Well, welcome everyone to our city of Mesa.

I I think Frankie will be here, I hope soon.

And uh Mesa City Council Studies session for March 12th, 2026.

All right.

As announced, uh everybody's here.

Thank you.

We're going to hear a presentation.

Item 1A is recommendation on the proposed fees and charges for the Falconfield Department, one of our enterprises.

So Corinne and Sam and I forget our attorney's name.

Jill.

Yeah, welcome.

So we'll turn the time over to you.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members.

It's um an honor to be here with you this morning, and thank you so much for taking the time to hear uh about this proposal.

Uh as you well know, here on my right is Sam Schultz, you know Sam, and Jill Owens is outside legal counsel with Snell and Wilmer, who has been assisting us from a legal perspective through this process.

So we'll go ahead and get started.

Corrine, before before we start, if I could just maybe make a statement uh for council for the benefit of the public also.

Um many times it's important to talk about uh what this is, but I think it's important also to talk about what this isn't.

Um the proposed uh fees and charges for Falconfield includes landing fees.

Staff is proposing landing fees to make Falconfield Airport as financially self-sustaining as possible.

These fees are not being proposed to reduce noise or flight traffic, discriminate against a specific user or favor one user over another similarly situated user.

That is not allowed under the FAA rates and charges policy.

Simply, noise reduction and flight traffic is not part of or the reason for the proposed fees and is not part of this agenda.

I just want to manage the expectations of the public that's watching this as they're seeing what we're discussing, but also what we're not discussing and the reason why.

Thanks, Mayor.

Sorry, Green.

Well, and to that point, uh that's why we're here.

And I think it's been long overdue that we've had this discussion.

So again, it like I stated, it's one of our enterprises, and so as we look at the financial well-being of our enterprises, this is something that we have to evaluate year to year, and so we appreciate all those that work so hard on it.

Uh Councilmember Goforth, uh, she led a team to analyze that, being in her district, so appreciate her work and everyone else.

Vice Mayor.

Well, you used a term enterprise, and let the maybe somebody might want to define what that is or what the enterprises are, since folks might be watching.

Well, I don't I think I think maybe to to Jim and Scott or they should be able to do that first and then Sam as well.

Mr.

City Manager.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, Mayor, actually, I think Sam is probably the best positioned uh person to to really articulate uh how we treat our enterprise funds.

Okay, you wish we are so mayor counsel from an enterprise standpoint.

What the city looks for is that this is a self-sustaining fund, um, similar to like a business where there's no additional contributions when we look at it from a general fund contribution.

What we look for is uh the revenues from an ongoing basis will sustain those expenditures and the capital expenditures and or debt service payments within enterprise fund.

Well, on that point, I think that's for a lot where it's confusing.

There's different buckets of different buckets at the airport that the monies are allowed to be used in, and sometimes they cross lanes, so to speak, and so I think for clarification for what monies can be used for at Falcon is essential for all of us to understand.

That's why hopefully you can break it down.

Why what the FAA requires uh for you know the runway and ramp services, tie-downs, obviously, hangars, leases, ground leases.

You have a whole correct portfolio of things, just put it that way.

And one thing to add with the with when we look at the this utility fund, it is restricted from an FAA standard in the sense that the revenues generated within Falconfield are exclusively used then for expenses related to the operations and infrastructure of Falconfield.

Okay.

I'm sure we'll have some questions as we go on.

So uh just have some clarity in that, I think, for those who are listening in the public and ourselves as counsel.

Okay, Corinne.

Thank you, Mayor, Council members.

And I think we'll go into a little more detail here regarding that observation of yours and hopefully clarify some of that through the presentation.

Okay, so we wanted to include first of all the purpose statement for Falcon Field Airport.

And I don't need to read through all of these items, but just few just highlights.

So that is really a big focus for all of this.

Of course, we're very customer centered.

We want to foster positive community relationships.

Again, the need to be financially self-sustaining and also to be a great economic development opportunity that brings jobs to Mesa.

So let's talk about the primary sources of airport revenue, which are not related to a grant.