Huh?

Thank you.

That's great.

Should I actually worry about the topic?

I think that should be a little bit more.

But you don't have a mic.

Oh, that's right.

No, I have an idiot.

It's too bad.

That would be a lot.

I can't do that.

So you've been wrong.

I mean, if you have to make that shape, I've got to do that.

Yeah.

We watched the chief side.

So I think it's just a chief spy.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Just use that.

I think that's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

And then we're the software.

Software.

That's why we don't have any more.

Yeah.

So we put the money in the interest.

Yeah, so we have to do that.

We can spend it.

Join those tools.

Yeah, you did less than that.

I have to watch the one that should be quote.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do apologize, it's just a slight technical error going on right now, just a little difficulty.

All right, good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to tonight's Eloy City Council meeting.

It is Monday, September 22nd.

The time is approximately 611 p.m.

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

Councilmember Valdaska?

President.

Councilmember, Councilmember Crudis, I'm sorry, our phone's not working.

Um Vice Mayor Toronto.

Here.

Councilmember Schneider.

Here.

Councilmember Garcia.

Present.

Councilmember Galindo?

Here, Mr Santin.

Here.

Thank you.

And I'd like to ask everyone to please rise for a moment of silence and the pledge of allegiance that will be led by Councilmember Glacia.

And our public appearance sheet.

Thank you, sir.

She can hear it.

Okay, first on the public appearance sheet.

Faith.

Please come up, state your name and where you live.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, and City Management.

My name is Faith Palis.

And two, is there not another location for revenue to be distributed to be obtained?

The reason why I asked this is because uh a friend of mine and I went to the senior center because we did look at the activity guys.

So whoever puts this out, it's great, we do look at it.

Um but the question was um where do we go?

What do we do?

What is needed?

And um so we went and we talked to uh Suri, very nice lady, and uh she gave us registration forms, we filled them up, blah blah blah, and then she said what we wanted to to do was in October, the next day would the uh the calendar would be out, stop by, picked it up as I was leaving, because I was just gonna pick it up.

She had to ask me if I was going to stay for the arts and craft part, and I said, No, I'm just here to pick up the calendar.

And a couple other ladies said, Oh, you should have wanna stay, and I said, No, I need to go.

And then there was one lady, bless her heart, she goes, Oh, you're not gonna stay.

And then she started pouting.

It's like, okay, so I guess I need to stay.

But I'm I'm glad that I did, because it gave me an idea of what is there.

And I have to say that the renovation that's outside is marvelous.

It's very inviting, it's welcoming.

You walk through those doors, not so much.

It's empty walls.

And it's empty because of the fact they the center gets rented out, and that's how we get revenue, I guess, for the the center, and I'm not sure.

But they can't make it their own.

So my question is, is there a way that the seniors can have this space all to themselves?

They have no place else to go per se, and not being there on Fridays.

When I I stopped in there because I asked about different donations that they could possibly use.

And I know that Saria is buying the adult um the pens because somebody needs it.

The city can't supply everything.

She understands that.

So I'm trying to get donations from people from Robson.

And they're they're trying their best as well.

So she is very adamant.

But they did try setting up the decorations on the walls one time, and then it was rented out.

They came in on Monday, everything was down.

Even during Christmas, they have to remove the Christmas tree, fold up the tables and chairs, the TVs, everything.

So everything is stripped down.

It's just very blah ish there.

So that's my question as to why can't we have find someplace else to find more revenue, but let the seniors stay there, and let's open up on Friday.

So Reese says she's there on Fridays anyway.

So that is my little spiel.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for addressing the council.

Thank you so much.

Next up, we have uh Mr.

Bill Lisnowski.

Kindly state your name and where you live, sir.

I'm Bill Znuski, I live at 5445 West Corral Drive.

And my comment is about the garbage service since it's been changed.

And in that 16 week period, I've had the recycle bin on my house crushed twice by this uh waste management, and it takes another week before they come out to exchange it, which means I have to hold two weeks' worth of recyclables in order to before I can put it back out because of how long it takes them to replace the garbage can that they destroyed.

And uh from my recollection, prior when we had issues, we would call Rad directly to resolve them.

Now we have to call through the city, the city talks to waste management and gets back to us, so it's like round robin instead of talking to the horse directly.

So whatever can be done to kind of smooth things out or whatever, I we would appreciate it.

Thank you, sir.

And that wraps it up for our public appearances.

Now we're gonna go on to everybody's favorite part, mayor announcements.

Mayor actually has five pages today, so and he bought his own coffee, so on Tuesday the ninth, I had the honor of speaking at the opening ceremonies of the FAI World Cup of Canopy Piloting at Skydive Arizona.

Competitors from all around the world showed up.

The USA, we got some second and third place finishes.

We're in the running, but we just weren't at the top, and it was an amazing turnout by many countries that came.

Then we also celebrated our Fiesta Patres, and what an event that was.

A huge shout out to Corazon de Latinos Unidos for pulling it all together from the parade to the dances, their families to the live evening music, everything was top notch.

And I'll let my colleagues here add a bunch more details in a few.

I'm just saying they're setting the bar very high for future celebrations without a doubt.

Then on Wednesday the 17th, I attended the Board of Supervisors meeting where they selected the new city council for Santana Valley.

It was a tough job for the supervisors, but they carried themselves with confidence.

I wish the new city council all the success in the world.

But buckle up tight, it's gonna be quite a ride for them.

On Friday evening, the 19th, I stopped by the Troy Thomas Center for their glow in the dark dodge ball.

Now, if you've never seen kids throwing neon balls on the black lights while screaming at the top of their lungs, trust me, this was a sight to behold.

The volume world could have registered on a seismograph.

I knew it was a success when I didn't see a single kid at any video station there.

All the kids were engaged in playing, physically throwing that ball back and forth.

I kind of asked if they had an adult version coming soon, because I would like to throw the ball at a few people myself.

That same Friday I went to watch our Dust Devils at Santa Cruz High.

Unfortunately, they were outplayed by Christian, but we still have a few more games ahead.

But we still have a few more games ahead.

And we'll just call that a character building experience for the Dust Devils.

On Saturday morning, I attended the men's breakfast hosted by First Assembly of God Church with over 40 men from four local churches.

It was a great gathering, great stories, and great fellowship.

It really was.

And there wasn't a scrap of food left at the end.

So that was a success.

And then closing on Saturday evening, I joined Council members Galinda Lingarcia at the Suicide Prevention Walk, hosted by the Sparrow Campaign.

This was a powerful and eye-opening gathering.

One we all wish didn't have to exist, but one that truly makes a difference.

Events like this remind us that together we can break the stigma, support one another, and save lives.

My sincere thanks to everyone who participated to help shine a light on this such an important cause.

So those are my announcements.

Let's get on with some fun.

As I mentioned earlier, we had an incredible Fiesta Patreon celebration this month.

Tonight it gives me great honor to recognize those who made it possible in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

The City of Eloy is proud to present proclamations to Corazon de Latinos Unidos and also include Latino Familia Initiative for the work they do in our communities.

Members of CDOU and LFI, please come forward to the front.

Do we have anybody representing these groups here in the audience tonight?

We look over here.

Absolutely.

Come to the front.

That would be Mr.

Rosales, I imagine.

Mr.

Powell.

Mr.

Powell.

Come on up front.

And for CDLU, you guys want to do them both.

Okay, let's go.

Come on up.

Did I do good?

Okay, proclamation, Office of the Mayor.

Whereas Hispanic Heritage once celebrated annually from September 15 through October 15 honors the histories, cultures, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans whose influence has enriched our nation and our community.

And whereas the city of Illoy proudly celebrates and recognizes the contributions of organizations that uplift and strengthen our community through service, education, and cultural connection.

And whereas the Latino Familia Initiative, LFI, has consistently worked to support families through education, mentorship, and resources that empower the next generation to achieve their full potential.

And whereas Corazon de Latinos Unidos, CDOU, our local community partner, has dedicated itself to organizing cultural events, promoting unity, and ensuring that Latino traditions and voices are honored in Eloy.

And whereas the collaboration of those organizations embodies the values of community, perseverance, perseverance, and cultural pride that make Eloy a vibrant and inclusive place to live.

And whereas their combined efforts inspire civic participation, build stronger families, and bring together people of all backgrounds to celebrate Eloy's diversity.

Now, therefore, I, Andy Sutton, mayor of the City of Eloy, on behalf of the Eloy City Council, do hereby proclaim September 15th through October 15, 2025 as Hispanic Heritage Month in the City of Eloy, and further recognize and honor the contributions of the Latino Familial Initiative and Corazon de Latino Universe for their dedication to the residents of Eloy.

Be it further resolved that the City of Eloy encourages all residents to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by supporting and participating in the programs and events sponsored by these organizations working together to strengthen their families and foster community pride.

A witness whereof I have un hereunto set my hand and cause the seal of the city of Eloy to be affixed this 22nd day of September in the year of our Lord 2025.

Andrew Sutton, Mayor of Eloy.

Well, thank you, Will, and that brings me great honor to do that.

It really does.

So with that, we're gonna go council member announcements on my left.

Well, you know, I do wear, but um, you forgot that on the 8th of September we all toured the brand new hospital a week before it opened.

So we're really excited.

I was on a couple of Zoom calls today, and it was really nice to announce to other health care partners around the county that we also have availability for a hospital in Eloy that is full service and is a trauma has a trauma team as well.

So really excited about that.

I on September 11th was participated in a breakfast with the Eli element Eloh Intermediate School students, put a breakfast together for first responders.

Um they included the mayor and council, America or Councilmember Garcia and Council Member Vidoxka were also uh in attendance, and and it's just really wonderful to see the kids take pride and understand uh and continue to celebrate 9-11.

Um the fiestas were wonderful.

Thank you for everybody for that participated.

Thank you to the mayor and council and staff, but king, thank you to the chief for doing the difficult job of being one of the parade judges.

Um also thank you to Councilmember Curtis, her and her team for you know the very emotional dropping uh from the skydivers of the uh flag of Mexico and the flag of the United States of America.

That was just very powerful, and they got first place for doing so.

So, but um, and the other thing about the fiestas is from what I understood um about halfway through Saturday, was there was no incidents as of halfway through the day on Saturday.

So just a bunch of people getting together, enjoying their culture, enjoying the entertainment and enjoying the fun.

So that was really nice.

I am I was also um invited to participate and attend the Coid Centennial celebration on 920.

Um, it was a nice celebration.

Congratulations to our neighbors, the city of Coolidge, excuse me, um, celebrating their hundredth year of incorporation.

So it was really nice to attend that up, bro.

I had to leave short, and I didn't get their get to watch their drone show, which I understand wasn't from what I saw wasn't as good as ours, Paul.

But still a beautiful entertainment for the people there.

Um, because I also attended the uh steps of love suicide awareness and survivors event.

So that's me.

Can I just say diddle?

I did go to the 911 breakfast.

I did I had to leave earlier because I had to go back to my classroom with students to teach.

I rose up the fiestas both days.

I had the difficult job at the fiestas of having to sit in city hall and let the dancers in and out.

So I was the difficult task of having to sit in the AC.

It was tough.

And then, of course, we did the survival walk, the steps in love, and I let them the walk for, I think this is my third year leading my walk.

And we had it's great seeing everybody that came out to support them.

It's that that we have to continue to see even more names going up.

I'd love to be able to say that we're gonna conquer it, and it's we have nothing new to add, but we know each year we're gonna see at least one more face there.

But I am glad to see because we had several people come out that just wanted to support the families, and that was nice seeing them.

Thank you.

Oh my right, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I just wanted to mention uh that I also attended the 9-11 um ceremony, and uh it was very well attended, and um I think it was uh great experience for the kids just to know that we don't forget that day um for what it stands for, and uh appreciate the chief of police and the uh chief of our uh fire district and their teams that were out there too.

Um the first responders, we are so appreciative of what you do.

Um and then another note uh last week um Chief Bonales hosted a cops and clergy meeting at the police department.

Uh City Manager Dave Mallowitz and myself attended it with approximately about 10 members of the community clergy.

Um it was very informative and looking forward to uh some of the future meetings that are planned.

Um basically they kind of uh told us what their parrot parishioners needs and concerns are, and um the chief said, well, let's coordinate and see how we can work together to uh you know somehow um just be a force within the community.

So that was very good.

Thank you, sir.

So now we'll move on to the city manager announcements, Mr.

Mallowitz.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council.

Uh, a couple things on my list.

Just as a reminder, the silent witness is Tuesday night, six to nine in Cassagran.

So that's a big event for silent witness.

Um also good news, round number three rehab starts the first week of October.

So we're really excited to finally get that project done.

It's been a couple years in the making, so they'll start redrilling that well so we can have that good water quality coming into our system and lower nitrates and do all the other fun stuff that to make our good drinking water.

A lot of technical though, I don't know.

Um ball break started, so we got events for the kids going on at Troy Thomas.

So Paul and his team are working hard at that.

And then this Saturday we have a drive-through vaccination at City Hall from 8 to 10 a.m.

So owners and pets stay in their car, no appointments needed, special arraignments need to be made for aggressive dogs.

So, as a reminder, that's a Saturday, 8 to 10 at City Hall.

If you have any questions, it's we posted on our social media as well as the Pennell County Animal Control webpage in their social media too.

So spread the word on that.

And the last thing I have on my agenda is actually a poll of the C of the City Council.

Uh, do you recall when we did the general plan when we did that kickoff?

We had a joint session with the planning and zoning commission to go over what the expectations are, what this plan will do.

Well, we're doing that again.

Uh, we've got the air park master plan right around the corner, Logan Simpson who's here tonight to give you the update on the general plan.

We'll be managing that plan as well.

So, wondering if council would be willing and able to join the planning and zoning commission on October 15th.

That's a Wednesday at 5:30 to kick off the air park plan, talk about public outreach, and basically do exactly what we did for the general plan.

Give it give a good overview.

This is not a required meeting, it's optional.

But if council is able and willing, we'd love to have you there, and then Mr.

Dan can go ahead and notify the consultants that that's gonna happen.

Is so any questions on that?

Sound good?

Is that the regular PC meeting?

Yes, correct.

Yes, yeah, what'll happen is the same thing as you go, you'll go in the community talking to my hands again.

You're gonna go in the community room, we'll do the meeting with the consulting group, and then once that's wrapped up, planning and zoning commissioners will move into the chamber here and have hold their regular chamber meeting.

I have that that's Eloy's national night out.

Is that still scheduled?

Yes, yes, that is still scheduled.

I believe that starts at 6:30, Chief.

Uh 6 to 9.

6 to 9.

6 to 9 is the Eloy National Night Out.

I mean, and this shouldn't take too long.

It'll be similar to what we did.

I think the last time we were there for 45 minutes or less.

Unless there's a lot of questions, then we could go later, but planning and zoning regular meeting does start at 6 o'clock.

So this is at 13.

Yes, ma'am.

Yep.

I noticed uh tonight on the uh agenda is the approval minutes for the rook session, which was last week.

What we haven't seen the minute yet for the I think a September 8th council meeting.

Is it is that correct?

That's correct.

I'm working on those.

Yeah, I think that was a pretty important meeting because we had the uh discussion around the different uh ways that the city can look at the so uh I know that when the public watches this on uh video and then I think we have to work on trying to get some of these minutes out of a timely basis for the community anyway.

And secondly, uh I noticed uh I think on that meeting and maybe tonight there's been several cases where at the last minute uh council has been given some additional information for the uh meeting.

I think I'd like to be sure that there's the additional information gets in the minutes.

So sometimes you know we read it today before day of whatever, but uh it's not in the on the agenda, so let's be sure that in the minutes that that information gets in the minutes as well.

So I think if we had that situation on the 8th September, we're some pictures of the uh uh later and so forth, and so be sure those pictures get in the agenda because we go back and look for them later.

And we're not looking through our emails, we're going through the agenda.

So that's if we would thank you.

Yeah, Celine has confirmed we can do that.

We'll get it done.

Oh Mr.

Vice Mayor next to you.

Did the vice mayor have a question?

I just think we need more than 30 minutes.

I mean, especially with some issues that have come up recently with and so with the airport.

I'm talking about Wednesday.

Yeah, I don't know.

30 minutes doesn't seem reasonable to me.

I mean, not with a whole discussion.

This session is only about the the starting of the plan and the public outreach.

But if there are comments and concerns that you would like addressed, that's a good time to bring them up.

So if we're having national or what are we calling it this are we calling it national night out again?

Um I don't want to be trying to hurry that meeting if some of us are planning to go over there.

So again, I don't think 30 minutes is enough time.

Did you say five?

53.

So 5.30 to 6:30 and national night, that's how it starts at 6.

So 6 and 9.

Yeah, 6 30.

I think I would echo uh uh the the comments because I remember I came to a PZ meeting uh at the last uh go-around, and it was uh half hour late.

Did you start the PZ meeting?

And because there are people so I think uh maybe starting at five, give yourself a cushion.

If you finish early over there, it means you've got uh 15-20 minutes for people translation over and new people to come in.

So uh I think it's point a point well made.

Maybe start at five.

There'd be an issue starting at five.

I can ask the commission.

Absolutely.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Mayor members of council.

That wraps up.

Appreciate the hope on that.

Okay, thank you.

And then we have a report.

We are actually here.

We have one of our uh Pennell County Supervisors, District One, Mr.

Rich Videello.

And he just wants to bring something here to council.

Uh good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members, thank you for having me.

Excuse my voice.

Uh my buddy just got inducted to the BMX Hall of Fame.

So it was an exciting weekend of yelling and screaming at a bunch of 50, 60 year olds who were still being big kids.

Uh so sorry for the hoarse voice that I have.

Um, so first of all, uh, I just like to thank you for having me here today.

And by the way, you have a very beautiful council chambers.

I've been around the block a little bit to many council chambers over the last several years, and this is a very beautiful one.

So, again, the Santan Valley, thank you very much for mentioning that.

Uh, I am honored and proud to be um part of that process and the largest town and um incorporation in the United States ever.

So of 120,000 people.

Uh so it's uh exciting, and uh we had 86 people apply for the position.

We had to go through all those resumes, and uh it was quite fun narrowing it down.

Each one of us narrowed it down to 14, then we then put everything together and then had 14 total, and then narrowed it down to the seven that we chose.

So congratulations to the seven of them, and like you said, it's going to be a fun seven or eight months.

Yeah.

And then they had their election.

So they'll have an election uh in July uh to uh people to decide to run if those people want to run again, and after getting beat up for seven or eight months, they may not decide to run.

But anyway, uh the reason why I'm really here is uh as you guys know the legislative session is gonna be starting up soon, and uh as you know, last year they went after planning and zoning.

And I have to tell you something, they want to take away cities and towns planning and zoning because they know better.

Now, I was at Arizona League with many of you last month, and I ran into six of them who decided to get into a little argument with me, started out as a discussion, and then I told them you better bring some more on because you're gonna need help.

So I had six of them sitting there telling me that we don't know what we're doing, we need more affordable housing.

I don't know if you read the article in Pennell Central, you should because it was exactly what happened that night.

To make a long story short, they're telling me that you know we need more affordable housing.

I asked what that number was, and they said 1,250.

I said that's a great number.

Where'd you pull it out of?

No answer.

So what I got at was you're telling me 1250.

Did you figure in insurance?

Did you figure in HOA fees?

Did you figure in utilities?

1250 achievable is probably about a 700 mortgage out about 3% if you're lucky.

If anybody has a 3% mortgage going out there, you know, an agent, let me know because we can make a lot of money telling people this.

So it's unachievable, and they're just doing it for votes.

Well, I'm sorry, I don't care what side of the aisle you are on.

If you're going to come after planning and zoning in the state of Arizona, and I'm going from council to council doing this, I don't know if I'll make it to every single one of the 91 or 92 now, cities and towns, but I will do my darndest to make sure that I do this, and with the help of everybody and all the council members when I get around it.

Uh also the county supervisors, we are on top of this.

We just had a big meeting, um, and it was all um uh 15 counties there, and it's going to be an issue again this year.

And after they finish coming after the cities, they're gonna come after the counties because they think they know better.

So anyway, I just want to let you know that we need to start something, and I'm probably gonna start an email thread.

I don't know if you guys ever heard of the 347 facts.com emails.

Over hundred thousand emails were sent to state legislators, count and um the um county supervisors.

Well, over a hundred thousand emails in the course of a year and a half.

If that's what we got to do to tell our state legislators to stay out of our backyards, they don't want the federal government in their backyard, but they want to be in our backyard.

So basically what I'm gonna ask for is help, and we'll get this coalition together and work together because again, it's gonna be one team, one goal to tell them to stay out of it.

So thank you very much for having me here today.

If there's any questions, I'll be more than happy to uh answer the question.

Remember what I said.

Doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on.

If you come after you guys, your count your uh planning and zoning to tell you what to do in your backyard, those people shouldn't be elected re-elected.

It's election season, people.

Let's make sure that they know it.

I will let my representatives in my area know, who are three close friends of mine, and they know it already.

You sign that bill, you ain't getting votes in the city of Maricopa, and that's 80,000 people.

So anyway, I hope I can get your help.

I'm sure of it, and uh God bless you and thank you.

And if there's anything I can answer, please ask, and otherwise I'm gonna sit down and shut up.

Any questions here on the left?

Go ahead, sir.

I make two points.

You know, I've been in a lot of these meetings, uh, and I'm still uncomfortable with somebody finding to me what affordable housing is.

You know, it's just they used to throw this term around, but nobody's really defined what is affordable housing.

There was also a good article, and you may have seen about three weeks ago in the Arizona Republic on a Sunday, talking about the housing crisis.

And the comment was we do not have housing process.

We've got a lot of housing, is yes, we don't have housing where people want to live.

And so we've got this situation where people want to live in certain environments, which is driving housing instead of floorable where I want to live.

Well, there's housing, but it's just a quite a case where people maybe are exceeding their expectations of where we want to live.

And so there's this goal around right now.

So I want to share that with you if you you haven't read the article, it's a very good article.

I appreciate that, and I can also tell you in the city of Maricopa, we have a 40% vacancy in apartments with four more being built, okay, and we have a thousand homes available with about another thousand available coming up on the market.

And we have a thousand homes available.

With about another thousand available coming up on the market.

So you are a hundred percent correct.

It's an election season.

Let's use buzzwords to get elected.

That's what I see this happening.

So let's make sure those kids and again I call them kids because they were between 25 and 35 years old.

And I gotta tell you something.

When they started telling me I didn't know what I was talking about, I told you we better bring more on because six of you ain't enough.

So but uh thanks.

I appreciate that.

All right.

Do you have anything?

Mr.

Videolo, I thank you for coming here to address this council, and we will talk.

You got it, but real quick, Mr.

Supervisor Videolo.

I just had a I just had a quick question if you don't mind.

Um I you know, I really appreciate everything you're doing and and everything that you've done on the Board of Supervisors, but uh as we talk about the Santana Valley Incorporation and the loss of revenues that the localities are experiencing.

Has the board of supervisors given any consideration into how the half-cent sales tax will be divvyed up?

Will the county be taking a reduction in there so that the localities can become whole?

Are you talking about the the half-center sales tax for uh for the roads?

Oh that that one that's part of PRTA, but there's the other half cent sales tax that you know goes towards the roads and everything and so with the county because the county didn't really lose anything with the incorporation, the localities are the ones that were losing everything with the state shared revenue and more money as the kind of looking at how they're gonna maybe adjust what the localities will get out of the half sets.

And uh like I said, Chairman Miller is working on something right now because he was asked that question at a meeting two meetings ago.

Perfect.

That's really great to hear.

We look forward to it.

Thank you.

We don't forget about where we came from.

Thank you, Mr.

Videolo.

Okay, that brings us to it.

Quarterly report from the Eloy Chamber of Congress.

Hey Andrew, the uh your presentation is right up there.

Yeah, the chamber quarterly report.

That's not so if you go back to the desktop.

Yeah, right there.

Thank you.

Are they gonna be able to see up here or no?

Mayor, um you want me to just go ahead and start?

Yeah, I have it right here on mine, so but you guys can see it, but the public can't see it.

And we apologize to the public once again this evening.

Okay.

Um mayor council, city staff, city management.

Um I'm Andrew Rodriguez, the executive director of the Eloy Chamber of Commerce, who also oversees the Sun Land Visitor Center and the Santa Cruz Valley Historic Museum here in Eloy.

Um I want to give you guys our first quarter report, also the ending of our last report of the last physical year of 24-25.

Um our board members and our staff, so our board member president is Dr.

Terry Acklin, our vice president and treasurer is Michael Powell, Secretary is Richard Rosales, our member is Angel Rebus, a member is uh Ralph Arella.

Our board member is Bill Pittman, a member is Stacey Ortega, a member is Jermaine.

I never can say his last name right.

Um Stacey Ramasio and our ex-official is the Assistant City Manager McKenzie.

Um my operations manager is Angela Mead, and our CPA is uh tax master tax advisors.

Our outreach statistics for 24 and 25.

So in 2024, we had three 319,400 people on social media who came to our page, who liked it, who saw anything of our pages.

Our pages are the Eloy Glow and the in the and um also the chamber of Facebook.

Um attendance to our events from Eloy from the Eloy Glow all the way down to our luncheons, mixers, um any events that we've had.

Um in 2024 was 8,570.

Our marketing was 22,500.

Our members in 2024 at the end of the of the June was 176.

Our office contact was 1,668 people.

That's phone calls and also people coming into the office.

So as of June of 20 uh sorry, June 30th of 2025, social media has rose up to 359,947.

Our attendance went up nine nine thousand and forty-eight.

Our marketing went up to twenty-three thousand one hundred.

Our members as of that date was two hundred and five.

As of today, we're at a little we're over about I believe two fifteen.

Um, office contact is two thousand and forty-three.

Again, that's people calling the office and also coming into the office.

Uh ARP staff and two volunteers in 2024.

We had 19,000 eight and eight visitors in 2025.

We have the same one staff member, two volunteers, 21,000 and 10 people.

ARP is a grant that we've done, so we don't pay her salary.

We just manage her, you know, we just do the payroll and everything.

Uh ARP actually pays for her to be there.

So it's uh it's a good it's somebody who's 55 and over who meets a certain criteria they can work at a nonprofit organization.

Um the museum is now the chair of the Pennell County Museum Advisory Board.

So myself and Angela are now get all the uh museums in Pennell County, and we go visit every single one of them.

We have a meeting and we talk about the what's going on, what's happening.

Uh McKenzie was at one of our meetings uh last year and the partnership.

We talked about partnership, how the city and then our nonprofit works together.

Um so um last year the organization fell through.

So they asked us if we wanted to take it up and run with it, so we did.

So our first meeting is now going to be next week, and it's gonna be at the museum, and because they all remember Dick Myers, so they love coming down there and paying his respects to him.

Um also um, as you guys may all remember that the museum received 25,000 in donations.

The landscaping is complete.

Now we have a path to the color school in the back, and it's all lit it up now.

We have landscaping, we have uh uh landscape lights, and so it looks nice out there.

So please, if you guys haven't seen it, please go by there and look at it.

Um the visitor center now has we have a called section in the visitor center.

It's called Shop Eloy.

So we have a lot of people keep on coming to the visitor center and asking us can we have do you guys have anything that says Eloy on it, a t-shirt, uh mug or anything.

So we knew there was an outlet that we needed to tap into.

So we now we have uh ornaments, postcards, and our I Love Eloy shirts and our our past Eloy Glow shirts there, and we're selling them there, and they are actually selling like crazy there.

And we're not selling them like to make a lot of money, but it's uh you know, money to for them for the visitor center to make some money out of it.

Um Eloy Glow is one of our biggest events for us.

Uh so it's the Eloy Biggest event, which brings in thousands of visitors to Eloy, and that's from Placer AI.

PlayStar AI does all their information, gets all your information, and I'm sorry to say, but it goes through your phone records, uh your phone antennas, your credit cards, how you use your credit cards.

So they did that, they used a lot of the events that Eloys had from July to December, and they pinpointed like how many events and where it was at, how is it happening, and the Eloy Glow was the highest ranked event in Eloy.

Um, so we went with that.

Evo has been featured in so many media outlets and on and social media outlets for people just sharing it and getting it out there for us.

The Elo Glow this year will have a lot more attractions.

We have uh shape balloons coming this year, we have country music coming this year, we have a kid zone that's gonna be like I wish I was a kid again because it was gonna be it's gonna be uh it's gonna be amazing.

Um in 2024, the Eloy Glow paid out 2,500 of its GLO proceeds back into the community for the kids Eloy Kids programs.

So we donated money to the civil civil air patrol, the high school, the junior high, so we paid out a lot more money back.

Um the Arizona Department of Revenue, we asked them to give us some numbers, and um, I don't know if you guys want people to do all these numbers, but um there's some numbers that they they told us from September, October, and November in 2024, and you can see the spike on three of the four um to the name change.

Um on August 24, on August 28, 2025, the Eloh Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors voted and passed a name change of the two organizations that the Eloy Chamber Board oversees.

Um they wanted to change the name of the visitor center and museum.

And the little backstory is we went to a conference and Angela went to represent the visitor center, and she kept on telling everybody I'm from the Sunland Visitor Center, and they're like, Oh, well, nice to see you, nice to meet you.

Where's that?

And oh, it's in Eloy.

Well, why is it not called Eloy Visitor Center?

Uh, so I mean, and I think Angela got tired of saying the whole story why why it was named Sunland Visitor Center.

Um, so we brought that back to the board, and I remember one time uh council councilwoman Curtis told told me, why don't you guys change the name?

Because at Skydive, it's like that too.

People don't think it they think it's at Sunland Gen Road.

Um, so the board brought it back, and they wanted to change the building name to the Eloh Historic Museum and Visitor Center.

And the organizations itself are gonna be changed to from Sunland Visitor Center to the Eloy Visitor Center, and Santa Cruz Valley Historic Museum to the Eloh Historic Museum.

And we're asking just for your guys' blessing in that.

Um once we get the wording and everything correctly, then your guys' blessing on it.

I will ask the city at as soon as we get some designs if we can put that on actual building, and the chamber will cover those costs of that.

Um Eloy Chamber 2025-2026 programs, and we're gonna be starting a government affairs committee, and we'll be meeting once a month.

And Eloy Chamber 2025-2026 programs that we're going to be starting a government affairs committee, and we'll be meeting once a month.

Other chambers have been doing this, and it's been very successful.

Is basically we get on, council members are involved, city leaders are involved, uh, nonprofits are involved, and the chamber just runs it to see what's working, what's not working, um, what can what can be done.

Um, if like one thing that's happening in Cash Grand, and the chambers involved in is the homelessness that's happening in their parks.

They're working on that with all together with the city and stuff like that.

So, stuff like that here in town, we will be how I mean everybody be on board on one on one phone call, and maybe help helps everybody.

Um we'll be starting with a local first for businesses, it will be partnership with the economic development program here with the city.

Um we're starting the initial phases of that.

Uh so as soon as we start meeting up with the local first, um, we'll I'll give you guys a report back on that.

Um, continue working with the USDA rural development, continue working on the Arizona uh Pennell County Tourism Advisory Group representing the Elo area.

Uh continue working with uh Panel County Chambers Advisory Group, continue working with the women in business programs.

We just started that this year, and we do luncheons, and we're gonna be doing more our luncheons for the women's in business.

I'm not invited to that.

They don't they told me I can't go.

Um so it's about 15 to 20 women that get together and I just say hello, you know, you know, who I am, and they say, Okay, now it's time for you to go.

So um, but which is okay, you know, they they all go to different restaurants in town, and then like this next one is tomorrow, it's gonna be at Robeson.

Um they they do a lot.

I mean, then uh their speaker is Kevin from CAC.

Uh he's gonna talk about business plans, uh, how um AI is helping women start up their business and how AI is helping business to the next level, so which is gonna be great for them.

Um so continue working with the Food Alliance Coalition in Pennell County, continue to attract entrepreneurs and businesses owners to Eloy.

Um continue the rental program at the chamber building, and also continue to have meaningful luncheons and mixtures.

Uh the visitor center museum in the chamber for 2425.

There we were featured in Fox 10 News, Eloy Enterprise, Cash Grand Dispatch, the ABC uh Kun 9 for the Tucson in Tucson for the Eloy Glow, the radio stations 106.3, 105.3, and many county and statewide uh magazines.

Um, and at this time, I believe uh the board wants the my executive board, Terry, Dr.

Terry Aquin, Micah Powell, and Richie Rosales will want to want to have some statements to you guys.

Um, just be a quick few minutes and we'll go on from there.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Hello, Dr.

Rockland.

Very quickly, I'd like to thank each one of you, Mr.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members, government leaders, for your support and encouragement of the chamber.

It means a great deal to us, and we know that every one of you helps in that regard.

We know that a symbiotic relationship between a chamber and a city can make a lot of difference.

It helps with growth and prosperity for all of our citizens.

So I'm here to just say thank you on behalf of the board.

I know you come to our events, the museum fundraiser, golf tournament, glow.

Tomorrow I'll be at the women in business leadership meeting.

I you can't believe them.

They I mean we'll have great speakers, but the kind of relationships that form in those settings is just amazing.

So we're happy to have that opportunity.

I wanted to also praise just briefly Miss Mead, Mr.

Rodriguez, and our volunteers.

The visitor center has been named a best place to visit in Arizona.

Pinell County is named the GLO, the best event.

Uh the museum, I got a really neat award about a year ago, Community Support Award.

And of course, just recently, the Arizona Chamber Executives gave us the outstanding membership engagement strategy award.

So we're very proud of everyone, but mostly I wanted to say thank you to all of you and to our ex officio member who sits on the board with us and helps us keep that flow of information going.

Thank you.

Welcome, absolutely.

Anybody else want to come up from the chamber?

Mayor and Vice Mayor, Councilmember and Staff.

As you know, I've I've been involved for for a while now, and I took the role as uh treasurer, and then it got elevated pretty quickly when the vice president um uh resigned.

So, yes, I'm losing more hair because it's just more work on top of everything else, but I truly enjoy doing what I'm doing right here.

Um I've learned a lot from this side of the chamber um versus women's up there.

And I can tell you it's it's it's it's a great working relationship with the city of the chamber, uh learning a lot of what it actually does, um, and seeing how much activity and work that those two staff members that we have are conducting on a daily basis, uh representing not just for the chamber but for Eloy and Panell County, as you heard from the list of project events and uh um combinations that the chamber's been getting.

So um it has been an interesting ride, it's great transition.

Um the pay, I'm not I'm still trying to negotiate some pay, but that'll work later on.

Um I have uh appreciated McKinsey being there, representing the city.

It seems totally different from night and day from from sitting where you are to being over here.

Um so if you guys know I'm the part of the treasurer, um, so when it comes to the financial side, um, as we know, we take the fiducial responsibility and take that oath that uh we need to make sure we're all taxpayers' money is going to, even when it is coming from the city or anybody else that um gives to the the funds of the city or the the chamber.

Um I've been uh chairman uh several boards, been members of a lot of the boards, and one thing that I've I've always stressed on is don't make me look stupid.

And that's something that I I preach to the chamber here, is even though I'm new here, um people know me.

And I don't want our name, the city, the chamber, to have any mud on its face when something happens.

And so um I've been very uh strong towards Andrew for these past several years, even as a council member, but even more as a uh board member because when it comes to the financial responsibility of taxpayers or just financial side of it all, we can't mess this up at all.

Um I'm very strong about that.

I've very passionate about that, and so I I put my name on the the uh the financial reports that come through here.

And I'm in a lot by Dan, you know, he's business side of it all.

Uh and we just have a long, strong hearted meetings about what we're doing in line items and asking questions, the three whys.

I'll never forget your three whys.

I still use our practice to today, the three whys.

And so it's different as a former council member mayor that I asked these questions that they never heard of or saw before because I was said over there, they didn't have that over there.

So it's it's a totally different environment now.

Um with the the great leadership that we have with um the board member, the executive board team that we have.

Um we invite anybody to go to our meetings.

We have we are not a closed door session.

We we want you to participate, even though McKenzie is our ex officio, he only gets a you guys probably only get a brief statement of what it is.

Dan, you've been on the the board as well too.

It's very similar to what is ran here.

Um but it's it's exciting to know what is being projected for the city of Eloy as a chamber of commerce.

Um a lot of hats that Andrew wears and Angela wear um that we support, we want to support this continued behavior from all of us.

So I'm here uh representative vice president and the treasurer.

So if you guys have any questions regarding that, I'll bring Andrew up.

So thank you, Mayor, for Megan, a quick question.

I just woke through the the uh the rules whatever the uh week home.

By laws, by this, thank you.

And uh one of the things you with the chamber now having a visitor center and the museum, the assets are are going.

And uh have you as a board looked at bonding uh members or other bonded or uh to be sure that you know not that anything's wrong with the people who have, but I'm just thinking years ago when some of the uh uh real league uh people scrolling with funds that are just you never know the thick maybe in the bylaws you might look at that uh just to protect yourselves and also it wasn't really clear the bylaws on who has access to the funds and who can it says it has to be approved by board members that one board member more about board.

It wasn't really clear when I looked at the bylaws, so just maybe maybe I misread something there.

Uh to the first question, we all need to be protected.

We have to be, and and that's just first and foremost to protect our livelihood and our reputation, same with the cities and everybody else that that provides the funding to us.

Um checks and balance.

Gotta have checks and balances.

And so uh I'm always asking Andrew, what's this?

What's that?

What's going on here?

Um so all the the more eyes and more protection that we have to go to that uh responsibility is important to not just to us but to everybody that's that participates in that.

Um second question.

That one.

Um so for the first question, we do have the insurance if just in case something does happen.

Um we do it by another policy.

So we do have insurance for board coverage.

So board does have some coverage on that.

Um takes off with the funds that's covered.

Yes, it's covered up to half a million.

So we do have that.

Um we got that just because when we had the glow and stuff like that, so we just we just started doing that.

That that's liability, and I just was good thinking beyond the liability, but just more the the yeah.

And uh second one is uh I can can you repeat that one again?

It's some about the sign-off when uh who has access to the money and the bylaws said one board member, but it wasn't really clear.

Is that just one person can do it, or you need to have more than one?

It'll be the president or the treasurer.

And that's and myself under $500.

If it's for over $500, it has to be um uh Micah or Terry.

It was very clear in the bylaws.

That's why I was asking the question.

Okay.

Um just a couple of comments, you know.

I on you, I've always followed the chamber and I've supported the chamber.

And um recently for sure.

We're at the end.

I want to thank the sponsors, but still we're at the end.

Go ahead.

Sorry.

So um, as I was working on the fiestas this year, I do get a lot of positive comments from people around the county about the chamber.

They talk about talking to you specifically.

Um I really wish we could get back to working hand in hand with the fiestas, because even super the supervisor that was just here, I talked to him the week of the fiestas, and he says, well, Andrew tells me everything that's going on in England, he had no clue about the fiestas and stuff.

So maybe if we could work more hand in hand in in promoting working with the chamber to promote the fiestas and get the word out.

Um because you know, those those are our two biggest tourist events is is the fiestas and the glow.

And and I'm very happy that we're still able to support them, but I I would like to work together with them.

Um also the uh the one room schoolhouse.

I like to call it the one room schoolhouse, I know uh I gotta yell at for changing trying to change the name.

I mean, Daniel are talking about that.

I yelled at it.

Yeah, I I won't go against Rosie Coil either.

Um but if are there tours available to it?

Are there is and are they posted?

Um yeah, the the hours on Monday and Thursday is from nine to one, and then from uh on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays is from nine to three.

Um so we'll have staff there at all times and the doors are open.

Um if you have uh a special group there and wants to go in and we'll have staff there to be prepared for the group, but those hours are that's when there's somebody's always gonna be there.

Yeah, I would like to see get that information out to the schools too, so maybe they could do tours.

There, they always bring kids kids group every year, and Tall Tech School brings kids.

They want just walk them over.

Yeah.

Um, and then the last thing um I had is I and you know, Dr.

Actland can tell you too.

I've been trying to get on the the chamber list or what it the information list, you know.

I sometimes by chance find out when there's a luncheon.

I sometimes find out by chance when there's a a uh mixer or something.

I I look at your Facebook page and see it, and I'm like, oh yeah, let me see if I can make that and stuff.

So um I know we're having we're having technical issues and stuff, but you know, you also have my my personal email and my work email.

You want your city email on there, or you want your personal email on there?

I'm gonna go with my personal email because I'm not too reliant on my city email right now, you know.

But yeah, you know, and I know even before I was on city council, I asked Dr.

Ackham if can I just get on the mailing list?

Can I just know when things are are happening in the chamber and stuff?

So just um constantly having getting that information out there.

I'm happy to promote the chamber that this city of Eloy.

I think you guys are doing amazing, but you know, I sometimes I I feel like I'm I'm blacked out of information.

Uh we'll make sure it'll be on there for tomorrow morning.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

The one question I have, thank you, Andrew, is I think I've told you before.

Um, you know, we rent out you rent out that space that's in the back there to the coffee place.

Um and I know it's gonna cost us money, or you you know, there's gonna be costs involved, but I really want to look at figuring out how we get running, you know the whether whether it's sewer, water, whatever it is to be able to upgrade that space, um, because I think you know it's nice that the the Cafecito place is able to sell what they are, what they do sell, but it would be nice to be for them to be able to do much more with that space.

Or whoever's in that space um because you had a bakery there before, you have this place now, and uh I believe that they're limited because they do not they're not able to run the kitchen out of that place because of that limited availability.

So I really want us to look at that.

Um, you know, you to bring that to us if possible um to see what that would cost.

Maybe if it's not too up, you know, obviously cost prohibitive, but I think that would be a benefit to you guys and to us and to our community um to have that space be a little bit um more available to those kinds of businesses.

So yeah, and we do get that a lot.

Like people are looking for like a kitchen to start their business real quick.

But uh we'll get those numbers and we'll send them to McKinsey and we'll get a going on that.

And the rent that she pays now puts it into an account that we don't touch, oh that's only for if we want to upgrade the building.

So we it's been almost a yeah, it's gonna be a year, so we we can talk about how we can work that out.

And we can go from that expenses.

Andrew, just we had a nice discussion uh, I guess it was last week on the uh buildings in town that uh vacant and so forth.

Uh do you think there's a market there if I'm just pie in the sky here now?

If the city would invest in buy one of those buildings and then turn it into a rental space, do you think there's a market out there to be able to do that?

Uh if the city would take the initiative to fix the building up and just have it like plain or have it set up for something?

Something like you have the back of the chamber, like a kitchen.

Yeah, I guess.

Um an incubator or something if if you know we've got vacant buildings, we keep hearing a story about well, they can't afford to come in because of the upkeep and so forth.

But if you know, if we find a way to maybe uh buy one of those buildings to create an incubator, do you think there's a market out there that people uh would would rent a space to do that?

Yeah, I I and depending on what type of business.

So if you have like a uh office, like Angela was here this weekend, she came on our off time and she went with a member and they looked at two spaces on Main Street.

And when they were looking at two spaces, that realtor actually got a phone call from a company that's looking for offices in Eloy, because they're bringing they're they're doing some construction work in Eloy.

They need um their payroll office and everything here in town.

So he was like, he told Angela, where can I go?

So Angela had to show them another office space.

So there is the demand is here.

But I think too, if we want Main Street itself to to boom, we need to do something like that.

The city needs to probably step up a little bit on that, and then maybe either do like the kitchen or ghost kitchen and stuff.

We have our food charts right now going all into Maricopa for doing their food.

And that's at CAC because that's the only way they can do it.

You get their go to CAC, do their food, and they come back to Eloy or Cast Gran and sell their food in out of their food trucks.

And but if we do that something in here, that's there's money going out, money going in.

Um if we have a restaurant type thing here, also that will actually work.

Um we have a guy right now that's looking for a restaurant to do his restaurant type of food.

Um, but again, it depends on the price of the rent, you know, because everybody wants sky high rent or selling their buildings for sky high.

Um, but that's I mean, I believe if I see it as control, like if the city or a nonprofit has control of that of that entity, I think more people will have more of a chance to succeed.

Okay, I'm all right.

Mike.

Thank you, Moore.

Umrew, I've got a a statement and then a couple of soft questions for you.

Umrew, thank you for your sub report and the support of the city of Eloy through your directorship of the Eloy Chamber of Commerce.

I believe we can all agree that you and Angela are doing your best job of carrying out the directives of the Eloy Chamber of Commerce through promoting the chamber's purpose and mission statement and organization of chambers sponsored by Eloy Community Events.

We look forward to a long-lasting stronger relationship based on mutual respect and understanding.

Um we go a little bit.

As you're aware, we have several community outreach agreements with not-for-profit agencies that fall within the city of Eloy.

The Eloy Chamber of Commerce being their largest monetary recipient of Eloy City funds that are given to support the various not-for-profit organizations that have solicited the city.

Those of us sitting on sitting council have reviewed and approved of these applications for funds, and in doing so, we feel that we have a fiscal responsible obligation to make sure that these funds are awarded and spent accordingly.

And this kind of goes with you know your board's fiscal responsibility as well.

Um so these are a soft, these are soft administrative type of uh questions, and you can either answer them or maybe Angela or even Micah.

Um, if you can answer them tonight, that would be great.

If not, maybe an answer before we have our our next uh board meeting, which is our excuse me, our city council meeting October 13th.

Um the first question, and it relates to end of year financial reporting for chamber fiscal year 24 and 25, which would have been your ending June 30th to 225.

Um we would like to see if we can get the financial report, preferably audited.

It is my understanding that the chamber executive committee can be responsible for the annual audit and review of those chamber financial report or request a special auditor or auditors appointed by the committee.

So we're looking to get your annual report from last fiscal year.

And then the second question, correct me if wrong.

Um believe that Angela is responsible for the Chamber of Commerce accounting record keeping.

And Angela has been providing a quarterly PL statement report to the Eloy management team per the community outreach agreement.

In the exhibit A and then agreement, she's to provide the reports on a kind of offset quarterly basis, meaning that they're due 15 days prior to the quarter close to the city, and I think that's only because they need to review them and get the quarterly checks out in time.

So I'm hoping we don't place any undue work time on Angela, but is it possible that the city council via through city management receive a full complete quarterly PL statement for each quarter?

And that's yeah, you can either answer I can answer those.

Um so the the first question, the my board okay.

So when we do the the the end of the year financial, so I believe that we gave the management the end of the year, the June.

Yes.

And we send it, we send it to the management.

So they have the end of the year.

So I don't know if you guys want it to be audited.

That's gonna take a different whole different spectrum because then we have to find another an outside auditor to actually to go audit it.

And the last time that we were gonna actually get our books audited, they were they're looking at 15 to 20,000 to audit our books.

Um but I can I can let the council know and staff knows the way we do it our our books inside in-house, Angela does her stuff in-house, then it goes to me, and for me, it goes to Micah, and from Micah, it goes to the executive board, which is our financial board, and from that board it goes to the to the whole chamber board.

And once they approve it in a meeting, it goes to the CPA.

So the CPA has it approved, does his thing with it, then he follows the taxes at when at the appropriate time.

So the report that comes to the city management, is it the CPA reviewed no report?

Well, yeah, at the end, at the end, at the numbers at the end of the year, we have those numbers that him, the CPA and Angela have talked and the numbers match.

So what we do is that we just send the report from QuickBooks to the management team.

Are you looking for a copy of those?

I I think what I'm sorry, Mayor, members of council.

I think one of the things that uh Councilmember Vadraska might be looking for is in asking for this is by the statements made that the CPA has reviewed the end of the year financials.

There's nothing that the city gets that actually says that.

There's no letter from a CPA, there's nobody that authorizes it outside independent agency that states that these books have been verified.

I concur with what is the result of these.

That that we don't see, and I think that's what uh the council members asking.

It's just something of that that is a secondary from your own internal measures, because really all you said is just our internal people look at all this, but we got no verification.

The council doesn't to say that this has been independently looked at, and as a CPA stamp this, it's okay.

Mayor, if I might now um address the question um about the you said Nick and Ellen had fiscal responsibility, right?

We don't take fiscal responsibility of it.

So us as a board, we felt we're passionate about that.

So we established a process and we go line by line every month through the checkbook through the visa reconciliation, every single report that we receive.

So we spend an hour every month just going through asking questions, and then we report that to the board.

And after we approve it, and then the board receives it, and then and and you know, your ex officio is in there as well.

So we hear the questions that we're asking.

So we take that seriously.

Um so when you say uh uh the count reviews it, yeah, our master taxes reviewed it, and he'd be happy to sign off, but just know that every month we're doing our own internal audit because we take fiscal responsibility seriously.

So every board member uh can be a part of the finance committee, so it's not just the executive committee.

Uh when Dan was on, we would tell the board, hey, anybody can come to our board meeting, anybody can come to the finance committee meeting that we meet the week of to go through the finances.

So if we we also considered an audit a couple of years ago, and like Andrew said, the prices were too high.

Um we're at we're our total budget is 178,000 for the chamber.

We started five years ago when we took over our budget was 86,000.

So at that time, the chamber was almost at four, I mean, the city was financing almost 40 some percent of the chamber budget.

And remember, I told you as a chamber a few years ago, we want to start to get ourselves leaning off the city for that.

So now we're so we're we're proud because we're at 178,000 and we're like around 30 percent of the budget coming from the city's funding, and we're looking to continue to grow our budget and continue to uh you know just rely less on on a on on the city.

But whenever you need whatever you want, we'll be happy to supply it.

And we always welcome any of you to welcome to our board meeting also to come to our finance committee meeting or just join the board.

We'd love to have you.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, sir.

What was that in the second question, Nicken?

The the quarter report, not a complete so as soon as the end of the quarter and Angela's done with rec reconciling and everything, and we'll send it to the management.

And that's don't sit on yet.

I'd like to thank the members of the chamber for all they do with those big fat paychecks they get to do.

And I'm really happy about changing the name of the visitors seminar, because you say Santa Cruz, you say Sunland.

No nobody knows what that is.

I mean, I know those are legacy names and whatnot, but nobody knows.

And when you're pulling in almost 22,000 visitors a year, you're talking 17, 1800 visitors a month.

That's about 500 a week that's rolling through there.

They need something that they can identify with Eloy and Eloy identifies with it.

So I'm I don't know about the rest of the council here, but I I'm I'm all in favor of changing the name putting the word Eloy on the front of that building.

I I really am.

So once again, I want to thank everybody for all the work that they do.

Do you have anything else to add, sir?

No, um I'm I'm grateful that you guys um for the council or staff.

Um sorry to see David leave, but um I was up there when we hired him there.

But uh I I understand.

Um, but uh other than that, I mean thank you guys for your guys' time.

I'll be back if you guys have questions on the next item.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Anyone else on council before we roll to the next item?

Go ahead, sir.

I do want a little clarification on the audit portion that we just heard about.

What's in our contract with the chamber?

Are they required to provide when or what are we able to accept just to make sure that we're in in line with our contract?

Uh contract states that bear with me.

The recipient agrees to allow the city to make site visits as well as financial and function audits, which the city may deem are necessary to ensure agreement compliance to ensure financial control and provide an audit trail for the use of award funds recipient in Greece, maintain valid invoice and expenditure documentation.

Recipient agrees to provide detailed quarterly financial and function reports of the city.

So I'll turn it mayor council members.

Um the city manager did quote some provisions from the you know from the agreement on there, and these are set forth in section 5B.

Um six basically were set site visits as well as financial and function audits, which the city may deem necessary.

And if the city were to do that, basically what we would what we would basically do is we would talk to the chamber to try to determine basically if the if the city council wanted some form of an audit, how do we do it in a in a manner which will get the city's questions resolved that's not such a big financial drain to the chamber as well.

And I I don't know if when the last time that you know that the chambers done audits.

I will tell you I do know from um hearing the number that uh that Mr.

Rodriguez pointed out what it was quoted as an audit.

I have heard that in Casa Grande for an audit, but I think that you would want to try what we would try to do is find accounting firms that basically have a subspecialty where they deal with chambers of commerce so that they're more streamlined to focus in on what's there, but certainly an audit would cost money, and the issue would basically be what level of you know audit or review would be appropriate from the city standpoint and also from the chambers as well.

You know, I'm under the impression if we get something from the chamber with the CPA sign off, that would be that would be acceptable to council.

It's just that last step you can get us at.

I think I mean that's absolutely that's absolutely good.

And we can revisit later if there's an issue, but I think that's an easy peasy.

You're already doing this anyway, so all right.

Anything else?

Okay, we'll move on to item number seven consent.

Can I make a suggestion that before we go on that we take a break?

Go ahead, councilwoman.

We'll take a five minutes.

We'll try to wrap this up at a reasonable time.

All right, we call this meeting back to water.

Item number seven, consent agenda.

All items with an astronomy considered to be routine matters and will be enacted by one motion on one roll call vote of the council will be no separate discussion of these items unless a council member show request, in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered in its normal sequence in the agenda.

Does anybody have anything they would like remove from the consent agenda?

Hearing seeing none, I'm looking for a motion to present to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Council Member Vojska.

Yes.

Yes.

Council Member Schneider.

Yes.

Council Member Garcia.

Yes.

Councilmember Golindo?

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay, that brings us to item number eight.

Business possible discussion and/or action on the following.

The authorization to use general fund reserves to pay off the water infrastructure finance authority, also known as WIFA, debt obligations number 910103-09.

And 92 Apple 150-10 and 920216-12 and 9101 64-15, totaling 2,343, 899.52 cents.

Mr.

Wright.

Yeah, Mr.

Mayor, members of the council.

As part of the 2526 annual budget, uh one of the uh goals was to look to how to want to expand our infrastructure for our water and wastewater.

One of the things brought forward, and that was in the 2526 budget was to pay off the Ford with laws or two water to wastewater um obligations.

Um the budget, we had budget 2.4 million for this.

Um the payoff statement that we got from Luther was just over 2.3 million dollars by paying these off.

We actually will uh end about 180,000 in interest savings.

This will uh now free up our obligations that we can look to um expand our water wastewater uh infrastructure um here probably after tonight upon council's approval we'll be looking at probably early November bringing back a before you some uh probably utility or water wastewater obligation that Nick uh Dodd and Zach SIC has brought forward some uh for some of our infrastructure.

So you know tonight I'm just bringing forward the uh payoff statement.

If approved, I will be uh wiring the funds to WIFA to pay off those loans on before October 1st.

Thank you, sir.

Anybody on council have any questions about approving the payoff of these WIFA funds?

Seeing none, okay.

We'll take a vote of council, and at this time I'm looking for vote to authorize the use of general fund reserves to pay off one, two, three, four WIFA funds.

Do I have so move?

Do I have a second?

Second.

Roll call, madam court.

Councilmember Garcia?

Yes.

Councilmember Galindo?

Yes.

Councilmember Rodraska?

Yes.

Vice Member Tarango?

Yes.

Councilmember Schneider?

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

That was an easy two million dollars.

All right.

Next is item B, general plan update visioning summary.

Mr.

Simer.

Thank you, Mayor members of the council.

As you're quite aware, we've been doing quite a bit of uh outreach and work with our general plan.

And today we have Logan Simpson and Terry Hogan here that will be providing you an update of where we are at and a summary of our results.

So I'll hand it off to Jerry.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor and members of the council.

Terry Hogan with the firm Logan Simpson.

I'm here to give you an update on your general plan.

Can you hear me okay?

Perfect.

All right.

And for the members of the public, it looks like we're not going to get the screens to work.

So this visioning summary that we're going to give to you will be on the project website.

So if if the members of the public want to go to eLear General Plan update, they'll be able to see this generally this presentation in this summary.

If I can move this down a little bit, it'll help me.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so we've been uh we've been at this for quite a while, and uh tonight I'd like to give you uh an update of the process, uh public participation as well as uh the next steps that are coming up.

Uh and I I believe council, you can see this on your screens as well.

So I'm gonna talk a little bit more than I would normally talk, so the members of the public can kind of they're looking behind me at the screen a little bit, but um I'll kind of walk through this a little bit more.

Um we've been going through this process, uh started the launch in February of 2025.

This is an 18-month process uh from beginning to end.

Uh we are ending our uh envision or visioning stage of that.

Um so everything that's happened now between the web page launch in March uh to the end of August uh is what we're summarizing uh to you tonight.

As we move into the next phase, phase four, that's our build site.

We will be doing another public series workshop series for the public, which will be in person as well as online, and then we'll be moving into our 60-day public review that'll happen in the early part of 2026, and then going through that legislative process with the Planning Commission and City City Council, and then if adopted in March, April of 2026, the plan will then sit and go on the ballot in November for ratification by the members of the public.

Okay.

So going to give you the public participation summary.

We've had a lot of Mayor?

Yeah, the URLing people can see the screens.

Oh, super.

Excellent.

Wonderful.

I heard this was being live streamed.

It's it's uh it's an on, it's a demand, must see TV kind of stuff.

Okay.

Uh so this is this is actually exciting.

Dan and I get really excited about general plan updates, so um, I'll try to do a little dance for you guys, um, make it a little bit more exciting.

Um, but this is this is really cool.

General plan updates, uh, all about visioning uh community vision into the into the future.

Uh this visioning summary again takes what we've done from web page launch uh with 20 over 2300, 2300 views and subscribers, which is fantastic, and bring us all brings us all away uh to today.

We have over 3300 people that have been engaged in this process uh thus far, and that's a fantastic number at this point in the process, I'd like to say.

So we had our first questionnaire.

Uh, this was an online questionnaire.

We took this questionnaire out to different events that we went to, as well as the workshop series, uh, had 251 respondents.

Um I'm gonna read out some of the the comments that we had uh on that just so the members of the public can hear that.

Um folks talking about how they love the community events, uh, they make us uh bring us together and make Eloy feel like home.

Uh many folks uh talking about the top reasons that they love Eloy were the community events, uh people citing access to the freeway, the location, the location location.

Uh we love it, uh great cost of limit uh living, um, have some concerns about uh or a challenge of commercial infrastructure.

Uh so we want to focus our our um goals and our priorities on infrastructure because we want more retail entertainment restaurants and that sort of thing.

Um also want to preserve our small town feel and support the downhound downtown neighborhood revitalization, and we want more jobs, Mayor.

So uh lots of great information on that.

Uh we did have a a vote for the tagline for the general plan update, and we gave four or five different options.

The winning tagline is on your screen.

Planning for today for a stronger tomorrow.

And I want to remind the council that all of the topics that folks are bringing up in this in this questionnaire and these early uh components, we are addressing that in the general plan.

So you can see on the screen right now every city and town in Arizona is required to have a general plan in place.

These general plans have to be updated every 10 years, and there's population thresholds that require a certain amount of topics or or what we call elements to be included.

For populations over 10,000 but under 50,000, you're required to have land use, circulation, open space and recreation, growth areas, environmental planning, cost of development, and water resources.

Umas as well.

That's public services and facilities and public safety, as well as housing and neighborhood preservation that includes your downtown area and neighborhood neighborhoods, of course, and economic growth as well.

Okay, so in addition to all of that, we've been doing community listing sessions.

These are our interviews a little bit more in depth.

Uh, we've done those with uh mayor and council.

Uh we've had 56 of those to date, and I'll just kind of go through the the areas that we we've been focusing on.

Uh local government, regional government, state government, federal government, Luke Air Force Base.

Um we uh talked to the Union Pacific Railroad, we've talked to the uh chambers, uh commerce, we've talked to uh Robson Ranch and different HOAs, community members, businesses, nonprofits, school districts, water providers, electric providers.

Um I think it's a great cross section of the community that we're speaking to.

We're not done.

Um so we're still plowing forward on that interview list.

We have 56 completed to date, and as we go into this next phase, we'll be continuing to ask people if they want to talk to us in that fashion as well.

Okay, we've also been doing our uh City Council Planning Commission updates as well as uh GPAC, which stands for General Plan Advisory Committee.

Uh, that's your planning commission with a different hat.

Um, and you can see that the members that are involved in that, as well as our technical advisory committee.

The technical advisory committee is your department representatives and that uh makes up your city management group, public works, community services, fire finance, police, and community development.

We've met with those two groups twice during the process.

We will be meeting with them again as we go into this next phase as well.

And of course, we went and did the joint city city council and planning and zoning commission meeting the last time we met with you as a formal body as a joint formal body in April of 2025.

Community drop-in events.

These are these are events where we bring out the booth, and Dan puts on a lot of sunscreen, and we go out and have our general plan booth.

You can see some photos on the screen.

We try to do these every month in really focusing on events that have Eloy residents and businesses involved.

Some of the bigger events that bring in a lot of different folks, those are great and everything, but we kind of get lost in those.

So we like to really focus on the events that bring out the residents.

So we've been to the Robson Ranch Annual Yard Sale, the Easter Egg Hunt, Eloy Food and Cruise at City Hall, the Cinco de Mayo, and the Fiestas Patres, you said that better than I did.

So almost uh or over 500 folks engaged in this process so far at those drop-in events.

So it's really exciting.

Uh we're planning to go to the gain event October 3rd as well as the November 8th Eloy Glow and open it up to all of you.

If there's other events that we need to go to or HOAs, uh please let uh myself or Dan know, and we'll make sure that we divide and conquer and get to those as well.

All right.

Uh many of you attended this event.

This is the Eloy Talks speaker, speaker event that we had on June 20 uh June 21st.

Uh that was with Peter Kegiama.

Um he's a national known circuit speaker, uh talks uh about uh grassroots level uh community building and placemaking in cities.

Um it was an exciting event.

We had 51 uh people in person to that event.

Uh it was also live streamed out, um, and that will be on your project website uh as well, so people can view that and take a look at that if they if they missed it.

It was an interactive program, not just somebody getting up there and speaking.

Uh we had some uh cool things like uh the $500 challenge where we had people do a list of things of what they could do in Eloy to really make a difference with just a small amount of money.

Uh a t-shirt competition with a lot of cool ideas, uh, these are in your packet, and again, this visioning summary will be on the project website so people can take a look at these.

Um, a few more ideas for the chambers maybe to uh to pull together and sell a lot of really cool ideas about uh t-shirts and different things that people wanted to paint or uh kind of scavenger hunts that were just a kind of a fun thing to really celebrate Eloy.

So that was fun.

That was a great way to kick off our public process.

Um so the next thing that we did was we got into our what we call W1 or Workshop One that was all about visioning.

This is a vision plan, so we want to get out there and hear the community and what the community vision is for Eloy.

Uh we had three different in-person events.

You can see those on the screen, uh, June 30th at City Hall, June 31st at the Senior Center, and August 2nd at Robeson Ranch.

And then we we held that same event, everything that we did in person we put online on the project website from August 4th to the 30th.

So we had the virtual workshop, and we had over a hundred attendees participate in that effort as well.

That was where we took our vision statement, the overall vision statement that I'll show you in just a moment, as well as our themed aspirational statements.

We took that uh feedback that we had gotten on those from our general plan advisory committee and from the input and the listening sessions, and we took that out to the public to get comments on those.

Um we also did some visual preference exercises if you were uh there.

Uh we had to keep Dave away from the paste because he's a pace eater.

I didn't know if you know that.

Um he's leaving.

Um, just kidding.

Um, and then we also got a lot of big ideas, uh, locational maps, activity centers that people wanted to uh see more be more robust uh in in Eloy.

So a lot of great ideas that we're still analyzing as well on that.

Vision and vision statement.

I wanted to take a moment and just read this to everyone.

Um, this vision statement, as well as the aspirational vision statements, the mini vision statements, we'll be going back to workshop two, and I'll give you a promo on that as well.

This is where we're at with the drafts right now, and I think they're pretty cool.

Um, but we're gonna continue to take feedback on these.

So, this is the overall overarching vision statement for the entire effort for the umbrella of the umbrella, uh the umbrella of Eloy and the general plan, if you will.

So Eloy is a grow is growing with purpose, rooted in history, guided by community pride, focused on improving quality of life for all.

As we develop and revitalize our neighborhoods, strengthen our economy, and invest in infrastructure.

We will remain a city that honors its small town charm while embracing opportunity.

Pretty cool, huh?

Yeah.

So I want to remind the council, uh, and we we talked about this at workshop uh one, W1.

We have a new structure for the general plan.

It's on your screen right now, and I'll just kind of talk it out for the members of the public.

Um we're gonna have just your normal introductory um chapter, you know, what we're gonna call the uh our foundation.

We're gonna go into a community engagement summary, so everything that's happened, um, including the vision statement, and then that will then um drive down into our four different themed areas, and these four theme areas um encompass our 10 elements that we're going to have in the plan.

So purposeful growth, um, that includes land use, growth areas, and housing, prosperous economy includes economic growth, balanced environment includes parks and recreation and the environment, and then resilient infrastructure includes circulation, public services and facilities and public safety, uh, water resources and cost of development.

In those sections, um, you will then see your goals and policies, and that will then drive your action plan or your your strategic action plan after that.

So very robust structure.

Um we came out of workshop one with these um aspirational statements, and just for the uh the purpose of the the public, I'll go ahead and read those as well.

Uh purpose, purposeful growth.

EHOI will guide purposeful growth by balancing development and preservation to maintain its small town character, support revitalization, encourage compatible development, and protect the desert views and open spaces that define its identity.

Prosperous economy.

Eloy a visions envisions a thriving community where economic opportunities is is within reach for everyone.

This will be cultivated by supporting a diverse and vibrant economy that provides opportunities for business growth and housing, uh housing and job creation.

Balance the environment.

ELO will preserve and enhance its natural beauty and open space through an interconnected network of parks, trails, paths, and recreational spaces.

We envision a healthy outdoor focused community where residents enjoy the desert environment and celebrate the city's heritage.

And then resilient infrastructure.

ELO will invest in strategic, reliable infrastructure that keeps pace with growth, delivering safe roads, efficient public services, and sustainable water systems.

Through thoughtful planning and equitable investments, we will support both new development and long-standing neighborhoods with modern, resilient facilities.

So pretty cool.

Those are our vision statements, our many vision statements.

We will be bringing those back to our workshop too to get more feedback on those, make sure that we confirm those and that people are happy with those.

Those again will drive our goals and policies.

And uh for our next um event, we will be talking about uh a variety of different goals that we're gonna be getting comment on, and you can kind of see our next steps here.

Uh we will be developing a first version of the future land use match map, which is different from your zoning map.

It's the future categories going, and I know this this body knows what that is, but future land uses.

So a pictorial map of what the community wants for the future.

That'll be something that the community can comment on as well as um activity centers uh within the community, so the downtown area, toll tech center, different activity centers that um that might show up on your future land use map as well.

So analyzing the uh results of workshop one, uh completing those listening sessions and the coming months, drafting that future land use map, and then holding community workshop number two, saving the date for those.

Uh we have October 18th at Robson Ranch from 10 a.m.

to 12 to um midday, and then uh also all day at City Hall will be here uh with city staff in the morning and then the public at 5:30 uh in the in the evening uh to go through workshop number two.

So and then after that, there will be a virtual component of that as well.

So people that didn't have a chance to do that will be able to get on virtually as well.

All of that to say things are going well.

Uh we are starting into uh drafting the plan as well, getting workshop or getting working drafts out to our technical advisory committee so they can start commenting on those, uh doing our plan audit.

I heard a lot about audits.

It's uh we do an audit too, but it's not as uh exciting as financial.

Uh it's auditing all your goals, objectives, and policies uh with your technical advice advisory group so that we can bring those back to you updated.

So, with all of that, um the next time that we will see you formally, uh mayor and city council members will be hopefully before 2026, after our workshop dates, uh, once we coalesce all that, and we'll bring you back another summary uh to this body and give that to you at that time, hopefully maybe early November is what I'm thinking.

So, with that, I'm gonna open it up, yes, for the thank you for the questions.

Um I appreciate your attention, and I hope I was able to kind of talk through a little bit of that so that the public could kind of see what we're seeing as well.

Absolutely, and I think the aspirational statements are spot on.

They really are, they're spot on.

And you guys are doing a fantastic job.

Questions, comments, input?

Questions, comments, input.

Well, that means you're really doing a good job.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for the present.

All right, thank you.

Dan, do you have anything further to add?

This time, other than we do still encourage you to come all out to our events that we're presenting uh and working on coming up.

I do like to like to report back as uh uh on the past weekend of this event.

We were out there Friday and Saturday.

I was out there probably a third or a little bit more than a third almost half the time, and our consultants were out there the other two-thirds of the time when I was trying to do report.

So what we did had a very successful lot of input was taken in from those.

Uh it was good to get the kids and you know, they were like, Well, what's this?

You know, but um that was really uh a best part of it.

We had 181 participants, and that's just people asking us questions that ain't the people that come up and look at the maps and da da.

So we did have a really good participation.

And if I counted the kids, I think we've probably been over a thousand.

So that's a lot.

Thank you, Mary.

Uh thank you.

All right, with that, that'll bring us to item number C, which is the consideration of the acceptance of a resignation.

So we consider this, we can say no to this.

It'd be awkward, but yeah.

The resignation of a public office of city manager and establish employment end date.

At this point, we are going to the city council.

We'll convene into executive session for the following purpose for city council will discuss the resignation of the city manager, including the process timing and available options for recruiting and or selecting a new city manager.

Second, the city council may discuss or consider the appointment of interim city manager, including matters related to negotiation salary terms of employment.

The council may also receive legal advice and consider such an appointment.

Now, before we go into executive session, I would like to again thank and apologize to the public for all the technical difficulties we had here tonight, and we'll be sure this we will make every effort that does not happen again.

I thank you all for coming, and I thank all the people online that have joined us as well.

I was glad you were able to see some of the uh some of the slides that were presented.

So at this time we're gonna enter into executive session, and that will be the city council, city manager, city clerk, and city attorney, and or possibly assistant city manager.

And as we do so, I will adjourn this meeting temporarily.

And look, you guys don't have to sit around.

I don't know how long we're gonna be in there, but I'm gonna call it for at least an hour.

So I would say everybody have a safe trip home.

Once again, thank you, and thank you for putting up with us.