The Surprise City Council held a work session on October 7, 2025, to receive presentations and discuss three major items: code updates for water conservation (fats, oils, greases program, stormwater fee discounts, and turf restrictions), the Surprise Public Library’s new strategic plan, and the Human Service and Community Vitality (HSCV) department’s strategic plan. Council members asked clarifying questions, expressed support for the initiatives, and provided feedback. No formal votes were taken.
In front of entry monuments where there isn't a lot of opportunity for you know kids to be playing football or whatever other kind of sports. Um and so in this case, we're really trying to encourage other types of landscaping that are not uh not grass in front of entry monuments. And then lastly, grass areas that are not utilized for active or programmed recreational purposes or for drainage conveyances, storm basins, or erosion control. So we do allow for uh with this code update, we do allow for um grass to be used like in a drainage channel. Um in these two examples that I've given you, these are two grass spaces that really can't be recreated on, but they're also not serving a drainage purpose. So these would be examples that we would not permit going forward. And then what I really wanna call out here, because that now I've spent a lot of time talking about grass and you know, prohibiting certain items in development. What I really wanna focus on is um this code update, we've given five different criteria to really um scale, it's a lot of criteria, but the idea is to scale down what we're limiting. So making it very specific. And and I wanna be real clear that um, you know, the the what we do wanna see in our city is usable recreation areas. So we allow for grass and parks, uh, amenitized pocket parks and drainage channels. Um and so our team has actually been actively involved in the development review process for the last several years where we're already looking at these things. Um we've also made sure that this code update is in line with our planning standards and our open space requirements. So this shouldn't really conflict with those at all. Um additionally, we've had you know a lot of cooperation from the developers as we're looking at their landscape designs to you know hear our points and okay, you know, make some tweaks to their to their landscape plans. So we're pretty confident that this code update um is you know just gonna be reflecting some of our current practices, but making sure it's actually outlined in our code. And I'll also say that developments that have existing entitlements like Sterling Grove or Marley Park, for instance, that incorporate quite a bit of grass. This does not apply to that, even though they're not built. The entitlements associated with what's in those zoning documents will end in in a sense supersede uh this this code modification. It's really as Amy mentioned, those developments that we have not seen yet or have not been proposed yet. So with that, I wanted to close with some next steps and turn it over to questions. Um again, we this is just in draft form. We intend to incorporate any feedback that you might have and continue to work with uh Jeff and his team to finalize this language. Um we're still working on one more uh code modification associated with a high water user ordinance, and that one's not quite ready to to debut yet this evening. And that will also warrant likely its own work session. So we'll be back in the next couple months to talk through that one. And then once those are all tidied up and put together, we'll have uh the adoption sometime uh later this calendar year. So with that, Amy and I are happy to take any questions. Uh Councilman John. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Amy, and and thank you for the work you're doing for to uh to to get us in a better place for water conservation, yet still identifying ways where we can actively recreate. I mean, we we do enjoy grass, so it is good to have grass in our parks and grass in places where we can where we can enjoy them and maybe get them out of the places where they look nice and they're just they're just taking up water. Can can you go back to the fog slide, the first slide? That one. Um, so a couple of questions. First, I don't know if you if you so fog's an anchor acronym. I don't know. Did we go over what that is? We did not. So um a lot of this ordinance update or uh code update is is aimed at helping us establish our fog program, which stands for fats, oils, and greases. Okay, and no pictures of fat burgs here for us. I actually I thought about it. You totally should have. And so, and so the challenge with fats, oils and greases as I understand it is they is they they clog up our plumbing system, they create problems downstream, they can end up damaging the processes of the wastewater treatment plant, right? That is correct. And we do have some experience with some of those maintenance issues at um at our largest plant, uh the spa one facility. Okay. And so the maintenance that needs to happen, what does that look like for a property owner for restaurant owner? I mean, how frequent is it, how expensive is it, what do they need to do?