Well that should have each other.

I mean better.

No, no.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Oh, no problem.

Oh, I guess is there any elements in the world?

Oh, yeah.

No, it's just a right question.

No, you just work in the lecture.

I saw that I have to teach you know what's there, then I work my way up as a share.

Then I went to law school.

Um his dad is in a county.

So I'm not going to be able to do that.

Yeah, he might be behind the computer.

So you love trying to talk to the cell phone.

He wakes up at five and sleep by the other one.

Just recently we're starting with the that would be if they made a wake up and so buy uh well that's been hard lately.

She's been like that like every three hours.

But she doesn't have one which is whole.

So when I first had you, I'll find the FCT for y'all.

Uh oh, my notes.

So that's I thought we would be a large one.

And now it's a little bit more.

I know what the party but I don't know anything about it.

That's right, we're looking at the babies.

That's right.

You are a part of the engagement.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Good evening.

It is Monday, October 20, and welcome to the Eloy City Council work session about code enforcement.

May I have a roll call, Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Maldaska.

Present.

Councilmember Curtis.

Here.

Vice Mayor Tarango.

Here.

Councilmember Schneider.

Here.

Councilmember Garcia.

Present.

Councilmember Galindo.

Here.

Here.

Thank you.

And will you roll please Rod for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilmember Garcia?

And to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation, under God, the individual with liberty and justice for all.

Is there anybody on the public appearance sheet?

Yeah.

All right, so I'm gonna preface a little bit of this meeting.

First, I want to thank everybody who came out here.

I want to thank the people watching online because this is a bit of a hot button issue right now in Eloy.

First, I'd like to give the big shout-outs to our code enforcement officers and what they do.

They're doing a great job.

And they're out there in the face of this community, and uh i it it could be quite precarious what they're doing.

And I take my hats off to them to what they're doing because it is such a tough job.

I mean personally, I don't know how you do it all day, giving bad news to people and getting even worse news back.

I don't know how you guys do it.

But your efforts are making Eloy a cleaner and safer and more appealing place to live.

I know this because I hear the people coming back to me constantly in the neighborhood and from other cities saying, wow, you guys are really cleaning up.

And I and I give props a hundred percent kudos, Dan, Lydia, Angel, for doing what they're doing a hundred percent.

You have our support here on this diet a hundred percent for what you are doing.

So with that, there are no public appearances.

We're gonna go right into oh I know you would like to make a statement, so go ahead.

Yeah, I know I don't uh promote anything, I guess, from the diaspora since this one hits a little bit closer to home.

I wanted to announce that uh the rows and ranch uh softball team with the staff, the restroom staff.

Next Monday will be having a benefit uh softball game.

Probably know some of the uh traditions leaders and there's the bartenders if you're there at night, whatever.

But anyway, they're challenging the softball team to a uh chair the event.

And so stand up for cancer event.

And we'll be at noon on Monday, uh, with the opening ceremonies at twelve fifteen.

But anyway, they're challenging the softball team to a uh charity event, and so stand up for cancer event, and we'll be at noon on Monday uh with the opening ceremonies at 1215, and uh it's gonna be a um I guess a chance to give back if you've uh stand up for someone you know, your family or friends of cancer, they're selling placards that uh you can uh fill out and put the name on the uh fence uh between the dugouts, and so uh hopefully uh you'll get a good turn out and for you well needed event.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

And I know cancer has affected everybody in this room in one way or another.

So yeah.

All right, so with that, we're gonna go into the code enforcement update.

Mr.

Sima, I know you've been waiting for this night for a long time.

Oh, yeah.

And uh, I if I can ask you to repeat, because I sent Lydia out to find my glasses.

So if you can just repeat that, I'll repeat that a hundred times if you need.

I have to do that.

And I do I wrote it down that I was giving a shout out to Lydia and Angel for doing a great job with what they do.

And also take my hat off and thank you.

You guys violated the city.

You wrote violations to the city, and I thank you for that too.

Because look, we're not we're not above anything here, and I thank you for bringing that to our attention.

And the job you're doing is a tough job.

There's no doubt about it.

You just bring bad news to people that they're doing something wrong, and I'm sure they're so happy to receive this news from you.

But your efforts really are making Eloy cleaner, safer, more desirable, and just a better place all around.

Your efforts are not going unnoticed.

Everybody on this diet is here, notices these efforts.

People in different communities have come up to me and they have said, wow, Eli's really shaping up.

I'm saying, yeah, it's pretty much because of some dynamic people we have working in that area.

So on behalf of this diet, I thank you.

I thank you for all that you're doing, and I know it's a hard job.

I really do.

Uh, I think we all feel that same way.

Absolutely.

Thank you, man.

I appreciate it.

As you as you say, we are gonna go over the code enforcement program over here overview today.

I do have Lydia and Angel here with me to answer any questions that you may have of them or myself, or if I can't answer it, they can.

Um, but more importantly, I do agree with you, and I told them this from day one.

They do have the hardest job in the city.

Uh police fire, they go out, they have a very difficult job, uh, no knocks on them.

But these people are going up without protection 99% of the time.

You know, police does come out and give us support, but they're a pr uh addressing people that don't want to hear something that they don't think is uh a problem.

So I'm gonna struggle a little bit because we can't find my glasses.

So more importantly, also this month is the National Code Compliance Month, and some different organizations change it a little bit.

They also say Code Enforcement Officer Appreciation Month, but that's why we're here.

So it is that time of the year, and uh I appreciate all the acknowledgments you give them.

So as you already met uh and said, Angel and Lydia are our code enforcement officers.

Our primary duty, their primary duty is address a handful of issues, whether they're unsafe structures, environmental issues, which are uh a lot, hazards.

When I was on vacation, I heard about the refrigerator in the middle of the street that appeared, you know, uh nowhere.

Just was there.

Uh so we had to address that, and also protecting the well-being of our community and enforcement.

Now, one thing that I I don't you'll hear me say this probably throughout the presentation.

We do a lot of things that people don't want to to address.

And when I got here, one of the primary things we heard is we just don't feel backed.

And my job has been trying to make sure they feel backed, and if I can't do it, I get David and McKenzie to get that, get them and meet with them one-on-one, which they have to feel that they have that security.

But in the same sense, the foreign few one or two people in a community that complain about certain activities have tried to stifle our progress, whether it be taking care of weeds and plants, trimming trees, or just getting rid of junk because it's been there for 30 years.

And that also takes the assistance of the city attorney, Steve Cooper and Liz through our court.

Through our code enforcement program, we have a handful of objectives and goals.

As I indicated earlier, we're really out there to protect the health and safety of the community, but also property values is our biggest thing.

As properties are not maintained, they do affect our property values, but they also encourage crime and transients.

So our primary goal is to protect the public health and safety.

And we we do this through different methods, whether it's addressing the one-on-one through education matters, or when we have to take those people to court through formal complaints, and we have assistance from our judge to help address those issues.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I thought about that after she said she couldn't find them.

So the uh you can't see the quality of our neighborhoods.

Now neighborhoods are not just residential, they're commercial too.

So we have our commercial neighborhoods in downtown, and we also have a small little commercial neighborhood around Tolchik and the freeways.

So those are slowly getting addressed.

Downtown's in very good shape.

I've worked in many downtowns, and they always focus on them.

Our downtown when I came in is probably the first one I worked in.

I didn't have to go in and go, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?

So even downtown Scottsdale, I'll be the first one to meet.

I wanted five-gallon gas at night and burned down a lot of the buildings.

When they asked me what the solution was.

That was my answer.

Obviously, it did not work.

So the other thing is to build community trust through engagement and education.

And we do that through many different ways, but we want to be fair.

And we'll get into that a little bit later, because that's something I heard about a lot.

And honestly, I have not heard about it in the last six to eight months, if not longer, but I'll address that as we go.

But more uh importantly, how do we prioritize our violations?

And those we base it on risk and assessments to the community.

Our primary focus is number one, our immediate threats.

As you can see on the left-hand side, right hand side of the screen.

This was something that came up to us after one of the storms came through, the garage started collapsing.

Uh we don't see those is around a gas line.

Uh Angel went out took pictures and we immediately moved out and has had gas disconnected.

So this was a situation then when we did the assessment that it wasn't uh a factor of collapsing on the property, but it was a definite factor.

So Angel reached out to the property owner and we got them to comply.

Furthermore, once we were able to get into the structure, we did have our uh at the time our our building inspector review the insider structure to make sure it was still not uh impeded or uh impacted by this, and they did remove it.

Bryant mineral impacts come in many different ways.

Most people don't think about them, but you know, this is the Hayden or Hayna and Tultic area, kind of northwest of Robertson Ranch.

It's been a long-term dumping ground for us.

Umia got on them, it's been angels got on them in the past.

We just finished uh that abatement process.

Well, they took it upon themselves to clean it.

We participated in that cost because there's a lot of right-of-way out there that we we're also required to maintain, so we agreed to pay for a portion of that.

Unauthorized construction.

It's gone down, but it still happens.

Uh there's been a trend here that a lot of people come in, which was really unique was this individual and the guy next door.

When I first when he first walked in the door, I looked at him and went, no.

I've been dealing with these two individuals for 30 years.

They just go from community to community and see what they get away from.

I was just out of school when I first dealt with them in 1996, 97, and they were here now.

So these people, unauthorized construction.

These are our top priorities.

Then we then we hit our multiple complaints, nuisance, and our repeat offenders and junk.

Uh, these are a lot.

Um, they've made a great impact on these, although they are very costly for a city to abate, because most of the time these are abandoned properties, and in this case, we had squatters.

And in this case, we had squatters.

Angel came to me about it and I said, let's go with it.

And then we got with the city attorney and the judge for an eviction because they were not allowed to be there.

There were no running water, no gas.

We abated the property.

And recently I had just done, I had just gotten permission to go into that property, assessed it, and they have agreed to tear it down.

Of course, we have minor issues too.

These are the minor property abatements, weed zoning issues.

As you know, they start falling further down on the list, abandoned vehicles, and of course, we have other violations, which technically this property isn't in violation, but I took a picture of it anyway because it's weeds, uh, weeds have to be 18 inches, 12 inches.

So this is about ready to get into that violation mode.

So how do we go about our strategies?

Now, Angel and Lydia have always had, at least for my time, and at least their time too here.

It's been a proactive code enforcement.

We're one in a few cities in the county that does proactive.

I can tell you in the valley, I don't know anyone who does proactive code enforcement.

We do targeted enforcement, complaint-based, and community education.

So, how do we do that?

We go through neighborhood patrolling.

They're out there, they come in every day, they align up their inspections, whether they're new inspections or whether they're re-inspections, phone calls, all that, but they patrol the neighborhoods, they go out and they hit each neighborhood.

Our goal is to hit each neighborhood at least once a week.

And then we focus on, again, this is kind of repetitive, but our target enforcement, you know, we're hitting our unsafe buildings and our main thoroughfare.

Why do we want to hit our main thoroughfares first?

Well, from an economic point of view and from a community of parents.

These have people come into our community and see it.

So you have seen a long sunshine.

Lee has worked on, has been working on the signs on Toltec.

Uh I've been focusing on Frontier, and so is Angel, me on the railroad, Angel on everything else.

So it has come a long way in the last year and a half.

Then we go on to our repeat offenders.

These are people that we know on and on the gun.

And it does take time.

We got abandoned vehicles.

What I don't have a picture on later, but we call it the blue bus with the assist Lydia with the assistance of the city attorney at 26 years.

Was it there?

The blue bus.

Okay.

Yeah, it just was there.

We we cited the people, and it just happens that they were selling them.

So Steve reached out to the realtor and said, Well, either get rid of the blue bus, we place a lean, and there goes your your uh profits.

So evasive means, and of course, we also take care of the city property that is not being managed by parks, which is all the lots going on everywhere.

Why do we do that?

Because they're out in the field seeing these.

We took on, took this on last year.

Uh one of the complaints that we heard loud and clear through the community is why are you taking care of your property?

So we did, so we do those as well.

So I have that.

And then of course we have complaint-based inspections, believe it or not.

Uh if my numbers are right coming out of our iWorks, we only had 28.

Um at the end of the slide, you'll see that that's a very small margin.

But then we do community-based programming.

We were out there in the community.

We at the we just did the adopt the street.

We do the neighborhood cleanup that's coming up.

Uh they do the gain event is education.

Now, all these events are extremely uh beneficial to our fire department, who are one of the biggest supporters of us.

Uh, a lot of times we hear that code enforcement is how you need to be doing more, but people don't come out and help.

So, but our fire department is our largest person, our largest group that comes out and helps, followed by the school district.

Uh, we also have education material, which some of this is not yet on our website.

We just got it done recently.

We had an older flyer there, so we have some of these that were in your packet.

So we're able to hand these out.

These were all out at the gain event or national night out, still calling it game.

Evasive weeds, uh, this is something I've been hitting on it and talked about, or especially with the burning of the railroad.

Uh a lot of people were lying to burn the railroad.

Well, they were so ingrained in in the landscaping, there was no way just to evade get rid of the weeds and not a little bit of landscaping and trees.

And other than the one or two people, I know one, but maybe two people that complained.

I've had a lot more people appreciate the fact that we've cleaned up along the railroad.

So how did we do all this in the last year and a half?

Of course, some of these programs were already started by Lydia, but some of those needed some support, so we got Lydia and the Angel, sorry.

We issued this broader targeted enforcement.

Go for it.

They had curved lunch for me to go and do what they think is best to enforce the nuisances and get those addressed.

Now repeat offenders, we stay on top of them.

We had a recent repeat offender, moved the trailer off the property, moved it back onto the property.

I didn't even go back through abatement.

I just meant straight to cite straight to citation.

Angel had one of those, Lydia has those, I'm going to just go.

We do have to give some type of notice, but sometimes we don't have there's there's a give and take when it comes to that.

If you're just gonna compete, continue to violate the code, then we do have the ability to start issue citations right away, and those citations could be daily.

Now that's not our objective.

Our objective is to get compliance, education, and compliance.

But some people don't want to comply.

The particular property I've thinking of was Washington.

Is that uh the word a trailer was and we got it out?

Yeah, so 704 North Washington.

I was out there yesterday, and I it it's actually worse.

But we are working through the courts on that one.

Our goal was also reduce the number of notices.

But in what we used to have was we gave you three notices, the first notice, a second notice, and then a third notice, and then we go into abatement.

So effectively you had 10 weeks to comply.

We've got rid of the second or the third notice, and sometimes on repeat offenders, we go straight to an abatement mode.

Sometimes we give them one notice and go straight to abatement.

But the the idea is where are they at in the system?

Proactive abatement, which I just hit on, you know, a little bit, but what we've also changed is when we send out a notice, we send it out certified mail.

If that certified mail comes back, we go straight to abatement.

We do not give a second notice or third notice, we just go straight to abatement.

Because they're they're not going to respond, and many times they never respond.

So we also use a limited limited use of time extensions.

Uh what we did what we do now is we go, okay, you're if you're not if you need two weeks after the first abatement, we'll give you a second notice, which is two more weeks.

So you still have two more weeks anyway, and then if you still need more time, we're going to the abatement notice, and then it's essentially eight weeks.

But that's a typical time frame.

They have their the ability to whether or not to do that.

I know they may need a few more days or less days, but the idea is to continue the notice process to we get to abatement, so that we have a record that we've attempted to get compliance before we go to the city attorney with a citation or a long form complaint.

So then we were able to give that to the judge, and he's able to take action.

So of course I talked about city-owned property, we took care, we're taking care of that.

We do block-based enforcement.

One of the things that I heard of when I first got here was why me, why not them?

Why this?

Why that?

We do a whole block.

You hit one person, you hit the whole block.

That's our biggest thing.

And I in all honesty, have you guys heard anything about that?

Any more people complaining by me lately?

No.

So when we hit the one, we hit the whole block, and that's pretty much a stopped that complaint basis.

And why not them?

We're working with our contractors.

One of the things, especially for our uh neighborhood cleanup, we're working with those, they come out, they're big support, especially Hank.

He comes out with his track, his truck and his trailer and helps haul that stuff away for nothing as a community effort.

Um I forgot the other guy's name.

Daniel, thank you.

He's willing to volunteer to help our seniors or those in need once a month to come out and help a bait that he works to the church, gets the church involved.

We would like to do more of this, but we can't overstep our bounds with people giving their time.

So kind of like in the last 16, 18 months of our perspective of where we're at.

Uh we've 2800 cases is a lot.

Those are average, you know, four a day.

You know, that's a lot of cases.

And if you look at this, that's almost, and at the end is total violations per case.

It's a little bit more than two and two per, well, about two.

About two uh violations per case.

Many have three, some have four, sometimes just one.

And we have 65 cases that have gone through into the court system.

And if you look at the bottom chart there, the bottom chart is just violations that we have they have been able to file and take care of.

We only have 227 outstanding, that's right now this year.

That's pretty good.

That's how many we've gotten uh into compliance or some type.

And they've done over 5400 inspections.

So that comes out every day.

Just thinking about that, that's it's only about if I remember correctly, 405 working days.

So that's quite a bit that they're out there.

We've had some great successes.

Uh, this is this a portion of the Tucson phone building, as I call it.

We all went back to the aerials, some of that stuff has been there for 30 years.

We went after Lydia after them, clean them up.

We had to get the city attorney involved because they're trying to claim their constitutional rights as under uh interstate commerce.

No interstate commerce and just a zoning, not property maintenance.

So that was a good one.

This is a building right next door here down the street.

Angel was working with them, they're constantly been being boarded up.

Uh they went and tore down themselves.

Of course, we showed the collapsed building at W4 and after.

This was a a great success where we were able to get it in time.

This is our area just of northwest northeast of um Roberson Ranch, Hannah and Tulchik.

Angels work with them a few times.

Now this it was Lydia's term uh to clean this area up.

Took about 77,000 that the property owner dished out.

So this is something that we as a city they have gone through, they've graded uh some paths to try and prevent people from going in there.

Uh, this is an area where I wish I can get one of the police cameras on assistance.

Of course, I use the railroad.

This picture here is the one on the left is about two years ago.

This is today.

Of course, we have the new landscaping.

Further down, that's not that big of a deal.

This is the property that we have them uh evicted.

As you can see, they have no power, they have no water, there was no running toilet or sink.

So it's something that we've uh able to work on.

By the time I got into the property, it's an Adobe building that has severe termite damage.

Could it be saved with a lot of structural engineering?

Yes.

So, where are we going on the program?

We do want to expand our community outreach.

This is these are my objectives that I would like to do for the program.

Uh we do with McKenzie's help.

We have a consultant that we're working with to update our flyers and start getting those out.

Through the through that effort, we can do through direct mailing and other efforts, you know, door lockers and etc.

We can get those out, but more importantly, um enhance our compliance, right?

Doing through volunteer compliance.

One of the things that it once I get staffed up and working with the new building official is I would like to do sweeps through the neighborhood.

Go to volunteer.

Hey, we come through, here's your neighborhood, this is what we found on your property, here's the code.

Be proactive, and it said, hey, can you help us out?

One of the things that Angel has asked for me to come to Council.

One of the things that Angel has asked for me to come to Council and we haven't had a chance to start it yet on.

We used to do a twice a year we did the dumpster thing.

Public works.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you go in the neighborhoods, drop the big bins, they monitor it.

It's definitely a great program, helps them out.

So that's something I would like to get started again.

Um is more helping out our seniors and those that don't have the financial means to take care of their properties, which I call it Christmas in April.

That's what I grew up with, is actually starting to get into some more volunteer-based going into properties, helping to maintain them or bring them up to release decent statement sanitary.

That's a long-term project, uh requires a lot of assistance from the community and the businesses.

That's a that's a total volunteer base from everything from materials to time and labor.

And that gets into our innovative solutions.

You know, how do we address our chronic issues?

Ideally, I wish we can do once once a month, but we would burn people out.

You know, so trying to get out there and getting some more of our programs involved.

Uh one thing I forgot to mention is um Angel and Lydia work every other weekend to monitor what's going on the weekends.

It's it's been very good for them to see what's going on.

It gives them time actually in the office too to get stuff done.

So and monitor, but also our police chief, our police department with Sergeant Wonder in the back, he's been great helping us out when we need it, especially with the recent issue where we had to he did a wellness check, called me out.

It's one of the few days I was here after eight o'clock in the morning.

And he uh called me.

I was out there with the build our on call building official, and we condemned the building by nine o'clock.

And he helped get that person into some place of living and uh taking care of that property is scheduled to be torn down in a couple weeks.

Unfortunately, that's one of the pictures that we had on here that I wish I had more time to show you all the different examples of what we do and that they have done to advance the program over the last year and a half since I've been here.

Uh that was one of those that it looked atrocious when they started and looks great now.

Now we've got to get rid of the condemned trailer that I don't want to tell you more what I found.

So it's not less insanitary.

So as uh this is I had to put this in here.

Instead of having uh we're taking one bite out of the elephant every day.

We I found one that has a weed, taking an elephant eats one weed at a time.

So we are making progress.

Uh I commend them as much as I can.

It is a tough job, and I'll be happy, and they're here to answer any questions that you may have.

Well, the progress is what we all see.

And you know who really sees the progress is investors.

Because an investor comes to Eloy and they're looking to invest in our community and do something here, and they see the band of buildings, they see things looking like chaos, they see risk.

They're not going to invest in a place that looks risky.

They're not.

But if they see order and looks like things are happening, yeah, it's much more palatable for them.

I'm big for that dumpster program.

We had those up in Mesa.

Well, in the sub we were in the subdivision, and twice a year, they put that big 30 yards on the street right around the street corner.

And everybody could use it.

Everybody just ran out and threw your stuff in there.

And it was a great, it was a really great program.

And maybe instituting something like that might help a little.

So on my left.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Um, so I've got some questions sounds good, but I do want to thank Angel Lydia.

I've been out with both of them on the homeless count, and they know everywhere, they know everything, they know where, like the open land is who's who's squatting on some of that land, you know, and and you know, they're they're right on task with I know last time, Lydia, we found a boat out there in the just out there in the middle of the desert, but just understanding that you know, they're out there and they know what's out there already.

So I commend you guys on that.

I also sent a nice email to the city manager for finally cleaning up some of the property behind my house, and you talk about invasive weeds and stuff.

They they had all kinds of stuff, and then it blows, it blows into my backyard, and you know, and then I'm trying to get it tilled out and stuff.

But I first off, um I wanted to talk about the flyer on the landfill.

That's is that new or is that current?

That's that's not current, right?

That were in the report?

Yes.

They're both new.

Because I go to the landfill quite often, and I'm out I'm told that every dumping is ten dollars for a certain amount, and then that's it.

Uh it gets higher the more your weight is.

I've never been asked for ID, I've never been asked for a utility bill.

I've just been told it's ten dollars flat rate, they're coming and we're coming through.

Yeah, that those fires are are still draft, but they are new.

So they have not been updated since June.

But yeah, I would update that because that's that's kind of false information.

I do believe the policy is though, right?

$10 is the flat rate.

Do you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, up to so many pounds.

But I never go over a 10 or the the but it's always just you know a ten dollar flat rate.

And they say they don't check for I take I go with my utility bill and and they say they don't check because they said it's just a ten dollar rate.

So um, yeah, I would change that.

It says proof of residency require Eloy residents made dump.

Some percentage of tons per day.

Yeah.

Yes, on the website, effect of August 1st, weight in pounds, zero to a thousand pounds is ten dollars for a resident, thousand to fifteen hundred is twenty, and then there's escalating charges depending on the weight for residents.

Proof of UA residency will be required in the form of a current Eloy utility bill and a photo ID.

Yeah, so that's what's reflected.

Yeah, so that's what's reflected here.

But it may the first bullet it needs to be updated a little bit, but I would suggest that you add that to that policy because it is it is um kind of deceiving.

Um and then um I mean, do you have I I was expecting to see a copy of the current policy?

For what?

For um for uh code enforcement.

I don't want to lose.

And just just to know like what what is the policy, because I know I won't go into it, but Angel and I have been around around the world about what really is the policy.

I know that like there is a policy for uh abandon or what unusable vehicles and um but I you know there is a written policy, which we are working on.

The a lot of it was here, a lot of it is in the report that you're you're that I sent out.

Yeah.

What you're referring to is what city code says.

Yes, that's what I was hoping that we would see.

Like, here's a city code, here's where we want to change make modifications, changes, maybe.

There are changes is one thing I didn't hit on that we do need to do the city code.

There's quite a few that I don't like to do.

Um that today was just an overview.

I did not include the city code as part of that, but I would be happy to provide that information to you.

Yeah, I mean, we want to things that I mean I I understand that your responsibility is the health and safety of the community of Eloy.

Um you have some legitimate points on your brochure, but you know, I wouldn't consider aggressive and um intense uh policies on just you know weeds.

And I wouldn't include it with like abandoned homes and rust property in the back of, you know, in in the area where someone could could possibly get injured or abandoned vehicles, you know, uh trailers that are being uh used as habitats, you know, and and things like that.

I I understand those are some serious violations and should be gone gone after aggressively, and um, you know, those those are some things that need to be addressed, but you know how it is here in Arizona.

It it could be dry for four months, and then all of a sudden a monsoon will come through, and then right after that sunshine comes, and then in three days you have what three inches of weeds, you know, and and sometimes it's kind of hard to keep up with it.

And if you have a large property like I do, I mean they start coming in pretty quick, and and you know, and this it's sometimes it's just really difficult, you really have to wait till the ground dries up before you can get somebody out there to start cleaning it up and stuff.

So I would, you know, one of the things that that I have shared with the city manager and the mayor is that one of the things I would like to hear, because I hear complaints about code enforcement, and I shared that with you.

It's probably the one department that I hear the most complaints about and stuff, but a lot of times it's it's the enforcement.

It's like they, you know, uh people complain that they they don't give them any options, and and you know, maybe stepping out of the vehicle.

I I understand, and I've talked to the city manager about how I am concerned about our code compliance officers that they're not equipped with any kind of protection and they're walking in and people are angry and they're upset, and you know, when people start complaining with city officials, the neighbors come in, and it could could create a you know, a very dangerous you know, situation.

And I am concerned about our code enforcement officers being out there and writing violations and and checking on people's personal property and then people getting upset about that and stuff, which is you know, they are in violation and they have every right to be doing that, but it does put them in a dangerous situation.

Um so I mean what we had uh we just we did this at the health department a couple of years ago is we had to change our whole attitude as being we're here to help you, we're not here to find you, or we're here to help you, and and just uh kind of letting people know look, you're out of compliance, you're here, we we don't want you to be out of compliance.

We want to keep our our city beautiful.

So let's see how we can work together on this.

And if they say, like you said, I totally back you up.

If they say, you know, we don't want your help, we're gonna do whatever we want, then yes, find them and go after them and and send the courts after them, and if they you send them a letter and they don't respond to that letter, yes, you know, I I think you should go after them aggressively.

But I remember there used to be a program, I don't know, Lydia, you might remember this program, when when they were like disabled people that that um couldn't get their yard cleaned up, or when whenever there was some kind of issue where the the they got off and the the property owners just asked for help.

Now we didn't do it for people who own property and don't live here, or you know, just are are just abandoning their property, but just you know, like senior citizens and stuff, and and we would take out a day and we would work with the fire department and other volunteer groups and just go clean up their property.

Of course they were there and they let us know, you know, what you know what was off limits for us and stuff, but they were very appreciative, and I think that you know, like I said, one of my concerns, and probably I love the way you guys are going out there.

I love the the changes that I see in the beautification and that is happening in Eloy and stuff, but I also get a lot of complaints.

And and I understand that the complaints are like a lot of times they're like, well, my neighbor does this and they don't do anything to them, you know, maybe I should just ignore the city because that's what my neighbor does and stuff, and and it's like no, you shouldn't be concerned about your neighbor, be concerned about you, but let's see what we can do to help you.

Let's see how we can work together with if they say slam the door in your face and they say no, I don't want your help, and I'm gonna do whatever I want and stuff, yes, I say go after them aggressively.

That's what you have to do.

But I mean, again, there's this attitude that why do you why do you think that people have these type of behaviors and you know it's because they think they can get away with it.

So let's change that most definitely.

Let's go after you know the people that that are just ignoring you know, rules and and population and stuff, but let's also have a a bit of compassion and and let's let's talk to those people.

I don't want to put you guys in danger.

I don't want you knocking on doors where you know, you know, they're they're they're just gonna be defiant.

But you know, like I said, we have a lot of citizens, especially in Eloy proper, that have lived here for many years, have completely paid off their house, are not gonna leave because you know, they're that's their home and they take a lot of pride in it and stuff, but they're their kids have moved away and they're older and they sometimes they just need a little help.

So I know that's a social service person in me that it's reaching out and saying let's have a little compassion, but I yeah, I I I think that it would make us all a lot safer and healthier if we were able to work with the citizens of Eloy and help them rather than say, okay, you know, we're gonna we're gonna give you a fine.

We're gonna give you fine.

I know my my neighbor that lives behind me and stuff, he'd be willing.

He's he told me that oh yeah, he said anybody needs help, just tell the city to call me and and we'll I'll get my crew out there for you know, he's got a big enough crew, you could do it in an hour, but you know, I just feel like um we we we have to follow that fine line of staying in compliance and keeping our city beautiful and assuring that people are working with uh with us, but also let's let's find out why.

Let's find out why that one person has 300 bicycle parks and parts in his backyard, you know, instead of just telling them move them out, dude.

You know, do you understand what I'm saying?

I do, thank you.

And one thing that we don't tell you much about because it's what we do normally is we do help out our seniors.

Uh the person that I refer to that's willing to help us out once a month is your neighbor that lives behind you.

The in fact the neighborhood cleanup we're doing to was that one disabil disabled person, one senior.

We do do these activities.

They don't um part of it is not everyone comes out to help us with those.

Uh instead of working with them, so they don't see those activities.

But we do recently we have to tell a very fine line on how we use public funds.

And what you're some of the things that you're asking on state constitution prohibits.

We are not allowed to use public funds for private purposes.

So we have to tone a very fine line on that, and when we can help, our first thing is to get somebody out there that can help them, whether they're in the family, or if it's something minor, we'll we'll take care of it.

We agree on that.

Well, there's a lot of activities that we don't see.

I agree with you, people do complain about code enforcement and where I've worked.

Nobody's happy.

Uh enforcement is not the most sexy job and everyone loves it.

But in the same sense, in the same sense, the people that I have heard complaints from are the ones that are routine violators over and over and over.

They're the ones in here that are complaining to me that gets my level.

Uh uh, and some of those that I've been asked to look in are routine violators.

I do agree we try to work with them.

Uh, but I do agree that you know that's why um pushing that would like to do some of the major programs now that I talked about at the end of the presentation.

But when it comes down to our threats, these are the this is what has to be done.

We don't do these.

This is why Eloy's the situation it's in.

Because a few and a few people have complained, and therefore we didn't do anything.

So that's why honestly that's why we're at so as much as I appreciate the feedback and I acknowledge it, the same thing.

This is our priority uh of where we're at, unless the council wants to say no, um, this is not your priority.

Yeah, well, I understand that, and I totally support that.

Um I'm just saying that uh there's there are certain situations.

Oh I agree.

You know, and I think that we could we could benefit by keeping our citizens happier for just those certain situations.

Oh no, repeated by I I had someone complain to me not long ago, and you know I said, Well, you need to get your kids off the video games inside and get them to clean the yard, you know.

I mean, that's you know, that's something, and uh and I do hold that kind of standard of like if they're just complaining and they they have means to you know uh keep their property in compliance and stuff, you know.

I'm not gonna come to the city manager and talk to them about that.

But you know, like I know that there's you know a lot a lot of older folks.

There's a lot of people that um would love to be happy to help out the seniors.

We've always have been since I've been here.

That's good.

Well, I'm glad to hear that because I I didn't see that in any of the information that she sent us, but I remember that uh if we could have did it before with code compliance.

I think that was legitimate.

There's a limited I I acknowledge what you say, but you also I have to express we have to be fair across the board.

We don't have CBG money to do what you're asking.

That's CBG money where you go into other communities, they use that money for that.

So that's the volunteers though.

Yeah, we have the volunteers and we're working toward the doing that.

We have done that.

So I acknowledge what you're saying, and I think yeah, we would like to do more, like I said earlier.

We would like to do more.

So yeah.

And then the last concern was about like the businesses.

Like Circle K is just gonna, are they just gonna fence up their closed buildings and just leave them there because you know, and and the the Thompson factory on 11 mile corner road, and there's some other businesses there that have been closed for years, and it's just like why why are we not forcing them to be able to say you to be able to clean up, you need to clean up your property, or you need to sell it, or you need to get bring in another business, or you need to do something because we're asking our citizens to be more responsible in you know maintaining their property.

I think we need to also have that same standards for these businesses that come into Eloy and that aren't successful and just leave.

That's a good question.

You brought that up before.

I think some of the others have.

When it comes to property value learning up, I addressed this on vacant buildings.

One building is from a structural point of view safe, boarded up.

There is nothing that the city can do.

Nothing.

They could charge them a vacancy tax.

That's not code enforcement.

The city all uh all we're legally allowed to do is ensure that the building is safe.

And that that includes boarding up the building.

If it gets to a point that it's deteriorated to a point, then we can step in.

But forcing a uh a property owner to do something that's not code enforcement, that's more economic development, but even if from that point of view, it's it's not something that we as co-enforcement planning and zoning and building could take care of because it's not in our purview under state statute.

Well, I know that like just down the Loven Hill Corner Road, there's that Thompson factory.

The Thompson, yeah, been there for years.

There's La Copa.

I don't know, that building hasn't been functional for lots of years too, I'm assuming.

And stuff, yeah.

So I I think uh that too, let's let's also make them just as responsible as we're making our citizens.

And lastly, I just want to thank you guys.

You know, I know like I said, I've been out with Lydia and Angel both doing the homeless counts.

They're always willing to come out and and guide our volunteers and making sure that you know they know we're going to the right places.

One of the great things about eway, that's that we don't have to deal with like Cassagran is that we don't really have a homeless problem inside our city.

You know, they're they're mostly out living out in the desert and um coming in whenever they have needs or something, but they're not a nuisance.

They're not coming in and and attacking citizens and you know, that just which is what Cassagram and Coolidge deal with um with their homeless problems.

So we're very fortunate.

Thank you guys for that.

I know that that that's a difficult population to deal with as well.

I've been out there with you guys, and all of them can be very aggressive and dangerous and stuff, and and thank you for ha letting that making the people behind me clean up their property.

I feel so much safer at home now.

So and thank you, Dan.

Thank you for leading this team.

They're doing a great job.

Thank you.

Okay, I'll try to keep this to three minutes.

Um I want to start out by thanking you.

I know you have a difficult job, and there's probably more issues that need to be addressed than two people can handle.

So I do appreciate everything you've been doing.

I just have a couple of things.

I know uh counselor and Galindo brought up that we used to help them with the elderly and and others, but that was a partnership between the chamber and at the time CCA, and it was Christmas in April because we'd have to run up there and grab I can't even remember how many pallets of paint just to take care of those.

It would be great to have that back.

Uh I don't think it could be done unless we have the prison uh volunteers in place to do that because we just don't have the manpower anywhere else.

But I do have another another recommendation.

There was a time where we would recognize people for beautifying their yards.

And that actually went a long way because they make others try to beautify their yards.

I don't know if there's some type of programming where we can probably get any city funds, but if there's somebody to try to get a program like that back in where we can encourage others to take the next step and do what their neighbors doing and try to make something clean up that way.

So that's all I got.

Thank you.

Yeah.

That's uh addition for potentially again, council will have to find that.

But um there are additional abatement or additional programs that we can do.

Solutions.

So I like to echo uh Angel and really I'd like to echo what the other people said about your efforts.

I guess I've been in Eloy for about 16 years now, and it's pretty amazing uh coming down Frontier into Eloy and going up Main Street and Petagiola and even Sunshine just recently the changes.

Uh I remember the foam factory out there at uh Toll Tech and uh uh Frontier for years drive by that it was uh that was a mess.

And across the street from that, members of uh they had the uh garage sale every weekend or what it was, but that was all been cleaned up.

I've had residents where I live in roads and have commented to me about they'd noticed that.

And uh just uh was showing a resident around a little bit the community over the weekend or less last week and came down sunshine, and I just often surprised there's no cleanup that's been done in sunshine.

Some of those businesses and lots, and there's uh the businesses are doing a lot and it's showing.

And so we don't stop to think about the number of people come in to Eloy, whether it be uh the lawyers from the valley coming in to talk to Planning and Zoning, they're coming in frontier, they're coming down sunshine, uh whether it be uh other meetings from other towns that uh we have a meeting here, and we get a lot of uh accolades from the uh city hall.

Oh, you gotta regret City Hall, but we forget about the area they pass coming in to get here.

And they get a front street was or main street, it looks really nice, and the park is really nice, but we forget about what they have to pass to get here.

And that's really been cleaned up.

I think that's really uh you've done a great job there.

I have a couple questions.

When something happens, uh if you go buy a lot and you see that there's something shows up, somebody dumps a refriger has a refrigerator up front or an old car.

What period of time do you wait before you give a citation?

You don't do it instantly.

You know, do you you drive by the way a couple weeks, a month, or must be some time frame before you go back and say, you know what, this is new.

Uh what point in time do I go back and and actually say something?

Uh first question.

Second question is if I'm a property owner, and somebody dumps on my property.

I get a citation.

But it's not my fault.

Now I still get sighted because I have to clean it up and somebody else dumped it.

What's the leeway there of maybe give me some time and not you know what like how do you handle something like that too?

Those two questions.

And I'll do the first one.

The second one, and you can use it.

The second one is the how much time do you get?

Now going through the enforcement process, you know, from first notice to end of abatement is eight weeks.

It's two weeks.

And then if they reach out to us and ask, hey, I need another few more days, we'll give it to them.

But if they say I need four more weeks, then we go right into it.

We we explain, you'll get a second notice.

And after a second notice, you'll get an abatement.

So we it's really an eight-week process.

So we are the goal is to do we start getting the extensions.

You know, if it's a few days here and there after the first notice or after the second, we'll do it.

Uh if not, we'll just go here.

It's the process you need to have it done by the end of eight weeks.

And after eight weeks, if you haven't done anything, then we go into either a citation mode or a court action mode.

If they need a few more days, we'll do it.

We are working, there's a handful that we're still working on.

That's a year later.

You know, because we're you know, we're having to relocate people or get assistance for those, the the judge is heavily involved with notes right now, or the court system, that and the judge, but it just takes time.

Um Happy Hotel is going through actually taking Happy Hotel to court, I think.

Yeah, we've given them at least six months to try and get their sign done.

We do work with them, but it's it's a case-by-case situation.

Now the other one.

Good afternoon.

Uh referring to um the question you had.

Uh if we see something that's on a vacant lot or in the alley, uh, or it's reported, uh, we start a case right away.

We take documentation, take pictures.

Uh we had we send the letter to the owner on record, which is through the assessors uh information.

Uh right away, uh we will get a response from that property owner saying it's not mine.

Um usually happen happens quite frequently.

Uh we do go through all that property, uh, we do inspect it to see if there's anything in there, and we will pursue if there's three found, you know, bills, whatever information, and we try to pursue that side first.

But if we don't, or somebody out of the city limits, it's really hard for us to uh do anything on that.

But uh we we do consider all that first before we contact the property owner, and we do let them know that ultimately they are responsible for their property.

Uh it needs to be cleaned.

Uh we do look at everything before we proceed to it be at the end of citation.

Uh we want to work with them either by uh you know give them more time, uh I need somebody to I need give me some uh references, uh, some people to landscapers.

We help them with all that.

So definitely we give them all the opportunities that they they ask us, we we help them out, we try to give them that opportunity.

But often we tell them that they're responsible for the property, especially the alleyways, since the city does not do that kind of cleanup, they're responsible for halfway of the alley.

Yeah, how about acting?

Say one property owner spent up.

One property owner spent uh seventy-seven thousand dollars in total to clean things up.

Is there any kind of recognition given back or a letter back to that uh property owner to say, you know, we reappreciate you responding?

We know it's not your property, but we appreciate you helping us keep our city clean.

Do we send any recognition back to these property owners that clean something up uh in a situation like that?

Because I think that individual spent $77,000, like that goes above and beyond almost in this.

So I think uh some kind of recognition letter of appreciation or something to those people that recognize that definitely the situation where this is very unique that it came out to be that much, but it's very it's a lot of dumping out there.

Um we don't have anything as a procedure to send uh a letter of appreciation or anything, but uh personally I can say that if somebody's made an effort, it be it small or big, uh, and they have contact with me, I tell them that I appreciate their efforts.

I definitely let them know.

And uh I mean uh when I pass by there, um even uh McKenzie's uh growing with me and I made contact with people.

Um I talk to them.

Uh I show them that I tell them that they're appreciated.

Uh we definitely every time as we get opportunity, we we do.

But we don't have anything but official letters saying you know, yeah.

Definitely is something that we could work on if it's like a great effort on their part.

Yes, too.

Thank you.

Um I think a lot of the uh questions I have have been addressed.

Um, but I did want to thank uh Lydia and Angel and Dan.

Um, the three of you, and you know, I've been here five years, and um I just think in the last 18 months, just how much um the streets, the properties have looked much much better.

And um I see you know, by your uh presentation, all the hours spent on that.

Um it really shows it.

Um I think you know you're doing a great job as far as the compliance and uh Jose's um suggestion about a beautification program.

I think they can go a long way.

I I know um in the town I grew up, um it was almost like somebody saw it, it got printed in the newspaper.

Next week you saw somebody else doing it was almost contagious.

So it might be something that we might want to have to consider.

Um as far as uh codes, you know, you mentioned that you know, here this is the first meeting we're having.

I know some somewhere down the line.

Um I I expect you to come to us and say, Well, these codes are really enforceable, and these are not, and we need to you know look at that and get the support of the council behind you and making those changes.

Um, but other than that, um thank you again.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

The codes do we I've talked with the city attorneys, both of them, and the judge, we do have quite a bit to address in the codes to you make it a little bit more clear.

We do I prefer I you know that's I do like Dan's idea with the notification.

Uh we do work with our seniors, although we don't I don't or horn because that's what I expect of my staff.

So although they may it's not as prevalent, it's not in the weekly missive as much.

But they we do do uh and working with the codes, as you say, is is critical to that point.

So I've been kind of uh asking questions about this topic for ever since I've been on council five years, and I really appreciate you guys putting together this presentation and finally getting answers on a lot of the questions I have.

I I think the presentation answered many questions.

Um the priority of violations slide um was sort of a big question I get asked a lot in the community.

Um I live in Toll Tech, so most of my questions are coming from that area, and that just explains it right on the money, what I what I can how I can answer them.

Um the immediate threats and dangers all the way down to uh the last one, other violations, which I assume includes weeds and stuff like that.

Um so you know, people who get hit for weeds, you know, they're thinking, why am I getting hit for weeds when the guy on the street, blah blah blah.

You know, I that's the most common question.

Um but you know, they need to know that okay, the other immediate threats and dangers, they're getting addressed first, and now the stuff like the minor things like the weeds are getting addressed last.

And I would like to say, um, just echoing what we also said last year and a half, things have really improved.

So I think you know, you guys have really all come together, you guys have gotten some more guidance.

Um, you know, and Dan's been helping you, and things seem to be improving.

I've also gotten comments from the community that they're having really good communication with Angel and Lydia, like when they receive a letter, they get response back, and they understand you're getting direction on what they have to do, and they really like that.

So kudos to you guys on that.

Um, I also love the brochures that you included.

I think that's a fabulous idea, and I hope that uh we get those um going and get those out there.

Um the bit about the I was gonna mention the same thing a bit about the uh landfill, you know, how you can do I think the putting in the cost is important because I think it makes it seem like it's free.

Um, which you know, he didn't say that, but I think that's just a small oversight that can be easily corrected.

And then a question on the the weeds, um, the invasive species.

I think that's really great for many reasons because I think people get weeds and there's a perception because these weeds are all over the place in in eway, especially in Toll Tech, because it was you know, desert land that was plowed flat at some point, you know, 50 years ago, and now you know weeds just come there instead of regular natural desert plants.

So people don't understand what are weeds and what are natural desert plants.

And in the lots that are kind of in areas of just a lot more empty lots, there's a denser growth, and it's sort of hard for people to understand like should I be doing something or shouldn't I?

And then of course there's a whole ordeal of people you know who own those lots not even living here and having no idea.

So I think on the re brochure, um I was trying to pull it up right now, but the internet wasn't working for me.

But I so correct me if I'm wrong here, but it didn't say on the weed brochure if you have an empty lot, do you have to trim down all plants that are about 16 inches or just those invasive species?

Like how how does that work?

And maybe it could be somehow simplified and made clear, like what exactly the owner's responsibility is for a an occupied lot and b an empty lot.

I I guess that's my first question, not comment.

Yeah, that's a really good question.

The the way the code is written is anything over 16 inches, so whether it's grasses, whether they're native or not.

Um we do it does talk about maintaining your trees.

Uh that's a big thing that people think they can just be left ugly, and it comes or really what it comes down to is uh as Dave mentioned to me one time, is people like to see things pretty.

And uh that's not the what everybody likes.

So we do tell them to you trim your trees per code, which is five feet.

What do you say, five feet?

No, the the bottom when you're trimming up.

I don't know if it's code, but we tell them to trim the trim and get rid of the the mistletoes and all that.

Um we when we do have a lot, we hit everything.

So we do get it.

So that's a really good point.

Uh we could one of the things I want to do is is that's the first of a few brochures when I want to get out there proper landscaping.

Uh that's definitely one of those.

And one thing I forgot to mention is uh we did hear the complaints about dust.

We uh none of our contractors drag anymore.

So that don't do anything.

And I think I think it was a conversation I had with Dan one time is you look across the street from Rivers and Ranch, where was the um I forgot his name right now.

Kevin Peterson property.

Never been touched.

You don't have weeds in there.

Toltec, other areas you have weeds.

As soon as you break that crust on the call, as those of us in landscaping and planting is I've been doing this almost 30 years.

Soon as you break the uh desert floor.

It allows the weeds to grow.

Whereas that's why that's why Toltec has such a problem.

That's why along where you have the chip of water channels have such a problem because they've been graded.

As soon as you grain and you break that crust, weeds will grow.

So that's interesting.

I think we do need a better thing on landscaping.

Uh most of the time that we're when we do get complaints on landscaping, it isn't a city's contractors, it's the property owner, just go say cleared a lot.

So we do we do, and we don't have any recourse on that.

So I do agree with you, there should be a better better guide that we could have.

Yeah, that sounds good.

It's not something we can handle overnight, but I like the idea that's that's the first brochure of more to come.

Um on the desert dumping, I've had a people, not a lot, but a few people ask me um how they can like is it possible they could go and like clean up stuff in the desert and you know, bring either things to the dump or have like a designated spot where they could drop off trash.

And I I said, well, hey, can't you come to the you know days that they have on Saturdays and they're but most of these people from the drop zone and they work on Saturdays.

Saturday or the weekends are the days you know when that they have to do their work.

So you know, for them it might be like Wednesday or Tuesday, or you know, days where these events aren't going on.

So in your sort of innovation, innovative solutions category, I'm not asking for an answer now, but you know, maybe there's some sort of um way that the public who want to can get involved and have some sort of um in involvement on a more casual basis, not on a set event when when they have time or a group of people get together if there's a a way that could happen.

I'm not sure how to do it, but maybe you have ideas.

I don't know.

And I glad you said you don't want to answer now.

It's a complicated answer.

Yeah, that's fair.

Just kind of keep it in the back of your mind for as you're you know starting to develop new innovative solutions.

Um the one thing I would say is I can't encourage people to go on private property.

So I think most people don't understand that it is private property, so I've tried to explain that to them as well.

But you know, there might be something that can be done.

Um I like the fact that you're considering a deep dive on the city code, and we'll get into that at some point.

And um looking forward to that because I think the more we understand about the city code and then any subsequent changes that are made, the more questions we can answer in the community and help Angel and Lydia so that you know the when people ask us, you know, we can sort of explain this is how it works, and then they don't have to go back and ask them or feel like you know, oh I've been you know charged with a crime, you know, people immediately feel that as soon as they get a letter, but really um I think that perception is changing as long as they get explained how it all works, and I think in many cases that's just um what we wanted to know.

And then you mentioned the alleyways, one of you guys mentioned the alleyways behind the houses um specifically in Toll Tech.

So I think I understand from what you said that is the um the people who live there have to do the alleyways.

There's two parts to that.

Some of the alleyways aren't true alleyways or easements, and some of them are true alleys.

You have to look at your plot.

It's kind of a goofy thing.

Uh adjacent the the adjacent property owner is required to maintain whether it's an easement or an alley to the center line, if it's a street up to the curb line, if it's an alley to the center line of the alley.

What about in the back?

So, like in in Tortech, you know, there's like a fence, and then there's like in the backyard, and then behind the fence, it goes to another person's property.

So there's that like in between the fences area, and definitely I noticed they get filled with weeds and garbage, and um even my husband was like you know, plowing one and he like hit the water meter with his thing, and it was like a big disaster.

He was trying to do good, and it didn't really work out.

So, you know, if we're telling people or or can we tell people if they have to do those areas, you know, maybe a safe way to do it and stuff to watch out for, um, you know, some sort of information on that.

That's a fair, I think that's fair.

Yeah.

I think it's a fair thing that we can do part of our outreach, other things.

Because like you like you said, uh they are responsible.

The adjacent property owners are responsible for maintaining those.

So is it half the one property owner, half the other?

Okay, let's uh I can let them know that.

But that that question comes up, but I don't really know the answer, and I also don't know how to tell them to do it safely.

You know, that's a good that's a really good suggestion that we get something and work with our public works on that.

That's all I've got.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

I guess I'm an anomaly because I work for this city for so long.

And code enforcement used to work for me.

Um when they were assigned to our department.

Um again, thank you.

I've since Dan has been here, we've seen a lot more proactivity out of um code enforcement since before.

Um, and I really appreciate it.

Um, I remember the curling and dawn days.

Um they'd have to ask for law enforcement backup because uh people did not like code and to this day, don't like code enforcement and don't like animal control.

You can take me to jail for DV, but don't touch my dogs and don't touch my property, even though it looks like crap.

Um so just a few things.

The landfill, I do get asked for my water bill because I do go out there and we do get asked for our water bill.

Maybe that it's selective enforcement, I don't know.

Um, I know that's not part of you, but um I get asked for my water bill because my husband's always on me.

Where's the water bill?

I don't flip a no.

Anyway, right?

That's what I had to start doing.

Um I guess because of my law enforcement background, I'm very much into personal responsibility.

Um I'm aware that my alley, half of my alley is my responsibility.

Um again, I guess because I've worked for the city and dealt with you know those kind of issues with code enforcement.

I was aware of that.

Um, so we're very meticulous about ensuring that's done.

I mean, the neighbor's got a tree growing out of her fence, but um again, we're very meticulous about that.

Um the issue with the weeds is fire.

Yeah, and yes, it has rained a lot, but weeds cause fire.

And if you have lived here long enough, you've seen house fires where it's killed people.

Weeds are very important.

They you may most people may not think so, but it is because we have a lot of old homes here in town.

Um, and very um there's a high higher likelihood of them catching fire and burning to the ground because of weeds than um some of these other issues.

Um for several years, people were allowed to get away with code enforcement not doing much.

You know, they'd send them a notice, people wouldn't abide by it.

We weren't writing citations, I don't think, for the longest time.

And um I think people get too comfortable and they think, oh, they're just gonna ignore me.

They're gonna give them send me a notice, I'm gonna ignore it, and then no one's gonna come back.

And we did that, I think, for a long time.

But now we're finally holding people accountable again, and they don't like it.

That's correct.

And so um in regards to the Christmas in April, if I remember correctly, um, there was a cleanup on East, I believe it was East Fourth Street, and we had to do this woman's property a couple of times.

Um she complained after I think the second time that there were things missing from her property.

It was finally like, you know what, we're not gonna do it anymore because we can't take the liability of being accused of stealing people's property by doing them a favor.

And I think that's where some of that went away was because of that.

And then the liability, because you don't know what some of these people have in their yards.

Um, somebody could get hurt, but the fire department's always been great about that.

Um so regarding code of ordinances, so I Googled it, and I can bring up the city code, and again, I know what I'm looking at somewhat.

Um what code do you guys usually do chapter 10, 11, and 13?

1017 and 1017, and then of course there's a really weak tie to the zoning ordinance.

Okay.

So yeah, there's just one thing I do want to acknowledge though while I have the mic.

Um that's a big it's a big deal for me.

It is a threat.

Well, other people like it, I want to hear it as a threat.

And I forgot to mention the fire.

We did sent out a thing a couple weeks ago about a fire that Lydia saw.

And by the time she got there, it had already covered probably what half acre by the time the fire department got there, it had gone to an acre.

May not like the weeds and take time.

Yeah, we get we do give them some time.

It's just obviously it's gotta be 12 inches.

But if it's dead, which is most people do see the how the fire department managed the fire along here when we burned it out.

Gone.

Um at that same time we had a fire burning over off of South Sunshine.

The uh fire marshal got there and told them to go a quarter mile down the road by the time they got down a quarter mile road and broke broke a line, it was two-thirds of the way there already.

And they started 200 feet.

So it people don't like to hear weeds.

Why aren't we on weeds?

That is the reason why we're on weeds.

Because if you imagine Toltec, I'm just gonna pick on Toltec for a second.

Imagine that area.

Uh once that dries, that area will go.

We've been very fortunate in that area.

So I think overall we've been very fortunate to not have because we've had we've had children die in house fires here in Eloy.

It's been many, many years, but I don't want to see that.

And I don't want to see our lack of enforcing our city codes be the reason why somebody's children die in a house fire.

Um, again, I because of my law enforcement background, it's probably what a lot of it is, but personal responsibility.

You guys have seen what their yards look like.

You can imagine what the inside of their houses look like.

I've been in a lot of homes in this town, and um it's not pretty.

And so um I think it's just for the safety and welfare of our citizens and our neighbors.

I mean, I take care of my yard.

Why should I not expect my neighbors to take care of their yard?

I want my home's value to be worth what it's worth, but I can't do that when I have junkyards across the street.

And so that's why I believe code enforcement is so very important.

We have a hundred and fourteen square miles, and I'm sure you guys don't see half of that because of Eloy and Toltec.

But it's this is a very important part of us ensuring that Eloy prospers.

And and some people don't like to see it because they feel we're picking on them.

But I'll be the first one to say I will be the first one to back up Lydia.

I'll be the first one to back up Angel, you if you are doing what you've been doing, and people are upset about it.

So um you mentioned a very good point.

Um, don't know is legally I have the ability to enter a house under hoarding.

And along with the fire marshal, I don't like to do it because I personally had a family member that was that way, had to deal with that.

Um but that is part of my responsibility as well.

Um we did do it recently when the police called me out there.

I'm thinking thankful they called me out there because we got the person with police's help, Sergeant Wonder's help.

We were able to do something.

But that's another thing.

If there's something that we can help out from the citizens who are watching and know a hoarding situation or sanitary thing, I will step in because I know the w what those health hazards are.

So it's the safety of our firemen and the safety of our police officers, because if they have to go into a burning home and it's like that, it's not just the person inside the home that could get hurt and killed.

And and in my opinion, that's unacceptable.

So I appreciate you guys.

Um you have a tough job.

That's why a lot of times they hired retired cops because they're so used to dealing with people and their attitudes.

Um, but God bless you both because and all of you, because it's a difficult job, and and I get it.

But um, again, because I come from a different perspective.

Um, but I appreciate it and keep up the good work.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilwoman.

I just want to bring up one point to councilwoman Curtis's suggestion.

You know, we have a group that goes out from Robeson pretty much monthly, Mike, to do cleanups.

There's nobody involved, they just get themselves together, they go out and they bag everything up.

So it can be done.

It really can if a group wants to do it.

And we listen for them too.

The last thing I want to thank our team for here.

Nothing gets me worse.

So I'm sitting in my chair, scrolling on Facebook, and I see your names.

And I see your names now, it's personal.

And to me, it it just thank you for not going biting back at them.

It really for not biting back.

I know you want to.

Because every one of us on this diet has seen their name go across Facebook, and I'm like, well, yeah, let's go with this.

But you you've taken the high road.

And I I thank you for that.

And I yeah, most of the time, it's misinformation from the keyboard warrior.

But thank you guys for not, you know, stepping back on that.

I know it's hard.

I know it's real hard.

So comments from up here, are you good with comments?

I am would anybody else here?

Judge, Liz, would you anybody want to get up and say anything before we throw a wrap on this?

Oh, you good?

You good?

There you go.

I would say I haven't heard this is Eloy.

I can do all I can do whatever I want in the past few months.

Yeah, that is someone that someone who complains I hear all too often, but it's been about three months since I've heard that one.

So mayor council, uh I really like what code enforcement's been doing.

It's been years since we've seen as much uh traffic through the court as far as trying to get people to clean up their property.

But as I was listening to some of the stories, I thought that maybe it would be nice if um maybe these groups that want to do some of this outside cleanup, maybe present code enforcement with a picture of a piece of property a week prior and say, here's the property.

Code enforcement can then maybe give them something that allows them to go clean that up and dump for free.

So, you know, it it you don't want your volunteers to have to pay a dump fee.

But hey, if they're gonna go for bill of work and clean it up for you and and do that, maybe that is something that the city could say you present us with a piece of property, and as long as it's not your property, you're going out and cleaning up.

Um you can go and dump for free.

So that was just kind of a an idea that I had as I was listening to all the conversations.

So but thank you.

In the seven years we haven't had many goats as far as we have with a lot of these.

Yeah, I mean it's definitely been S and Closed, but this is the most intense.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Castle McKay.

Look, once again, I want to thank everybody who came.

I want to thank everybody who was watching online, everybody who participated, and everybody who we all have a stake in this.

Look, we're all residents here.

We all have we all have a stake in this.

And if you see your neighbor struggle, then help them out, see what they need, and we we can figure this out together.

Right?

Strength and numbers, that's the way it goes.

So with that, I'm about to swing the mighty gather and call it.

Thank you, everybody.

I talked about it.

So uh