Okay.

Good morning.

And welcome to the February 18th.

Transportation Infrastructure and Planning Subcommittee meeting.

I will call the meeting to order.

And we will ask our city attorney to explain public comment.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Members of the public can may speak for up to two minutes to comment on agenda items to be discussed.

Comments must be related to the agenda item and the action being considered by the subcommittee.

General comments that go beyond the scope of the agenda item must be made in the call to the public session at the end of the agenda.

Profane language threats or personal attacks on members of the public, council members or staff are not allowed.

Speakers should not act in a disrespectful manner that is openly hostile to others.

A person who violates these rules may lose their opportunity to continue to speak.

Thank you.

And next we'll turn to Elsie to uh explain the role of the interpreter.

Thank you, Madam Chair O'Brien.

Uh I'm sorry, Madam Chair Stark.

My name is Elsie Duarte, and I will be providing Spanish interpretation during today's transportation infrastructure and planning subcommittee session.

I will now take a moment to address our Spanish speaking audience.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Next we move to our agenda items.

The first is uh item one approval of minutes.

Do I have a motion?

Move to approve the December 17th, 2026 to meet in minutes.

Aye.

There's no nays.

Thank you.

We have two consent items today.

First, the approval of the historic preservation exterior rehab grants.

Do I have any questions or can I have a motion?

So moved.

Second.

In favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

No nays.

Ayes, Carrie.

We have um several speakers here for uh one of our information items.

Um and um before that, is does anyone else have any questions on the info?

Okay, then I will turn to item five and maybe ask parks to come up.

And um, this is just information to get us prepared as we go through the budget process, and we're at the beginning of our budget process.

So I'm gonna have you guys just briefly give us a update on what where we're at with your capital improvement program.

Good morning, madam chair, and members of the subcommittee.

That's uh thrilled to be here this morning.

Uh yes, annually at this uh time of the year we do submit our five-year capital improvement program to the TIP subcommittee.

Um the program uh circles around replacing aging infrastructure, addressing safety concerns, um, adding playgrounds and new amenities around our system.

So uh it's about five year, 321 million dollar program.

Thank you.

Well now turn to the speakers, Jerry Van Gas.

Welcome.

Morning, uh Jerry Van Gas.

Um it was nine years ago, 2017, right in front of this subcommittee that uh we reached an agreement to pay back 17 million dollars that was wrongfully taken to pay off golf course debt.

At that time, we uh had our attorneys stipulate that we would in addition to the money being paid off, uh, receive monthly balance sheets statements on the 3PI fund account.

Uh you know, I'm looking at your capital improvement project five-year timeline here, and it shows uh from the fund of one account, 1022, almost 32 million dollars being spent next year.

And yet our balance statement that we just got a week ago shows that same fund has only 11 million dollars.

I I don't know how you reconcile being able to do projects in that amount of 32 million dollars when you only have 11 million dollars in the account, and there's not that much coming in.

There's more coming in now than ever, but it's never gonna be enough to fill that need.

So uh please consider that.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Steven Brittle.

Good morning.

Uh Steven Brittle here.

So this makes me think of something that is playing out on the national stage when we have a bunch of people who were informed of something that was being done wrong and knew and did not take action.

I've been working with people who've been bringing information to you over a long period of time about missing money, irregularities.

Mr.

Van Gasse's point was another one of example of that, and yet no one in a responsibility position has taken appropriate action to investigate or to explain or even produce the public records.

And just like what will play out on the national level, everyone will be held accountable when the truth comes out.

As a city of Phoenix person who pays taxes.

And at some point, the public will find out, and they're not going to be very happy.

And I think you need to take a hard look at the inaction of this body.

You've not followed what the law says that you're supposed to do.

The actual law that was passed by the voters has specific things, including a real audit that has never occurred.

Like I said, there'll be some kind of reckoning at some point when everybody finds out what happened.

And I think there might be some criminal activity here, but we'll leave that up to the attorney general or the FBI.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Jeremy Thacker.

Good morning.

I want to focus on how the parks CPI structure uh affects the integrity of the three PI funds.

Um the city uh began this uh when we started with parks capital improvements, was for the expansion.

And what has happened over time is the 3PI funds have turned into a slush fund.

We've seen the operating budget of parks remain well below the growth of the city's budget, while the 3PI budget has exponentially grown.

Uh this was all based on a legal opinion by attorneys who are no longer with the city, who which we've had reviewed, uh a formal legal opinion reviewed.

That that legal opinion is invalid for a multitude of reasons.

The amount of money that we're talking about is in the hundred over a hundred million dollars now that has been mismanaged, misallocated without any accountability.

The oversight committee that was put in place to protect the citizens and how their money was being spent for this project specifically, has they meet for they manage roughly 50 million dollar annual budget.

They're to review all expenditures.

The average meeting they meet once a year is 52 minutes.

That's a million dollars a minute in oversight.

That's it.

We've got a problem, and it's a big problem.

And we're they don't provide full records.

We they're doing accounting with no beginning balances, no end balances, uh, showing expenditures, there's no transaction level detail.

The the categories or of projects, they're categories, not actual projects.

They're citywide for years on end.

Uh we'd like some accountability and some transparency.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Tim Sarakowski.

Good morning.

Thank you so much for your time, Tim Serkowski.

We've been doing and saying this for the last number of years, and it doesn't seem to be doing anything.

It seems to be falling on deaf ears.

So once again, we've all what I would like from this group is to make these individuals produce the two supposedly two different checking accounts.

The three PI money is located.

I would like, and I have done record requests for this for the last six years, and they never reveal produced any of this information.

I would like to see the two accounts.

I want to see the money coming in and out.

I'll make my own determination of what's going on with the accounts, and I'll have a forensic audit auditor look at this money and ask exactly what's going on.

We want to know where the money is going at the present time.

We don't want it misappropriated because you guys have no clue how to really manage anything.

That's not my problem.

The problem is you work for the people of the city of Phoenix, and this money is supposed to be three PI is to supplant, not to run the parks department.

Where's the general fund money in your five-year budget?

I don't see any money coming in from the city of, I don't see anything from general funds for all this improvement.

Where's this money?

According to your city charter, you're supposed to be giving the city parks a percental ratio of the amount of money you collect yearly.

And it doesn't seem to be adding up going into the parks department.

So where's that money going?

Your retirement fund that you're underfunded.

So once again, I'm asking you to take some steps.

I want to see both accounts.

I want to see money coming in and out.

I want to see it all, and I'll have my own forensic accountant look at it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's all the speakers we have.

Are there any questions from the subcommittee?

All right, we'll move on then.

Item 10 is the parks and recreation master plan update.

And Martin, what Bill?

Welcome.

This will be your first uh presentation, I believe, at the subcommittee as our new director.

Well, Madam Chair, thank you for that.

Congratulations.

And again, I'm happy to be here with uh you and the rest of the members of the subcommittee.

Um I'm extremely um happy about this um update today that we're gonna provide you.

Uh the last parks and recreation uh system-wide master plan was completed in 1988.

I know the vice mayor knows this joke, but I was a uh junior in high school when that happened, so we're excited to to get this going.

Um we started the uh current master plan in September of 2024, and for the better part of the last 18 months, we've been reaching out to the community to get uh feedback from them on what they like, what they don't like.

So joining me at the table today is Mike Svetz from Pros Consulting.

Uh he and uh a team of consultants have been helping us with the master plan.

So we have uh some slides to go through this morning's um for an update on our uh community engagement piece.

So I'll turn it over to Mike.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Turn that on.

Good morning, uh Madam Chair, uh subcommittee council members.

Uh, appreciate the opportunity to provide this update to you all.

Um met had an opportunity to meet many of you uh at some of the town hall meetings that we conducted and uh wanted to kind of circle the wagons, so to speak, and uh you know, kind of give you an understanding of where we're at as we as it relates to community engagement uh as well as kind of our next steps uh associated with the project.

So um just kind of a quick um you know understanding of where we're at.

Um we are at that phase where we are starting to strategically integrate a lot of information uh around park assessments around uh community engagement, uh, and we'll talk a little bit more about what that strategic integration means in terms of next steps.

Um but as Marty said, um, we are uh about halfway through the more than halfway through this project and look to continue to you know pick up steam as we head into the spring and summer.

Um in terms of the overall master plan goals, um we are definitely focused on a number of different uh ways in which we can improve experiences uh for your community uh as it relates to to parks and recreation, um, obviously identification of future development efforts, um, improvement to existing park and rec facilities, um, the evaluation of amenities as well as programs, uh addressing in a big way uh water conservation strategies, in particular parks that um you know do irrigate with potable water, incorporating uh as a standard going forward, um, crime prevention through environmental design practices, and of course, trying to continue to promote equity and inclusivity throughout the entire park system.

Um, a key component of uh this key finding phase is park assessments.

Um these are some of the uh best park assessments I have seen.

I've been uh doing this work for either on their side of the table or as a consultant for the better part of 33 years.

Um and it is very comprehensive from looking at shade to access to functionality, um, safety and condition.

Uh and uh just kind of some of the key themes that came out of these assessments, um, just some strengths.

Um there's definitely a strong variety of recreation amenities.

Um in some parks, uh, there are mature trees that in turn provide natural shade.

Um there is a good selection and distribution of gathering spaces, which you'll see later, um, is a key use uh of the park system by residents.

Um overall functionality and space utilization is also strong uh and uh there is definitely some unique character and or distinctive identities uh with some of the parks in the system.

In terms of opportunities for improvement, um there needs to be, as uh was just uh generally discussed about the parks uh capital improvement plan, a need to continue to reinvest in existing infrastructure.

Um shade is a deficiency across the city as a whole.

Um safety perceptions um is certainly compromised by visibility issues and uh unhoused um individuals.

Uh or I'm sorry, access and connectivity are somewhat inconsistent.

And what we mean by that is is really um people being able to get to parks in different ways as well as then navigate their way through parks.

Um, and then uh as mentioned earlier, asset and amenity replacement is greatly needed.

Um, in terms of community engagement, um, we uh you know tried to cover as many bases as we possibly can uh to engage the community in all walks of life, as well as doing so in a way that is geographically and demographically representative.

Uh over 117 uh events were attended, um, over almost close to 4500 um opportunities for well, not opportunities, but engagements or contributions around an interactive uh mapping in uh exercise, over eleven hundred um community engagement um or household completed surveys were done.

Uh over 8,000 surveys were done on the master plan website, 5500 dotracy uh exercises, and uh over 59 different meetings that in which we engage community uh in focused in-person conversations.

Some of the general themes that came out of uh the town hall meetings, the events, the online survey, the uh community engagement component.

Well, again, you'll start to see some of these be very consistent between what we saw in the park assessments, what we see in this level of engagement, and what will be shared here in a bit regarding this statistically valid survey, uh safety and security, um, developing parks that have not yet been developed, um, restroom cleanliness, general upkeep, uh, introduction of more splash pads, dog parks, and pickleball courts, which of course are a part of the um the projected five-year CIP, um, shade and access to water, uh, and of course, safe uh access and connections to parks.

Uh, you'll see these themes um to start to resonate in a more data-driven way as we work our way through the statistically valid survey here.

Um, and so um just a little bit about the statistically valid survey was conducted by ETC Institute.

Um, they are uh one of the nation's leaders in terms of doing statistically valid surveys, not just for parks and recreation, but for transportation uh as well as um uh public policy across the country.

Uh they do primarily work with local governments uh and state government to conduct these uh and uh they do an excellent job of being uh very credible and valid with regards to these results.

The surveys are um done in a randomly selected way.

And so over uh close to 6,000 households were randomly selected across the community um to ensure demographic and geographic representation.

Uh so um the in terms of you know, every council district uh certainly received about the same number of surveys, uh, but they also received them in a way to ensure that we captured good demographic um balance across the community.

Uh surveys were issued in both English and Spanish, uh, and so people had opportunities to respond in writing as well as online uh via that way.

The goal was to complete 1,000 household surveys.

Um we achieved uh that and then some uh and the confidence rate simply means that if you did this survey 100 times, you would get the same results 95 out of 100 times within that um plus or minus uh margin of error of about 2.9 percent.

Uh the ad so I'm not gonna go through every last question, but I will kind of break these up into themes.

So the first theme um kind of sets the stage for the rest of the uh results.

Um, agreement with the uh following statements about the benefits of parks and recreation.

What you see here is um strongly agree is dark blue uh agree is light blue.

Uh that red uh vertical line in the middle represents 50 percent.

So in essence, your entire community um as a whole uh is looking at agreeing with these benefits at a rate of 50 percent or more.

Um more importantly, there's very, very little orange on that screen uh in which people are disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.

So you have very strong advocacy for the benefit of parks and recreation.

The key here is to recognize when we think about benefits, it's not just quality of life.

Um it is economic development, it is safety, it is health, uh, it is um keeping uh kids out of trouble.

Uh it does have ties back to economic development and property growth.

So your community um recognized that it is more than just that nomenclature or nebulous term that we use to apply to parks and recreation, which is typically quality of life.

In terms of overall satisfaction, um, the numbers at the top are great in terms of comparing yourselves to a national average.

However, the numbers at the bottom when we talk about dissatisfaction and very dissatisfied um are a little bit higher than we would like.

Uh this is not to say that your community is dissatisfied with parks and recreation.

It's just that 13% of your community is.

Um, and there is potentially some reasons as to why we see some of that as we kind of work through some of the survey results.

So park visitation quality and barriers.

Um, your parks are used at about the same rate as what we see across the country.

Uh so um no really red flags here.

Um you actually do have quite a number of what we'll call frequent flyers in the sense that about 70% of your community uses your parks um at least monthly and close to 48, 48% utilize them at least weekly.

Yes, Madam Chair.

I actually have a question going back to the um previous slide.

Did you break that down by district or by areas of the city?

Um we can't.

That's a great question, Madam Chair.

And actually, we can uh cross-tabulate um every question.

And so as um we present, I'm happy to um work with ETC to provide cross-tabulation on any question that you may have.

Uh we would break that down by um council district.

Yeah, I'd be interested in that um for two reasons.

Um social economic structure, but also in some of the outlying areas where you're still developing Polly isn't there's a need for a park, but you don't have it yet.

So I think that would be interesting for us to look at.

So if we could share that.

Thank you.

You're very welcome.

Thank you for the question.

Um so as I said, you do have some frequent flyers.

Uh only 23% of your community is visiting the of the visitors to parks, visit them less than monthly.

Um, in terms of why people use parks, and this is really important because people use parks, but I think what we have to recognize is people use parks for self-directed reasons, self-directed experiences.

So things like walking for exercise, walking dogs, playing on a playground, picnicking, riding a bike.

I know that seems um, you know, less formal because it's not about a program per se, or it's not about an athletic league per se.

But when we think about people using parks and recreation, um, 75% of people that engage in parks and recreation is doing it through self-directed activity.

Another 25% of the community is typically doing it through events and programs.

So what this screen is kind of telling you is that you do see a lot of different potential self-directed activity uses in parks.

Um, and this is typically um what we would typically see across the country as well.

Um in terms of the physical condition of parks, um, again, this leans into the park assessments, the the stakeholder engagement that we had uh in-person conversations.

70% of the uh park system is viewed as excellent or good, um, but we certainly would love to see that excellent number um up a little bit higher.

And then you also see down at the bottom fair and poor.

Again, this can lean into why people have some levels of dissatisfaction that are greater than what we see at a national average.

In terms of what people uh pre are prevented in terms of using parks.

Actually, the top is um nothing keeps people from using parks more often.

That's strong.

That that's strong advocacy, it leans into the fact that you do have people that are using parks and using them frequently, but again, resonating back to what we saw earlier, they don't feel safe.

Um, and or restroom availability um is a challenge.

Um let's face it, if you don't have restrooms in a park in which you're asking people to potentially be there for 90 minutes or more, it's certainly gonna be a barrier.

Yes, question.

So um I'd love to see the data by district.

Uh the safety issue that's come up repeatedly here recently.

We had a fellow a couple weeks ago whose kids went up in one of our playground equipment things and found two naked men.

So um sadly, we get stories like that rather frequently.

I guess for the safety, I'd be curious specifically about that number per district by district.

So please provide that at the earliest convenience.

The other is also interesting, so it's an excellent question by Deb.

But I'm curious if that is spread out, if it's a 20% across the entire city, or is it in certain areas?

Marty, you should absolutely be using that with the distribution of resources too, recognizing it as possible that district two might have less people who think the parks aren't safe for a variety of reasons.

Um I think the statistic provided by parks is that there are roughly on average, maybe 12 to 14 dead bodies found in our parks.

So I might speculate that might turn off people and that the people who find those dead bodies might never come back and have shown up in your survey.

Um I'd also be curious uh if so for the what you called, I think I think you called them frequent flyers or the people who go to the parks all the time.

Um it kind of implies that they're not scared to go to the parks because they keep going back.

So I'm kind of trying to ferret out how many people have had such a bad experience they won't go back, as opposed to maybe they saw a news report, they just moved here and they've decided not to go.

Um or whatever reasons people don't go.

I'd be curious how that spread out across the city as well.

So, manager, at the end of these meetings, you usually ask for future agenda items.

I'd like them to come back.

And specifically about that safety issue, breaking down these statistics.

I assume it's not possible to do it.

Uh, you probably don't know the people that you surveyed.

Do you actually know which specific parks they go to?

I'm guessing people don't really spread it around, they probably go to the right.

We did not ask, we yeah, we did not ask a question very specifically about um the on the statistically valid survey through the mapping exercise.

Uh again, that is a a technology-driven digitally uh digital platform.

We did see some pretty good distribution in terms of people providing input on parks across um the system and across each council district.

So for each district, you'll have a statistically significant sample.

Uh in through these um through the social pinpoint website, we do, but not specifically through the statistically valid survey.

Because we did not ask people on the statistically valid survey which park specifically that they used.

But you'll I mean, I'm guessing if you live at a uh the border of district two and district three, if there's a park that's closer to your house in district three, but you live in district two, even if you're a district two resident, you wouldn't necessarily go to a district two park.

If you're in the middle of district two and you've got a neighborhood park, so it's not gonna be a hundred percent spot on.

Correct.

But but you can at least you'll at least know this person lives in district two, how they feel about the park.

Correct.

Okay.

Correct.

Thank you very much for those questions.

Appreciate it.

And we will certainly circle back on that cross-tabulation.

Yeah, and we'll uh we'll put it on a future agenda.

Maybe April, March, we're not having a meeting.

Would that give you enough time?

Um we I should be able to flip that around fairly quickly.

We'll work with you guys on that.

Thank you.

In terms of kind of moving into park maintenance and how folks view um park and facility maintenance.

Um again, very similar to the benefits chart.

This was a level of satisfaction as it relates to maintenance activities.

Um the only one that is below the level of 50 percent is restorant maintenance.

Uh that is um again, though, something that is a barrier to people using parks in terms of what's most important.

Uh so uh again, we want to be everything to everybody and provide high quality service for everything, but um there is not an endless pot of money.

And so when you look to prioritize maintenance activities in parks, um, these have a tendency to help lean into that.

Uh so park lighting is important, graffiti, vandalism repair, restroom maintenance, landscape care, trash litter pickup, uh, those are kind of the top five.

And then even um one of the top choices, um, even though it's number six uh down the list there is actually dog park off-leash maintenance and care.

Kind of gives you an understanding of how valuable dog parks and off-leash areas are a part of your system.

In terms of program participation quality and barriers, um, you do have a little bit lower level of program participation um than what we see across the country.

Uh, but we also start to recognize that your the program, people that do participate in your programs um do view them as being uh either excellent or good at the rate of 86 percent.

Uh so this is pretty strong in terms of the the quality of the programs that uh people uh of your community members that are participating in.

In terms of why people don't use programs, um, I kind of highlighted um here uh that are a little bit higher than what we see at the national average.

So I don't know what is offered by far the number one across the country and in the city of Phoenix.

Um too busy, not interested, too far from my home, fees are potentially too high, uh, program not offered, use programs offered by other agencies.

Um that said, um there are is some opportunity for improvement um through the lens of offering programs to the community, but at the same time, we have to also ensure that the programs that people want that you have spaces and places that are designed to support those programs and experiences.

So park and facilities um do go hand in hand with program and service offerings.

Speaking of which, when we get into park and amenity priorities, um the interesting piece of this slide is that there is not any low priority.

Um your community has either high priority or medium priority as it relates to the amenities associated with um park and recreation experiences.

Many of them in the high priority as you see are directed uh tied directly to self-directed activity.

Um what you see in the medium priority um starts to become a little bit more age specific, skill specific or special interest specific.

When we think about high priority, it means that your community um has a high need for it, has a places high importance on it, but also has a high unmet need.

In other words, they wish you could do more of these things yesterday.

Medium priority means that you have it relatively right sized, does not necessarily mean that it's geographically accessible, um, but it does mean that you are still going to have to continue to consider growth of these amenities as your population continues to grow.

In terms of looking at this by all council districts, um, this is an example of cross-tabulation that we can do on the other questions.

You will see that um we've broken this up into what we would call high priority, high-end medium and medium priority.

The interesting part of this is that there's a lot of consistency in terms of high priority, high and medium and medium priority across every council district.

Um, and so that gives you just kind of that sense of what that looks like uh and an understanding of how we can use this information across tabulate by council district.

Same exercise for program and service priorities, no low priorities, high priority and medium priority.

You see that community special events is pretty high and fitness and wellness programs are high, but you also have performing arts and water fitness and after school.

So there's not any one specific type of program or any one specific age demographic that you can lean into.

High priority is spread across a lot of different potential interests and/or activities.

Again, kind of same exercise with regards to priority rankings by council district.

You can see here that the uh high priority and high-end medium are a little bit off a little bit.

You do see the top two high priority are pretty consistent across all council districts, but you still start to see, such as in council districts four and five, um, as well as seven and eight, some of the high priorities are a little bit different there than what you would see in, say, council districts one and two.

In terms of overall support, um, the the big thing here is it's it's about what people are most willing to fund.

The top ten all have the word existing in it.

And so the overarching message here is that your community is asking you to take care of your park and recreation system first and foremost.

It's not only what they're asking for in terms of their wishes and wants, but it's also what they want you to spend the money on.

So what they're most willing to fund.

This is not a reflection of asking people if they want to spend more money on parks and recreation, but it's more about what they would be willing to, what they want you to spend money on.

So everything, nine out of the top 10 are have the word existing in there.

Um and so that kind of moves us.

Um any other questions?

Yes.

So one thing about this is these are not all, they don't all cost ten dollars.

Like building an indoor gym or even maintaining an indoor gym is dramatically more expensive than maybe something else on this list.

So that comes up a lot because when we go out, Marty, you know this from experience, Cynthia certainly does.

You know, what do you want to see in this new park we're building?

You know, usually everything gets mentioned, but then you get down to well, if you have a bathroom, is super expensive, depending on how much the piping is already done.

So if you want to have a bathroom, then maybe you're only getting one pickleball court instead of three or something.

Was there anything done like within a frame of reference of how much money?

Like if you had a million dollars, what would you do?

Because that might change this fairly dramatically.

We we have not, we do not do that as part of this master plan exercise.

What we would lean into when you start to think about how to use this information is we we want to, if you were to go to do a site-specific master plan for a park and you would engage the community, you now have some information through the these all of this information from a community engagement perspective of what the community has said that they they desire, what what they have a need for, what they find important, and what they have an unmet need for.

Well, this creates a good foundational jumping off point to test that very specifically with the community in that specific park.

Taking it a step further, you also are limited based on the size of the park, access to the park.

Um, so there are always some limitations that you start with in terms of what's appropriate to put into any existing park.

From there, I think what you're able to do is instead of going into the uh, I would look at it and say doing the community engagement, doing the concept plans and doing the site-specific plan has to come first before you do a cost estimate associated with actually constructing the park.

Because otherwise, what you're doing is exactly what you're referring to, which is you're trying to hit a target before you actually talk to the community.

Um, and so I think this information coupled with a lot of other planning principles for parks, gives you a good foundation to begin that conversation with the community and then work through the site-specific plan and to identify the cost estimate before you actually put the cost estimate out there.

I might suggest, I don't expect us to do this.

We probably couldn't even do it, but you know, like the number one thing right on here is yeah, fitness, wellness programs or I guess I'm interpreting that as a gym.

Correct.

There's no shortage of gyms as you drive around.

There may be more in some part of the city than in others.

Uh I know you can get a gym membership for $10 a month.

It might be more cost effective.

I don't know how many people would use the gyms built by the city versus the gyms that are private businesses that are out there.

Um local gyms in Tempe scream bloody murder in 1990 when ASU opened its rec center because it was now it's $25 a semester.

I think you could opt out if you wanted to.

I think they collected a while.

Didn't at least that's the way I sort of remember it.

But obviously now they have fewer people who are able-bodied who want to use a gym.

So they weren't necessarily thrilled.

Um we could say, look, we're looking for alternatives here.

Building a gym, that's it.

That's all you're gonna have in your park.

If we have a million dollars, it might cost more than that, actually.

Right.

Sort of know what the build-out is from people who have helped build facilities for different gyms in this city.

It might be more like four or five million.

We're not gonna spend that.

What if we just buy a membership?

Right.

And you go, you know, we got to be creative because it's a limited amount of money.

I I'm I I worry sometimes that we're luring people into this fantasy wish list, which we cannot afford.

Correct.

Sometimes it takes us years just to build a park.

Going through that right now in District 2.

You know, people think it's delayed or whatever.

So I understand why that would be difficult, but um, and this is helpful, but I do have concerns that it puts thoughts in people's heads that simply aren't realistic with the financing available.

Correct.

Understood completely.

And I think the one of the things that we would um continue to work through is to take this information and come up with the most fiscally responsive way within the the constraints that you have in order to implement uh a in something around fitness and wellness programs that could be very, very different look than say somebody going in and using a treadmill.

It could be that um you know, parks and recreation continues to work with um other departments to offer things like chair yoga um at senior centers uh or ensuring that we have um what people sometimes would look at as a line dance class as an opportunity for fitness and wellness.

And so it is incumbent upon the department um to recognize that the there is creativity that that continue to recognize the creativity of using existing spaces to meet some of these programmatic needs is important.

Or Madam Chair Marty, I might suggest in the future, because I I haven't gotten the sense that we do it this way, you know, okay, two pickleball courts equals a bathroom or something so that people have frame or reference going forward rather than just throwing stuff out there and then wind up being disappointed.

Um, we um, you know, my district office, we provide money as you know, Marty, for parks for equipment, so I kind of know what this stuff costs, but that is probably limited to a handful of people, most of whom work in your department in the whole city.

I mean, it just it's it's it's shockingly expensive.

Um putting that out there, like, hey, this is what the price of a tennis court or a pickleball court has skyrocketed in the last few years, and that's assuming you can find a contractor to build it.

We've gone through that too.

So I might just suggest giving people on future surveys sort of a frame of reference, because that I might not pick a fitness center as number one if I realize that's gonna wipe out everything else.

I might be happier getting my two, three, and four items.

And that's a more, I would argue, fleshed out discussion than just throwing a bunch of stuff out there when I'm answering.

Correct.

For future reference, you might want to consider that.

Thank you for that feedback.

Um, in terms of how we will start to use some of this information, um, we will move into the direction of what we'll call level of service.

Um, so what level of services is it's it's a quantitative way to start to understand where there are gaps in if there are gaps in your parks and recreation system.

What I'm about to show you is just work that we did in Clark County, Nevada, which is Vegas, um, to give you a sense of uh kind of how we're uh going to approach access to parks, um, but also access to pools and recreation centers and other amenities.

Um, just some of the considerations is what your current inventory is, um, what access standards look like, uh, what population growth um is going to occur and where availability of land and of course, um, as has been discussed, that kind of financial sustainability um is really really important.

It's not just the capital cost, but it's also that operational cost and the fact that anything you build, none of it lasts forever.

And so this is just an example from Clark County.

It gives you a sense of the level of service mapping that we had identified for both for recreation centers, parks, and pools.

I will uh just jump right to the chase that everything that you see in light blue are geographical areas in which the community does not have equitable access to a recreation center, a park, or a pool.

What you do see, and I kind of draw to your attention to the recreation center is the some of those kind of dotted circles that are a little, I want to say a little bit washed out, but those dotted circles kind of give you a sense of where a planned recreation center was kind of already on the books.

What that does is it allows you to say, let's move forward with that planned recreation center in that specific geographic area because we know that that is where a gap is.

So the idea that we were going to lean into here is to identify existing parks, existing recreation centers, existing pools, but also identify some amenities as well, such as dog parks, such as pickleball courts, such as splash pads, so that we can look at where those uh accessible uh lack of accessibility it exists across not just major facilities or parks, but also specific experiences that you're trending a little bit behind in in terms of being able to provide to the community.

Um again, we're we're going to look at this again, then through a fiscally responsible lens and start to really understand what the costs are of closing these gaps and also what the funding resources are available to do so uh maybe it's my LASIK strained eyes, but on both that printed copy and the screen, I can't read the legends.

Could you uh maybe other people can, but I guess I'd be a little surprised.

So if you could print those out and maybe just drop off of my office or something.

Yep, we will bigger.

Yeah, understood.

Um we will uh in our plan, we will certainly do this in 11 by 17 so that everybody can see that.

Um again, it's just the example of the type of mapping that we can do to show gaps in access.

Um Clark County is a little bit more complicated because it's a county system.

We had to take into consideration a lot of city inventory and also the county's inventory, hence the number of different colors.

Your maps will not be nearly as busy and the legends will not be nearly as detailed.

As long as I'll be readable because summary and kind of next steps uh as mentioned, we're going to uh really work through the strategic integration phase, which looks at level of service, um park equity analysis.

Uh this is also an analysis of how and where money has been spent in the past.

Um we are going to dive into operational assessments around program services, park maintenance and park rangers to get an understanding of where there are opportunities to uh strategically um position them in a way to better deliver on the community's um uh the everyday um communities uh expressed experiences.

Um we will then um align our cost estimating capital prioritization for capital improvements um with the city's um next five-year plan as well as the 2028 bond program and then look to provide uh some of these key technical findings to the public, eight town holes park board uh council members in late spring of 2026.

Um we will also be happy to bring back to you uh cross-tabulation uh of the statistically valid survey as requested.

Wonderful, thank you.

So are there any questions or comments?

Mice Mayor.

Thank you, Chair.

Um congratulations again, Director Whitfield on your first presentation through subcommittee.

Um thank you, Mike, for this uh very detailed and thorough response.

Um I wanted to wait until the end to consolidate my questions just in case they may have been asked as we went along.

But apologies if they were and I didn't get it.

On slide, oh, they're not numbered.

The one uh it's slide number five, um park assessments.

It has a sample slide sample assessment for each park.

I presume that was for two parts.

I presume that was done for each park in every district.

Uh we uh did a random sampling of the community uh to get representative parks um across the system and geographically distributed uh distributed um across council districts.

So a handful of neighborhood parks, handful of community parks, regional parks, but tried to also select those um that uh were representative of the community as a whole.

We will use um the information um as discussed in the uh CIP program uh in that agenda item to help fold into the park assessments um uh since the city does a good job of evaluating those annually as well.

So you've just taught me a valuable lesson on why we shouldn't assume I should have just asked the question.

So we did not do an assessment for each park.

Is it possible to receive the assessments that were completed for each for I'm curious to see for my council district because I believe that I do have some parks that probably will score differently?

Um I have a very diverse district, and I want to make sure that I'm accountant for the different um components of the district.

So I would like to see um the all of the assessments that were prepared for parks within my district, district eight.

Madam Chair and Vice Mayor Hodgewashin, if I might, and members of the subcommittee, we we looked at 29 parks as part of the Sparks Master Plan, but we will definitely get the information for the parks in your district.

Perfect.

If it's 29, I don't mind actually seeing all of them, just a comparison standpoint.

Um that would be helpful.

Um moving on, my next question.

11.

Slide 11.

Just to confirm the red dots reflect households that were randomly selected or the households that were responsive to the survey.

Great question.

Those are where responses came from.

Okay, perfect.

And they also represent clusters.

Um, so there's not 1100 dots on the map, but it does represent clusters of where surveys were returned from.

Perfect.

And just to make sure I'm clear, my understanding is the survey responses that are shown on this slide is a little different than maybe the pinpoint survey.

Correct.

This is just that very hyper focused statistically valid random sampled survey, correct.

And um, can you tell me about how many individuals responded to the pinpoint survey?

To the um this here.

So we ended up with uh the the top um to the right uh um icon, uh the online uh website surveys was over 8,000.

Okay.

General surveys was 7300 um use survey was close to 700.

Okay.

And apologies if this was also answered.

Is this is that website still live?

So for example, I know when I looked at it when we kind of kind of first pushed it out, we could actually see specific parks and what the community was saying about that.

Um we I can pull up those very specific questions um and send those directly to you.

The online survey was basically a survey monkey behind the scenes.

The um interactive uh mapping engagement is when people were able to go in and drop a specific pin on a specific um park and provide comments um around what they liked, what they didn't like, and we had close to 4500 of those responses as well.

Okay.

I would also be curious to see um those if it's on that level, because that's to me that's neighbors saying specifically for this park.

Here's what I would want to see.

I mean, some of this uh similar to Councilman Ware in my office.

Sometimes we do support uh resources in the park, and be helpful to know what it is that the community continues to ask in those areas.

So that would be helpful.

Thank you.

Um, the other question related to reasons preventing households from visiting um city parks or visiting them more often.

One of the items was the lack of restrooms.

And I know in some parks we have restrooms that um, I guess the best way to say it is we don't have doors that you can physically close.

And I'm wondering if that is viewed by the community as lack of restrooms.

Like, are they do they not feel comfortable using those restrooms?

And if that is the case, because I uh let me let me say it's a different way.

Is it a do we have any data that will show whether or not the restroom complaint is based on the available facilities or the lack of facilities as a whole?

That is a great question.

Um it actually uh is something that has rattled around in my head in terms of um identifying uh in the through the level of service um restroom locations.

Um one of the things that we do know um is that we have to tie restroom availability to length of experience.

So we're not putting in more restrooms than we need, we're also putting in restrooms in the correct locations.

So usually community parks and regional parks are where you would typically put um those kind of restrooms.

What we could evaluate is number one what the inventory of restrooms is across the system, and then number two, evaluate functional versus non-functional.

Um I don't think it's a functional versus non-functional the apparatus or the equipment in the restroom work.

The restrooms in some cases lack a functioning door.

So I question whether or not is it the lack of doors on the restroom that creates a scenario where people feel like I'm not going to use those restrooms, which equivalent or equivalent to a lack of a restroom available to the to the page.

Is an excellent point.

Um it seems like it's the point or the restroom issue comes up almost every park project that we do, uh, and it comes down to design.

Um part of it comes down to design from the uh perspective of it being uh functional, um, how it's constructed uh to ensure that it can't be very easily vandalized or damaged, um, and then doing it the right way so that people actually want to use the restroom, then you have the other cleanliness component as well.

Okay, and that's uh what I'm hearing is there may be some mechanism in the survey that captures that with that level of let me not presume.

Is there something that can tell us specifically what the complaint is about the restrooms?

Um I would say that um I from this specific question on this specific survey, no.

From the question um from the uh comments that we received through town hall meetings uh as well as um online, it was a combination of we want a restroom or the restroom is not functional.

Um so and or it was the the restroom was not you know designed well, or it just didn't feel like it was safe to use, um, or it was unclean.

So it was I'm sorry, it was a smattering of all of those potential issues that um uh where restrooms continually came up as as a point of issue or a point of um shall we say interest of improvement by the community.

Okay.

Um as you can clearly gather from my questions is I do believe that is an area we need to look into further and assess whether or not I personally think we should be uniform in our approach to the restrooms throughout all of our facilities, because then it becomes an equity issue of whether or not certain parks are being treated differently, meaning that their restrooms don't have doors versus other parks have doors.

Um if I was a I don't have a parent asked being asked to choose, will likely take their child to uh a park that has a restroom where there's some level of privacy, or I mean I think that goes to the safety concern that we clearly hear that our community is asking for.

And I wish my question also ties into the concern about the community asking us to maintain our parks and their facilities, and I'm questioning whether or not that is a part of it as well.

Um I I view uh I view that as very important.

So I don't know that's why partly why I was asking about the assessments at the beginning to learn that that wasn't done for every park.

I understand why not, but I want to make sure that we are holistically looking at that component.

Um my other question was uh it's a combination of slide 25 and 27.

So that slide talked about has your household participated in any recreational program activities offered by the city in the past 12 months.

Um the that more than a national average says said no, and on slide 27, um ideally, sorry, the majority says I don't know what is offered, or I use programming by other agencies.

And my question is did we dive into is there any availability and available data that will show what programs they go to by other agencies so that we are if we have to make an assessment of duplicating services, we can minimize that and could we figure out how to better efficiently um notify the public about the services that we are providing.

Ideally, if we had this unlimited pot of money, we would make all these improvements, but if people are still not going to the parks, we are not achieving the desired result.

So I can tell you for brevity's sake, we didn't obviously include every question in this, but I can tell you that two follow-up questions that we did provide because we know, just looking at the national average, that the number one reason why people don't use programs is that they don't know what is offered.

So we did two follow-up questions.

One was how do people learn about parks and recreation programs?

And then how people the second follow-up question then was how would people prefer to learn?

And again, that is information that can be cross-tabulated by district to allow us to allow the parks and recreation department to hyper focus what we call target marketing.

So if district two prefers Facebook, but if district three prefers um uh website, we have to use that information in a way to make sure that people are at least getting provided the right tools around which they can hyper focus uh their their research on.

Um the question regarding used programs offered by other agencies.

The reason that, and I'm sorry I did skip over this um as part of the presentation.

The reason I put that in red is because it's only 9% of your community, whereas the national average is actually 25%.

So you in fact do have more people using your programs than going elsewhere.

Um the key here is is we did do a follow-up question that says, who do you use?

The city of Phoenix was the number one um user or of what people use for parks and recreation.

They did list other like HOAs or private facilities, but you were by far the number one go-to place for programs and services for your residents.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have a couple more.

Um, and that's why I wanted to um, for example, on slide 32.

Um maybe it's it's not a specific, well, maybe I'll I'll ask the question.

Another concern that I hear um our office holds hosts pool parties for the kids during the summer, and sometimes the pools don't have covering over them, which sometimes makes the pool very difficult to utilize.

Is that a consideration on when we could we I guess for me I'm trying to figure out how many of the residents in my area said that this pool it's real it's fine and dandy, but I can't stay in the pool or I can't be there all the time because it's just so hot.

Yeah.

Is there anything that would have captured that information?

In terms of um the barriers, um, I don't know that we asked that specific question, but I can tell you that through the park assessments as well as then the um conversations that we've had with the community that shade and access to water is a big deal, and so um that needs to be something that becomes a standard in terms of improving parks across the system uh as well as um incorporating in part of new design.

So again, not saying that the um parks and recreation department does not take that approach, it's just that you have 189 parks, and many of them don't have the shade uh that people are looking for to uh be able to use them, whether that be pools or whether that be just be parks in general.

Well, I'm glad so that that was part of my comment to make sure that shade included the access to use the equipment in the parks, not just the trees that you would find, but um whether or not it's the um what do you call them, the the activity centers at the top, you know, youth may use or the actual pool.

Um shade sometimes can be a the lack of shade can be a barrier at times.

So um I think that was the let me come by notes real quick.

Um I did find it interesting that the on slide 20, I'm sorry, 35, that the items that are residents are willing to fund is more so just maintenance of the parks, which tells me that they see true areas of opportunity here, and we probably should lean into that.

So um thank you for the very detailed I am as you can probably gather, very data driven, and uh I found this very informative.

Um, and I too look forward to receiving the cross tabs so that um I can see a little bit more and specifically I would like to see the pin point um where residents reported about specific parks in the system and what um what we make we may I cannot do.

So thank you so much for that.

You're very welcome.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

All right.

Well, I think we'll see you back in a couple months.

Um we appreciate what you're doing, and we'll stay tuned for the next phase.

Thank you.

Very welcome, madam chair, subcommittee members.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, so we now turn uh to public comment, and the city attorney will explain thank you, madam chair.

During citizen comment, members of the public, can we address the subcommittee for up to three minutes on issues of interest or concern to them?

The issues being addressed, however, must be on the subject matters that fall within the jurisdiction of the Phoenix City Council or the subcommittee, and upon which the subcommittee has the power to act.

The Arizona Open Meeting Law permits the subcommittee members to listen to the comments, but prohibits members from discussing or acting on the matters presented.

Thank you.

And we have two speakers.

The first Diane Barker.

Good morning, transportation subcommittee and Deborah Stark chairwoman.

My name's Diane Barker.

I'm an advocate for the city of Phoenix, uh, the just expansion, and I've been a user and have worked in public transit to uh give information.

So I come for it in front of you today because I did look at your graphs, and the T 2050 money uh is showing 66% for light rail.

However, looking at T 2015, 52% was supposed to go for buses, and then you know, a couple of uh percentages, if not up to four for express buses.

That's a flexible, it's not a fixed system.

You can build, as they've done, uh very well in Curitiba, Brazil, which has about the same um population as the city of Phoenix, and actually disposable income, a bus system that serves people.

I sat 10 hours to listen to you take off a bird in the hand from the Capitol, 25 million you put into light rail, which is still an earmark.

You guys spend money down locally to chase the MIS investment studies that is an engineers, by the way.

You know what an engineer's dream is when the public gets butt out.

So I'm speaking up as a user.

There we don't have to remake the wheel and put fixed transportation.

It was a ghost to see the bad accident, and I still don't get the amount of money publicized that the city for three days at Indian School and Central had to fix when we uh a man got killed uh about six weeks ago, making a left-hand turn into the light rail, went off the tracks, we had to fix the tracks, and now you want to build a light rail station because you feel sorry for Maryville.

We have Indian school, we've got Camel back, we've got Thomas and McDowell and others running regularly for decades into Maryville.

You do need to take money and make shaded stops to make the signage and to make it welcoming in Maryville.

I go out there and I went to the meeting for that big project of 220 million dollars of federal money at Indian school so that we can fix it so we don't run into the BSNF.

And the thing about it, I caught a bus in two minutes and then connected with the light rail.

If we don't watch out where we're going, we're gonna end up there, and that's the poor house.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Tim Sarakowski.

Good morning.

Thank you once again.

I guess my question is this how come we don't know most of the answers to this survey already?

How come I have to call and tell people at the parks department that oh there's a door missing on the on the bathroom here and people don't want to use it?

What's going on here?

I mean, is there no forms of communication?

We've been complaining about maintenance for the last 13 years.

You haven't done anything.

We're paying someone a million dollars to tell you, hey, these folks want maintenance at their parks.

I just stand up here and it's just kind of goes in one ear and out the other because nothing's ever done.

It's really pathetic.

We're paid him what a million dollars to do uh uh this survey, which is skewed by the way, absolutely skewed, because I helped develop the Galileo survey 50 years ago, and it's skewed, but I don't even want to go into that.

I could have told you all of this, and I don't have to pay a million dollars to do this.

You need maintenance at the parks, you need to have communication with your rangers, you need to have people telling people and doing something about it.

You have a group of individuals who do nothing, they hear people's complaints at the parks and they don't take their complaint and they move it along.

That's why we have problems at the parks at the present time.

It's ridiculous.

This is a business.

Do you guys not know how to run a business?

Because in the real world, a business is run in a specific manner.

So and and your clients, your customers are the people that live in this, your districts, and you're not doing a very good job of helping them out.

You just pass along the problems and it's not addressed.

You have to do any of these people know that they're already being taxed twice on being taxed twice.

They're they're paying twice for their parks.

Do they even know that?

And they're still not getting something out of their park system, and they're paying extra money for it.

Where's the money all going?

Once again, I want to see the two accounts.

I want to see the two accounts for the last 15 years.

I want to see all the ins and all the outs.

I want to see the balance sheet, I want to see it all.

And if I have to go to court to get it, I'm gonna get it.

And if the money was mixed, if the money is mixed at all, there will be criminal charges.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our uh next item is future agenda items.

Um, we didn't really have much on March, so we're canceling March, which is helpful because I gotta go back and help my 90-year-old dad do his income taxes.

So any uh besides your addition, Jim, is there anything else?

Yes.

I do have a question.

Um not sure if it needs to be a full agenda item, but in the last recent couple of, I would say, leading up the subcommittee, there had been several, I believe, increase in accidents um involved in vehicles on the light rail track, especially on the new extension.

And I was just curious, we've seen, and I saw we saw them both with drivers as well as autonomous vehicles, and I just had some general questions of whether or not that was consistent with a new line coming on coming into play or whether we needed to look at visibility concerns that may need to be addressed.

So maybe we could have a report, a written report and put it on consent, and then if there's any questions, we can take it off the agenda.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Anything else?

All right, we are adjourned.

Fruits and vegetable right off the body.

This program is so powerful for so many different reasons.

We had a residents um saying that.