time.

All right, just a little while back we did the Troy Thomas Center, correct?

I'm sorry, Mayor I didn't a little while back.

We did the other renovation.

That was at Troy Thomas, right?

Mayor, that is correct.

And that came out really good.

We're all happy with that.

I didn't get a chance to see it.

Uh absolutely.

Okay.

So I'm Wolf of taking care of the senior center.

We were there the other day.

It's just looking a little used.

Agreed.

Yeah.

I'll I'll just use that word.

So anybody, council on my left, have any questions or comments.

Paul, I have a question because having been the senior center, is there a road that goes behind that?

Because I know sometimes in a parking lot, you park right outside that rear door, and then people drive through there.

Is that a road or just access what they do the parking lot?

Will it that whole back area be paved, or what's what's the plan there?

Uh mayor, council member Snyder, I don't believe there's a road there, and we can definitely look to address the the situation if need be, but I don't believe there's currently a road there.

That's just uses access to the building.

Uh so new plan in regards to this particular project, we would actually still coat just the actual parking area uh to the south of the building as well as the west.

Uh and the sidewalk is uh the sidewalk that surrounds a perimeter of the building, so your three-foot sidewalk that goes around.

Parking lot is what I was referring to.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, at this time, I'm gonna look for a motion to approve authorization to award dance and contracting LLCF Phoenix for improvement to the Toll Tech Senior Center for the amount of one hundred and ninety-five thousand two hundred and five dollars.

Do I have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Garcia.

Yes.

Councilmember Galindo.

Yes.

Councilmember Baldraska?

Yes.

Councilmember Curtis.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Tarango.

Yes.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Thank you, Paul.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, item D, discussion and consideration of accepting the proposal submitted by Westland Resources Inc.

under the cooperative purchasing agreement with the town of Oro Valley to provide civil engineering consulting services at an amount not to exceed 100,000 to assist the city of Eloy and penetrating of the underground storage facility credit application to the Arizona Department of Resources.

Mr.

Renta.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I'll be brief on this.

I know we've been here for a long time already.

Uh this is basically just a formality that we need.

Um when we met with Department of Water Resources back in February of 2024, we were informed that our permit for the recharge uh the recharge credits that we had been getting through our wastewater treatment plant had had expired.

And we were and in order to renew that we had to go through the applications if they were a first-time application.

Part of that is to include the services of a professional geologist or hydrogeologist and water resources team to do the water modeling to do the groundwater monitoring to make sure that that we have a um that we don't have a negligible and adverse impact to the groundwater table.

Uh this is a process that that my staff doesn't have the technical capability to do so.

Uh so we reached out to Westland Resources and and under the town of Ora Valley, they have a contract with them, and this is to help us to to regain those credits that we that we can start earning those those recharge credits again from the Department of Water Resources.

Quick question Are we being penalized for the permit expiring?

No, we're not being penalized.

The only the only drawbacks we're not getting the credits that we that we were getting previously.

There they're minimal compared to the the designation that we do have from the Department of Water Resources.

Council Thank you, Mayor.

Um does one allow a permit of this type to expire.

It was um an oversight on the department with my department with my predecessor with some of our staff, and we've addressed that so that these type of permits will not expire in the future.

We have them calendared out, we have them set out so that we know when they're expiring before they actually expire.

Okay, another question I have is if this had if this had been renewed prior to it expiring, would we be paying a hundred thousand dollars to renew this permit?

Probably not.

We would probably just go through the renewal process, however, that is subject to the Department of Water Resources.

So reading the um information provided, there were a couple of exclusions.

Um, a pre-recharge site inspection.

Um, how much is that going to cost in addition to the $100,000?

We haven't gotten quotes on that yet.

We are working on that to find out.

Do you and do you have any idea?

Ballpark, I would say between $30,000 and $40,000.

And excluding PrEP for formal technical specs, permitting an installation of point of compliance monitoring well, should those be required by ADWR.

Do you know have any idea how much more that's going to cost?

That would probably be minimal because we don't expect this to be part of the the application process or the monitoring process.

Okay, thank you.

I guess my biggest concern is because we are in the talks with ADWR about our water and how much we have and how much we can keep that something like this gets um looked over.

And we just went over talking about increasing our water and sewer rates, yet here we are spending a hundred thousand dollars plus to do something that should have not been overlooked.

So that's all I have to say on it.

And I don't disagree with you at all, and I'm addressing that within my department.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Okay, Matt.

Um you answered one of my questions, um, but maybe I can address it to the city manager as well.

Uh, you did mention that it won't happen again.

Do we have something citywide for all our departments to make sure if there's certain um agreements, contracts, permits like that, that it's on somebody's radar that we don't have to, you know, run into anything like this again?

It's up to the departments to manage that independently as they're more aware of their permit expiration dates than myself or the assistant city manager would be.

So as Matt stated, it was a departmental error that he's working on correcting to ensure that this does not happen again.

And and if I may add to that, Mr.

Mayor, Councilmember, Councilmember Vedroska, one of the things that we're doing now is is I'm working with my business manager more closely to make sure that she is aware of all of the permits that we have through the different jurisdictional agencies through the Department of Information Quality, through Penell County, through our through the Department of Water Resources, so that we are tracking and are aware of all of our parts, all of the permits within the public works department.

And she's doing a phenomenal job in helping us keep those permits straight.

Got two more questions.

Um you said that the credits are minimal.

Approximately how much in dollar revenue those credits are per year.

In dollar revenue, I'm I don't know.

Um however if the the wastewater we're discharging or recharging about 700,000 gallons per day, um, which is maybe about two acre feet per day.

Okay.

And last question.

Do you have a timeline at this point?

How long the scope of the work to be completed, the permit application to be submitted, permit issued, and then we expect to be able to submit the permit application with all the supplemental materials as as provided if council approves this tonight within 30 days and then a 30 to 60 day review from the Department of Water Resources.

So 90 days to 120 days, we should have our permit in place again.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Anyone else from council have any questions?

Okay.

At this time, I'm looking for a motion to approve accepting the proposal by Westland Resources for 100,000 dollars.

Mayor, I'll make the motion that we approve the uh contract.

That's right.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Madam Clerk.

Councilmember of Aldraska.

Yes.

Councilmember Curtis.

Yes.

Yes.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Councilmember Garcia?

Yes.

Councilmember Galindo.

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

All right.

Now we just hit the two hour mark.

So I'm going to vote we take a quick ten minute recess here for comfort.

I know I guess it's the actual hand.

So check it out.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's take our seats.

Dim the lights.

All right, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm going to call this meeting back to order.

Trying to be respectful of everybody's time.

Okay, here we are.

So we're up to item E.

We're going to conduct the public hearing and adopt resolution number 251616, approving case number GPA 24 2024-002, Eloy Commons North and adopt ordinance number 25990, approving case number RZPAD 2024-003 Eloy Commons North.

Request by XCL Engineering, LLC and LLC in behalf of Eloy 170 LLC for a minor general plan amendment from community commercial to medium high density residential high industrial and amendment to the zoning map, a rezone from general commercial C2 to small lot residential R2 with a planned area developed over the lake, a PAD and light industrial I1 PAD, approximately 33.86 acres of land located approximately 1740 feet west, southwest corner of Sunshine Boulevard, interstate I-10.

Furthermore, adopt a resolution 25-1625, declaring for public record that a certain document filed with the city clerk entitled RZPAD 2024-003, Eloy Commons, North Plan PAD development plan.

Mr.

Simon.

Oh wait, wait, wait.

This public hearing.

Mayor, before you open the public hearing, I'm gonna request at the applicant's request that we hear E and F concurrently.

They are directly related to each other.

So well, and in that case, to honor the applicant, we will do E and F together.

I will read F at this point.

That will conduct a public hearing and adopt resolution 25-1617, case number GPA 2024-004 Eloy Commons South and adopt ordinance number 25991 approving case RZPAD 2024-005.

Eloy Commons South request XL Engineering LLC LBG Developmental LLC on behalf of Eloy 170 LLC for a minor general plan amendment from light industry to community commercial high density residential and an amendment to the zoning map rezone from res from neighborhood commercial C1 to General Commercial C2 and single family residential R1 through R6 with a planned area development overlay from C2 and Light Industrial I1 to Single Family Residential R1 through 6 with PAD on approximately 11.1 acres of land located to Southwest Corner, Sunshine Boulevard, Interstate I 10.

Furthermore, adopt resolution 2526 declaring as a public record certain document filed with the city clerk entitled RZPAD 2024-005, Eloy Commons South PAD developmental plan.

Mr.

Simon.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mr.

City Curry Cooper, does he have to open the public hearing in both cases?

Mayor, Council members and Simer.

I think it would be a good idea for the record showing that we've, you know, there's a public hearing going on both the agenda items simultaneously.

So for the record, we will open both public hearing for both agenda items simultaneously.

Thank you, Mayor.

Is the mayor stated the cases before you are E and F.

And on the screen before you you can see both those.

Milligan Road is the divider of these two cases.

It is located west of the southwest corner of I-10 and Sunshine Boulevard.

It is a considerable, considerable uh general plan amendment from basically light industrial and commercial to commercial and uh residential.

Uh staff has been reviewing working with the app on the past year and a half for this and working with ADOT.

Uh we did present this to the planning commission at the July 16th hearing.

Planning commission did recommend approval of a 6-0 6-0 vote.

Staff is recommending approval subject to the attached stipulations.

The case does include both inclusive of light industrial to the north.

Small lot residential to the south.

Upon approval, the Maverick will is almost ready for permit, which we know a few years ago that that had started, and it's just waiting for his approval.

And the applicant is here for their presentation.

So his staff is available for any comments that you may have.

But I will like to turn it over to the applicant for their full presentation.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

For benefit of the public hearing, state your name.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

My name is Gary Lane.

I'm with uh LBG Development.

I am the uh planning consultant for the project.

Uh firstly I'd like to say thank you, Marion Council, for hearing us today.

And I want to also thank uh staff management and planning engineering staff because this has been a uh uh challenge um to to move the project.

And uh we've been working on it uh I think a year and a half, almost two years, and it's been uh it's been great to be at a hearing today.

So thank you for your patience and and for the staff for their time.

Um I think I will start uh probably with the general plan amendments because I think uh we can't really talk about zoning until we talk about uh general plan amendments.

Uh the request for the north part of uh the general plan amendment is the area that is currently uh in your if you can see on your screen, um circled in yellow and um is uh called Eloy Commons North, and um that is changing what was um 37.19s of light industrial and uh 12.71 acres of neighborhood commercial.

Um sorry, don't I actually have the south one?

Sorry.

Here we go.

Apologize for that.

Uh 33.86 acres is that area.

Uh and it was uh basically denoted on the general plan.

Um Dan, do we have um another slide?

How do I oh this one?

There we go.

This is what's currently on the general plan.

Um it's um 33.86 acres of general commercial.

Um, and you know, we are looking at transferring that to um 21.54 acres of light industrial and 12.32 acres of smaller residential.

I do want to point out this whole project is a mixed-use community, and the whole purpose of it is for each use to support each other.

So the fact is is we want to bring commercial, uh mean uh industrial to this area because it's got a great window.

If you've been along the freeway and you turn to the right, this property really fits itself much more to an big industrial user and industrial users than it does commercial users.

And with the fact that commercial in certain aspects with the advent of the internet is reducing in size and you know, types of commercial, it made sense to move that to a light industrial because we also see in other cities that that uh industrial users are coming in and building uh you know big warehouses and and you know there's a there's a lot of tax dollars in there too.

So um, yeah, we thought that that would be a good fit.

And to support that, we wanted to put in uh some residential because you know we talk about sustainability a lot, and you know, what better than to have a residential community, a bit small lot residential, but to have those jobs and those people right there to supplement the industrial growth and the industrial plants.

So that was the thinking behind that.

Um the site is within this the jurisdiction of the city, and it's obviously uh subject to um the general plan, and and we want to amend that.

Um, so um, you know, we're trying to, as a project to adopt or to attract uh both freeway sensitive commercial and industrial uses and really uh sort of work on that.

Um we have um uh uh Milligan Road to the south, and the infrastructure um that is there will support this.

We have a 12-inch water line that runs along Milligan Road, and there is also a sewer manhole um that I think sits uh also along Milligan.

I I think in this location right there, I don't I think that's on Milligan, but it's also sort of uh an undeveloped area.

So um that will uh suffice for the infrastructure.

Obviously, with the development on this north piece, uh the water sewer roads will be developed as well, along with you know, as the property develops.

So we will meet all the city standards and codes that are required by the uh by the uh the city.

Also, we'll be putting in uh we'll meet the city requirements of open space.

There's a requirement from the city of 15% open space, and that requirement will be met.

And I'll get into that a little bit more as we go.

Um so basically, the um let me go back up here.

There will be a um a long sort of long road um with a cul de sac at the end.

Um you know, the light industrial area will be here, and there will obviously be signage.

We don't know quite how this will be portioned out yet.

It will be dependent on users, but for a general plan amendment, we will be going from this to this, and this is what I wanted to show you.

So, this is what we're actually this is the actual request for the general plan for the north piece.

Milligan Road, as you see it, will also be realigned.

Um, this was deemed too close for A dot stacking, and therefore, after looking at it and working with the city and want to thank the city on this.

We um came up with this alignment which works and is very functional for all per for not only city but um for ADOT as well.

So um that is uh that's Milligan, and there will be um the half street will be developed.

There'll be the sub the uh cul de sac, which is actually very good for truck traffic.

I've we looked at this, what would be the best thing to do?

We didn't want to go through the uh residential community, keeping it here and then having trucks filter out onto a straight, narrow, well not narrow, straight roadway that supports it is probably the best thing.

There are no curves on it, and then truck traffic comes down Milligan and then hit sunshine and comes up in and uh um hits the it and freeway.

That is uh the north piece of the PAD.

I don't know whether we need to vote on that, or we want me to go to the South PAD and talk about that briefly, and then maybe uh vote on both of those.

Would that be better?

If it's possible, I'd like to do both of these simultaneously, the north and the south.

Mayor, you can, but you might want to ask for the record if there's anybody who has any comments, wants to speak as to this one.

All right, on this portion here, does anybody from council have any comments?

We will I just have a quick question.

Sure.

On that north piece, will there be access to it from the west side of the parcel?

I don't see there, yes.

Um, we haven't put a major thoroughfare in there.

Um we also don't know what our neighbors are doing.

This is a big hole.

And so it would be probably um, you know, I'm not sure quite what the access would be.

Certainly, it's not off the table, but we have to look and see what the configuration is and what the slopes are to make sure that if you've got 18-wheel trucks that you know any kind of access is supported by um uh by the engineering question.

Thank you.

Anyone else from council?

Just a quick one.

Um for access to the residential portion, uh the what was approximately four point, yeah, the small art is that access, one access there on off a milligan, and then another access.

Is that right?

Is that an access point?

So it'll come off the the wrong the long linear road, as you can see here.

There'll be an access here, and it has to be an access.

There has to be two accesses to any residential community uh for fire purposes and I mean many many other reasons, but yeah, there will be two access.

Thank you.

Um, in regards to the realignment of Milligan Road and where it looks like I guess Vineyard Road is going to meet back on sunshine.

Is there plans for a light to go in there?

Because of truck traffic, vehicle traffic, um, the amount of traffic that's going to be coming in and out of all of that area right there.

Um is there plans for that?

It's a very good question, Vice Mr.

Ango.

Yes, we have got a very, and I think staff will agree a very in-depth traffic study um that looks at everything looks at actually the density of our project and the uses of our project and what's needed uh and warranted for uh traffic road so roadway width and also uh warrants for traffic signals.

And I can assure you that at some point there will be definitely a traffic signal there, yes.

Okay, regarding South Eloy Common.

Oh, this is Eloy Commons North.

That's correct.

All right.

Yep.

Okay.

For Eloy Commerce North, does anybody from the public have anything being this is a public hearing?

Okay, not seeing anybody.

Is Council good?

Okay, let's move over to South.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, members of the council.

Um let's go to the south.

Uh uh, this is uh minor general plan amendment uh for approximately 11.10 acres um situated primarily on the south side of Milligan Road, um, west of Sunshine Boulevard with immediate access to uh I 10 freeway.

Uh the requests will change at the 11.10 acres of light industrial to 15.60 acres of there we go uh of community commercial and 95.5 acres of medium high density residential with 17.97 acres of open space.

What do we have that there?

So I think you can see sort of a layout with the old overlay, so you can see how how we you know things this is before and this will be afterwards.

So um so the site again is in uh the jurisdiction of the city of Eloy and is subject to Ely's current general plan.

The uh current land is uh vacant agricultural and um has again good access to Milligan and uh Vineyard, which will be developed and Sunshine Boulevard.

Um the proposal is consistent with the city of Eli's general growth area element um and is located within the Sun corridor growth area, which suggests that commercial industrial designated land should be situated along I 10 along the highway with residential areas transitioning away from the freeway, and that is what we've tried to do here with uh having the commercial up against sunshine, which is your major intersection and probably gonna be your major retail area coming off the I-10, and when sunshine expands, you will have uh a nice commercial retail area like most cities do when they come off the freeway, and then transitioning away.

We've got some open space.

If you can see, if I can go back up to the first one here, we've got an open an open space buffer, and then the residential community right here, which will help you with your water rates.

So just wanted to point that out.

When he said we need a big subdivision, I'm like, good.

We're happy about that.

So um so uh that there are the the amendment um complies with all of the general plan um criteria for um um changing um the uh use on the general plan.

Uh we will not delete any existing roadways nor reclassify any roadways, and therefore uh we believe that this uh particular general plan amendment uh is in conformance with uh the the um city of Eloy's general plan and we would like to suggest that the city of Eloy make this amendment um and if I'll take any questions that you have.

Anybody from council have questions on the South.

I have a comment.

I first looked at it, said that I was looking at Sun Lun Road again.

So I like to see the realignment of North and makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, I like that that realignment is definitely I have a quick question for the residential portion.

Any idea what kind of single family homes would go there, what they would look like, or um I I can't really speak to that right now.

But what I will say is that when we get we we were going to talk about the PAD overlay on here, but um what I will say is um that uh the excuse me, there is a design review that we'll go that we'll have to go through that's part of the city process.

And typically most cities, and I work for a few in the valley, um, they require four different elevations, four different uh home types, different colors, and so it would probably follow the standard.

We have one of the things we have done, which I do want to point out, and I can get to this in the PAD, perhaps I'm getting a little ahead of myself, is that our lot depth is uh above the norm.

Um, and that is because we're actually um trying to provide a little more backyard usage by the residents.

So we want to really focus on that, and I think that'll be a very good um element uh for selling homes here.

So go ahead.

The the light industrial uh area on the top, which is there any plans for what type of industry or um what you you perceive might there might be interest in that area?

Well, I can tell you uh Councilman Gilot, uh sorry, Glinda, that's um we've Eddie had a broker sort of um speak to us about uh you know industrial warehouse.

In fact, he came to our uh public um uh a public meeting that we had, a neighborhood meeting, and was talking about the various different uses.

I'm trying to look here.

Oh, I got the wrong one about um he was sort of keen about uh put it's typically warehousing is light industry, you don't have any heavy stuff, it's warehousing, it's um that would be some like car manufacture, anything that's sort of a clean industrial use, a big box industrial use where you know obviously I can't tell you exactly what, but there's typically nothing that's toxic or anything like that.

It's typically manufacturing or of that type, something like that big box of that type.

Thank you, sir.

Anyone else on council for questions on South?

Anyone from public?

Because I'm gonna close the public hearings on north and south.

Does anybody have anything?

Oh, come on down, sir.

Absolutely.

Mayor Sutton, members of the council.

My name is Larry Fank.

I am the owner of the uh project on both the north and south sides of Milligan Road, and I just wanted to be present here tonight to answer any questions or give any kind of an update to council may uh wish to know.

Thank you, sir.

Does anybody have any questions directly to the owner?

Light industrial area is there.

Yes, yeah.

Uh, everything that's here for the uh PAD uh zoning tonight on both the north and south sides of Milligan Road.

Yeah, one question time frame.

Uh this we pass this tonight, or this goes moves on.

What's your magic?

Uh I guess guess of when you uh are planning to do something here.

I know some of the with the industrial, it depends on who you know uh clients, but on the uh residential side, what's your thoughts on how you're how you might move along?

Yeah, uh Mayor Sutton, uh Commissioner uh uh Snyder.

The um we've been working on this for about three and a half years.

It's been a long project.

Uh we were here in front of you about two months ago on the final plat approval.

Since that point in time, we closed with Blue Beacon, uh, adding a small parcel between them and Milligan Road uh so that they could uh accommodate the traffic that they've been generating on their site.

Uh tonight's zoning anticipated zoning approval uh will allow Maverick to move forward.

And um my guess is that they'll be closing the end of this month uh with that synergy being created.

Once we uh go ahead and get that closed, we're gonna start working on the uh uh development, the uh preliminary plant for the residential, and we've got interest from a few brokers out there uh working with the residential developers uh for that portion of the property.

So my hope is that uh we could be back here in front of the council uh for approval on the residential and provide an update to the council at that point.

So hopefully within about a year's time with all of that energy being created, the C2 zoning on the parcel to the north side of Maverick.

Um we have already had two hotels contact us that you know had expressed some interest.

So um, but you know, build it and they'll come, you know.

It's we're all familiar with you know with how that works, but uh with the energy that's being created here with the big upgrade that Flying J is doing.

I talked to them, they're spending 10 million dollars on their site.

You know, it's a big big deal uh with Maverick going forward, and they just had their committee meeting last week approving the site, and they were told to get the their people were told to uh get their site opened up immediately.

So I anticipate now things moving along uh much more rapidly than it has.

So anybody else have questions, Mr.

Fink directly.

I would like to say thank you, sir, for stepping up and doing what you are doing for the uh the city of Eloy and making the investment that you are.

I appreciate that.

Well, thank you, Mayor I appreciate it.

And it's been a uh difficult uh project.

There's been so many moving variables on this thing, and um we couldn't have gotten to this point if it wasn't for uh an excellent staff that the city has, uh Dan Seimer, uh Matt Ringer, and uh McKenzie.

Um everyone has been so very helpful on this project.

So thank you very much.

And I see it as a good partnership between the city and us and thank you, sir.

And thank you for those kinds words about our staff.

That means a lot to me.

It really does.

Absolutely.

So did you get the timeline?

You'd hope to you'd like to think that it's a year, maybe less, maybe ten months to a final plat, and then from there um there would be a year of ten months to a year of home building construction, depending on how many lots go down.

So 22 months probably is realistic to have homes on the ground, and I'd also like to thank the city manager too.

Thank you, David.

Thank you, guys.

All right, with no more questions from public or council.

I'm going to close the public hearing on items E and F at this time.

So for item E.

I'm gonna take these one at a time just for clarity purposes.

For item E.

Do I hear a motion to read by title?

Resolution 251616, ordinance two five nine nine oh, and resolution two five one six two five.

All in favor say aye.

Oh, wait, no motion.

All in favor say we have a motion.

Mayor, I'll make a motion to uh read item E by title.

Second, second all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Ayes have it.

Madam Clerk.

Resolution number 251625, case number RZPAD 2024, Eloy Commons North.

A resolution of the mayor and city council of the city of Eloy, Penal County, Arizona, declaring as a public record that certain document filed with the city clerk entitled RZPAD 2024 003, Eloy Commons North Pad Development Plan.

Resolution number 251616, a minor general plan amendment, case number GPA 2024-002, Eloy Commons North.

A resolution of the mayor and city council of the city of Eloy, Arizona, approving a minor general plan amendment to change the land use map from community commercial to medium high density residential and light industrial industry, excuse me, industry.

Industrial that on approximately 33.86 acres of land located approximately 1740 feet west of the southwest corner of South Sunshine Boulevard and Interstate 10 I 10.

Ordinance number 25990, case number RZPAD 2024-003, Eloy Commons North.

An ordinance of the mayor and city council of the city of Eloy, Penal County, Arizona, approving case number RZPAD 2024-003, Eloy Commons North.

An amendment to the zoning map, rezone to rezone from general commercial, C2, to small lot residential, R2, with the Plan Area Development Overlay pad and light industrial hay.

I one pad on approximately 33.86 acres of land located approximately 1740 feet west of the southwest corner of South Sunshine Boulevard and Interstate 10, I-10, providing from several providing for severality and establishing an effective date.

Thank you.

Do I have a motion to approve resolution 251616, ordinance 25990, and resolution 251625 as read?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

I'll second Madam Clerk.

Resolution number 251626, case number RZP AD 2024 005, Eloy Commons South.

A resolution.

No.

Oh I was just looking for the roll call.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I apologize.

That's all right.

I was ready.

Thank you.

I'm sorry about that.

Um council member Garcia.

Yes.

Councilmember Galindo?

Yes.

Councilmember Valdrasca.

Yes.

Councilmember Curtis.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Tarango?

Yes.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Okay.

Now we're going to go over to item F.

Do I hear a motion to read Resolution 251617?

Ordinance number two five nine nine one and resolution two five one six two six by title only.

Do I have a motion?

Mayor, I make a motion.

We read by title item number F.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

Uh hearing none.

Madam Clerk.

Resolution number 251617.

A minor plan amendment case number GPA 2024-004, Eloy Commons South.

A resolution.

Let me let me start over.

I'm sorry.

This is the title by only.

So resolution number 251626, case number RZPAD, 2024-005, Eloy Commons South.

A resolution of the mayor and city council of the City of Eloy, Penal County, Arizona, declaring as a public record that certain document filed with the city clerk entitled RZPAD 2024-005, Eloy Commons South Pad Development Plan.

Resolution number 251617, a minor general plan amendment, case number GPA 2024-004, Eloy Commons South.

A resolution of the mayor and city council of the City of Eloy, Arizona, approving a minor general plan amendment to change the land use map from light industrial to community commercial and medium height density residential on approximately 11.10 acres of land located on the southwest corner of the South Sunshine Boulevard in Interstate 10, I-10.

Ordinance number 25991, case number RZPAD 2024-005, Eloy Commons South.

Rezone from neighborhood commercial C1 to General Commercial C2 and single man family residential R 1-6 with planned area development overlay pad and from C2 and Light Industrial I1 to single family residential R16 with the pad on approximately 11.10 acres of land located on the southwest corner of South Sunshine Boulevard in Interstate 10 I-10, providing for severality and establishing an effective date.

Thank you.

Do we have a motion to approve resolution 251617, ordinance 25991 and resolution 251626 as read?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Roll call, Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Councilmember Garcia.

Yes.

Councilmember Galindo?

Yes.

Councilmember Valdrasca.

Yes.

Councilmember Curtis?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Tarango.

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Thank you.

I I do want to point out for the record though that uh we're in absolute agreement with all of stuff's conditions of approval.

So thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

I have to see you soon.

Thank you very much.

Okay, now that brings us to item G.

Conduct a public hearing and consider the adoption of ordinance number 2594, approving case number Aussie PAD 2007-16A1, Tierra del Sol, Sawtooth Energy Center.

A proposed amendment to the Tierra del Sol, Planned Area of Development to allow solar utility scale generation, battery energy storage system facilities as a permitted land use in the underlying zoning district of the PAD.

The property is located southeast corner, southwest corner of West Milligan and South Tweedy Road, and consists of approximately 320 acres and consider the adoption of resolution 25-1624 declaring as public record that a certain document filed with the city clerk entitled RZPAD 2007-016.a1 Terra Delso PAD First Amendment Sawtooth Energy Center.

Mr.

Simma.

Thank you, Mayor Matt.

Let me open this public hearing.

So what?

I was thinking of doing G G and H together, although H does have the um we're gonna be bumping up that that barrier.

So we may want to listen to that one separately.

Okay, thank you, Mayor.

Uh the applicant will probably present it all as one, but for your discussion purposes, they are separate.

Absolutely.

So as the mayor indicated, the first case um before you is the e uh the Soltooth Energy Center East.

It's a it's a case for approximately 320 acres of solar.

Uh staff uh did bring this case to the planning commission and was recommended an assume of a six zero vote.

Um we are just with the approval of this project, we'll be up to about approximately 199 acres to the maximum cap.

Uh the next case is the discussion on that.

So this case does not trip the maximum areas recommended or as indicated in the ordinance without specific approval by the city council.

So as I indicated, staff it is recommending approval of this application, subject to the attached stipulations, and Mr.

Mayor, I'll hand it back to you unless you would like the applicant.

By all means.

The applicant's probably thinking you should have had dinner before he came here.

You read my mind.

Yeah, there's a few, there's a few texts going back and forth about what's for dinner.

Um, or where I'm stopping on the way home.

Um, Mr.

Mayor, uh, members of the council, Court Rich from the Rosela Group, uh, on behalf of EDF Power Solutions.

Uh, thank you for your time tonight.

I know it's been a long night.

I know you probably think I like to talk, um, and I'll try not to talk more than I have to here.

Uh, but to just get through this, I appreciate it.

I am gonna present um both of these projects together.

Um, they're actually part of a large complex that you've already approved the first part of, uh, and I'll take you through all that, and I'll try to do it efficiently.

And thank you to Dan also and your staff uh for all their hard work over the years on these projects.

Um, first of all, I I want to tell you just briefly about uh the the developer of the project, EDF Power Solutions, and Kelsey Kenoki is here with me today, who's a senior developer uh with the company.

And you know, I work on a lot of these projects around the state, and um I'm really excited when I can represent a company like EDF.

There's a lot of words on these pages and some stats and stuff, but the point is they are very, very experienced.

They know what they're doing.

Um, they've been doing this for over 35 years in in North America.

Uh they operate everything from uh at least their their parent company operates everything from nuclear power plants to to the kind of stuff that you've got in front of you today.

So they know safety, they I mean it's part of what they do all day.

Uh they just know development, and there's a lot of new energy companies on the block these days.

This is not one of them.

They're experienced and they're a great community partner, which I want to talk to you about.

Um they've already uh committed to being a great community partner and started demonstrating that here in in the city during development.

There's a lot of opportunities uh for this project for both these projects.

Um you'll see uh there are employment opportunities locally during the construction and operation phases.

Uh there's uh contractual opportunities for local businesses.

Uh there's local uh investments, particularly during the construction phase.

You're gonna have hundreds and hundreds of workers building these facilities.

There's tax revenues throughout the life of the project as well.

This is part of a very large complex.

I'll get into it later.

That's going to help provide revenue.

Um, and if you're into clean energy and those kind of things, you get some of that too.

So locally, we're really excited.

We've worked close with the fire district and have they've told us that we can come here and tell you all that they're in support of the project.

APS has done training with them as part of our project.

We will do training with them when the project is completed, take them around, show them where everything is, how it works, uh, and what you need to do to in case there are any disturbances.

Um in the community here locally, uh EDF was really excited just a month or two ago.

They were able to help CARA with a large sizable donation to help with the food bank.

Um, there's some expansion that's going on there to allow for more food distribution and safer conditions, and and they're really excited to be able to get involved in the community and do things like that.

Uh they've been a sponsor and they sponsored this year the back to school backpack program with the Eloy Chamber.

I think it was 200 backpacks uh that were stuffed and ready with everything you need to start the school year.

Uh and they've been a regular sponsor of of the Eloy Glow community event.

As a result of some of this good work that they've done, we've got uh letters of support from the Eloy Chamber of Commerce uh from CARA as well.

Uh, and then we've got a local landowner.

Um, I want to stop really quick.

I you see one here from McCarthy Building Company.

You may remember um uh last year at one point when I think the first phase of this project came uh before you, McCarthy, who's uh the contractor that would be building the project came here to talk about how they hire locally and they train locals.

Uh and they they really take pride in making sure that they you know help folks locally learn the skills uh that then they can take uh and hopefully be a successful part of this industry going forward.

And so they think that's a great opportunity for for folks in Eloy as well.

Now I'm excited to be up here.

I've I've talked to you about a lot of solar projects, um, but I've been taught calling this one Eloy's Last Solar Project.

Um, these these two uh that are before you today, and the reason is Dan touched on it, is you're approaching that cap uh that that you all um put in place.

And let me talk to you about this.

So, this these projects that are here today have been part of this plan since the beginning.

And this map that you see in front of you was included in the very first staff report on this solar zoning ordinance.

Those of you that have been on the council the whole time recall going through that process and hearing me speak a lot then.

Um, but this is let me show you where.

So E on that original map is what we call Sawtooth West, and that was approved last year.

We're talking about today Sawtooth Central and Sawtooth East, which you see I've highlighted in red and blue there.

And those were part of that project D that was on that original map back in 2023.

And so um all of that together makes what makes up what we're calling the sawtooth energy complex.

And I call this the last project because you've almost exactly hit the acreage target, which is actually frankly pretty amazing, right?

So um amazing planning by staff.

We're within one percent, less than one percent deviation uh on that 11,744 acres that are set aside for solar.

Um we call it a cap, but it's not strictly speaking a cap.

You have the authority to say you're going a couple acres over, you approve it, and you're allowed to do that.

And that's how you wrote the ordinance when it was written.

So it's not a prohibition, but you do need special approval, and we're certainly asking you to allow us to go just 121 acres over uh that cap as part of uh this project, and that's out of those 11,744 acres.

So I think the timeline here is important just to try to convey how much planning has gone into this project and and where we've come and how hard we've worked with the city.

So uh we've already touched on the the ordinance was worked on back in early 2023 through the middle of the year.

Since that ordinance was approved, EDF has done a number of things uh on this pro on these projects.

Um they've extended land options, they've paid interconnection deposits to move forward connecting to the grid, they've updated permitting applications, they've updated the environmental studies, all of these things took time and effort uh and took resources in December of 2023.

They got the transmission line interconnection to the Milligan substation approved by the Corporation Commission.

We submitted the Sawtooth West program project uh in May of 2024.

That was approved by the council by you all in in August of 2024.

And the central project was submitted in January of this year.

And so those are the last two are the ones that are in front of you right now.

And I know you've had a lot of discussion about you know, do we want solar here?

Do we want solar there?

And I want to submit to you that from a planning perspective, this site makes all the sense in the world for solar.

When you look at what's around it and what has been approved, whether you like solar, whether you don't like solar, you have to admit that this site in the current state makes all the sense for solar.

And so you'll see there's the Sawtooth West project that's been approved in green.

There's the Kit Solar Project, that was the eastern portion of that letter D on that original map that's been approved for solar.

There's the Shea solar project down below there, and there's the Milligan Energy Center.

These are all already approved.

So what makes the most sense on this piece of property right in the middle there?

There's solar on both sides.

The city and your code and your ordinance that you adopted for solar said that you preferred that solar projects be contiguous to one another.

And in fact, um this helps you achieve that.

If you don't do it, you know, you've got a somewhat undesirable gap between these projects.

Solar is the best use.

I just would submit, I know some of you haven't supported solar projects, and maybe you will or won't support this one, but you've got to admit that if you're ever going to support it in this location, um, it certainly makes sense from a planning perspective.

Um I've just got some details on the the two projects.

Uh the east project is 309 acres.

The west project is 325.86 acres.

There you see them there.

Um let me try to wrap up and talk real quickly about the benefits that I see to the to the city of Eloy from this whole entire energy complex.

As part of this, you see, I highlighted with yellow lines uh on this map.

This is 13 miles of roadways that will be dedicated, constructed, and chip sealed as part of this.

That's a huge dust reduction for the area and certainly a benefit from a transportation perspective.

That's real benefits uh to the the to the city.

Uh the that cost, you know, if the city were going to do it is certainly um uh a substantial cost that it won't have to incur.

Um these projects are low water use.

You'll see the central and the east projects are uh on land that's been traditionally farmed.

Um, when you replace it with with this use, you're dramatically reducing the water that would be consumed by the city, keeping that water in the aquifer, keeping it in the ground, keeping it for other uses and future growth.

Tax revenues, jobs, and secondary spending.

I've talked to you all in the past about uh tax revenues that go to the city, to the county, to the schools, to the local taxing districts.

Those are certainly a benefit of this project.

Um, and then when Eloy is out there um talking with companies and trying to attract different businesses to the city, certainly the presence of renewable energy and a resilient grid are things that are attractive to businesses that are looking to locate in the city.

Um, and so I think that's a benefit to the city as well.

Community partnerships, I touched on that.

You're getting a great partner that knows what they're doing and is interested in being a good part of this community.

Um and just having these types of projects locally, make your grid stronger here.

There'll be battery energy storage, there's solar.

Uh if there are disturbances in the grid, you've got this operating locally, uh, which can help protect Eloy and help the the lights, the lights stay on.

So I'm happy to answer questions.

We've got a good team here with us that can answer specific questions if I can't answer them.

I appreciate all your time on this.

We've been working on this for a very long time with you all, with your staff, and I'm excited to be here with you know with this at the end of the day.

Um, there is that you know 121 acres over that 11,744 cap.

Um, I certainly hope that you all would be supportive of allowing that to occur because this has been planned in this location all along and the various benefits that we discussed.

So I appreciate you letting me uh present this for you on this late evening.

So happy to answer questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Rich.

Anybody from council.

So you said this 138 acres that uh you're asking above the the policy set by the city of Eloy was in the plan originally.

Why wasn't it submitted originally?

Mr.

Mayor, Councilwoman, that's a good question.

Thank you for letting me explain.

So uh the city, when it originally adopted the ordinance said that it before you would set aside more than 16% of the city's acreage for uh rezone it for solar use, you would have to specifically get permission to go beyond that 16% number.

That 16% number adds up to 11,744 total acres in the city.

That 16% number adds up to 11,744 total acres in the city with both of these projects combined.

You're just 121 acres above that 11,744 acres.

And so you all need to specifically say yes, that's okay.

Um now if someone came to you, you know, with another giant project.

Uh this is why I call this the last solar project.

I presume I wouldn't want to be standing up here trying to try to get you to vote for that.

I I don't think you'd like it, and I think you'd probably say no.

Um, but but I would ask that because this has been on this, you know, this site's been in the works for three years now, uh, two and a half years at least.

Um I would ask that you allow us to to have that 121 acres and go over that number respectfully.

Thank you, court, for all you've done, and thank you for EDF.

Let's see what the so any comments from the public being this is a public hearing okay.

At this time for G, item G, which is the E Sawtooth.

I'm gonna close this public hearing.

You have to separate these?

Yeah, I'm separating them.

Okay, do I hear a motion to read ordinance two five-994 and resolution two five-1624 by title only?

Mayor, I make a motion that we read um by title only.

Um I have the second.

I have a second it.

All favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none.

Madam Clerk.

Ordinance number 25994, case number RZPAD 2007-016 point A1.

Tierra del Sol, Sawtooth, East Energy Center, an ordinance of the mayor and the city council of the city of Eloy, Penal County, Arizona, approving case number RZPAD 2007-016, period, A1, Tierra del Sol, Sawtooth East Energy Center, and an amendment to the zoning map, rezone to add solar utility scale generation and battery energy storage system facilities as an allowed land use in all underlining zoning districts on the pad on an approximately 320 acres of land located on the southwest corner of West Milligan Road and South Tweedy Road, providing for several ability and establishing an effective date.

Resolution number 251624 case number RZPAD 2007-016.81, Tierra del Sol, Saw Tooth East Energy Center, a resolution of the mayor and city council of the city of Eloy, Penal County, Arizona, declaring as a public record that certain document filed with the city clerk entitled RZPAD 2007-016.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Do I have a motion to approve ordinance 25-994 and resolution 25-1624?

Mayor, I'll make a motion to approve item G.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Roll call, Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Curtis.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Tarango.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Councilmember Garcia?

No.

Councilmember Galindo.

I vote no, but I'd like to explain that I just feel that the uh limits were set specifically because we wanted industries to come in and stuff, but we didn't want to become overpowered by solar.

So that's why the limits were set.

So it's not over.

To be clear, this one is not over the limit.

I did you said it was 100 and second one is oh okay.

I'm sorry, yes.

Thank you.

Uh council member uh the trash got yes.

And Mir Sutton.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, that is done.

Okay, next is item H is to comb to conduct the public hearing the adoption of ordinance 25-993, approving case number, Aussie PAD 2005-062.

A1 Eloy Acres saw to Central Energy Center proposed amendment to the Eloy Acres planned area development to allow solar utility scale generation and battery energy storage system facilities, permitted land use and underlying zone.

Districts of the PAD on the southwest corner of Millingham Road and South Covery Road and consistent with approximately 320 acres considered the adoption of resolution 251623 declaring as public work for a certain document filed with the city clerk in total RZPAD 2005-062A1.

First amendment to the Eloy Acres Plan Area Development Sawtooth Energy Center.

Hello, Mr.

Simon.

All right, let me open this public hearing.

There we go.

As the applicant previously indicated as presentation, this item is central.

It is in this area here, which is in the red circle.

This is the application that it that will exceed the cap by approximately 124 acres, 23 acres, approximately that.

Staff has recommended approval since the the number is in that general area.

And it is contiguous with the original map that was presented to the council when we were evaluating this application's sawtooth, uh not just sawtooth, but the overall solar ordinance.

So on that planning commission did recommend an approval of a 6-0 vote and staff is supportive of uh subject to the attached stipulations.

Mayor.

Thank you, sir.

You have anything to add, Mr.

Rich?

Uh no, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh just to maybe just point out, well, I say no, and then I'm gonna add something.

So just really quickly to point out I had that that that slide earlier that said it made all the planning sense in the world for this to be solar.

Um now with the approval of the East One, this is even a narrower strip here that I think it makes even more sense for it to be solar.

Um, and I'd really appreciate your support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else from public have anything to add?

Anybody from council anything to add?

It's not really a question, I guess.

My concern is we approve this for going over our limit.

How many more solar farms, solar companies, energy companies are going to come before us and say it makes sense to allow us to go over our cap.

That's the only thing I have to add.

Thank you.

Anyone over here again, like I was saying, you know, I believe that I am not an anti-solar.

I am pro using alternative energy, but I do believe that in being a good steward to our community, we set these limits because exactly like the vice mayor says, we don't want a community that's just gonna be overpowered by one industry.

And my objection is simply going over the set standard that was set by the last council.

Mr.

Mayor, if I just briefly the only thing I would offer um councilwoman, I and I fully appreciate that is that anyone that would come after us, 100% of that project would be over the limit.

In this case, it's a small piece of the project that's been planned all along is taking you over.

I don't know if that matters to you.

I I appreciate your perspective.

Um, if for some reason that matters to uh to the rest of the council, I'd love to talk about potential solutions.

I don't I don't know what we can do, but I I think um uh anyway, I would just rest on the idea that anyone that comes after Vice Mayor in particular to your comment is gonna be 100% over.

It's gonna be a completely different situation, and they won't have been on this map since day one.

So thank you for your consideration.

I I followed the uh guess the initial planning of our overlay through planning and zoning before it came in.

And I know that at uh acreage percentage, uh we didn't pick acreage, we picked just a percentage, and it so happened the acreages fell with it.

And I guess probably the right way to do it would have been going back and looking at plots of land and figured out what the the acreage would be in those plots of land, which we didn't do.

And so now we're one of the things we want to do too with the uh overlay was try to get a concentrated area of solar so we would not have a patchwork effect.

And so I think uh this as they has come would look at this and say, all right, if we don't approve this, we've really created a patchwork effect.

And if we don't approve this, what happens to this piece of land now which is central because we've just kind of locked it in with nothing around it, and I recognize that okay, we're over the uh the cap, and I've been one of the proponents of not going over the cap.

But I also recognize that well uh is a good land use by not approving it, so should we say okay, it's good land use to go over slightly over the cap and be firm from this point on, but uh recognize it uh what it does for the uh surrounding area, so that it's just comments.

Thank you, council member.

Anyone else?

Nobody else, anybody from public, Mr.

Rich.

Any closing statements for the public hearing?

No, sir.

Thank you.

No, thank you.

All right, this time I'm gonna close this public hearing.

Do I hear a motion to read ordinance two five-nine nine three and resolution two five-1623 by title only?

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none, motion passes.

Madam Clerk.

Ordinance number 2593, case number RZPAD, 2005-062.81.

Eloy Acres, Sawtooth Central Energy Center, an ordinance of the mayor and city council of the city of Eloy, Penal County, Arizona, approving case number RZPAD 2005-062 point A1, Eloy Acres, Sawtooth Central Energy Center, an amendment to the zoning map rezone to add solar utility scale generation and battery energy storage system facilities as an allowed land use in all underlying zoning districts on the pad on approximately 320 acres of land and approving a request to exceed the maximum allowed area within the city of Eloy that be used for the aforementioned use in accordance with the Eloy Zoning Ordinance located on the southeast corner of West Milligan Road and South Currie Road, providing for saberbility and establishing an effective date.

Thank you.

Do we have a motion to approve ordinance 25 dash 993 and resolution 251623 as read?

Mayor.

I just have to read the the public record one too real fast.

See now I'm the one rushing things for the resolution 251623 case number RZPAD 2005-062 point A1 RZPAD 2005 06.81.

I think we got that twice.

Eloy Acres Plan Area Development SAW 2 Central Energy Center, a resolution of the mayor and city council of the city of Eloy, Penal County, Arizona, declaring as a public record that certain document filed with the city clerk entitled RZPAD 2005-062.81 First Amendment to the Eloy Acres Planned Area Development, Saw 2 Central Energy Center.

All right, thank you.

Now do I have a motion to approve ordinance 25-993 and resolution 25-1623 as read?

Mayor, I make a motion we uh approve item H as read.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Madam Clerk may I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Valdraska?

Yes.

Councilmember Curtis.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Tarango.

No.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Councilmember Garcia?

Still no.

Councilmember Galindo.

No.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Okay.

Item 9, executive session.

We're not doing that tonight.

So can have a motion to it.

Do we have a motion to adjourn?

So move.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All favors say aye.

We are adjourned.

Whoa is it.

And thank you, everybody.