Mayor, when you're ready.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Good evening, and welcome to the Eloy City Council meeting.

Tonight is Monday, December 8th, 2025.

The time is 6 p.m.

May I have a roll call, Madam Clerk?

Councilmember Rogerska.

Present.

Councilmember Curtis.

Here.

Here.

Councilmember Schneider.

Here.

Councilmember Garcia.

Present.

Councilmember Galindo.

Here.

Here.

Now if we will rise for a moment of silence and the pledge of allegiance led by Councilmember Snyder.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which stands one nation under God.

With liberty and justice for all.

So that brings us to public appearances.

Those wishing to address the city council may do so by signing a form provided by the city clerk identifying the topic or agenda items and actions as a result of public comment regarding non-agenda items.

We'll be limited to directing staff to study the matter or researching the matter for further consideration at a later date.

Speakers shall be limited to three minutes, and I have one person on the appearance.

Please state your name and the city and where you live and have your three minutes.

We own a 20-acre commercial property that allows for community playing fields, community recreation center, religious assembly, parking lot retail general.

We've been operating as a community recreation center for the last five years.

And we'd like to invite the city council and all the uh members of the community here to come visit us this Sunday at 2 p.m.

We'd like to have lunch up there, and we have several members of community uh Mexicans and uh Spanish and uh Mediterranean different types of food.

So we encourage everyone whoever can make it Sunday at 2 p.m.

to come and visit us.

And we have a community center.

And every Saturday we meet all the children from the community from Eloy, from Casa Grande, from Arizona City, Tucson, all the children they come and play, study and enjoy.

We have several activities, including we have we do eventually we're going to have free medical examinations and career training and several other things.

As I mentioned, we own another property which is right next to it, another 20 acres.

And we already talked to Dan Simon regarding that one.

We'd like to go ahead uh we'd like to go ahead um build acre lots as a time and community for people who have a lot of money.

So they can build uh farmhouses and acorlots.

And we own the property right next to the Eloy City uh um cemetery.

Most probably that's where I'm gonna be buried and my family.

So we own that place and we already find the county to get the zoning for uh get the permits for the um for the cemetery.

And we also have another property we'd like to go ahead and communicate to the city and uh not have the city uh attorney keep suing us, taking us to the court for uh absolutely like ridiculous reasons.

Uh we strongly encourage anybody who can make it.

We would love to have you guys come as uh our uh uh captain came last month, and uh we will go ahead and be very good host.

We'll be very gracious and we'll provide you lots of food from different countries, and we'll have uh a lot of Mexican people and I mean Spanish people are Latino people, and we'll have some of the people that work at the prison system, and we have me and my family, my children, and you get to meet all of us and see the community center and see how we can contribute to the society itself to the city of Illinois.

And I'll start be planning to build all the um community center and mosque and church and also the accounts.

This is all within it was about 160 acre development.

So it's not that far, and it's only about five minutes drive from here.

So I mean strongly encourage that request everyone who can make it to come and see what we are doing and how we can help each other to make the city a beautiful city where we can invite all the people with lots of money to come, not some poor people to come and uh evaluate and invite all the people who are good.

They come and they add value to everybody else.

Excuse me, Mr.

Taha.

Your three minutes are up.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Well, thank you, sir.

Thank you for addressing this council and thank you for extending that invitation to the members of this council.

It's greatly appreciated.

All right, next we go with reports and announcements.

And we got a little flip here, so we're gonna go council member announcements first.

Anyone over here with council member announcements?

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I've been uh away for about almost two and a half weeks.

So uh haven't been involved in anything here local in Eloy, but um I spent some time away back in uh Chicago area where I grew up, and uh I'm just while I let everyone know I'm happy to be back here in Arizona where it's sunny and warm, and um I'm looking forward to getting back to work and um and wanting to extend to everyone um a very safe and happy holiday.

Thank you, Councilman Rob Roscoe.

Welcome back, by the way.

Sarah?

Uh just a quick announcement.

I wanted to let the public know and um the council that on the weekend in Eloy, there was a new um world record set, and it was a for gigantic US flag flown in free fall.

So it was the largest flag of any country ever flown in free fall.

The previous record was about half the size.

So this flag was 3,000 square feet, actually 3,200 square feet.

So you can imagine how big that is.

It's 40 by 80.

Um, I'm not even sure if it would fit in this room, the length, but um it was it was pretty huge.

Anyway, uh a cool team got together to do to do this, and there was actually some politicians and astronauts involved, and a really cool group of people.

So once we have all the photos and stuff ready to release to the public, we'll make sure you all get to see that stuff.

Well, that is exciting.

Again, putting you there in a map.

Thank you very much, councilwoman.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'll just say I get anxiety just thinking about jumping out of that plane.

Let me see.

Just happy holidays.

We're not gonna see anybody again until I mean, unless you want to come by my house.

I just live down the street here.

But um, happy holidays to everybody.

We I really appreciate those of you who come.

Um, and and poor city staff has to be here, but um those of you who've been coming, we really appreciate it.

We love to see a full room because at least somebody's listening to us and not just complaining about us on next door or Facebook or you know, any of those things.

So I really appreciate it.

So happy holidays, everyone.

Thank you, councilwoman.

Oh my god, Joe.

I too want to show my appreciation to all of those who come to these council meetings and listen to us.

We really do put a lot of work and effort into the decisions that we make, and and we really appreciate the your feedback and your involvement, and just you know your taking your time to come and listen to us.

I also uh attended the with the um mayor and council member Snyder, the employee appreciation luncheon, which was very fun and very exciting.

I wanted to first thank the um employee appreciation committee.

They went all out, they did an outstanding job.

I also uh attended the with the um mayor and council member Snyder the employee appreciation luncheon which was very fun and very exciting I wanted to first thank the um employee appreciation committee they went all out they did an outstanding job they had little MMs on the table that had the city logo on them which was kind of cool and stuff and and to all of the longevity uh employees that were recognized congratulations to them really know that you you have a great working place when you can keep employees you know 30 and 20 and 25 years so congratulations to all the all of them as well um I also was able to attend with the mayor um the uh a presentation from the CEO of APS um that was really exciting such a nice guy like started working at APS right out of high school and and now he's a CEO and and just really cares about his community and especially the smaller rural areas um he did um verify for me that I can also verify to all the constituents that APS the data centers are going to be required to provide their own um power and none of the extra electricity that they're gonna need is going to reflect the residentials and the residentials bills they're completely different he did tell me they have a different source of energy that's going to uh provide like the industrial parts of development that that we're starting to see so I'm I'm happy that he verified that and I can share that with a lot of the constituents that have been concerned about that issue um also attended the annual Penel Partnership uh review of of the uh economy and pretty much learn that we don't know anything we we should be in a recession but we're not but we probably could be one and we could be in one next year but we're not and we may and we may not so it was pretty much up in the air and you know you have some of the the biggest brightest minds in the state that are um reviewing all this information and and they couldn't give us any concrete information so I take it we're in an economic flux right now and we'll just have to we'll just have to keep on doing what the city of Veloy is committed to doing which is to provide good living conditions and uh places to live work and play here that people can appreciate so that's um that's about it.

Well thank you councilwoman was there nothing for me other than just to wish our community Merry Christmas well thank you sir uh I also like to make a comment relative to uh council member Galindo's uh uh comments on the uh Penel Partnership and it has to do with the relevance to our general plan we're working on now and I see we're gonna have an update tonight on this but there's a couple of things that jumped out at me one of them was the average age of the first time home buyer is now 40 years old the number of people getting married the first time is in the 30s yeah I would think that those kind of demographics are going to have some kind of impact on what we plan for the future for Italy in terms of housing and far as uh recreation because those demographics are there's less kids less children people are having children because they're getting married later or not having kids and not buying homes or running so and plus the population gain in Arizona is more in the 20s and 30s so it's uh that population so I think those are kind of some key takeaways that I had that are probably going to influence how I think about what we do in the general plan in the future thank you.

Thank you sir.

Which are kind of what we went over here but I'm gonna read it anyway because I wrote it on December 2nd Councilmember Galindo and Schneider and I attended the APS luncheon in Casa Grande hosted by APS President Ted Geisler.

And to your point councilwoman that guy was really passionate.

He was really passionate, and I think he's a good fit for the position he is in.

It was an informative luncheon.

We took into we took into account the future of energy generation and consumption here in Arizona and have those impacts, those changes will impact communities like Eloy.

That was a great I think they do this annually, so I can't wait for the next one.

Then on Thursday the fourth, we held our Eloy employee appreciation luncheon up at Rovson Ranch.

Our employees are truly top-notch, and it's always a pleasure to recognize their commitment and service to this city.

Our employee pool is not so big that we can't know pretty much everybody's first name.

And I think that's that's really a good thing all around.

Then on Friday, it was off to Panell Partner Breakfast.

This, as always, the anticipated December event with the economic state of Pennell County in Arizona were discussed.

The outlook was mostly positive.

There were some interesting facts, like the median age for the first time.

Home buyer is 40 years old.

Yeah.

I mean, this isn't the days of your where a 25-year-old couple was buying a house.

That's not happening now.

In fact, they're not even getting married till they're 30.

So that's just a change of demographics that we should work with.

And then later that day, I met with representatives from the Union Pacific Railroad.

I wanted to bring to their attention that many of our constituents have expressed concerns about trains blocking our intersection.

The railroad term for blocking the street is called fouling.

So we are working to have you the UP people to attend a future city council meeting here to explain their positions and how they are partnering with the city to address these issues.

Yeah.

So I want to get with them, and I I don't know what we're going to get out of it, but I would just like to know their position and what on what they're doing.

So this brings us now to City Manager announcements.

Go ahead, young man.

Awesome.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

So the only kind of update I want to, I'm not going to echo what the other council members said regarding the employee appreciation, but going along with the lines of gratitude, just wanted to personally thank the mayor as well as the public for the flexibility in allowing us to host that event and then have a whole half day off to just recognize our employees.

Several of us, especially newer hires, have worked in several other communities across the state and across the country.

And that's not always the case that you have that time to really spend and really bond as a team and have that day.

So just wanted to extend my gratitude as the interim city managers that thanking council and thanking the public for allowing us to have that day.

Moving into events for this weekend, it's going to be a busy weekend.

We have first kicking off with the Wreaths Across America.

So that's going to be taking place at 10 to 11 a.m.

That's going to be at the Eloy Memorial Park Cemetery off of Milligan.

So we'll be one of communities out of 5200 locations across the U.S.

annually that are celebrating and basically remembering and honoring veterans that have fallen in combat.

Following that, we're going to be having the city's marquee event, and so this is the Eloy Christmas celebration.

So this is going to be Saturday, December 13th from 4 to 9 p.m.

at Main Street Park.

So this is pretty much our marquee event for the entire year.

I was shocked with the amount of people that are line up on Main Street to participate and see our light parade.

I'd say it's probably one of the best Christmas parades probably in the state.

So if you have time this Saturday to come to that event, definitely come down and check that out.

We're also going to be concluding that with the 715 fireworks as well.

So unfortunately, no, we are not going to have a drone show this year.

But it is going to still be fireworks.

It's still going to be awesome, so please do come out.

And then lastly, just going into holiday closures.

So coming up for December, we are going to have city offices are going to be closed the 24th, 25th, and 26th for the Christmas break, uh, as well as January 1st and 2nd for New Year's.

So city offices will be closed on those days.

Uh we will still have access to emergency services, obviously.

But if you come here to do anything else, our city offices are going to be shut down.

But besides that, I would like to hand it off to our chief for an update on the PD operations.

Thank you, Mayor.

Need to raise this thing up a little bit.

Good evening, uh Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council members, um, senior attorney, uh city clerk, city manager.

I'm changing up a little bit tonight.

I usually come in the first meeting of each council of each month and do a monthly report of the previous month.

This being December and the end of the year, I'm going to give a brief report, annual review of the police department activity for 2025, and then also discuss some of our initiatives going to 2026.

So with that, 2025, I talk about some of the overall crime in the community.

Eloy Police Department handled 616 criminal incidents in the community so far this year.

That's from January 1st to today's date.

That works out to about 47 crimes for every 1,000 residents.

These incidents are split into these categories crimes against people, crimes against property, and drug and contraband cases.

More detail on the crimes against people.

Officers investigated 131 crimes against people, including two homicides, and those were in our prisons and located inside the city limits.

127 assaults, and three kidnappings.

Property crime.

Officers investigated 437 property crimes, including 58 burglaries, eight vehicle burglaries, 242 thefts, 29 stolen vehicles, two arsons, and 98 vandalism or criminal damage cases.

Another area that we respond to a lot of calls in was a basic quality of life and nuisance calls.

And some of the examples were 1,343 welfare checks, 569 911 call hangups, 437 suspicious activity calls, 253 family fights, 218 calls where we're just needing to come out and meet with the citizen.

And lastly, 181 animal related calls.

So as you see, a lot of our portion of our work is not about arrest.

It's about checking on people, answering questions, calming disputes, and responding when something doesn't look right.

So the community relies heavily on Elo PD for day-to-day help and problem solving.

The last area I want to talk about is high risk and priority incidents.

Officers handle 288 high-risk calls, including 11 overdoses, 31 calls about a subject with a gun or knife, 56 shots fired or shots heard calls, 10 attempted suicides or five and five suicides, 21, 45 emergency calls, and 108 reckless driver calls.

So this works out to about 4.2 shots fire calls per 1,000 residents, about 2.4 weapons calls per 1,000 residents, and about 8.2 reckless driver calls per 1,000 residents.

So as you can see over the uh 2025, uh the Eloy Police Department stayed pretty busy.

Um with the uh majority of those calls or are the quality of life issues that I talked about.

Um thing I was happy to see was that uh not a lot of calls were crimes against persons, where um people were randomly attacked or crimes committed upon persons.

Uh when I look at quality of life issues, that's one thing I really look at.

Can you walk down the street safely?

Are you gonna get robbed?

Is someone gonna take your cell phone, your bicycle, um hold you uh knife point or gun point, and those types of crimes Eloy are very rare.

Um so I I like to look at that this is a kind of a measuring stick of quality of life issues.

A lot of them are just answering uh calls, answering questions, and just basic day-to-day issues that people need help solving.

Some of the things uh want to recap for 2025 for the police department.

Some of the programs that we started and got off the ground for the year of 2025 was the adopt a school program, our blue envelope program, which is the um the awareness program, people with autism if they're getting stopped, and then they can put that in the system, and they have blue cards that can handle the officers to let them know that they have autism.

Uh the cops and clergy program.

And we also looked at officer wellness, where I hired an outside consulting company come in and assess our apartment on the officer wellness needs and how do we best serve our officers as far as their wellness and their mental health.

On the technology side of the house, we're able to implement their fallout cameras, which is automated license plate readers, and live view cameras, which helps in our investigations.

And we've had a lot of wins, and I've presented some of those cases before the council, before the public before.

And that's just one example of how we leverage technology to solve crimes and conduct investigations.

With that, we have uh axon body cameras.

We were able to get the support of council to upgrade our axon body cameras to use the um artificial intelligence and the report writing capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Um that is another item that helps us leverage technology and keeps officers out in the field so they're not sitting in the station and long periods of time writing reports.

And then also with that, we got the real-time crime center software.

We do have that, it hasn't been fully deployed yet.

Um so we'll be working with Axon and our technology partners how to best implement that and get real-time crime statistics and how we best deploy and strategically deploy our officers out in the field.

Another thing is uh do some reorganization in the police department.

We created a support services position that oversees um police and fire communications, police records, and property and evidence.

Also created a field services operations sergeant position, which is that kind of like my quasi lieutenant where my patrol sergeants report to the operations sergeant and help problem solve uh with issues and operations in the field services, and then that field services operation sergeant reports directly to the captain rather than having five or six sergeants all independently reporting to the captain.

Also, we brought back the sergeant and criminal investigations divisions and also created our professional standards unit or our internal affairs, which gives more efficiency and effectiveness in our investigations, not only outside the department, but also inside the department if needed.

We also redeployed our traffic unit and our commercial enforcement.

And uh you heard me talk about numbers with that.

Uh, we just recently went to um one of the trucking companies over here off Sunshine, and I had the opportunity to go one of their Christmas parties, and they actually donated a bunch of toys to our crucible the cop program, and they they had nothing but praises about uh Corporal Gorings or traffic enforcement investigator who out of his own initiative and went to them and in his own time well on the department time went over there and inspected all of their commercial trucks to be proactive and to address any issues they had before they hit the street.

And they said by just him doing that saved them many hours of manpower of having trucks down and money by identifying um violations before they went on to the public highway.

So that's just an example of creating those relationships.

Um with personnel, we were busy with hiring.

Um we hired three sworn officers this year, three dispatchers, and one CSO.

Unfortunately, we did lose some officers as well, three officers and two dispatchers over that time.

We currently have uh two, excuse me, three sworn vacancies open, and two dispatcher positions we are currently recruiting for it for those positions at this time.

Some of the things we're gonna concentrate on for 2026 is obviously fill those uh vacancies and staffing for the police departments, enhance recruitment and retention efforts, uh seek out technological resources to leverage manpower needs in the department.

Uh one of the things we're also gonna be looking at is online reporting.

Also, we're gonna use our real-time crime statistics, strategically deploy officers and department resources, and that goes back back to their real-time crime software.

How do we best use the resources we have and address those some of those numbers that I read to you earlier, whether it be the thefts or the um reckless driving, DUI, or any of those things in our community?

How do we best address those issues?

Also, we're gonna work with community partners to enhance crime prevention efforts and public education, working with our schools, our businesses, churches, and community services.

Another thing we did inside the department, or we're looking to enhance for this next year, is create a succession planning model for future leadership of the police department by developing future leaders through professional development enhanced training.

We're gonna look at strategies to better address the opioid epidemic and drug use.

As you all know, there is money available to the cities and counties for the um to address the opioid opioid epidemic.

So we're gonna work with public health schools and mental health providers on outreach education and post-incident follow-ups, and also the use of Narcan ADs to effectively advocate for the treatment resources.

So we're not responding to overdoses, but helping to prevent them as well.

And then lastly, we're gonna review and ensure our policies and procedures are in alignment with the law, city policy, procedure, law enforcement, best practices, and in alignment with our values and our mission statement.

So, with that, that's a brief cap uh recap of 2025, and I'm hoping to answer any questions you might have.

Well, thank you for all that hard work you did in 2025, and we certainly look forward to 2026.

Absolutely.

Those are great ideas, Chief.

Everything's looking good.

Questions, comments?

Questions, comments?

This man covered it all, didn't you?

Just one mayor.

So uh just to comment that you know I work for public health and I work closely with um Corey Wilson with who is the uh suicide prevention program manager and stuff.

And she mentioned to me that the Eloy Police Chief is the best police chief in the entire county, and she just loves working with that police chief.

And I told her, you know, I'm from Eloy, right?

She goes.

Yeah.

She goes, I just had to tell you that so you could tell him.

Thank you for passing.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Well, thank you, sir.

Thank you for.

And if and if you could pass our holiday congratulations and whatnot over to the troops, would be greatly appreciated from this council.

Thank you, will do, Mayor.

Thank you, Council.

All right.

Okay, that moves us on now.

Are you good, Mac?

You're good.

Okay.

That moves us to item number seven consent agenda.

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

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

Do I have any council members wishing to remove anything from the consent agenda for consideration or discussion?

So we'll have a motion to accept the consent agenda as written.

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Garcia?

Yes.

Councilmember Galindo?

Yes.

Councilmember Vondraska.

Yes.

Councilmember Curtis?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Tarango.

Yes.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Okay, now that brings us to item eight business possible discussion and/or action on the following.

Item A, general plan update, mapping the future outreach summary.

Hello, guys.

Good evening, Mary members of the Council, Danzheimer Community Development Director.

As you know, we've been working on our general plan for almost a year.

It's been starting out in February.

We're 10 months in and we're at a great location right now where we're going to start drafting.

As you know, we've done several outreaches and a lot of workshops, and y'all have been participating in that.

So tonight, Terry's gonna come in and give me an overview where we're at.

And again, Terry's from Logan Simpson, and she's our consultant on this.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Welcome, Terry.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Um, I'm gonna pull this down just to even a little bit more from the chief.

Okay.

Um and Terry Wogan with the firm Logan Simpson.

Um, I also wanted to just address Mayor, if I will, just a couple of points that I heard uh during during the uh during the uh council presentations.

Um to uh Councilman Snyder's point, uh we have done a robust uh job of looking at demographics, of course, in Eloy.

Um, and I wanted to just point out that we have an entire chapter um based on economic growth, housing, and neighborhoods, addressing just that.

These are elective elements, not required uh by the state, but something that's very important to Eloy, and so those are gonna be included in your general plan.

Um, also heard a lot of cool, interesting things going on in terms of uh action items that you'll see reflected in your general plan.

Uh uh coordination with the Union Pacific Railroad, uh different things that the the PD and public safety are doing.

Those things will also be rolled into your general plan.

You'll see those as though those come out.

So it's it's always good to uh come to the meeting.

This is really high for me.

Okay.

That means it makes me stand up tall.

All right.

Uh so tonight um I'd like to just go over a quick process update.

I only have 58 slides, so we'll get you out of here uh in not too long.

Uh public participation update and then uh next steps.

This is a graphic that you guys are all used to at this point, um, just for the benefit of the audience, and most of them can probably recite this as well.

Um there are five phases in an 18-month process for your general plan update.

Uh, we are you can see the star of here we are in the build phase.

Uh so we've gone through uh almost four phases at this point.

We came to council and gave a summary in September, uh summarized on the first three phases and tonight, and in your packet, we have a summary of what's happened in the last three months.

Um, as we get into this build phase and and we're nearly through it at this point, uh, we will be drafting, we are in the midst of drafting your general plan.

That will uh go through several iterations with your technical advisory committee, uh, your planning commission as a general plan advisory committee as well, giving input into that document.

And then at the end of the build phase, we will be going out for the statutory 60-day public review period where pencils go down.

Um, everybody gets a chance to take a look at the plan.

We're going to be doing open houses, we'll be doing that immersive technology, the mobile immersion lab, um, and getting input during that time, and then we'll come through the celebratory phase where we come to planning commission for a recommendation and then to city council for adoption.

Pencils go back down again.

Uh we go into 120 days at least where we're in a holding position.

It goes on the ballot in November, and then uh the community has a chance to vote for that or ratify that document.

All right.

Um so public participation summary.

This is uh the mapping uh mapping of the future, uh, which is what we called phase four.

Um I'm I'm excited to say that over the course of the last three months we've had an increase of about 600 people engaging in this process.

So we went from 30, 3300 and some change up to uh over 3900 people engaged in the process.

That is an excellent percentage percentage of the participation for a community of the size of Eloy.

So really, really excited about that.

Uh over 3400 website views, over 2300 subscribers to your website.

Should be very, very proud of the engagement that you have here at Eloy as we are.

Okay, uh, we're continuing with the listing sessions, the interviews.

Um we have 61 that we completed to date, and for the benefit of the audience, uh, you can see all the different um entities that we've been focusing on from city staff, mayor elected, appointed officials to state uh departments, uh federal departments, uh, Union Pacific Railroad, the military utilities.

So we've had a broad spectrum of folks that have participated in this manner as a one-on-one or group interview, so that's kind of exciting.

Uh we've also continued uh doing our drop-in events.

That's where we go out into the community, we set up a booth, uh, you can see lots of pictures of Dan in there where we're we're passing out information, educating people about the general plan, having them participate in online surveys if that's happening during that time.

Uh during this three-month period, we we went out uh to the to the gain event, and you can see we engaged 140 people, Eloy Glow glows, um, just under 200 people, and then the family bingo night.

Uh we had 26 people um come up and engage with us.

Um so nearly uh or a little over 900 uh folks engaged in that uh that winter uh going out.

Uh we will be at um the Christmas in Egloy, have a booth out there as well, so come by and say hi to us.

Okay, workshop two.

Um to the workshop that we had during the month of October.

We held three different in-person sessions, uh, one at Rhodes and Ranch, two at City Hall in the morning and the evening, um, basically all day we had it at City Hall.

Uh, and then we had the one-month-long uh virtual uh version of the workshop up.

So 120 or 114 attendees during this um during this workshop, we reconfirmed the general plan vision, uh, the overarching vision as well as the aspirational statements.

You'll see no changes to those.

It seems that people are very happy with those.

Um we introduced the future land use map, um, got some good comments on that, as well as definitions of the land use categories, and then renderings of what those look like or could look like in Eloy.

Got a lot of uh good comments on that.

We'll be making some tweaks to that.

You'll see those as you start seeing the draft plan.

And then we also uh just as a reminder, uh we've taken your uh the statute requires seven uh topic areas for Eloy.

You have 13 topic areas.

We've taken all of those and put those into themes for different themes, and we have goals uh for those different themes that have come out of the public input.

So we we um uh displayed those as well at the workshop and got a lot of good feedback and input into those, and so we're making some tweaks with those.

Uh and you'll see those also in and you've got to see your your comments in your packet as well, but you'll see those tweaks and revisions in your general plan as well.

Okay, so next steps.

Um again, we're gonna be out at the Christmas in Eloy.

Uh we'll be doing the planning and zoning commission or the general plan uh general plan advisory committee uh update on December 17th, in the midst of plan drafting right now.

Uh that 60-day public review period will be sometime in February through April.

We'll have um exact dates at your next update, which will be uh March 9th and then uh February 18th for Planning Commission.

Uh sometime in the probably mid to uh late February, we'll have that mobile immersion lab.

Um and then with that, I think I'm at the end, and I get to say I'd be happy to answer any questions, and we wish you a very, very happy holiday from Logan Simpson.

Well, thank you, Terry.

Thank you so much.

So this is the first general plan I've ever been involved in.

Exactly.

I really think you guys are doing a great job.

You're getting the word out there, you're engaging, and the public seems to genuinely be happy to have some input, and that's I guess the goal we were all looking for.

So comments on the left.

Anybody comments, questions, concerns?

Comments, questions, concern?

Well, thank you.

And from all of us to all you at Logan Simpson, safe holidays.

Happy new year.

Thank you, Council.

Okay.

All right.

All right, this brings us to item B.

Authorization for the Mayor to execute an amendment to the on-call professional service contract with the Bureau of Viritas, North America aim to increase the IRU fees within any city fiscal year from 200,000 to $500,000 for building plan review inspections.

Project management related services, Mr.

Sima.

Thank you, Mayor Member of the Council.

Answer community development.

As the mayor's indicated we are asking for an amendment to our on-call uh on-call professional services contract for a number of things, which is mainly for plan and view inspections, although they are also working with me on updating the building code for the 2024 edition of the IBC or ICC codes.

That's mainly because as of the end of the year, our code is expired and it'll no longer be supported by the International Code Command Council.

So we do have the update or code.

The reason for the increase is we have three on calls.

Currently, we're running up against two of the caps, uh, at least anticipated before the end of the fiscal year.

Uh earlier this year, we went out and came to you with a separate contract for Stantec, who is doing our review, has just literally finished the review today for the first solar uh solar utility scale development, and that project alone had fees of over 700, almost $800,000.

So imagine if I have three contracts at $200,000.

I'm a little bit over.

Um so the projection is because mainly because we have lost our building inspector and we haven't followed our chief building official.

Uh they are my main advisories to them.

Uh it's a great thing to have them on call right now to fill the in the inspections.

Uh as I projected out the rest of the fiscal year, I would exceed that 200,000 with this sole year, so just inspections alone.

And that's mainly because the type of inspections that are needed is much greater than what we have budgeted in a position-wise in our uh budgets and um employees.

Uh we have an inspection inspector that is a beginning inspection person who just can do residential.

As you can see, we have industrial coming along, we have the solar coming along, and our projections over in the next year are gonna probably exceed probably another $800,000 almost potentially if the um sawtooth comes online in the next year.

We'll probably close to $10 million in revenue for those projects, but that's all dependent in phases.

So the idea is to keep these inspectors in line so we have a continuous continuity with our community, and then I'm not changing between each of my on-calls.

So the one thing to keep in mind is that planning and development is mainly uh driven by fees and planner review cost.

So these uh fees and increases will be covered by any of those fees that we take in.

So uh the mayor, I'll be happy to answer any questions for the council.

So just to be clear for the council, all this is reimbursable money to the city.

For lack of better term, they pay for the services we pay it back out.

Yeah, okay.

To that point, do you think the five raising this to 500 is enough?

Or will will we be back here revisiting this shortly?

I do believe this fiscal year we're in good shape.

The I do believe next fiscal year uh will be coming in for for an amendment, either that or a separate contract.

I had reached out on this on the saw chief and haven't got back to me with exact dates.

They did close on the land as of last week.

So they are expected to be early spring on site plan next fall.

That project alone, if I'll give you an example, solar fees were projected at about 1.1 million dollars.

Sawtooth is six times the size.

So we will be bidding that project out separately.

And uh we'll be coming for a one-time contract under that.

Um as free point ecosystem comes online.

That's twice this twice the size of uh solar.

Actually, three times the size of Kit Solar.

So again, we're probably coming back to you with a one-time contract for those expenses.

The main thing budgetary-wise I'm looking at is keeping the specialty lack of a better term, specialty projects off off on the side and handling those on one-offs and keeping the day-to-day operations underneath this cap.

So that's my projections.

Thank you, sir.

Questions or comments on my left.

So Dan, is there uh anything we can do?

Is there any thing we can reach out to or to find out where you could possibly be able to hire those building inspectors, be able to bring those staff people on?

It seems to me like the the reason for for this increase, which I totally understand what the mayor says, is it it just gets reimbursed back, but it just seems like if we had somebody on staff that was capable of of doing these inspections and doing these permits, you know, it would just be a smoother process.

Mayor members of the council is a great question.

It's been asked of me a couple different ways and different times.

The type of work that we need right now is when you're residential inspector, a commercial inspector that has special inspection experience to staff those three positions alone, they're looking at about two to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars because of the qualifications.

Uh, for example, we're getting our current inspector starts out at sixty thousand, which is way low.

I don't have enough work full time for that person, nor do I have enough work full time for the other.

So by bringing one person in that's specialized that I can do both, and is also working with me on updating, which I didn't share with you all, but is also working with me on updating our processes with the experience that we need so that when we do bring in is much more valuable and a better use of the money right now.

I I agree with you eventually we're gonna have to bring on more staff.

Beyond next year, I don't want to be in the layoff situation.

And honestly, I think that's where I would be because uh it got pretty scary last year with just keeping people on staff and only having 20, 25 hours worth of work.

So I had to keep them busy otherwise.

So pretty much this is more cost effective to do it with contractors.

I wouldn't say it's more cost effective, it's it's more beneficial.

It is more expensive to have them on, although we do not pay for any other insurance or anything like that, and they're on call whenever we need them.

Um and the persons that I have in here have all the qualifications, the one person has all the qualifications, whereas our last person only had a third of them, and we were heavily reliant on that.

And it was I've learned that it wasn't the right thing to do by having those people that have 20, 30 years experience, being able to go, oh, we really made a mistake here, we missed this.

So those are the things that I'm I'm learning that I was entrusting in my staff to go, okay.

How do we fix this for next time?

So right now it's it's a mulling stage, and I do agree with you that eventually that we're gonna have to if the economy takes off and eLoy takes off, we're gonna be in a situation either we have to farm out or we bring on more staff long term.

So well, thank you for clarifying that point.

Anything over here?

Okay.

So I guess we look for uh for a motion to approve.

Do we have a motion?

May I make a motion that we approve agenda item 8b?

Second, Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Valdraska?

Yes.

Councilmember Cardis.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Tarango.

Yes.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes.

Councilmember Garcia?

Yes.

Councilmember Golinda?

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Thank you again.

Okay, next is item C establishing the 2026 council meeting dates.

And I think we also got to do the 2025 one, don't we?

Like next meeting.

Do we have to vote for that?

That was part of the consent again.

I should have read that and paid attention closely.

All right, so for 2026 council meeting dates.

Ms.

Kidwell.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

So the item before you is to establish the 2026 City Council meetings.

Um staff is recommending that the for the 2000 2026, excuse me, 2026 council regular meeting calendar.

Um that we hold only one regular council meeting in July, which should be Monday uh July 13th, and instead of the standard two meetings, and so therefore cancel the July 27th, 2026 regular council meeting.

Otherwise, um it's the first and third, excuse me, it's the second and fourth Monday of the month.

Um with that uh the calendar I also put together identify six potential scheduling conflicts with federal holidays that may require meeting date adjustments or special consideration for attendance in regards to uh work sessions and also for our regular meetings.

I have provided a um calendar.

And um if we want to go through how do how do we like to do this, Mm.

Would you like to go through each month and look at each?

Can you put them on the screen?

I'm trying to, yes.

Um was there a reason we picked July to skip that meeting?

Because some council members have asked if we can skip uh the last meeting in June.

That would be 62.

The one thing that we would need to consider is budget.

Um I don't think that was one of the dates that we are permitted to do so just with the timing and statutes and so forth.

So you could do something in uh we could do the late July or possibly even the late August, the last August date.

So that would have been on Goodest 24th.

Anyone on council have a preference, so we'll be that date.

Preference?

I don't care that we whether we cancel it or not.

Okay.

Oh, we're gonna cancel this is which date we're gonna cancel it.

I think I lean toward July because August uh people coming back and school started, and I think things start to pick up pretty quick again.

So I think uh I'd rather keep that council meeting in August and do with July.

Personal preference.

And what was that date in Gerald, uh, Madam Clerk?

July 27th.

You don't necessarily have to, I don't think.

Is that Mayor?

Stephen Do we have to vote on the calendar establishing that?

Mayor, council members.

The agenda item calls for an approval of the meetings there, and um certainly you if you don't take any action, this is gonna be the proposed schedule, and you'll have leeway during the during the year if it comes there where it looks like you run out of business that are you know that are basically there, and so um and also you always have the alternative of moving some of those dates as the year goes because things change that you don't really anticipate occurring.

But um, as you pointed out, our our busy time for the council is really two times of the year.

One is during the budget process through the tax levy and then these general plan amendments that come in usually September, October, November Okay.

So I'm good with uh approving the 727th to meeting to be put off.

May When's the primary this year?

August 4th?

Yeah.

Correct.

Okay.

That's a good 27th is a good time to miss them with the primary coming up.

Shifting over to those three holidays, can we just automatically move them to Tuesdays?

Because we're going to be coming right back to vote on those.

Okay.

And then can we go to the end of the year?

I think it's just the September one.

I mean, but if in case we need those meetings, we want to have them already shifted over.

The other ones is to cancel both the December 21st and the December 28th meetings for the holidays.

I'm not sure that the Thanksgiving one's going to affect us.

So we've got to read a vote and how are we going to do this?

Just say approved on it, or we just take it as we go, we're just going to copy it down.

Okay.

And we'll take them as we go along.

We can do that.

Okay.

That's what we'll do.

Thank you, everybody.

Okay, next one we'll go to item D.

Consideration and adoption of resolution number 251638 authorizing the mayor and city council to amend the city council rules and procedures.

Section 5, appointment of vice mayor and establishing an effective date.

And I see Mr.

Cooper's name on that.

Mayor, Council members, uh staff had received some direction to bring a resolution for you for discussion and possible consideration and approval if the council deems appropriate.

And this dealt with the issue that was discussed at our last council meeting, which dealt with the appointment of the vice mayor.

There was some confusion whether or not there could be consecutive terms of vice mayor, and I believe some council members had different recollections of what was discussed at that time.

We had prepared a resolution for your consideration, and this is basically council driven in the sense that you are legislative body, you determine your rules of conduct that are there, and this proposal would allow an individual to serve two consecutive terms as a council member, and thereafter, if approved, they would not be eligible for the office again until one additional term had passed after that.

I believe at the prior meeting with regards to election cycles as well.

As you're aware, council members are subject to two uh they're four-year terms, but they're staggered, so we have an election cycle of every two years.

If we were to have language basically putting it in an executive, you know, in a legislative cycle, we probably would land something similar to the proposed language for the you know that's here because every two years there's going to be a council election, and then you kind of reset the clock after that one.

This one is this one if the council chooses to approve it would allow a member to serve as vice mayor for two consecutive terms.

Thereafter, someone else would have to be appointed.

The prior vice mayor that did the two consecutive terms would not be eligible to be reappointed until one vice mayor cycle had occurred after the ending of that appointment.

We also did have an effective date of December 1st.

Uh, the reason for December 1st is this is that historically we have always chose our vice mayor in the you know, right before the December meeting.

We were doing that just to have it consistent with what we do historically, so that we can calendar that as the year go by to make sure that we get this to you timely on the agenda.

And there is no problem with you as council members basically having a retroactive date, you know, going back to December 1st, because this matter is a legislative action of the council setting when the time is there.

You're not a creating a law, you're not creating a crime, you're not creating expending any public monies or anything.

So certainly this is a legislative or ministerial act that would allow you to basically have the effective date on December 1st, even though we are now one week into the month.

Thank you for your work on that, Stephen.

Thank you for presenting it so we can uh digest it.

I know you do.

Yeah, no, I just a question for Steve.

Stephen, so the boards and commissions, when we got delayed in uh I guess uh appointing people, the comment was made, I think that you made that if we didn't appoint someone the current position carried on until someone was appointed.

Is that true for the vice mayor as well?

Um this is a that is basically a general election law question in the state of Arizona, and the case law in Arizona basically provides that a person that is serving office and their term expires, unless the statute specifically says that you know the term ends, they continue to serve until such time as their successor has been properly chose and put into office.

So it's my belief that basically that even though we're now past that December 1st on the prior appointment, because there has been no one appointed, that the current vice mayor would continue to serve until such time as the council chose to appoint a successor, whether or not you approve this resolution or or yes.

Anybody else on the left have anything to add, comment?

Oh, my right.

Go ahead then.

Oh, yeah, I just a question for Steve.

I have to say that I spent probably uh a good two hours yesterday, two hours again today, and thank goodness for uh Mr.

Cooper because he kind of directed me in the right direction, but trying to find where are the city council rules and regulations.

I went through all the websites, I went on the codes, I couldn't find them anywhere.

And so I was what I was trying to find out was what was the existing language we have today to compare it to what's being proposed.

And I couldn't find it.

And finally, Mr.

Cooper's uh pointing me in the right direction, and it turns out that this uh rule, I guess, if you will, procedure was established in November of 2019, five years ago.

And it was done in November before the new election after before people who won the election were sworn in.

So the move the change was made before the uh idea of a new uh uh vice mayor came to council.

So it was done ahead of time.

One of the things that bothers me a little bit.

This is making rule changes on the spur of the moment to accommodate a situation.

Uh no's I guess uh you all toward the any uh individuals, but just I'm a more of a process guy and we have rules and regulations, and why are we talking about this now?

Why don't we do it last November when we knew this is coming up?

And that's the only thing that bothers me because if we're gonna be this easy of making rules and regulations, say, well, you know, it doesn't fit, so let's change it.

Well, we can change anything anytime.

Why do we even have the rules and regulations?

And we go back and say, well, we do it three times, you can serve twice, but then what happens next year we say, uh, let's let's make it no, you you can you can uh repeat again.

You don't have to sit out a year.

And so I just that's bother bothering me a little bit.

But it was kind of interesting.

Uh I did find I'm gonna re take some time, repeat some of the rules and regulations that people may not know that exist.

Number one is special meetings or work sessions can be scheduled at request of count three council members.

So it doesn't have to be staff, it doesn't three council members could request it.

Items on the agenda can be placed on the agenda at the request of two council members.

Uh a member of the public may request that an item be removed from the consent agenda.

That's no.

Uh agenda packet materials were ordinary to be distributed on the Wednesday prior to the scheduled Monday or Tuesday council meeting.

Okay.

Uh designate a term for the appointment of the vice mayor.

So back then there was no term established.

So that we didn't want to establish a term for it.

Uh the mayor may appoint a sergeant at arms to maintain order.

Council members are required to vote on all issues unless excused by conflict of interest.

So you can't uh abstain.

You you have to vote.

I think the other thing abstaining is a no vote, is it not?

I think it but anyway, and the other thing I found in this, there was a code of ethics that was put together.

That all the council members at the time had to sign.

And I have a feeling that we've kind of become remiss in that, that we've had an election and some new council members.

I have a feeling that that hasn't been enforced.

But just I wanted to bring that up.

And a council member may serve more than one term, provided the terms are non-consecutive.

So it's a little bit different than what was presented to us about uh setting out a year and whatever that that's totally new.

But anyway, that uh wanted to share that with everybody.

Uh that being said, I'm I'll go whichever way council wants to go back.

Wanted to dig out some of this information and where are we now?

Thank you for that mining.

You did to find that stuff really.

I know that took a minute on a lot of clicks to get to that.

It really did.

So does anybody else on staff do anybody else have anything they want to say?

Go ahead.

Just have a comment because you said November 2019.

Yeah.

Um pretty sure I didn't get on council until 2020.

Correct you.

But I was there for a meeting.

It was either my first or second year of council, where we reviewed all of the council policies and procedures, including the vice mayor terms.

Um I was there and voted on that meeting 100%.

I didn't do the mining and the research that you did, but there's something missing in the time dates that we're talking about.

There's there was a time when we did some updates, so maybe more data is required.

I'm not sure.

No, I think where it was there is November 2019 is when the the council talked about it, but it was voted on then approved in January, and you would have been seated then.

We definitely talked about it when I was here for sure.

Anyway, very interesting, Dan.

Thanks.

Thank you, sir.

Anybody else?

Questions, comments.

Just a quick comment that um one of the things that as we go into the next election cycle, is that there'd be some changes with uh the city of Veloy's electing a mayor, and I think that this is a good time to review this new vice mayor policy and and I like the idea of because the next mayor is going to be serving for four years.

And maybe having instead of having a vice mayor to work with the mayor for one year, there's now the opportunity to have a vice mayor to work with the mayor for two years that's going to be serving for four years.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

That's it.

No, one other thing.

There is a possibility the way the language is proposed now, is that a candidate could potentially be vice mayor four out of five years to be on two years, set out a year on two more years.

So that's okay.

I just want to bring that out.

I'm not saying good or bad, I'm just bringing point that out.

I just want to clarify.

I was asked to continue to if I wanted to continue.

I want everybody to make sure that that's clear.

So thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

All right.

So everybody good?

All right.

Do I hear a motion to read by title adoption of resolution 25-1638?

Are you in a first and a second?

Motion.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

Madam Clerk.

Amending Eloy City Council rules and procedures, Section 5, appointment of Vice Mayor, establishing, excuse me, appointment of Vice Mayor and establishing an effective date.

Thank you.

Do I have a motion to approve resolution 25-1638 as presented?

So moved.

Have a second.

Second.

Roll call, Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Galindo.

Yes.

Councilmember Andraska.

Yes.

Councilmember Curtis.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Toningo.

Yes.

Councilmember Schneider.

Yes, but I would also in the process would ask that we make rules and regulation changes, we make them well in advance of when we're going to be voting on uh doing something relative to them.

Okay.

So the answer is yes.

Councilmember Garcia?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, that brings us to item E, appointment of the Vice Mayor for May for a period of one year, effective December 1st, 2025.

Do I have any nominations?

Mr.

Mr.

Mayor, I will make a uh uh nomination.

We uh reappoint Michelle Tarangel.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay.

We'll do a roll call on this just to be council member Schneider.

Yes.

Councilmember Garcia?

Yes.

Councilmember Garmundo?

Yes.

Councilmember Baldraska?

Yes.

Councilmember Curris?

Yes.

Vice Member Turingo?

Yes.

Mayor Sutton.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

On behalf of the Eloy City Council, we want to wish everybody here and everybody watching online.

I want to wish you Merry Christmas.

Want to wish you all the very best new year that you can possibly have and nothing but health and safety to your families.

And with that, I'll take a motion to adjourn.

Someone do I have a second?

Second.

Adjourn.

Thank you, everybody.

Safe trip home.