Okay, I'd like to um call orders study session.

Council Member Kenny Bucklin's Council Member Yan Koprowski.

Council Member Monty Lyons.

Council Member Jim Torres.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

I'm Mike Angstead with the police department.

Just take us a second here to get the presentation up.

Council, I know you've got a packed agenda today, so I'm if you don't mind, I'll just start talking through the slides that would normally be up on the presentation.

So I'm here today to talk about bikes, help bike helm, bike safety, and potentially an ordinance having to do with bike helmets.

There we go.

Kind of an overview, as many of you probably noticed as you drive around Gilbert, uh, if we were to go out on the roads today, you'd see the use of e-bikes is really surged in recent years.

Uh they're popular alternative mode of transportation, and we're we have a concern or vested interest in these these bikes of all kinds.

Um in terms of enforcing the laws and and regulations and making sure that people are safe as they operate on our roadways and sidewalks.

Um I raised two high school, you know, teenage boys.

Uh they're grown now, but there was a time where we wanted to get them out of the house and off of Xbox and you know go breathe fresh air and ride bikes.

And uh that's happened, but a lot of them ride not only just regular bikes, but nowadays e-bikes.

Um these e-bikes in Gilbert uh have become you know kind of a rising challenge for us in terms of safety, and uh we're committed to uh solving the issue with mayor and council.

It's really not something we can solve overnight, and really the the town has taken a strategy over many decades to try and uh use a combination of engineering, uh education, trying to promote uh bicycle safety, the use of helmets, and then uh lastly enforcement, but any one of those components, um if we don't have all of them working in in conjunction together, uh we were relatively ineffective.

So it's a multifaceted strategy.

The agenda for tonight is to kind of talk about community feedback.

We do a lot of surveys and gather a lot of data from the community in terms of what they were interested in regarding bike safety, and then uh second point we're gonna get into uh a series of slides that talk about bike safety efforts in Gilbert, not only uh from an engineering perspective, but also from an educational perspective.

We'll get into crash and injury data, and then last there will be some ordinance options, and they're not exclusive.

Really, it's it's if you all feel like an ordinance in any way is uh a good idea, then that's great.

I try to stay in my lane being in the executive branch of government, and you being the legislative, um, I won't make a necessarily persuasive argument to you, rather than you know, rather I'll just leave it in your hands in terms of an option.

So, first off, community feedback.

Um, the number one takeaway from our 2022 transportation master plan when we asked the community what they wanted.

Uh overall, it was improving safety for all users.

Number two is reducing travel congestion on roads.

I think we can all get behind number one and two.

70% of our population wanted more separation between bikes and cars.

67% were more likely to bike with uh more green bike lanes, which we're gonna get to later in this presentation.

51% wanted safer and easier crossings, and 48% wanted more connections to bikes and trails, and lastly, 45% of our folks wanted more bike lanes, trails, and paths.

In terms of our current bike safety efforts, um, you know, I think we we listened to the public.

Um not only did we do a lot of engineering uh changes and efforts that we're gonna get into, but one of the education uh efforts we did is this know your ride campaign, the police department launched uh this month, and some of it is just to educate parents on these different devices and the impact that they have in our community.

Um as a parent, uh reading state law can be kind of cumbersome.

But if I was to take all the different variations of e-bikes and bring them in here right now, we would all have a really hard time telling one device from the other, and I would have a hard time, and this is what I do for a living.

The challenge is that when you look at this matrix, it talks about a bicycle, like an old Schwin or Huffy.

And then next to it, it talks about an e-bike class one, class two, and class three.

All of these are born as bicycles.

If there's if the battery isn't charged on them, you can ride them, you can pedal them like a normal bike.

The difference being if a parent was to ask me, well, what's the difference between all of them?

The class one bike is a bike that you can sit on, and when you hit the throttle for the electrical part, uh it won't do anything unless you start to pedal.

And then it kicks in and it assists the rider going down the roadway.

Uh you can go up to 20 miles per hour on that device.

A class two e-bike is different.

When you sit on it and you hit the throttle, it takes off, uh, kind of like a scooter, maybe like a bird scooter kind of thing.

You don't have to pedal.

You can sit there and just keep the pedals level and just use the motor the entire time.

It also goes 20 miles per hour max, and then it shuts off.

Class three e-bike is very similar to the class one in that you have to pedal the pedals to make it go, and then the motor kicks in and it can't it'll go up to 28 miles an hour.

Um, the other difference is a class three e-bike, because it goes 28 miles an hour, you have to be at least 16 years old to uh to ride the device.

The last uh column there is for electric motorcycles and um completely different category than what we're talking about tonight.

And I say that because there not only are those considered a motor vehicle, so they fall into a completely different part of law, but it's already um against the law to operate a motorcycle of any kind and not wear a helmet under the age of 18.

And again, you have to be 16 years old to legally ride a motorcycle.

Speaking of motorcycles, uh another one of the pieces of information that we try to get out to uh parents is that uh when you see this type of device on the screen featured here, it looks a lot like a class one, two, or three e-bike, like an electrical electric bicycle, but it's not.

It doesn't have pedals, you can't ride it like a bike.

It actually doesn't do anything if it's not charged up.

But it in terms of the law, it's exactly like buying your kid a Harley Davidson, whether it's gas powered or electric, hardly makes an electric motorcycle as well.

Uh you can't operate this without all of the things that you would need if you were operating a motor vehicle.

This slide talks about these being modified to go up to 70 miles per hour.

A lot of them go a lot faster than that.

Certainly the Harley Davidson electric motorcycles go faster than 70.

And it does sort of uh imply on this slide that you can go get this uh registered and have insurance and license and operate it legally.

The truth of the matter is the bike that's featured here that you see a lot on our sidewalks, um, they can't even be registered, they're not Department of Transportation compliant, they're often made exclusively overseas.

Um, and so it's tempting for parents to buy them because they're cheap and they're kind of like an e-bike, but they're for most part completely illegal to operate in Gilbert.

In terms of uh additional education efforts, um, our police department and the town and at large, the parks and uh other departments participate in the Global Village Festival.

We'll have a booth out there where we hand out helmets.

Um, police department bike safety events, uh, mainly we hold those downtown inheritage, our safe sensory awareness event that we hold every year, and then the community uh bike ride and heritage district that we did last April, and I believe we plan on doing it again this year.

It was uh very well received by the community, and thanks to Councilmember Kaprowski always for supporting us with the bike helmets.

We've gotten a lot of helmets out to a lot of kids.

Um I don't think in terms of this presentation, I don't go into a lot of depth about the effectiveness of helmets because I think the council would all be unanimous.

You know, wearing a helmet, there's no downside to wearing a helmet.

Certainly we encourage people to do it.

Um it is the the safer route to go, especially if you're riding on roadways.

Um it's just sort of implied that it's safer to wear them.

The question will be down the road uh is it the place of the government to require that.

Infrastructure improvements.

This is another key piece.

So I know we're talking about helmets today, and we're gonna talk about crash data, and we're gonna talk about wanting to lower the um the frequency of severe injuries on bicycles.

I think that's kind of what this discussion is about.

But really, what we'd love to do is get the bicycle collisions down to zero if we could.

And a lot of those efforts are really come down to engineering, like a lot of efforts, a lot of uh investment that our community has made.

I think we're making strides in trying in reducing the amount of collisions in this area.

So as discussed before on the surveys with the public, there was sort of this discussion of wanting more space between bicycles and cars.

So the town updated their engineering standards with regard to bike lanes, increasing the width from five and a half feet to six feet on roadways.

On the right side of the screen where it talks about the green bike lane program, the bottom kind of pie chart in the green area is when people were asked, would you like to see more green bike lanes in Gilbert?

82.3% of our respondents wanted uh more green bike lanes, and those have been installed off the top of my head, uh Gilbert Warner right out here, Valvista and Warner, we're making progress on installing more of these green bike lanes, and those seem to be well received by the public.

In terms of safety improvement projects, um, the theme of all of these projects, without going over every single one of them, because I know the council's familiar with many of them as you've you've reviewed them and approved them.

But the goal of these projects was safer canal path crossings along major Gilbert roadways.

Um, if you think about riding a canal path, it's nice and safe, whether you're running or you're biking, and you're kind of in a zone and you feel really safe because there's no cars around, and then you hit one of those crossings, and that's the point where you know it does become pretty hazardous sometimes crossing six lanes of vehicle travel when the cars are going 45 miles an hour.

So the town has made it an uh considerable effort to make these crossings safer by either installing um traffic signals or um what they call hawk systems where the lights uh flash, stop the cars just for the pedestrians to cross.

Uh they've also made separated or protected bike and pedestrian infrastructure from vehicles, new traffic signal installation, safer routes to school.

One of the schools that um the town has been working with is Rice Elementary, it's a new one over there at uh Lindsay and Okateo, and whenever a new school pops in, we want to make sure there are safe routes for kids to ride their bikes to school, and then trail connectivity for pedestrians and cyclists.

So, in terms of a total number, the investment in these projects that were on the slide before, I think there were um 11 or 12 of them, you know, it's 215 million dollars to enhance the safety for cyclists and pedestrians again with the goal of lowering the number of overall collisions between bicycles and vehicles, and you know, in a utopia, you'd be able to ride around the whole town and never even come close to a vehicle and just ride your bike safely around the the entire uh perimeter over the town.

We're not there yet, but we're getting close.

Crash and injury data.

So, unfortunately, when we do mix vehicles and uh bicycles, we end up with uh some crash and injury data.

We also have some collisions that we're gonna talk about here where they weren't collisions with vehicles, somebody just wiped out on their bike, and the and the fire department responded.

In terms of this first slide, so this is from the police department.

This is our Gilbert bicycle crash data, and these are vehicular-related bike collisions by year.

Um, and it's important to note when I talked about uh the different classifications of bicycles, regular bikes, class one, class two, class three, because they're all bicycles when the battery is dead, it has a chain, it has pedals.

The state captures, and the police department by virtue of being part of the state, um, captures this data all the same.

So if you crash on any of those devices, you crashed on a bike, and that's the data that we that we capture.

We don't separately have data for each classification of different uh bicycle.

But I will say overall, what this graph tells me.

When I looked historically back uh five plus years, we always had this trend where the yellow line, the adults, uh were having uh more collisions than juveniles with vehicles.

That trend's been going on for a very, very long time, and it stands to reason there's more adults in Gilbert than there are juveniles, it's 70% adults and 30% kids.

Um for the first year uh in 2024, we saw the shift, and again, I think this is attributed to there's more kids out there on bikes, which is you know, we always we all thought that would be a good thing.

Get them off the computers, get them off the Xbox, get them out outside.

But the proliferation of these e-bikes has changed things.

You could only ride so fast on a on a traditional bike, right?

And you can only crash so bad, um, which um council member Buckland and I have both done on bike patrol.

Um you can only do so much injury to yourself, but now these e-bikes where you're going 28 miles per hour, um, life comes at you pretty quick.

So that's one of the trends that I wanted to just make sure that we pointed out to council.

We are seeing an overall decline in the total number of crashes, which I attribute to a lot of the engineering improvements that the council has approved.

But unfortunately, we're seeing the number of juveniles, juvenile crashes dwarf the adults for the first time.

Similarly, this slide is from the fire department.

It's talking about Gilbert bike crash data for non-vehicular bicycle crashes where EMS responded.

So these are calls that don't involve a vehicle at all.

These are people that were riding along and wiped out for some reason, they hit a curb and went over the handlebars and had to call the fire department.

In those instances, we're still seeing that the number of adult crashes total are higher than the juveniles.

Again, 70% of our population is adult.

But we are seeing, if you look at just the juvenile numbers, went from one in FY23 to eight in FY24 to 12 in FY25.

So we're seeing a rise in the you know, bicycle wipeouts, I guess you'd say.

Easier loss of control, and then the faster speeds result in deadlier collisions.

And this is bicycle and e-bike crashes in San Diego County that's on this graph to the right, and it's showing this the dramatic climb in e-bike crashes that they're tracking over in San Diego.

This is also Carter's information.

E um is discussing just injury reduction.

So in terms of bicycle helmets, like I had kind of mentioned before, you know, they're they're thoroughly proven to reduce injuries.

Um you can see the statistics there, um, reducing head injuries by 48%, reducing serious head injuries by 60%.

I can attest to the fact I was on our bike patrol for several years.

We absolutely, as police officers can't operate our bikes within policy bike.

We have to wear a helmet all the time.

And the reason for that is, you know, you learn pretty quick in bike school when you crash that a couple things.

One is it doesn't take much to crack your your egg up here, you know, crack your head uh that can kill you, um just falling over the front of your handlebars.

You also learn that as safe as you can be, you know, when you're riding, especially down a public uh a crowded roadway, you glance over your left shoulder all night long to make sure nobody is driving next to you and you can safely make lane changes.

It only takes one time for you to glance over your left shoulder and think it's clear, and the next thing you know, you're just getting chewed up by a car.

I've done that before.

I've I've weaved into a lane thinking it's clear, and thank goodness the person wasn't on their phone, they honked and alerted me, but it happens.

In fact, we had uh an elderly driver hit an elderly bicyclist last night uh with severe injuries.

It just down at Valvesta and uh Chandler Heights, it happens when when we have bicycles out there on the roadway.

So to wear a helmet to Carter's point is uh often a lifesaver.

Helmet use by children.

So the police department relies on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHSA.

NHTSA published um material that's that's available on their website openly right now, and they published this survey conducted by the CDC.

And what they did is they asked parents in two different locations how often their children wear helmets.

So in communities where there's no helmet law at all, they found around 40% of the kids responded that they wear helmets, and about 35% said they they're certain their kids don't.

And then when they went to locations where there are helmet laws in place, they found much better numbers or you know, about 10% higher, about 50% of the parents in this survey indicated that their their children do wear helmets, and only 20% never do.

So it does seem to influence.

I looking at the literature, there's sort of three things that influence it.

One is you know, potentially a helmet law, right, as covered by this data, but they also talk about the fact that just passing the the ordinance doesn't really take it to the finish line.

There has to be an enforcement, an actual enforcement element, and there has to be a pretty heavy education element too.

If you get all three of those together, you're gonna move the percentage.

It won't ever be a hundred percent, but you're gonna move, you know, hopefully the needle, like they did uh as in the surveyed data here.

So, in terms of ordinance options, um, this is just kind of a matrix of all the different um the different ordinances around the county here, and at least in the East Valley on this first slide.

So, as you can see, Gilbert did have a um an ordinance for a short period of time.

It was repealed in 2001.

So there's not currently an ordinance in place, but there is some data from the previous uh ordinance that was in effect.

Um, Scottsdale, as you can see, uh, if you're under 18, you do have to wear a helmet if you're on a motorized skateboard or motorized play vehicle, very similar for Mesa and in terms of the motorized skateboard.

Chandler also very similar to the other cities.

Tempe is a little bit more, they've got a little bit more in their ordinance because it actually requires anybody under 18 to wear a helmet on a good old-fashioned bicycle, you know, a human-powered bicycle.

And then looking a little bit more broad, um, you see the city of Peoria there is kind of like the rest of the East Valley, but when you look at Tucson, um operators and passengers under 18 for a motorized bicycle.

So those class one, twos, and threes, uh, they do require a helmet if you're under 18.

Pima County uh is one of the is one with a um pretty stringent ordinance, uh, but it's clear and it's easy to follow.

If you're under 18, if you're riding a bicycle or if you're being towed by a bicycle, anything like that countywide, and you're under 18, you do have to wear a helmet.

And just as a reminder, in terms of state law, really the only thing state law touches in terms of helmets is motorcycles or motor-driven cycles or anything that falls in that category.

If you're under 18, you do have to wear a helmet.

So these are some options for council to consider, and they're not uh exclusive uh or exhaustive.

Really, you saw there's a litany of different decisions, you know, different uh ordinances out there in this state, but um the ones that I just kind of throw out there, I guess, for consideration.

One is to keep the existing status quo, it's always an option.

Anytime I come up with one of these ordinance presentations, you know, it's always an option.

Option two is requiring all persons, regardless of age, to wear a helmet when operating any form of bicycle on public property.

That would be sort of more extensive than anybody else in the state, but it's certainly an option.

Option three is requiring those riders under 18 years of age to wear a helmet when operating any form of bicycle on public property.

It's very similar to Tempe or Pima County, they're kind of in that realm.

Option four would be to require those riders under 18 years of age to wear a helmet when operating any electric bicycle, class one, two, or three, and there were um previously on that other slide agencies that have adopted that.

They feel like the e-bikes kind of you know present an even bigger challenge.

You can only hurt yourself on a traditional bicycle so much unless a vehicle is involved, and maybe there's some wisdom in uh choosing the class one, two, or three, but all of those are certainly options or anything else that the council um decides on.

In terms of future exploration, because I didn't want to uh just lay out those ordinances and not mention um many of you probably seen in the news that the city of Scottsdale outside of the requirements or not to wear a helmet, they're also addressing, and I think creatively so, uh, some other issues having to do with um e-bikes.

So they approved an ordinance in July that um it intends to enhance safety for e-bike users under 16 and provide additional education guidelines for those purchasing e-bikes.

Their code 17-77.1 basically says that the ordinance is really long, but if you if you cut that out and um kind of paraphrase it, no children under 16 are allowed to write a class three electronic bike or similar machines on city property, including electric motorcycles that can reach speeds of at least 21 miles per hour.

Also, e-motorcycles must be titled and registered.

Um you may be telling you may be asking yourself, well, isn't that already what state law says?

And that is that is what state law says.

I think if I had to guess, um their city council felt like we're going to just reaffirm as a council what state law says, but it I think it also built on the second part of their ordinance, and this one is aimed more with the distributors of the class, the different classes of uh bicycles.

So revice code 17-77.2 requires businesses that sell class three e-bikes or electric motorcycles to post a written notice in their stores stating that anyone under the age of 16 is prohibited from using them in their city.

Sellers must also give purchasers uh City of Scots still produce educational materials at the time of the sale.

So this is so parents, guardians, and other buyers have the correct information on the legal use of the devices before and after buying them, and then it's a petty offense as the outcome.

But um if you look at that yellow slide, it requires sellers to affix a permanent sticker in a prominent location to class three e-bikes for easy identification.

It also makes it illegal for the sticker to be removed, and again, it has uh the offenses and the fines.

So something creative, and I don't know if other uh municipalities are gonna follow suit, but it was worth mentioning because I know um I get emails sometimes from the community, and they'll ask about what Scottsdale's doing, and I figured uh discussing it at least would be beneficial.

Any questions?

Thank you, Mike.

Questions, counsel.

Council Mayor Bongi Vani.

Thank you, Mayor.

First, I want to um point out thank you to Carter.

Um, do we get emails from young adults and say, hey, I want to want to help, I want to do something.

So I got this email from Carter, you wanted uh to help with this e-bike thing, and I said we'll come up with some stats for us.

And I think the next day I had them in my email, so we forward them over to Chief, and I appreciate your help with this, Carter.

Um couple of questions.

Um is maybe I I saw it wrong, but isn't there an option five, which is all forms of bikes and the e-bikes?

Yes, uh, Mayor Anderson, Councilmember Bon Giovanni.

That's certainly yes, I think that was sort of trying to imply that.

Yeah, it would be bikes and e-bikes like Tempe as right now, currently.

Okay, because I saw option four or option three was just all forms of bike and then four specifically said e-bikes, so I thought maybe option five is together, right?

Yes.

Okay, yes, sir.

Um, and can I don't know if you can answer this, um, but can someone give us the history of the bike helmet ordinances in Gilbert?

Probably as good a person as any since I was here in 2001.

Um yeah, I I know this was briefly the um ordinance was briefly approved.

There was a discussion, if I understand correctly, uh from information from the clerk's office, the little bit of research that was done back then, was that the council at the time felt like they didn't want to legislate that issue, they wanted to leave it up to parents, and ultimately they agreed to uh you know vote on it and it was repealed.

Don't believe it was in effect for a very, really short period of time.

Okay, Mayor, Councilmember Mongiovan, if I could just add, I did some research on this a while back, and if I remember right, um Chief Angstad's correct, it was approved by council.

That ordinance was approved by council if I recall, either in May or June of 20 or 2001, and back then councils were elected and seated effective July 1st, because the elections were in the spring.

So a new council came in and it was immediately repealed within I think their first council action.

So the prior council approved it a month later, it was repealed under a new council with several new council members.

Okay.

Great.

And I also want to um thank Council Mayor Koprowski and all the work that she's done with uh bike helmets over the last year, year and a half.

But thanks, Chief.

Vice Mayor.

Uh I I I have a question.

I I've personally like the bike helmets under age 18.

But the big question is what about enforcement?

And and what does the department plan on doing to chase these kids because they can't catch them.

So I think that should be a big thought in here is how and what you're gonna do to enforce them.

Mayor Anderson and Councilmember Bookley, great question.

And my apologies for not bringing that up during this presentation.

Our goal, if uh council was inclined to pass an ordinance, would be to start off with a pretty heavy education component, um, trying to get the word out that we have a new ordinance, it's coming, let's get the bike helmets on.

Um, and then we would carry that forward out in the field when our officers go to enforce, make a stop.

You know, the first contact is kind of educational.

Hey, just so you know, we have a bike law, need to take it home.

Let's call the parents who haven't picked up.

But after, as we've learned with new ordinances, um, eventually we have to actually enforce it.

Um what I've seen when we look at some of the ordinances here in the valley, most of them are set up for civil traffic fines for these violations.

So you you get a ticket and it's a fine.

Um, it's not for most people, it's not the end of the world, but it's enough to kind of change behavior.

And a lot of it is um in looking at the studies.

If parents are uh aware of the law and their modeling wearing a helmet, their kids tend to as well, and you just kind of change culture over time.

But in terms of enforcement, there will come a point where we will have to actually write citations because if we don't, what we found is it becomes purely symbolic and the behavior doesn't change.

Yeah, that that was my concern that you know the kids could you guys get calls, but by the time you get there, they're gone, or you may have to chase them, and you know it's that's not ideal either, because then that just puts danger for the kids, you know, going faster than they should even should.

Um, I I think that is it for me.

Uh have you did and and I apologize for this because I know you had some numbers up earlier.

What were the statistics for um that came in that the parents or whoever answered the survey that actually want to have an ordinance for bike helmets?

Uh Councilmember Buck, that's a great question.

We when we did the transportation master plan in 2022, and we did a survey, we didn't ask the community that specific question.

We did uh ask a lot of questions related to bike safety, and certainly they sub they heavily support any efforts to make biking safer in Gilbert, but that specific question about helmets was not part of that um master plan.

So that's yeah, that's that's interesting because I I would have thought they would have wanted to say something.

Um I guess that's it for me then.

Thank you.

Council member Mongi Vani.

Thank you, Mayor.

I do uh to answer uh Vice Mayor's question.

I I did see uh a video on social media recently of the Gilbert PD using some drones to get these kids off the bikes, and that was pretty impressive.

I um I you know, kids were thought thinking they were getting away with it all, and then they turned around and another police car pulled right in front of them, and the drone just went down and took off.

So I was uh very happy to hear that.

I guess it was in the Morrison ranch area.

I'm not sure, but um there are there are ways to um to slowly change some of this behavior, Torreson.

I'm looking at this, and when I was a kid, nobody had a helmet.

We literally would jump cars, we were menaces.

Uh because they their menaces in a different way, they're going down sidewalks on e-bikes, and that's a big bigger problem, I think, than anything.

But what I'm seeing, if we're talking safety, these numbers are much higher than I would have anticipated.

It's much higher than let's say when I grew up.

Uh what is the role of cars in this as opposed the helmets not going to stop an accident.

Certainly, it helps from somebody being injured, and certainly I would hope somebody's parents had you know would encourage that.

But the other side of this is that cars more responsible for an accidents at these point at this point.

What why do we see such a rise in accidents?

Because safety is the the end goal.

If nobody's getting hit, nobody's really caring about a helmet.

So that's not gonna happen.

But what is contributing to this that brings this to an issue for us to even discuss?

Yeah, Mayor Anderson and Councilmember Torgenson, great question.

Um when we look at the data, especially for the serious uh collisions, we find all kinds of different answers.

Some of them are related to crossings, like I had spoken about before, where you're having people cross a path uh from one path to another, but they have to cross a major roadway.

We found that that's kind of one of those pinch points where if we can design it, engineer it correctly, it lowers the it makes it easier for the cars, quite frankly, because oftentimes you can't see if people are about to cross.

Um so we've made great headway in there in that area.

Um we've also worked on a lot of our intersections to try and make them as safe as we can.

I think the green bike lanes, a lot of those efforts have helped.

But any time as as evidence of the collision last night, we had a rider that's you know riding along the roadway, like I had explained.

Oftentimes they glance over their left shoulder to because they want to maneuver and make a left-hand turn.

Um they don't see a car.

Amazingly enough, sometimes you know, your brain just kind of blocks it out.

You don't see it, and you just wonder how'd I miss that?

But inevitably, until we um can engineer keeping bicycles completely away from vehicles.

I think we're always gonna kind of have collisions.

That's the unfortunate part.

So when you bring up will a helmet stop, always advocate to wear a helmet, but as we both know, if you get hit by a train, it doesn't matter if you're wearing a helmet, right?

I think that's kind of the point that we're both we agree on that.

I'm just wondering not to sit there and cast blame on whether it's a kid or a driver or whatever.

But what is driving the accidents to increase?

It's not the helmet or lack of helmet.

What is driving increase in accidents?

So we'll just go back real quick to the accidents, and I just want to make sure that I'm clear on it.

Um so in 2022, we had 50 uh vehicle bicycle collisions.

Uh in 2023, we had 65.

And this year, I believe we're down to 48, if my math is correct.

So they're actually down the vehicle and and um bicycle collisions, and I think a lot of that is attributed to all of these engineering efforts, the 250 million dollar investment that the citizens made.

But to I but I can't ignore the fact that with regard to these collisions, although they're going down, the juvenile ones are now outpacing the adult ones.

And I think that's just that's probably the more disturbing thing.

And I would attribute those, although we don't track them separately, I would attribute a lot of that to the proliferation of the e-bikes in the last couple years.

You know, they just go a little faster than you would normally pedal.

And you're the you as you can see, the kids are a little more reckless on them than they are on regular bicycles.

So you are council member Bon Giovanni.

Thanks, Mayor.

I I might be able to give some insight to this.

Um I ride about 75 miles a week, and me and my GoPro pretty much figure out I I have actually six near misses a week, pretty much.

I think that has to do with with drivers being preoccupied, getting ready to go to work, you know, need to get past that red light, and it's just it's driver behavior.

But on top of that, with the kids with these e-bikes who don't even have a driver's license yet and don't know the rules themselves.

I mean, I've been in intersections where I'm having to stare down with the with the driver trying to figure out am I right or are you right?

You know, do I go straight or do you turn on me?

But I mean I've had I've had numerous vehicles.

Um I'm in the I'm in the bike lane and I'm equal with them, and they pull in front of me to do a right-hand turn.

I don't know what's going through their minds.

Uh hopefully it isn't my body next time, but um it's it's it's just a matter of us paying attention and having enough consideration for each other.

Now, that may not have anything to do with bike helmet, but you know, if if I have a you know young child and and and uh uh a motorist doesn't see them or is too worried about getting to work on time, I'm gonna want that kid wearing a helmet.

And I think that's my responsibility as a parent, saying, you know, I told my kids if I see you without your helmet, your bike is mine, and you're not gonna get it back for quite a long time.

So thanks for the work you guys are doing.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mayor.

So there's a couple things that we're not talking about in terms of um behavior.

Any given day you drive through Morrison Ranch, you will see lots and lots of e-bikes and electric motorcycles.

Um are right at that 20 mile an hour threshold, but some are keeping pace and exceeding speed limit.

And what worries me is we have some very talented um wheelie riders through this town.

But at these speeds, you know, uh like Councilmember Target said, we were all reckless when we're young.

We're dumb, right?

We think with it we're unbreakable, and I'd ride a wheelie every chance I could get, but I'm also doing it at like five miles an hour, eight miles an hour, because trying to pedal while they do it.

Now, like you just yesterday, I watched three kids taking up the entire westbound lane of Morrison Ranch Parkway, slowing traffic down, stacking them up so that they could boost into a wheelie at a high speed.

And um that's dangerous.

Personally, I've witnessed a group of 10 to 12 riding wheelies uh going down uh going northbound on Higley in front of Morrison Ranch, doing like 40 miles an hour and cars behind them.

And I had a uh good citizen um email me uh video of kids doing the same thing, so a different incident.

How are you handling these types of behaviors?

Because these the speeds are way different now, which creates way more risk.

And then one last thing before you answer.

I I think drivers are conditioned until the last year or so bicycles coming, I'm about to pull out.

There's plenty of distance, I can make it.

But all of a sudden now these things they're boosting, and all of a sudden you don't have the time distance you once had, and and you know, there's there's risk there because we're not conditioned to we're we recognize slower speed bicycle I can go, and then all of a sudden, bam.

Can you speak to all of that, please?

Yes, so Mayor Anderson, Councilmember Bucklin.

On the first point, you're absolutely right.

We've had uh takeovers where we get a lot of e-bike and electric motorcycle uh kids together and they'll take over the whole street and they'll ride right down Higley Road.

Very tough for for us from an enforcement standpoint because uh what we don't want to do is chase them and create, you know, somebody ends up getting killed, you know, or officer or somebody else.

So um we have started to institute some tactics where uh we have a right now we are piloting a drone as a first responder program.

We have individual drones that are used by officers, but we have uh kind of a mother drone that takes off the the roof of our building.

That works really, really well.

We can't we know we can't catch them all, but if we can track a couple of them back home and we go knock on mom and dad's door and we have the we take the opportunity to educate, impound the device, um, and try to try to send the message that's been pretty effective because um what these kids don't like getting is tickets, what they really don't like is when we take their three thousand dollar e-bike away.

That's what I was when you were gonna say.

Yes, sir.

And on the second point, uh, Councilmember Buckland, you're you're 100% correct too.

On the judging distances, um we all judge when we make a left-hand turn or we're pulling into a driveway, we all sort of our brain knows how quickly something normally moves, and we sort of make our our movements based on that.

But unfortunately, what happens, especially with these e-bikes, and even more so with the e-motorcycles that go 70, 80 miles an hour.

Um, you see that little light, and you you figure out it's probably a bicycle, and you have no idea it's coming at you at 80 miles an hour, and that's what's causing some of the major collisions.

Um, and in those cases, uh, we deal with them appropriately.

If you're on a an e-motorcycle specifically, and you're operating a motor vehicle, you are fair game in terms of we it whether you're driving a Chevy Tahoe or you're riding a uh uh an electric motorcycle that was made overseas that has no place on our public streets, you're getting every bit of the law that you deserve.

So thank you.

Councilmember Kaproski, did you have to yes?

I have some comments.

Thank you for the presentation today and for the data that was shared.

I think that was really important, and it's unfortunate to see such a rapid rise in juveniles being involved in these crashes.

Um, and these serious injury crashes are resulting in these juveniles being in ICU and having long-term um disabilities.

I guess just for a like a little bit more perspective.

Um my family has regular bikes.

Me and my children can ride at the fastest, maybe 10 to 12 miles per hour on a regular bike.

My husband can maybe get up to 15 uh on our road, like in the road on a road bike.

Um, but these e-scooters, e-bikes going over 20 miles per hour, over 30 miles per hour.

I think the speed seems to be a really big issue.

They're riding on our sidewalks with people walking, they're riding on our shared use paths.

Is there any kind of um speed limit that is applicable to our sidewalks or shared use paths?

Mayor Anderson and Councilmember Kaprowski, the great question.

We don't have any um ordinances currently that would govern speed on a multi-use path.

There's nothing keeping the council from adopting speed limit on a given path.

Would have to be obviously enumerated in law.

Um some of the difficulties we have on on particularly on um multi-use paths is we often don't, as I understand it, I'm not from the engineering or development section, but when we discussed these in the past, a lot of them we don't fully own.

Some of them are partially owned by SRP, be a private owner for a couple feet, and that's the only um only complicated part of it, but certainly any on town property um we can govern speeds.

That would have to be a decision by council.

And it's my understanding that uh facilities like sidewalks and shared use paths aren't even designed based on a speed limit because e-bikes and these devices didn't even exist before.

And so this is kind of a new issue that we're entering into.

Um I would absolutely support an ordinance that would um require helmets for juveniles under 18 on e-bikes.

I think that the speed is a big issue.

I'd like to get maybe your thoughts and further study on differentiation between the class one, class two, class three, because I see that a lot of what's been happening is around the class three, but I think that there's even an issue necessarily like with class one and class two with the speeds up to twenty miles per hour.

And what else could we consider in terms of the education seems to be a big piece as well because bicyclists are supposed to follow the rules of the road like drivers, yet they get zero education and there's zero requirements or barriers to entry for these devices.

Um do you think we can work with our schools to get e-bike or bike safety or training courses um incorporated into these programs?

Like it seems like we need a multifaceted approach.

And what are your thoughts on that?

Councilmember Popreski, I couldn't agree with you more, and I know um Shane McCord's retiring soon, but I know Shane has expressed an interest in partnering with us and just being really in terms of education and potentially even the schools looking at um not allowing those devices on their property either.

Um a lot of kids do use these devices to get to schools, um, and some of them are just you know, quite frankly, outright illegal for them to ride, especially with the e-motorcycles.

Um so I think some of those partnerships, we have opportunities for partnerships in education.

I think um with regard to the retailers that sell these, um, you know, Scott still took the approach of requiring them to hand out educational materials at the time of sale.

Um that might be something that's worthwhile for the town, but I certainly um concur with all of your all the points you made council member Torres.

I think we have to look at the speed a little differently.

Like I just confirmed something because I'm listening to 20 miles an hour, and we exceeded that far on a on goose BMX bike on a town a city street, we're going 40 miles an hour.

I looked it up and it's like, yeah, I don't misremember I don't misremember this.

I was passing cars.

It was like a 14-year-old kid, 12-year-old kid.

So 20 miles an hour is nothing.

I mean, if on a normal bike, a regular not a 10-speed, not a race bike, BMX bike, which is all my friends and I had, we're going over 40 miles an hour.

So I'm not I'm not understanding why we're even having a discussion about 20.

It's because these things have to be going in excess of that.

They have to be going in excess of that.

Uh Mayor Anderson and Councilmember Torgeson, that that could be the case.

I know some of these devices, the class threes can go up to 28, and I've been told uh by a lot of the kids that uh you can modify them to make them go even faster.

I've ridden, I've driven next to uh kids on these type of devices that are going at least 40.

Yeah, so we see it from time to time.

Um but even to Councilmember Kaprowski's point, if you're going 20 on uh an e-bike and you're a little kid and you go into a wall, it's it's you know, I'm sure we would all agree it's it's gonna sting.

So um we have kids that do wipe out on paths and drive into canals and all kinds of stuff because they're kids and some of the injuries are pretty gruesome.

Other comments, questions.

No, we used to call these mopeds.

I used to ride a moped and uh gotten into plenty of accidents with it.

Um I'm personally supportive of the suggestions that Councilmember Kaprowski made.

I think that's we we ought to look into it a little bit more about helmets maybe speeding on the bike on the pass, the multi-use pass.

Councilmember uh Bonjivani.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I I fully believe in in more parenting and less government.

Unless the kids don't listen and the parents don't parent.

And now when a parent feels that their right of freedom to choose whether their kids should wear a helmet or not, overseeds the safety of their kid.

I think we have a problem with the society we're in.

But I'm I'm supportive of having us have further discussions on um helmets, not just for e-bikes, but for kids too.

Because you gotta, you know, you're gonna start them when they're three or four years old on a bike.

Not just wait for them to know an e-bike, because we want that to be a behavior uh kind of thing that they take when they're young.

And I'm also supportive looking at some of the things that Scottsdale is doing with some of the retailers, especially of these um the motorcycle ones.

And I mean, if I'm a parent and I go in and I see this cool little motorcycle thing, I might be like, hey, that maybe my kid might like that.

But if I knew that they legally should have a license and registration and insurance, um that might that would stop me from making that purchase.

So they don't can't really blame too much if they don't know that that's there.

I kind of like what Scottsdale did, and I'm open to listening to all the options on the dais um in a future date.

Does that give you a little bit of direction?

It does, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

Our second item is the presentation on utility bills, water consumption, revenue collections, and updates on key water related projects.

Evening, Mayor, members of council.

I'm Rebecca Hamill, I'm the water manager for the town of Gilbert, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight and talking to you about water revenue rates updates uh as well as a number of other topics.

Um we have quite a number, uh quite a list of topics to cover tonight.

Um if there are questions during the present presentation, I'd appreciate just holding them to the end because I believe I may address some of your um your talking points during the course of this presentation.

So starting off by um focusing on recognizing the importance of water and the services that we provide to our residents and our businesses in Gilbert.

Water is one of the foundational public services that provide the quality of life we have all come to know and love in Gilbert.

It's our water team's top priority to provide clean, safe drinking water and uninterrupted service to all of the residents and businesses in Gilbert.

When we set water rates and when we balance the annual budget, we do so with three main goals in mind.

The first is to cover the operating costs of the division to keep the water flowing, to keep the treatment plants running, to keep the pressure up, and customers having uninterrupted service.

The second is to fund projects that match our critical priorities, things like water treatment, things like water resources.

Uh and the third is to plan for the future and set up the fund to start executing on repair and replacement projects that have been deferred.

Talking a little bit more about our first goal, covering operating costs.

Um, as all of you are aware, Arizona and Gilbert are facing uncertainty in water resources, and providing a secure supply of a secure water supply is a top priority for our department.

We have a diverse and resilient water resource portfolio consisting of surface water, reclaimed water, and groundwater.

Since June of 2022, Gilbert's been in stage one of our local reduction management plan, which aims to raise community awareness around water due to the declining conditions on the Colorado River system.

We're dedicated to our water resilience resiliency efforts and do so by employing a multi-pronged strategy to address the Colorado River reductions through resilience measures, sustainable long-term walk wall long-term water portfolio management and enhancing water conservation activities.

One of the main impacts on the budget is these increasing water resources costs.

And we have seen since 2020 a 73% increase in the per.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't advance the slide.

Apologies.

This is the slide I'm speaking to now.

We've seen since 2020 a 73% increase in the per acre foot cost of CAP water, and we continue to see an increase in the percentage of the water resources as a component of the overall water budget.

We also see volatility in the markets that lead to increased chemical and electrical costs to the tune of $600,000 this fiscal year.

Those are due to general price pressures, inflation, local competition with other large large and regional projects, ongoing supply chain delays, particularly when it comes to electrical equipment.

We see tariff and trade uncertainty with international markets, all which lead to volatility and increased costs.

And although these have stabilized since the COVID-19 pandemic, they continue to be a factor.

So moving on to goal two, funding our critical priorities.

In orange, I want to highlight a few changes that have occurred since the previous fiscal year's budget.

We now have moved far enough in our well drilling program where we're able to determine water quality for our well sites and have found that four of the seven wells either require on-site treatment or transmission or blending, and that comes at an increased cost.

And so to soften the impact of that on the fund and to balance the five-year budget, we have had to defer pipeline replacements not associated with streets projects and some of the system connectivity projects recommended by the Integrated Water Resources Master Plan to the tune of 151 million dollars that have been deferred outside of the five-year plan.

These are still necessary projects, they're just not our critical priorities right now.

One of our critical priorities is the Northwater Treatment Plant Reconstruction Project.

And so I'd like to give a few updates on this project and the milestones that we've met so far.

When this project is completed, the Northwater Treatment Plant will supply 70% of Gilbert's water supply.

It's estimated to last more than 50 years, serving Gilbert for generations to come.

It'll serve 250,000 residents and be able to provide the system with 60 million gallons per day of production capacity.

Some really exciting milestones on the project include the 50% construction completion milestone.

We have a celebration coming in October to recognize the efforts of the project team and this tremendous milestone.

We also have less than 300 days until the startup of the new treatment complex and less than 500 days before primary treatment transitions over to the new facility in the old facility comes offline.

One of the other main priorities of the water fund right now is the well program.

So we have seven wells within the program and one well which was in progress outside of the program, which are being drilled in central and southern Gilbert in order to in order to improve our water resiliency and be able to access our stored groundwater credits.

Now that we've drilled these wells, we're able to determine the water quality and we know that four of them require treatment or blending.

Here's a timeline for these projects because we now understand that some of them need additional infrastructure.

We have a phased timeline for them.

And so with the green check marks, we can see the completion of those sites, and we'll be celebrating the first completion of site 34 in the first quarter of 2026.

We'll see two more sites coming online in the second quarter of 26, two more sites coming online in the third quarter of 26, and then the remaining two sites coming on in quarter four of 2026 and quarter one of 2027.

Now that we've covered the critical priorities for the water fund, I want to talk a little bit about the financial update.

And so here I'd like to speak to what goes into a utility bill.

We can see the breakdown on this slide of an average 8,000 gallon per month utility bill.

The bill is typically made up of rates and fees for four lines of service, including water, sewer, solid waste, recycling, and environmental compliance.

We've refer to each of these four lines of service as enterprise funds, which means that each fund operates as a self-sustaining business entity within the town.

Revenue collected for each service is only used to fund that service.

And this is written into Gilbert's fiscal policy in the town code that each enterprise fund must operate independently and fund its own activities.

User fees for these enterprises' funds are set to a level to recover the cost of operations, overhead, debt service, repair and replacement.

And so to summarize what your water rates do and do not pay for.

Your water rates do pay for the resource cost, the treatment cost, water system maintenance, water system repair and replacement.

They do not pay for new developments.

We collect system development fees, which cover the cost for additional water resources or additional water resources infrastructure in order to supply those resources to those new developments.

Water rates do not pay for streets projects, they do not pay for quality of life projects, and they do not pay for any other town services.

And so this may be a familiar slide for you all, but I wanted to go back briefly and speak to the history of water rates.

And so we see here that we went eight years from a period of 2010 to 2017 without a water rate increase.

And we are now in the cycle of evaluating each line of service rate every two years, alternating.

So we do two lines of service each year.

And this year we are in the cycle of evaluating the water rate and the solid waste recycling rate.

And this aligns us with industry best practice to review rates every two years.

Looking back now at the history of the water rate adjustments, I'm showing here a graph of the actual water user fees for an 8,000 gallon per month user shown in blue, compared to a what if scenario of a utility bill with that same consump with the same consumption that experienced a 5% annual increase over the same time period.

5% is less than the average 6% annual justice we see adjustment we see in other utilities, but we'll use it for this scenario.

Looking first at the actual water rates, so the blue line, we start with a water bill of 1471 and finish with a water bill of 5925, collecting $6,149 over the 20-year time period.

If we compare this to the simulation, the what if scenario, which experienced smaller, consistent increases over the same time period, the orange graph starts with the same water bill of 1471 a month and finishes with a water bill of 3925, having collected $6,339 over the same period.

So what we can learn from these two examples is that is that smaller, consistent increases generated more revenue for the fund and ended with a lower final bill at the end of 20 years.

This also means that ratepayers have more money in their pocket today than they would have had over time, but we need to catch up on the missed funding.

At the time, we didn't know about unprecedented unprecedented shortages that we're now facing on the Colorado River or record breaking inflation following the COVID-19 pandemic that are now impacting the fund.

What we do know is that we've put off rate increases for as long as possible, and continuing continuing with the planned increase is essential for funding the operation of the water department and paying for critical priorities in the water system.

And so here's a reminder that in February of 2024, council adopted the cash bond gradual option.

This was a three-year implementation where council adopted the first two years of the implementation with an understanding we would come back and reevaluate for the third year.

So we experienced a 50% rate increase on April of 2024, 25% rate increase of April of 25, and the council was presented with an anticipated rate increase of 25% April of 2026.

This is where we are now.

We are working with our rate consultant to determine that that 25% is the proper number for the fund.

This option provided the fund with sufficient revenue for critical capital projects, ongoing $5 million capacity in the operating fund, and ongoing $66 million capacity in the repair and replacement fund starting in fiscal year 29.

This is a summary of the next steps that we'll be looking forward to in the rate setting process.

So we presented this first to council in February of 2025 at the financial retreat.

We're here in the summer of 2025 undergoing the rate study, and we'll be reaching out to HOAs regarding potential rate increases once we understand a little bit more from our rate consultant.

In the fall, we'll be giving presentations to the Public Works Advisory Board and presenting the options to council at the fall retreat, followed by asking for a notice of intent for council and publishing the final rate study.

In the winter, we will focus on community outreach, holding two open houses, and bring the rates back to council in February of 2026 for consideration to be implemented April of 2026.

A couple of additional things I want to highlight that are different this year that we're asking of our rate consultant.

The first of which is a water resource recovery rate or water resource recovery fee.

We're asking our consultant to take a look at the properties, the homeowners and residents in Gilbert that receive Gilbert water but do not participate in Gilbert sewer because we do not receive any flows back from them to be treated, recharged, and later used for groundwater storage credits.

The other thing that is different from this rate cycle is we're bringing a solid waste and recycling community survey to the public to evaluate our service offerings.

Next, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the water fund and how prior increases to the revenue compared to what we predicted in the 2023 rate study and the 2026 budget.

So the key takeaway from this table on the upper right shows that the current plan in the five year budget is matching the 2023 rate study.

We've balanced the budget with 50, 25, 25 as was originally brought before council.

On this lower table, we're taking a look at actual revenues that are in actual revenues as compared to the 2023 rate study.

And we can see that in 2024 we're within 4%.

That may seem like a lot, but it's within the amount of variability we would expect in these numbers and accounts for different customer behaviors or different weather patterns over the year.

Moving on to 2025, we can see that we are within 1.6% of our five-year plan from 2026, which has been updated with the new numbers and is more current than the 2023 rate study.

And we're seeing that as we move through the five years as we reach fiscal year 28, those two models are aligning very closely.

So we expect a certain amount of variability in these numbers, but on the whole, we are right on target for the end of fiscal year 28.

Next, I want to talk about the replacement fund.

The graph here is showing the projected inflow, outflow, and ending balance of the repair and replacement fund.

This cash bond gradual option increased the contribution to the repair and replacement fund starting in 2030, which puts us in a really strong position to begin tackling that backlog of project that had been deferred outside of the five year window.

With this plan, we can stay ahead of the curve when it comes to our aging critical infrastructure in the water system.

Next, I'm going to transition and talk a little bit about how our community uses their water.

So on this slide, we can see water consumption by customer class.

We have our single family residential, commercial, multifamily, school, and municipal users, and we can see that single family residential is by far the largest user of water in Gilbert.

Looking a little bit more closely at the residential water use, here we're showing monthly water use per acre for different densities.

So moving from the left lowest density to the right highest density.

You can see that the density, as the density of development increases, the water use per acre also increases, indicating a higher intensity of water use for multifamily and cluster home developments.

This water use is four times higher per acre for the highest rate density versus the lowest density, and we see a lower water use per acre in the very lowest density because often there's a single home on multiple acres in that zoning category.

On the other side of the coin, we're looking at indoor and outdoor residential water use for those same different zoning scenarios.

What we can tell from this information is that there's 20 times more water used per dwelling unit, so not per acre anymore, but per dwelling unit in the lowest density versus the highest density.

And we also see the largest outdoor use in those highest densities.

On average, Gilbert is using between 50 and 70% of their water use outdoors, and that's important to us because all of the water that is recovered is treated and then either used directly or recharged into the aquifer for groundwater storage credits.

And that's an important part of our water portfolio.

So even though we see the highest intensity per acre for large or for high density, we see the most percent recovery when it comes to indoor versus outdoor water use.

Okay, on this graph, we're looking at the percentage of residential users in each tier of water use.

So we have tiers 0 to 8,000 gallons, 9 to 20,000 gallons, 21 to 30,000 gallons, 31 to 50,000 gallons, and above 50,000 gallons.

And we see the percentage of residential accounts and then their corresponding percent of the water used, both in the residential portion of that pie chart and for the total pie chart.

And so the majority of our customers, 57% of our residential water users are using between zero and eight thousand gallons per month.

And that makes up 23% of the residential supply or 15% of the total water supplied to Gilbert.

Our water rates followed a tiered rate structure, meaning that in higher the higher tiers cost more than water in the lower tiers.

And this is done for two reasons.

The first is to keep water use for essential living, things like drinking and bathing and cooking affordable for all residents.

And the second is to encourage water conservation and minimize outdoor water use.

Looking at the other end of the graph, we see we have 1% of the residential users, less than a thousand homes, using more than 50,000 gallons per month.

And that makes up 11% of the residential water supply, or 7% of the total water supply to the town.

Now I've talked a lot about the residential water use, and the main focus of our water conservation efforts is on outdoor water use.

So we have on this slide some examples available to the community and some of the policies put in place for water resiliency focusing on outdoor water use.

We offer water efficiency checkups, high and continuous consumption alerts, school education, water conservation rebates for smart irrigation controllers, residential grass removal, and non-residential grass removal, and then adult workshops.

We can see the impact of those efforts in 2024.

The team has provided 183 grass removal rebates, 297 smart irrigation controller rebates.

They've completed 646 water efficiency checkups, and have saved 52 million gallons of water by alerting customers on their continuous consumption.

Now we realize that many customers are still struggling with increases to their utility bill, and it's important to us that Gilbert's water services remain affordable.

Recently, the ASU Kyle Center for Water Policy released a fantastic report on top water affordability.

In this report, the study evaluates the household burden of water services in communities in Arizona and nationwide.

The report calculates a household burden as the percentage of monthly income of the 20th percentile in a community, and a value less than 2% is considered affordable.

So we can see on the table here that Arizona's average is 1.42% of the monthly income.

The national average is 1.44% of the monthly income of that 20th percentile, and Gilbert is sitting at 0.87 for the household burden.

Looking at the impacts of our water bills regionally, we can see the average June bill by zip codes with average water bills ranging from 870 or 8107 per month in 85234 to 7231 per month in 85296.

This is the water portion only of the bill.

Even though Gilbert's water meets the definition of affordability, we realize many customers in Gilbert are still struggling to keep up with rising costs.

And so we offer a utility bill assistance program for residents making up to 120% of the area median income, which falls in at 79,140 for a single person income, or any residents receiving assistance from other programs are automatically eligible.

The discount covers $30 per month towards the utility bill, and to date we have 408 clients enrolled and have issued over 32,000 in discounts.

As we evaluate utility rate increases, we will continue to monitor and adjust this program to provide assistance to those residents who need it most.

Thank you, Rebecca.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't advance the slide.

Councilmember Mongi Voney.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Rebecca, I have two master's degrees, and this was written like it was PhD levels.

So pretend I'm fifth grader.

Absolutely.

Why is our water bill so much higher than Queen Creek and Chandler?

One sentence, fifth grade, tell me why.

Our water bill funds the costs required to operate the water utility and to maintain our infrastructure.

And Gilbert stakes a proactive approach towardstaining our infrastructure.

Because we are building a water treatment plant, correct?

We are reconstructing the Northwater Treatment Plant.

And we're also saving money for future repairs.

Which, if I'm correct in that many years of nothingness that happened, where your scenario was what if it really was what didn't?

If we would have raised the rates a small percentage throughout that white period of time where nothing happened, we'd be in the situation we are in now.

Based on, let me find this slide.

Based on the math in this slide, we ran a what if scenario if we did a 5% adjustment every year over the same period as the actual water rates?

And so we start at the same place, 1471 per month for the water portion of the bill, and we finish with a higher water bill for our actual water rates with more revenue collected for the what if scenario, the 5% annual increase.

Thank you.

No, I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you don't know this, you can phone a friend.

I'm just answering questions that I'm getting over and over and over and over again.

Sure.

Residents are saying why am I paying for that new apartment complex?

Can you tell me how much developers pay for the water?

Uh maybe in a system development fee per house and per apartment.

Does someone have that information?

I'm gonna have to phone a friend.

You can phone a couple of friends if you need to.

Kelly will know.

Bring Kelly up.

Mayor, Councilmember Bon Giovanni, I don't have it off the top of my head, but we can look it up and provide that to you.

It's just not one of the numbers I keep handy.

Okay.

Well, everyone else is talking, I think I have that number, so I'll I can I can look that up.

Um I'll have more.

Um that's moving on.

Thank you.

Council member Torres.

I as we're looking at the whole bill, just not water, suit we have sewer uh waste, et cetera.

This there have been people that are not receiving what we would have considered when we discussed it, $29.72 a month on a sewer.

All of a sudden, with another water increase and the sewer increase, so don't that's apply into three quarter inch uhins, and they're tying this sewer, and it's sixty dollars or something for one inch.

I don't remember the recall the number.

Some people are seeing some extremely high increases.

Not $30 a month, not $30 plus seven per you know, 20% of the water, but they're seeing large numbers.

How is this occurring?

Because when we looked at the average, what the average person was using, we were very cognizant of what we were doing.

But we are seeing some things, whether you want to call them unintended consequences or unanticipated.

But those people, they're hurting, they're getting some large bills.

What is it that we can do to deal with that to be able to just deal with the people that are getting unduly hit really hard?

Mayor, Councilmember Torreson, thank you for the question.

Um I would advise those residents to reach out to us and utilize our water conservation programs.

Our team is more than happy to come out and do water efficiency checkups, set up a landscape budget, and help them get their outdoor water use under control.

Keep in mind we are in the summer months.

Water use tends to be higher in the summer months, and so we would expect to see a little bit more of an increase in those higher water tiers, those higher water users.

Um, but we are more than happy to take a look at those individual situations and see what assistance we can provide to customers.

Councilmember Lyons.

Um Rebecca, you may not have the answer to this, but um, and Leah, you may have to help with this.

There were two zip codes that we looked at the other day that I didn't see in your presentation that had an average water bill increase of like um they were yeah, they're not on here, but their bills were 1100 and 1200.

Was that right?

298.

It was a 298.

I thought there was another one.

Oh, there's another one, yeah.

Yeah.

With 30 people in it.

Yeah, that had 30 people in it.

Um, and the uh average rate increase was like 1100 or 1200 bucks.

I think Hawkins coming up, um, Mayor, Councilmember Lyons.

We have this is specific to single family residential consumption and um water bills.

Data that we shared previously in the meeting we had with you was the average water bill for all customer classes, um, and included some areas that were um that then didn't end up having any residential customers in it.

And Hawkins has some breakdown on that.

Okay.

Maybe yes, I do.

Um, so those are again some of those areas on the edges of Gilbert that have just due to water distribution needs, there are people right on the borders that might be in a different zip code than these traditional ones, and they're very small.

I did look more closely at the one that we looked at, and it was essentially a large multifamily complex was the key driver in that ones in that one zip code.

All right, because I know I got two emails today from folks that were telling me their water bill is now more expensive than their electoral, and we're in summertime.

And I was surprised because I didn't, and they sent me the numbers they were looking at one bill was 400 and some change, and the other one was over 600.

So, and I don't see anything like that in here.

And I know the the breakdown we saw the other day did show average that would indicate where the high usage was coming from.

Yeah and I think what Rebecca showed also got to that one percent of our customers are using a uh a lot of water and when you start looking at the that volume of water there are additional costs that go with that and so as as those tiers are set and and as Rebecca can can articulate more there are additional capital needs the water resource leases that are tens of millions of dollars to in order to acquire enough resources to provide the water for different levels of water use the pipe size has to be different in certain areas when demand is so much higher than what we see in some other areas and so yes those tiers have the things that that the Rebecca mentioned they also get to the true cost of delivering that volume of water and so we do have some residents and customers that have experienced larger increases they are also using multiples of water average home in Gilbert are is using and have additional demands on the system for that so let me ask you this because these numbers that I'm seeing here are not the numbers you guys showed us the other day so that surprised me and the other thing that I know that's in here I saw it but wasn't as clear was the fact that we had like 12 percent of the residents using 40 percent of the town's consumption.

I didn't I saw it in here but it was not as clear and we blew through that it did am I correct in that number.

Correct yes Mayor Councilmember Lyons numbers that are broken out here by zip code now are specifically single family residential numbers that we shared with you last week that were the 200 range per zip code were all customer classes.

So that included an averaged out the multifamily users the large commercial users and the single family residential that was the average bill across the entire zip code of all customers including schools and and users this is just family residential so this would be reflective of um your your average neighbor that would be if they had a 400 water bill their their average neighborhood bill is somewhere in the 70 to 80 dollar range.

But if I'm understanding you correctly then like the neighborhood near me which is similar to White Fence Farms but they can have a cow or like an acre of land they got a cow they may flood irrigate or whatever that's excluded from these numbers you gave us is that what I'm understanding?

Correct the flood irrigation would be excluded correct so we don't have a complete picture in this slide that you showed us what the rates are per usage.

Because all I'm seeing is single family residential correct okay um this is the um usage graph that we showed we had we broke it out into just absolute highest tier that was one that was requested as well is not actually a tier that we have it was just a request you know how many people are using more than 5000 gallons of water a month.

Right.

So this is the one where you say we say eighty-nine percent of our residents are using less than 2000 gallons a month and then the other 11% of our customers are using more than 2000 gallons a month and are using what is that 40 percent of our residential water consumption okay um the other thing that we we did discuss and I and if you can go to the slide this shows the rate increases over the last 20 years I think it was 20 years in there.

All right right there go back okay so if I understand this correctly but I do want to point this out out of uh over a 15 year period from 2010 to 25 we've had three rate increases over that period of time correct from which time period again from 2010 to 25.

So the last 15 years we've only had three rate increases is that correct in water we've had four had one in 2018 22, 23 and 24 or 24 and 25.

We've had four okay but the one chart you showed illustrated if we had had a gradual increase over time it would have we've been in a lot better position.

Now my question is was there was there water delivery cost increases during these years we didn't do rate increases kind of going out.

Councilmember Lines there were and that's where you see the cost for water becoming a larger percentage of our total water operating um budget is we saw those increases and then we were just offsetting that by not doing other things in order to artificially keep the rates lower than they really should have been.

Right so if we had if we had pegged the the rate of delivering water to the actually the cost delivering the water we wouldn't be where we're at right now that fair to say definitely would have helped make up the difference.

Is that fair to say?

Definitely would have helped make up the difference.

Is that what's illustrated in that slide you showed that if it had been increased by percent per year?

Is that what that's trying to illustrate?

Yes, what's that what that slide was trying to show is that if we had just increased five percent per year, our current water bill would be lower, but we would have collected more revenue over the last 15 years than where we're at right now.

Okay.

That's all we have for now.

So member Torgison.

One thing to note is that we've got we've had some failures that are unanticipated, you know, pipe failures, uh problems with the Northwater Treatment Plan, that even with this, there may be other issues to deal with.

So granted, there should have been an increase a cost of living per se increase uh for years rather than off putting maintenance and off putting uh construction, but we had councils that uh wanted to save that five percent rather than preserve our infrastructure.

One of the questions I have though is we have HOAs are taking a pounding.

I'm looking at the fees for my HOA, they're double what they were five years ago.

It's incredible.

We don't have a pool, we don't have a recenter, we have some grassy areas.

And I feel we're using the uh potable water, and that seems to be a problem with a lot of the areas.

The uh was it trilogy uses 45 million gallons of water a year for that?

I believe is the number as we try to we're dialing friends.

I think we're both wanting a friend.

I'm I'm I'm saying that because I'm really sure it's 45 million gallons of water.

What can we do to help these HOAs offset because they're using water at a higher rate than if they were using treated water?

How can we get the point because that's affecting people also?

They're not just paying it here on their own bill, they're paying it on their HOA bill.

And some of these HOAs didn't weren't smart about the way they were built.

How do how do we get to help them?

How do we encourage that?

Is there something to do to turn that using a recycled water?

You went you went a different direction than I that I anticipated at the very end there.

Let me let me make this point and then I'll uh speak to the recycled water uh topic.

So HOAs, the they have resources available to them just like our single family residential customers.

We're always willing to have our water conservation team provide education um for landscape water use, provide water budgets for HOAs, and we've expanded the non-residential grass removal rebate program um to have a a larger financial impact and make it more appealing to HOAs to remove non-functional turf.

Uh as far as the water, the reclaimed water question, that would be a conversation.

Oh, there's Lauren.

Great.

We're gonna phone a friend here.

Thank you.

Good evening in Mayor and Council.

Um so I don't have the numbers for trilogy right in front of me, but um the conversation about switching from potable to reclaimed.

Um switching sources doesn't really help us from a water resources scenario because it's all one water, we're using that water that's not going to HOAs right now or to businesses to recharge at our riparian preserve south recharge site.

So um although conversion would offset what's going there and allow more water from the potable side, in total, we're not gaining water, right?

The net the same.

Um the other consideration is when an HOA desires to use reclaimed water, they have to build all the infrastructure to get that reclaimed water to the neighborhood.

There's a large capital investment that's needed to um bring that water supply to the neighborhood.

Also, our reclaim system is a lower pressure system than our potable system.

So it can't be just connected directly to irrigation system and sprinklers, you have to install um storage.

So much like Morrison Ranch has um lakes that are for storage because they're on reclaimed water and how they were initially built.

Um and the developer paid for all of that, right, to get that to the neighborhood.

But now um if a neighborhood's already established, you have to build that pipeline, build the storage, build the pump station, HOA has to manage that now and pay yes, reclaimed water rates, but also pay for the infrastructure maintain on top of that.

AHOA has to manage that now and pay yes, reclaimed water rates, but also pay for the infrastructure maintain on top of that.

So although the water rate will be less because the reclaimed water is less, there's also the maintenance of the infrastructure going forward.

And the ROI on doing all that investment is probably 15 to 20 years.

So although they may um eventually see a benefit in making a switch, that's gonna be a very large capital investment.

The HOA is gonna have to make and charge fees for to coop those costs.

So there's a lot of different factors at play when it comes to switching sources.

Unpossible.

We've had one community switch, but they had the pipeline right in front of the neighborhood.

Um so the cost was a lot less.

Um so there's just a lot going on when it comes to considering what source you use for landscape irrigation.

So I know I probably said way too many details.

Hopefully that's helpful, but um essentially we just recommend really looking at the outdoor water use, try to participate in our water conservation programs, the landscape water budget program, make sure you're watering to budget for the HOAs, just much like we rep uh recommend to the residents.

And um if if that's not enough, we also have our uh grass removal rebate, um, which you can uh look into to remove specifically non-functional turf grass that's not being used for play in the community to consider um as well to reduce water use that the HOA is using.

So a lot of details there.

Hopefully that was helpful.

Uh it was, but hopefully hopefully there's a few more people along that supply, other than just one that came to you and did it.

But there's we have any way to reach out to some of these HAs.

If you've ever been involved in an HOA, trust me.

Most of the time you're dealing with an ego, you're not dealing with a business person.

Uh we reach out some people, and uh as a town, we're gonna have to redo our standards because we require a certain amount of grass, require a certain amount of bushes, require a certain amount of trees.

And if we're asking people to reduce that, we've got to give them a break somehow.

We're gonna have to take a look at what the standards are that we're trying to enforce and what those agreements are.

Is there any intent on doing that?

Can it be done?

Is it done from your department or is it done from up here where we start talking about looking at how to save people money?

Because this is an awful lot of money that some people are paying.

And it's not your fault, you didn't write it that way.

You know, saying you're just telling me the ugly truth.

But I do want to try and get it so we can kind of it's contained more that we don't have unrealistic expectations of certain areas, and if we can help that we're reaching out to these HOAs and saying, not just waiting for them to come to us, but going to them saying, hey, we're seeing this much use, we're gonna try and help take the bill down.

Let's look at this and see if we can proactively get to that rather than reactively get to it or get to it through us because we get the dozens of calls of my bills up and my baby can't eat today.

So do there's something proactive we can do now.

Yes, uh, mayor and council member Torgeson.

Um our count our conservation team is doing outreach constantly, um and we've been doing more outreach to our HOAs and making them know we're available to come out to speak at board uh meetings.

I don't how many we've done this year, but we've seen an uptick in how many have requested a presentation on our programs, and we've also had many new neighborhoods uh join our landscape water budget program or waterwise Gilbert.

So we're seeing more engagement on that front.

Um that's more on your point of helping them manage what they already have in place.

Um and then as far as from our conservation code, we back in 2021, we did update the code so that even if you're using reclaimed water, um you're not allowed to have as many high water use plants if you're on reclaimed water.

Um historically, we've always limited how many how much basically put a cap on how much of percentage of your landscape could be high water use plants and grass.

Um, and so that incentivizes the installation of low water use plants and those that are on the ADWR low water use plant list, but we can always investigate um more conservation code updates to further restrict that and have more desert landscaping.

I would like that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bon Giovanni.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, I think I have some numbers, but I may be wrong.

They might be before we raised system development fees.

So tell you if I sound way wrong, save me, okay.

Um this goes back to the question that I get from residents all the time.

Are are we paying for new neighborhoods?

Why are we paying for apartments?

And I just for the record and help me but make an official record if you could.

Um developers are paying between water and wastewater $14,000 per home that they build and $148 per square foot per apartment.

If that's close, I just want to bring out the point that they're paying these fees prior to anyone moving in and prior to the resident moving in or the resident moving into the apartment pays their first water bill.

Am I correct?

The developers do pay those bees bees before they move in so we can create the infrastructure.

And you're right, it's uh $14,100.

That's just the water and water resources portion.

It doesn't even include the wastewater.

Okay.

That's for a three quarter inch water.

So is it safe to assume that developers are paying their fair share?

Is how the system development is designed in it strictly uh highly regulated under state statutes so they pay their share.

Okay, so I had a meeting with my neighborhood, and um it's in the 85298.

And probably 16 of the people that were there are paying I'm basing this off of total utility bills, because we in our meeting, my name my zip code was 198 dollar average, and my neighbors are paying 1100, 1,200 uh per month for utilities, mainly water.

Um I'm not paying anywhere near that.

I have a huge pool and a huge pond.

Um can you tell me what some of the things that my neighbors and other people who are paying more than their zip code average that's showing here?

I'm hearing $400 a month, $500, $600.

What can they do?

Um before I mean, what can they do to help lower that bill that the town can help them with?

Mayor Councilmember Bongi Vani, thank you for the question.

Um there are two things that go into the water portion of the utility bill.

It's your meter base fee, which increases with the size of the meter.

As you have a larger meter, that base fee goes up because it costs more to operate.

Yeah, but they can't they can't control they can't control what meter size.

Yeah, what can they do?

What I'm getting into is they then it's the consumption, and that is the part that we have more control over.

And so with me, $1,200 a month is an incredibly high water user.

I would make sure they didn't have any leaks and that they were watering appropriately.

Okay, so help me here.

So my I had a water bill one month of $850.

I freaked out.

I called the town, they came down and they came down, not just because I'm a council member, but they came down because I called them.

And um they said I had some leaks going on, so I called a professional and found out that I had leaks and I didn't have an ego enough to say no, I don't have leaks.

I had plenty of leaks, and got the bill down to 250 dollars a month from $850 a month.

So I what I'm trying to get at is that we have if if 12% of this town is using 40% of the water, they're not growing crops in their backyard, right?

I would assume not.

Yeah, I haven't either in my backyard is a freaking jungle.

I don't know if you ever see it.

It's a it's a jungle.

There are things that we can do rather than just get on social media and complain about our water bill.

And I I hope that everyone goes through these things that we that they can do.

They can call the town, see if there's leaks, see if there's leaks going on, fix those leaks, get to a point where the water bill is manageable.

Because when I see 10 times use of the average person average water in my in my zip code, or any of these zip codes up here, um that's a problem that we have to handle.

It's our responsibility as land as homeowners to figure out why it's that that why it's that high.

Um I I had leaks to a point where I think it was um gosh, I think it was like 5 15 gallons a minute or something like that, and it was huge.

Surprised I didn't have a sinkhole, right?

But there's things that all of us can do to conserve water.

And I've had questions about the tiered water fees.

Why is it so expensive for people using more water per thousand gallons than it is for people using less water?

And maybe I'm wrong, but that's to me that's called responsibility.

And if we wanted to, because they said to me, why don't we just charge one fee for per gallon so everyone pays the same amount?

That isn't fair to the people who are conserving water, those people who are doing it right, those people that aren't using 80,000 gallons a month.

Um I don't mean to go off right now, but this has just been something that we all have heard every single day for the last year and a half.

And personally, I want to see more self, you know, responsibility.

And I tell people all the time find out if you have leaks, adjust your water to the to the town's recommended water for your for your grass and for your plants.

And if your water bill is still high after you do all that, give us a call.

But I think we need to take some responsibility.

Um we're paying for something that basically was ignored for many years, and that's a shame.

And my hope is that after the five years when this thing is uh completed, if any of us are up here still, my hope is that water bill goes down.

I can tell that's one thing I'm gonna definitely do if I'm still sitting here.

But I want to make sure that residents know that there's things that they can do rather than just going on social media and attacking the water bill.

I think I've had enough, so sorry.

I may add one thing.

Uh part of the transition to our new utility billing system is to provide customers with more data and more access than ever to their water usage, so they are empowered to make those changes and see what their water use is so they can understand how to fix it.

Thank you.

Council member Torreson.

First, poker Mountain Dew.

Okay, that answered that.

The uh one thing that would probably be great if you guys could do is outreach some of the higher water users.

Uh and what he had said about calling the town, it's again not because I was a council person.

Guy came out and started looking, trying to figure out oh, you have a leak.

Well, no, you don't have a leak.

He starts going through it.

My house had been vandalized, and it was a $1,360 bill.

And because the town came out and took the time, I ended up being one of the people that bought the smart irrigation system, installed it the whole bit, and it took it way down.

I'm I'm afraid to look at my bill because it I'm one of the people that had a hard time accessing, and I've got to basically hold my breath when I log in tomorrow.

But I know my bill's not $1,360 because the town does come out.

And if you if you can reach out to some of the you see them, you see these high users.

What can we do to help?

Do you we will come out and check to see if you leak?

We'll give you advice on this, we'll show you these programs.

Can we be more proactive so that we can start the people that are most affected?

Not the guy that's affected $30 a month, the guy that's affected $300 a month.

Can we do something to to start an outreach program to phone calls?

Anything, can we do something?

Patrick, did you have something?

Uh Mayor, she would like to answer that first, and then I had a comment to make.

Oh, sure.

I was just going to say certainly we do outreach for continuous consumption, but we can also do outreach for high water users.

Okay.

Um, Mayor, members of the council, I just wanted to one, thank the staff for putting this information together.

It is a very complicated issue.

That was a very, as councilmember Bon Giovanni pointed out, you may need a PhD to really understand all of the different elements that come into this water is a complicated issue in our state, and it's a complicated issue in our community, and there's a lot of factors that go into it.

Um I I would like to add on to Councilmember Bon Giovanni's comments in regards to where we we stand today.

We've had some singular issues around infrastructure with a water treatment plant, the single largest capital project in the town's history by a considerable amount and something of uh tremendous importance for the quality of our water, having enough treatment capacity to treat all the water that we do receive, as well as the wells that we've had to do.

We had nine wells that we planned on doing on over a decade.

We are in the middle of a historic prolonged drought in this region, and we had to accelerate the construction of those wells to make sure, depending on what happens on the Colorado River, which is anticipated potentially as soon as January of 2027, that we can still meet the demand for this community, depending on the impacts and the cuts we take from that water.

And those are a singular point in time.

We always have repair and maintenance needs, we'll always have infrastructure sometimes that doesn't last as long as it's projected life, uh anticipates it too.

But they are singular points, and and they will once we pay off those projects, they will fall off.

But would to your point about white quick customers asking why can't we have one flat rate across the board?

If if it was not a square a scarce resource, if we had an unlimited supply of water, we could certainly do something like that.

It is a scarce resource.

With that being said, this town has been a very good steward in managing our water supply and to building an assured portfolio.

We've got almost 10 years of credit stored in the aquifers below this community.

So we've we've done everything that can be done to secure our water supply and it make sure it's there to meet our needs.

But that being said, it's a scarce we resource.

We're in the middle of a historic drought.

And when it comes to it's a it's a consumptive cost, and if you use more, then you're going to have to pay more because we only have so much of it to go around.

And I think one of the things, and this is not will not be unique to us, but one of the things we may have to come to terms and grapple with in this state and in the southwestern United States in any state that finds itself in a similar position.

We have a very affluent community on the whole, and just because you can afford to pay for it, doesn't mean that we shouldn't necessarily allow water to be consumed at a unusually large amounts, depending on what the usage is.

We still want to have a robust economy and have employers that create meaningful jobs for our residents, but we're going to have to really challenge ourselves as we move forward through this.

What can we do to use water more wisely, to manage water we have more wisely?

Um and what does that mean for people in their lives?

Councilmember Lyons.

Mayor Councilmember Lyons, I'm not sure I understand the question.

Are you talking about Gilbert as a Gilbert as a as a user?

Does it cost us more to bring more water in?

I'm going to phone a friend.

CAP.

CAP charges this year.

Councilmember Lyons, um if I understand correctly, so the water that we bought or the water rights that we have when the town started growing was considerably less expensive than the next bucket of water that we have to go get for either resiliency projects when we have shortages or for that growth.

And the growth will pay for its for its own water coming in.

But any time we have to go out and get more water, even just to to shore up our existing resources for our existing customers, it costs considerably more now than it did 20, 30 years ago when we were looking at it purchasing it the first time, if that's what you mean.

Okay.

We have to remember is that it costs and it's it's gonna cost more over time to purchase the water, to transport the water, to treat the water, and to distribute the water.

It's gonna cost more all the time.

Uh and we can't lose sight of that.

Conservation is the key that we have to work on.

Um, especially uh and I echo what Patrick was saying that we know what's going to be happening.

Unfortunately, I think the general public does not understand what's happening on the Colorado River, and and that's gonna hit us right in the face by 2027.

And we we need to understand, as he said, is a scarce resource, it costs more.

And when I hear the number of 12 percent using 40 percent of the water, there's a reality check that needs to happen there.

And um but thank you for the presentation.

Any other comments?

Thank you, Rebecca.

Thank you very much.

I'll entertain a motion to adjourn our study session.

So moved.

Second moved and seconded.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

We have about five minutes or so before we start the next meeting.

Yeah.