All right, thank you very much.

Good afternoon.

I now call to order the Tempe City Council work study session.

Mayor Woods is out of town on work-related business and is unable to run tonight's work study session.

He may try to join us virtually, but in his absence, he has asked me as Vice Mayor to lead tonight's meeting.

Council meetings can be viewed live on Cox Cable Channel 11 online at Tempe.gov forward slash Tempe11 or virtually through Microsoft Teams.

If you would like to speak on agenda item and have not yet submitted an electronic speaker card, you may still do so.

Please visit Tempe.gov forward slash council comment and complete the electronic card.

Be sure to select the option.

I will be attending the meeting virtually to personally comment.

When it is your turn, I will call your name.

You will then be able to turn on your microphone so we can hear you.

You will have up to three minutes to speak, and a countdown timer will be visible on the screen to help you track your time.

Please submit your card by 4 15 p.m.

today to ensure smooth operation of the meeting.

Please note the Microsoft team's hand raise feature is not monitored.

So submitting an electric speaker card is the only way to be placed on the agenda in the queue.

So we'll go to move to agenda item number two, announcements from the mayor and or city manager.

So item 2a.

This item has is a friends of the library 60th anniversary proclamation, but this item has been moved from the agenda.

The proclamation will be read by the mayor at a future community event.

Item 2B joining us is for National Voter Registration Month and Day Proclamation.

And joining us is Avery Zola, who is voter education manager for the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

Avery is a Phoenix native, a U.S.

Air Force veteran, and a Flynn Brown fellow whose leadership and outreach, civics, and public service has earned distinguished recognition in Arizona.

Welcome, Avery.

I will now read the proclamation.

Whereas the Office of the City of Tempe City Clerk is committed to encouraging broad voter registration, access and citizen participation in elections among voting eligible citizens.

And whereas the Office of the Tempe City Clerk recognizes that Americans are not able to vote because they miss a registration deadline or do not update their registration information or are unfamiliar with how to register.

And whereas the Office of the Tempe City Clerk recognizes the need for diverse partners, such as nonprofits, libraries, businesses, colleges, and universities, and others to work in the communities they serve to register citizens to vote.

And whereas the need for reliable and trusted public information and education on voter registration is critical to America's active participation in elections and the integrity of electoral processes.

And whereas the Office of the Tempe City Clerk is committed to joining national efforts to support voter registration and citizen participation in elections throughout the month of September, recognized nationally as National Voter Registration Month, and to highlight the specific call to action on National Voter Registration Day.

And whereas National Voter Registration Day, observed annually on a Tuesday in September this year on September 16th, 2025, serves as a nationwide nonpartisan civic holiday dedicated to ensuring every eligible voter has the opportunity to register and participate in our democracy.

Now, therefore, I, Doreen Garland, Vice Mayor of the City of Tempe, Arizona, do hereby declare September 2025 as National Voter Registration Month and September 16th, 2025 as National Voter Registration Day in Tempe, Arizona.

So we will move on to item 2C, which is the Fannie McLaren proclamation.

I now recognize Councilmember Hodge to read a proclamation honoring Fanny McLaren.

Hello everyone.

Excuse me, Major Fanny Glyphin McLaren, um, and on August 21st.

She was actually born September 22nd, and she will be 105 years old on that date.

And I wanted just to tell her happy birthday and myself and the mayor, we went to uh a celebration for her.

Um, and let me read the proclamation.

Whereas Major Fanny Griffin McLaren stand is one of the one of the two last surviving members of the historical 688 Central Postal Director Batlan, famously known as the Trip of the 6th Triple A.

And whereas the 6 AAA was the first and only all African American woman unit of the war women's army corps to serve overseas during World War II, answering the call of duties as a critical time when over 17 million of pieces of mail had accumulated and leaving countless Americans and soldiers disconnected from homes and their loved ones.

And whereas, though the relentless declamation, courage, work tireless work, and processing over astonishing 65,000 pieces of mail per shift, the 6AA restored the hope and morale among our U.S.

troops, excellent exemplary services and patriotism.

And whereas, despite confronting racism, sexism, and segregation both at home and within the military, Major McLaren and her fellow members carried out their mission with um steadfast determination, dignity, and excellence.

And whereas Major Fanny Griffin McLaren, born in Louisiana on 1920, barely answered her her nation's call.

Oh no, excuse me, bravely answered her nation's call during World War II and continuing her trailblazing military career by re-enlisting in the Air Force, where she broke barriers as the first woman to command an all-male unit in the strategic air command.

And whereas Major McLaren's life and serve.

Happy birthday, and we honor you.

Thank you.

That is wonderful.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Hodge.

It's an honor to have her living in the city of Tempe and all the service that she and the other members did.

So thank you for reading that.

Item uh agenda item number three is a call to the audience.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for those wishing to speak on issue review session and committee of the whole items on this agenda.

Before we begin, I will review the protocol for public comment.

You may speak up for up to three minutes on matters appearing on the agenda.

Please begin by stating your name and city of residence for the record.

We ask that all speakers refrain from personal impertinent or slanderous remarks and from becoming disruptors disruptor while addressing the council.

Continued disruption may result in the removal from the meeting.

Because this is an official city council meeting that is recorded, live streamed, and broadcast on Tempe 11.

Electioneering or campaigning activity is not permitted.

This means no promoting your candidacy, asking for votes or signatures, or using this form for campaign purposes.

Madam Clerk, were there any electronic speaker cards received for this meeting?

Madam Vice Mayor, no, there were not.

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much.

Then we will move on to agenda item number four, which is the issue review session.

So I will um now um call on um let's see we have item four aid's budget update.

So I will call on Lizette Camacho, Deputy City Manager, and Robert Baer, municipal budget director for a presentation.

Good afternoon and vice mayor, members of the council.

Before I start with the presentation, I'd like to take a moment to introduce our new budget director, and that's Robert Baer.

He started last week, and just a little bit about his professional experience.

He has over 14 years of experience in local government budgeting in Arizona and has extensive experience in revenue forecasting, capital planning, general obligation bonds, and utility rate modeling.

He's also a graduate of Arizona State University, which is a big plus for him.

He holds a Master of Public Administration and degrees in economics and political science.

Robert is on camera right now, so wanted to welcome him on the team.

That's Lori Osakowski, Scott Gruber, Kevin Di Domenico, Carrie Taylor, and Benesia Benson.

This presentation came about as a request from City Council at the budget review sessions we had last spring to provide an update on the budget as we start the new fiscal year.

In this presentation, I'll be providing an update on the two largest revenue sources for the general fund, and they are local taxes and state shared revenues.

I'll also provide an update on fiscal year 2025 year-end results of all of our major funds.

A few key takeaways from this presentation is that fiscal year 2026, the current fiscal year that we're in is the first year that we'll see the full impact of the loss of residential rental tax.

If you remember, we estimated that that would result in a revenue loss of 9% across three funds.

The three funds are the general fund, the transit fund, and the arts and culture fund.

As you all know, local taxes are largely dependent on the economy.

We continue to see economic uncertainty across at the national level and also here in Arizona.

We haven't seen seen the full impact of the tariffs.

Also saw the federal budget and tax reductions that were passed earlier this summer.

So we're continuing to monitor local, state, and federal economic trends and any other policy that may impact our local tax revenues.

One good news is that the ending fund balances at the end of fiscal year 2025 for all the major funds are above the council adopted financial policy.

So this is a reflection of the city's continued commitment to sound management of resources, focus on strategic priorities, and continued emphasis on long-range financial planning.

Moving on to the next slide.

Today's presentation directly aligns with the council strategic priorities, strong community connections, and financial stability of the city.

The specific performance measures are 2.11 and 5.05.

In the next slide, you'll see that the general fund is the largest operating fund of the city.

It funds the operations of police, fire medical rescue, park and recreation, library, to name a few.

As you can see on this chart, moving on to the pie chart to the right, the largest revenue source for the general fund is the dark blue pie slice, and that's local taxes at 48%.

The second largest revenue source for the general fund is the TAN PISLICE.

That's state shared revenues at 25%.

We also collect revenues for charges for services, primary property tax, fees, licenses and permits, and any other miscellaneous revenues we have here in Tempe.

Moving on to the next slide.

As I mentioned earlier, the largest revenue source for the general fund is local sales tax.

The city's tax rate is 1.8%.

As you can see on this slide, the 1.8% is distributed among three funds.

1.2% goes to the general fund, 0.5% goes to the transit fund, and 0.1% goes to the arts and culture fund.

General fund revenues are unrestricted.

However, both transit and arts and culture, their revenues are restricted for their purposes.

Here in Tempe, our voters also approved a 5% bed tax on hotel and motel rentals.

Revenues for the Bed tax is also restricted to promote tourism.

The metrics you see here in the bottom of the slide applies to across all three funds.

So at the end of fiscal year 2025, total taxable sales were down 2.8% compared to last year.

So last year I'm referring to as fiscal year 2024.

Sales tax revenues were also down 2.6% compared to the prior year.

The lower taxable sales and lower sales tax revenue is primarily the result of the loss of residential rental tax.

Even though we had lower taxable sales and sales tax revenue, we did see growth in retail, utilities and communication, restaurants and contracting business categories, but the growth in those categories were not sufficient to offset the loss of residential rental tax.

In the next slide, we'll go over historical 10-year historical information on combined general fund sales tax and bed tax collections, going from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2025.

So these are actual revenues collected for each of the fiscal year.

In this chart, the dark blue bar is the general fund revenue that's been collected.

And then on top of that, you'll see a light blue bar, and that's the bed tax component of the sales tax.

As you can see here for fiscal year 2025, revenue was down 2.5% compared to fiscal year 2024 at 146 million.

As I mentioned earlier, that's primarily due to the loss of residential rental tax.

In the next slide, we'll go over monthly to budget actual comparisons for the general fund and general fund sales and bed tax collections.

This chart compares budget to actuals.

So the dark blue bars that you're seeing here are the actual monthly revenues collected.

And then the line that you see, the red line on top of that is the budget.

We do account for monthly seasonalities in our forecast, as you can see here.

Again, actual revenues collected for each of the month going back August 2024 through July 2025.

As you can see here for fiscal year 2025, revenues for general fund sales tax and bed tax were below the February forecast by 1.2%.

That's about 1.7 million dollars.

We don't have a lot of information right now because we're at the very beginning of the fiscal year.

When we present the November forecast, we'll have at least a quarter's worth of information for revenues and expenditures.

But as far as July here, as you can see, combined revenues for sales and bed taxes are below the budget, approximately $300,000 below the budget.

In the next slide, we're gonna discuss state shared revenues.

As I mentioned earlier, state shared revenues are the second largest revenue source for the general fund.

To the right, you see two pie charts.

You can see that state shared revenue is 25% of the total general fund revenue, and then the PAN breakout below breaks out the three components for general fund state shared revenues.

So they include state vehicle license tax, so if motor vehicle registration, state sales tax, and then state income tax being the largest component of state shared revenues.

These three revenue sources are shared with all of incorporated cities and towns throughout the state, and the distribution of the state shared revenues is based on the population of the city or town.

I do want to talk a little bit about proposition 495, which passed in August of this year.

This is the Santan Valley Incorporation that were approved by their voters.

As I mentioned, state shared revenues are distributed based on population for each of the cities and town.

So with the incorporation of Santan Valley, you have one more city that is sharing the state shared revenues.

So the total population for the state will go up with the addition of Santan Valley, but the population for Tempe remains about the same.

So our share of the state shared revenues will be smaller.

So what that means is that we will have annual revenue losses in the general fund and the transportation fund.

In the general fund, we estimate that revenue loss at 1.3 million.

And then in the transportation fund, their primary revenue source is the gas tax or the highway user revenue fund.

Again, that's another state share type of state shared revenues.

And in that fund, we expect that they will have annual revenue loss of 255,000.

The next three slides will cover the updates for the major funds.

The first one is general fund, our largest operating fund.

In the general fund, the financial policy is between 20 to 30%.

So at the end of fiscal year 25, we expected at 36%.

Also wanted to highlight a few of the budget balancing measures we implemented in fiscal year 26, and that included the drawdown of the public safety retirement system or PSPRS and other post-employment OPEB reserves.

We are expecting the fund balance in the general fund to stay within policy throughout the end of the fiscal year 2026.

If you go back, Jason, as I mentioned earlier, local taxes are highly dependent on the economy.

There's still a lot of uncertainty, as I mentioned.

And we did discuss it, Mayor and Council during the budget review sessions that if we see further economic slowdown or any future legislative action that impact local tax revenues, additional budget balancing measures may be required.

And they could include freezing vacant positions, but we could always put a process in place to allow for hiring of crucial positions like police and fire.

Also reducing service levels to reduce costs and mitigate the impact of unfulfilled positions, shift resources to the highest priorities, services and programs.

And lastly, to continue to identify any any economic opportunities to increase the tax base.

The next slide will provide a brief update on the enterprise funds, and that's water, wastewater fund, solid waste, emergency medical transport.

For the water and wastewater fund, their financial policy or fund balance policy is 25%.

And we expect at the end of fiscal year 25 that the fund balance will be above that policy.

Going into fiscal year 26, we did include any rate adjustments that were recommended from the latest rate study last December.

Solid waste, very similar story here.

Preliminary fiscal year 2025 fund balance is expected to be above the policy.

And in the Solid Waste Fund, we also include rate rate adjustments from the latest rate study included in the fiscal year 26 revenue estimates.

The emergency medical transport fund, the fund remains stable.

This fund doesn't have a fund balance fund balance policy established yet.

We're gonna um, as far as as part of the budget process for fiscal year 2027, Robert and I will work on developing that policy for council's recommendation and approval.

Moving on to the special revenue fund, we have transit, transportation, arts and culture funds.

The transit fund is expected to have fund balance at the end of fiscal year 2025 that is above their fund balance policy of 25%.

We do have a planned drawdown of fund balance in this in this um fund, but is expected to remain within policy within the five-year forecast.

The transportation fund is also expected to have fund balance above its fund balance policy of 10% at the end of fiscal year 2025.

We're gonna continue to monitor this fund to ensure that their expenditures are in line with the revenues that they're collecting.

And um, and this one is you know the fund that is also affected by the reduction in state shared revenues as a result of the incorporation of Santan Valley.

The Arts and Culture Fund again expected to have fund balance above its fund balance policy of 10% at the end of fiscal year 2025, and also um continuing to see facility and programming revenue remain strong for this fund.

Um moving on to the next slide.

The next update we'll have for mayor and council would be the long-range forecast in November.

As I mentioned earlier, at that time we'll have a quarter's worth of data for revenues and expenditures.

What we'll do in that forecast is revise all our estimates for all the major funds, so revenues, expenditures, and then we'll also provide information on their fund balances as far as um meeting their policies throughout the five-year forecast.

For the November forecast, we'll also have you know additional information from our forecasting partners, and that includes a report from the Arizona Finance Advisory Committee.

They do provide a report out on the Arizona and U.S.

economies and typically our growth or forecast assumptions mirror some of their assumptions as well.

Um, with that, um, that concludes our presentation, and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

And I'll now open up the floor to any council members for discussions or questions on this item.

I just have one quick thing, uh Vice Mayor.

I Lysette has been meeting with me every month uh since June, I want to say, and she's been spectacular in terms of keeping me up to date with all the revenue projections and just want to do a shout-out because they come really close to what it was that we voted on.

So I'm very proud of them.

So thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember Amberg.

Uh, and before I close, you know, and um, I just want I forgot to mention that all the information that I provided today is also on our website, the municipal budget office website.

We do publish monthly tax revenue reports and we also provide quarterly performance reports.

It does have revenues and expenditures and also performance for all the departments.

So I wanted to put it out there if you want more details.

This information is posted on our website.

Okay, thank you very much.

Vice Mayor, Vice Mayor, can I just say one thing before she goes?

I just want to say thank you so much for the presentation, and also thank you for having our stewardship throughout our financial because there is a lot going on right now within federal funding and everything, and you're doing a phenomenal job of keeping us on track and even going a but far and beyond and uh making sure that we will be sustainable, not just this year, for future to come.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember Hodge.

So, do we have any other comments or questions from council?

All right.

Um, I want to say um welcome, Robert.

We're glad you're part of the team and go doubles.

Um, and uh hearing no other questions or comments, I'm going to close the discussion on this item and thank you so much for your presentation.

So we will now move on to agenda item 4B, which is Tempe Transportation Plan.

And so I will call um on Eric Iverson, the transportation and sustainability director.

Chase Wallman, principal planner, and Lindsay Post, senior planner for a presentation.

Awesome.

Uh thank you, Vice Mayor Garland and members of the council.

I'm assuming you can all see us and our team here in the conference room.

We can see you.

All right, great.

I'm gonna kick this off.

Um, thank you for your time.

Uh I'm as you mentioned, Vice Mayor, I'm Eric Iverson with our I'm the director of our transportation and sustainability department.

And I am here with Chase Wallman, our principal planner, and Lindsay Post, who we're also going to present.

Lindsay's our senior planner in our planning section of uh our department.

Um we also uh just want to mention, and the team will talk about this a little bit more.

We do have a consultant, HDR, um, that is uh following us along in this uh one year process of developing this transportation plan.

Um so these uh this is a this is a technical plan that we update uh roughly every 10 years.

They generally follow the updates and the adoption of the city's general plan.

So this kind of fleshes out the details of what we're doing in transportation.

Um that is mentioned in the general plan that was adopted about a year and a half ago.

This is uh I'm lucky enough that I've been with the city long enough that uh this is I think the fourth transportation plan that I've been involved in.

Uh, these are really important documents.

Um, and so we're gonna um hopefully get some good feedback from the public as we go through this process.

Uh, what we're doing here uh this evening with you all is kicking it off with the council, even though we've already begun our public process um as of a couple weeks ago when we started our public meetings and reaching out to boards and commissions, et cetera.

Um there's no ask of you all today, tonight, um, except for feedback.

We will be back later on uh in uh in this year and into calendar year 26th um for more feedback as we progress in the project and then ultimately getting adoption of our plan.

Um and then next slide, please, Jason.

Great.

So one thing that I want to mention um is that these uh these are plans that are really important to us, important to the public.

They do guide us, they do not sit on a shelf.

Um they they really do help us in achieving great things in our city.

Um, what is flashed before you on the screen shows some of the really important things that that you all as council members have supported that the community has supported, um, and that really staff has tried to make happen and make reality um and and always referencing the plans and the strength of those plans in doing so.

So we are a city in the last 30 years that has done great things.

We now have the highest per capita public transit ridership in the state.

We have the highest bike ridership commute in the region.

We were the first city in the state to adopt a vision zero policy, which is really aimed at getting um to the point where you have zero fatalities in our transportation system or serious crashes.

We continue to see a decline because of of your commitment and and uh our community's commitment, a decline in our in our series crashes.

So that's really significant.

And these plans help guide us to getting to those places.

Um when I started the city, we had a couple miles of bike lanes.

Now we have hundreds of miles of bike lanes, as you can see here on the screen.

Um, so again, uh wanting to stress the importance of developing these plans and how they guide us into the future.

Um we uh we are here for your feedback.

We're hearing great stuff from the community already and recognizing all the great things that we've done and how far we've come with these transportation plans.

We ask of you and we ask of the community, where do we go next?

What great things can we achieve in our city next?

Um, with what I think today is is uh the best transportation system in the state.

Um, and so with that, the the next slide, I think we go to I'm gonna hand this over to Chase Wallman to uh go through the next set of slides.

I think we go to I'm gonna hand this over to Chase Wallman to uh go through the next set of slides.

Yeah, thank you, Eric.

Uh Vice Mayor, members of council, as Eric said, my name is Chase Wallman, principal transportation planner with the Transportation and Sustainability Department.

Um, so I wanted to start below with a snapshot of some of the specific performance measures that this plan will contribute to.

This plan's overarching goal is to address these specific performance measures by ultimately providing the community with more comfortable, safe, and accessible options to commute or recreate in the city, whether that's by bike, car, transit, or as a pedestrian.

We thought it was also important to underscore that not only will this update to the transportation plan seek to directly improve TEP's transportation system and these related performance measures, but also we realize we have the opportunity to support many of the other of the five strategic priorities set by city council.

Beyond the transportation network, this plan will contribute to right-of-way landscape maintenance, community health and well-being, urban cooling, capital investment created, and more.

Uh, next slide, please.

I did also want to take a moment to introduce the team working on the transportation plan.

Uh, I lead the small but mighty transportation planning group, which is comprised of the staff listed here, responsible for capital improvement projects such as streetscapes, multi-use paths, and pedestrian bridges, and then also long-range planning efforts, such as reviewing transportation elements as part of private development reviews, overseeing the dockless scooter program, uh, and of course, this update to our comprehensive transportation plan.

We also meet regularly with our core team, which consists of transit, traffic engineering, sustainability, and neighborhood services staff.

Beyond that, we also want to ensure that the priorities and needs of other city departments are supported and reflected as part of our transportation plan update.

Our technical advisory group or TAG will meet during each phase of the project and consists of representatives from our community development, public works, community services, public safety, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and other city staff.

Um, with that, I'm going to hand it on over to Senior Transportation Planner Lindsay Post, who is leading this transportation plan effort.

Thanks, Chase.

You can go ahead and advance the slide, Jason.

Um, good evening, Vice Mayor and members of council.

As Chase mentioned, uh, my name is Lindsay Post.

I'm a senior transportation planner in the transportation and sustainability department, and I am the project manager of this plan.

Before we dive into the details of the plan development, I wanted to show you our anticipated timeline.

We kicked off our plan development in March with an 18-month work schedule.

The work tasks are broken up into these three phases, and we are just now wrapping up our understanding phase, or often referred to as the existing conditions analysis.

And we held our first public meeting on August 13th.

The survey is now open through September 10th.

And as you can see here, there will be more opportunities for us to uh uh engage the public and present again to mayor and council.

Next slide.

I developed this scope of work with help from the core working group that Chase introduced and from research on local and national cities and their comprehensive transportation plans.

Cities like Salt Lake City, Portland, and Atlanta have light rail, street cars, major universities, and have or are adjacent to international airports.

At the time of our scope development, Mesa and Goodyear were also updating their plans, and I was able to work with colleagues in those cities to learn more about their processes.

As you can see, we are still in phase one.

You'll notice that I have starred the public involvement task, and that is to highlight that public involvement is not a one-and-done task that exists only in phase one, but to highlight that it is paramount to every step of the plan development to ensure this is truly a comprehensive community planning document.

And then you can see in phase three, we will come back to mayor and council to uh present draft and final plans and ask for support at that time.

Next slide.

Our transportation plan is a strategic document outlining how people and goods move through our city.

It is TENPE's roadmap for developing and maintaining the city's transportation network.

This update will include the update to the vision zero action plan that Eric introduced, and we'll include all the elements that you see here.

Next slide.

And you've seen this slide before.

These are all the components that make up our transportation network and what our plan will cover.

We boast the most diverse transportation network in the Phoenix Metro area, with help in part by our dedicated transit tax.

We also benefit from working closely with the sustainability and resilience team to collaborate on projects like green stormwater infrastructure adjacent to streetscapes and bike path improvements.

Next slide.

There have been big changes in our city since our last plan update.

We have also experienced changes to our work culture since COVID, with many employers now offering flexible work schedules as a standard practice.

We also update our plan to account for the projected change in our population, which this map is showing.

On our project website, which I'll introduce at the at the end of the slide deck, we will show this as an interactive sliding map showing the public where the general plan 2050 is projected our population to change.

So the public can slide it from 2024 and see what changes are expected for 2050.

We have a similar map for workforce.

Next slide.

We work with partners like MAG and ADOT to deliver projects like the pedestrian bridges over I-10.

Next slide.

We look to many different sources to guide the plan development.

As I mentioned, the General Plan 2050 drives the plan, but so do many other comprehensive plans that have been created in our city.

We and our consulting partner HDR did a literature review of all these comprehensive plans and more to ensure that we understand the needs in our city and how our plan can support them.

We have also met with or are meeting with these city boards and commissions that you see here and plan to do those do so in all three phases.

Next slide.

That was on August 13th.

We have also tabled at several events like Open Street SIMPI, the city's Juneteenth celebration, TIMPI Time Machine, which is a children's uh summer series.

This this summer was focusing on skateboard.

And we were at several ASU welcome back events.

We also reach out to advocacy, affinity, and community groups, such as those listed here.

Next slide.

This is not intended to be an eye exam for all of you.

I do not expect you to be able to glean any information from these small maps that you see here.

These were, of course, presented in very large format at our public meetings and are available in PDF format on our web project webpage so folks can zoom in.

The information provided will help them as they take their first survey.

This slide shows our current transportation network for pedestrians, bikes, and scooters.

Active transportation refers to human power transportation.

The map on the left shows where we have gaps in our sidewalk network, where we have sidewalks that are below our standard width, that would be in orange, and then where our sidewalks meet our standards, which are in green.

The map in the middle shows our current bike facilities all over the city.

And the map on the right shows our scooter ridership.

You probably haven't seen a scooter ridership map yet.

This is a map showing trends for the last year.

You can see the brick red would show dense trips and green is fewer trips.

And you can see that the dark brick red is mostly concentrated in the downtown corridor around ASU.

On average, the trip lengths were about 1.5 miles and lasted about 15 minutes, which indicates to us that they are being utilized as a first mile, last mile connectivity.

Next slide.

The public can also view our current transit network and information on service parameters like frequency and span of all of our transit modes.

We also provided the public with information on our new transit shelters, such as the location selection priorities and special features of the shelters, especially the solar-powered lights that light up now at night that prevent buses passing passengers by and helps with uh safety.

Next slide.

And of course, we recognize that most people using our transportation network are in their own vehicles.

We continue to move traffic and make adjustments using signal timing and technology.

Our traffic engineers are watching traffic in real time at our traffic monitoring center to see trouble spots and clear traffic.

The map on the left is dynamic.

You can see it moving.

It shows congestion in a 24-hour span.

And the map on the right shows our traffic volumes around the city.

Next slide.

Safety and crash data is also shown on our project website and at public meetings.

This slide is showing a heat map of fatal and serious crashes and has information on crashes involving vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists.

This information and more is available for the public to refer to as they fill out their surveys.

Next slide.

And speaking of, our survey is now open.

It opened on August 13th, the same day as our public meeting.

It is open until September 10th.

It is available on our project web page, and we bring paper copies to all of our outreach events.

Our website also has interactive features like a location specific comments map that will stay up through the duration of our planning development.

So folks can make comments anytime they want to at any point on our Tempi map.

I look forward to going to the public to engage with them on our needs and gaps analysis in phase two.

Our anticipated public meeting is in February of next year.

I'll be back to present on that phase with uh mayor and council then, and then we'll be back next summer for your approval of the final plan.

And with that, Vice Mayor Garland, I welcome any questions.

All right, thank you so very much.

The great presentation, so much wonderful information.

Um I have uh two council members who'd like to speak.

I've got um council member Chin and then Councilmember Hodge.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, thank you for the information.

Just a quick question.

I often get uh questions or have conversations with residents about the scooters.

And so I I think this would be a great opportunity for residents to provide feedback if they have any about the policies we have or the agreements we have with the scooter companies that we allow in Tempe.

So I encourage them to do so.

But could you very briefly share with us some general rules and parameters that we have with these uh companies yes, uh thank you.

Um Vice Mayor Garland, um, council member Adam uh Chin, thank you for that question.

Um we have uh uh license agreement in place with both uh with all of our scooter providing providers.

Um we work with them closely and with our partners um throughout the city, like at parks um and our partners at ASU to help us um address the scooters, get them rebalanced where they're overcrowded in certain locations.

Um, but we also heavily rely on those uh license agreements with Byrd and Lyme um to help manage that program.

If I could, Councilmember Chin, I'd like to um ask uh Chase to help fill in some of that information as well.

Yeah, thanks, Lindsay.

Um so just a high-level overview of our terms and conditions.

There are some um conditions in place that um talk about the having a good operational balance with the scooters and rebalancing.

So um we instituted uh dedicated scooter corrals that you might have seen in the downtown core.

They stretch from Apache to the 202 um rural to center parkway about.

Um, and these are locations where operators they can only stage their vehicles within these dedicated corrals or users um using the vehicles can only park.

And if they don't park in in those corrals, then they can be fined or ultimately taken off of the service by the operator.

Um, we also have uh monitoring capabilities now.

Um, so we're able to monitor in real time um compliance with our our scooters term and conditions.

So um we can tell how many scooters are at corrals if there's overcrowding at corrals.

Um also we can uh make sure that the rebalancing regularly or if they're in residential areas, they're required to remove those within 24 hours.

They can't block sidewalks, so there's a lot of good terms and conditions in place that really help us to monitor scooter programs, but we really rely as well on um 311s that come in um to let us know, especially in residential areas where we may not have as much visibility into um that those are forwarded to staff so we can have the operators move those if they become a nuisance.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Chen.

Councilmember Hodge.

Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation.

It was very um the information was uh, you know, uh always spot on and um great job of perform um presentation.

So, but my question is more about funding.

And I know you were talking about transportation and with all of the cuts and things happening in federal, how is that affecting us in the citywide?

What what's gonna happen with our infrastructure when it comes to transportation and our rest of our freeways and highways um yeah, um build.

Vice Mayor Garland, uh Councilmember Hodge, thank you for that question.

Um it is uh an interesting time to be a transportation planner, that's for sure.

Um what I have seen, because I I um take on a fair amount of our transportation uh planning grants that I apply to from the FDA and the federal highways as well.

Um what I'm seeing is that the the no foes are not being released.

What I've been expecting all summer long, they just have not been released.

So um the SMART grant never got released by the FTA.

Um TOD, which is transportation um demand management, uh that did not get released.

So um where I typically would be scrambling and writing a ton of grants right now, there are no opportunities.

So it makes us nervous.

Um if I could also, Councilmember Hodge, I would also like to turn it back over to um uh Eric Iverson to to expand a little bit on that.

Okay.

Uh thanks.

Uh thanks for the question, Councilmember Hodge.

One thing I would add um to what Lindsay said is that we do continue to work uh with the feds, um, and there's multiple um under the U.S.

Department of Transportation, there's multiple branches of that that we work with to try to um you know seek the funding that that um maybe in the past administration had been secured and now is stalled or or um not happening right now.

So we continue to work with them to try to get that.

Um we we um we and we have had some successes with that.

We are also working with our government relations team, Jonathan Shuffield, um, as you know, um, to work um, you know, kind of on the inside with how we're um messaging this back to DC through our uh lobbyists, and then we we look uh, you know, we we have had a lot of success in getting grants in the last several years.

So we have we're we're flushed with projects right now.

It's really in the next couple of years where we worry about maybe funding availability, but we just don't know um you know what's gonna happen at that federal level.

So we do have a lot of great projects lined up with really substantial federal funding that's already um uh secure.

So we you know, for for a year, you know, to three years, we have good projects lined up.

We also uh it helps with the uh passage in November of 2024, um, the regional transportation tax, Prop 479 that passed that gives us more uh funding uh in the region for regional projects.

Um, so that does help us as well.

Um those are some thoughts.

I don't know if Chase has anything else he wants to add to that, but good question, thank you.

Thank you.

I have just one more follow-up to that.

And I know you said you're working with Jonathan, and we all work with Jonathan.

We all go to DC for different things throughout the year.

Is there anything that we could be doing like lobbying on our behalf for our cities too?

And if there is, would you mind giving us some talking points of what is needed and where it's at and stuff?

So because I'm on my way to DC in a few weeks for a conference, and I'm just wondering, I'm gonna meet with some of our you know, congressional elected office.

So I just want to make sure that I have the right, you know, conversations.

I'm asking the right questions.

It's not a picture op for me, it's more about what can I do to make sure that I sustain our city.

So I'm just wondering, is there, you know, can you get with us and kind of give us some like talking points when we're there because I'm gonna be gone in two weeks, and I want to be able to, I don't want just I don't want to be able to just talk to them about yeah, the pleasure disease.

I want to be able to come in with uh what we need and how we can work together to get there.

Yeah, uh thank you for that request.

And certainly we can provide you with speaking points.

We do um, you know, our department reports up to our our great CFO and deputy city manager uh Camacho, and you know, obviously, because this is a tap to our our funding.

And so we have a spreadsheet that shows our existing grants and grants that we're still kind of working on finalizing with the feds, and we can certainly share that with you and the rest of the council um to prepare you for any conversations you might have in DC.

We also, you know, as part of the relationship with our government relations, you know, we we we have worked with, I know you have as well with Congressman Stanton, who's been a big advocate for a lot of the transportation and sustainability projects as well.

So we we lean on our congressman um as another representative of the region uh to help message this back.

So I think every every voice matters in this conversation, and we'd be happy to provide you with with uh kind of the update of where we're at with with all of our grants that we have secured and ones that we're trying to um secure.

I am I'm very thankful.

Thank you so much for that because yeah great um Congressman Senton is phenomenal with this but I'm gonna go ruffle some other feathers so I want to be able to go outside again you know because we're gonna need just more to his support so um that's my that's my thing so I want to be prepared and outlined and ready to go thank you thank you thank you councilmember Hodge uh next up we have uh council member adams then council member keating and then council member amberg thank you uh madam vice uh chair um or uh vice uh board of directors and council and I'm gonna give you lots of good titles here tonight so anyway uh I have the good fortune uh to serve on the Valley Metro um board of directors and I can tell you through experience and and all my years in transportation that we do have the best transportation in the valley and the state of Arizona so I'm very proud of our transportation team uh Eric has been with us for many many years and has been uh uh a close uh ally and uh supporter of transportation and it is has a great vision for uh protecting our transportation needs um I am concerned about scooter and multimodal safety um with transportation and we'll be proposing a subcommittee later on in our meeting tonight so thank you for very much thanks to the team and uh I yield my time thank you thank you thank you council member adams uh councilmember Keating thank you very much vice mayor um piggybacking on councilmember Hodge's point and we talked about the budget a little bit earlier can can you just um briefly give us an overview of the revenue that the scooters bring into the city both through licensing fees and the um the daily use fees that I know that they pay and those monies go directly into the transportation fund to increase multimodal options in the city do they not thank you uh council member keating thank you for that question I'm going to also defer over to Chase to fill in that information yeah thank you so uh I have um our numbers at least for 2024 um so in 2024 the city invoices a total of 4353 dollars um from the operators of the scooters that are operating in 2024 so I don't have the most the most recent um numbers year to date uh but as far as last year it was just over 400 000 I appreciate that now that's that's kind of what I expected I I thought it was kind of around 300 and some thousand so it's more than I than I remembered it being but I just think it's important to point out um the economic impact that the scooters have particular in our downtown area thank you thank you thank you council member keating council member amberg yes thank you um miss vice mayor I've got a real quick question for Eric um now that I moved rooms and the blowers no longer outside of my window uh how long from a vision zero standpoint are we going to need uh in terms of getting data from the photo radar to see whether or not it's having an effect on like serious crashes people slowing down you know that kind of thing yeah uh thank you for that question councilmember amberg um we you know I don't have the we just started the enforcement in June for photo enforcement um and so I would imagine that very soon we'll have quarterly data that we can share back to uh the council on on the efficacy of that program um one thing that you know so that will be shared shared soon I'm sure uh one thing I do want to mention is that we really um when we're making decisions about about traffic safety um and looking at trends we try to give it longer than uh to determine its effectiveness we try to give it longer than a quarter um sometimes up to years to make sure that we're seeing uh the trajectory that we want um I do know that there's a there uh you know there's a lot of chatter on social media and there's a lot of chatter among staff about about some of the um you know people are seeing uh the cameras flashing at intersection so it is generating a lot of um feedback in the community and so we look forward to sharing uh with the council uh what what kind of data we're seeing and and the effectiveness that it's having thank you I appreciate it thank you council member um amberg uh council member am adams I have no further questions I apologize that's all right thanks Councilmember Hodge yes thank you um wanted to go back to what um what uh council member amber said when we do like our when we get our data points would it be possible that maybe we can get some of our regional ones around us is doing the same thing with their um you know with uh the the cameras and everything so we can have some point pinpoints of how well it's going and you know just a regional because it's not just affecting just the city of 10 B it affects everybody who comes you know through us or go through Mesa

When we do like our when we get our data points, would it be possible that maybe we can get some of our regional ones around us doing the same thing with their um you know with uh the the cameras and everything so we can have some point pinpoints of how well it's going and you know just a regional because it's not just affecting just the city of Tempe, it affects everybody who comes, you know, through us or go through Mesa or chat, you know, Chandler has it and Scott's also just kind of what's going on regionally because I know that a lot of our constituents talk about safety and how it's coming.

So I would love to have some data points showing exactly what's going around, like just not just affecting us, but just in our region for areas that we drive in, you know, daily.

Yeah, certainly that's a um great recommendation, uh, Councilmember Hodge.

How how do we compare with uh with the other adjacent cities?

And I certainly because of the um uh conversation, the robust conversation about photo enforcement in our community.

I would imagine it's similar in others.

Um, and people are gonna want to hear a full, you know, our residents um and you all are gonna want to hear a full reporting of uh the effectiveness of it.

So um certainly as we get good information, um, you know, moving deeper into the year for uh for the operations of the program, we will we will get back to you and share that um with comparisons with the other cities.

Thank you.

And my last thing to that is also I know that you know it's been a big concern with street um racing, and how is that coming along with the with the cameras and everything too?

Because I know that's been a big concern throughout the time that people are racing.

How is that effective with the cameras?

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, member that council member Hodge.

Um are there any other um additional questions or comments?

All right, hearing none, I'll go ahead and close the discussion on this item and thank you so much, Steph, for the presentation.

This is wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So will we move on?

We will move on to item 4C, which is the Tempe Public Library update.

So I will now call upon Craig Hayden, community services director, and Jessica Jupitus, deputy community services director, library services for a presentation.

And I think I'm flying solo unless you've got something to say, Craig.

All right, Jessica, it's all you.

Good evening, Vice Mayor, Mayor, Council, City Manager, and staff.

I'm Jessica Jupites, Deputy Community Services Director for the Library, or as I call myself the city librarian.

I'm here to give you an overview of what the library's been doing with our community in the last few years.

Libraries are trusted community resources, and it where people come for accurate information, whether that's our circulating materials, using public computers and library databases, or asking staff.

Next slide, please, Jason.

These are the council priorities directly related to library services, but in my strong opinion, we're involved in everything.

Uh the library is always up in your business.

So, you know, I'll add more to this later.

Uh and the next slide is an outline of what this presentation will be covering.

So the 3.33 statistical measurements, the major reading initiatives, and then kind of a debrief of what's new at Tempe Public Library.

On the next slide, as we're a data-driven city, we'll start with some numbers.

Here are the last four fiscal years and our material circulation data.

The blue bar is physical items.

The 10 bar is digital.

As you can see, more and more people are using the library virtually.

This is in line with trends with how folks are accessing information, and we offer options like unlimited digital access for our current book club titles to encourage participation.

We also do our best to offer audio items where possible to ensure accessibility.

Ear reading counts the same as eye reading.

It's all reading.

We have a circulation goal of 3.47 items per capita.

And as you can see here, we hit 5.4 items per capita.

Additional context, the state average in Arizona is 4.95 items per capita, and Maricopa County library system is 1.7 items per capita.

So your library is smashing it.

The next round of numbers on the next slide is our library programming.

As you can see, there is some fluctuation in the numbers.

This is due to our efforts to ensure that we have quality programs over quantities of programs.

There was also a drop in attendance in the FanCon 2024 when the date was shared with other major programs in the city.

And we only have so many people to go to so many amazing things.

In our youth programming, however, the attendance continues to grow.

We now have four story times a week for varying ages, including a Tuesday night family story time for folks who might work in 9 to 5 and not be able to get away during the day, and we're adding a bilingual English Spanish story time starting in October.

We often have 80 to over a hundred people attending each of these story times.

So that's a couple hundred people every week.

It's a crucial early literacy step, and it helps improve school readiness as kids develop their print awareness, they learn motor skills through songs and finger plays, and as they reach the preschool story time age, become more skilled in following directions and learning how to help still their wiggles to focus on the librarian.

We offer a variety of programming for all ages and currently run seven book clubs for adults.

We also use books that have been loved to pieces in programs like our recycled crafts.

We bring in a variety of presenters to introduce our community to a broad range of experiences.

From last fiscal year, we averaged 31 people per program, and we are continually adjusting to offer what the needs of our community are as they change and grow.

The library is a place to discover new things, as you know the staff is here to help.

So we're aiming for a 37 per person, so we're at 31 round, we have room to grow.

Next slide is to highlight some of our major reading initiatives.

I want to share out about three of them.

We've got FanCon, Summer Reading, and One Sempi One Book.

Our first one, Fancon, and this slide has lots of pictures, so it's good to look at while I talk.

Uh, go ahead and switch it, Jason.

Fancon is a free annual program offered in January that's a celebration of all fandoms comics, manga, anime, film, television, you like it, we bring it.

We bring together vendors, performers, and fans from all over the valley with attendance numbers in the thousands for an immersive day of the celebration of your favorite media.

Other events like this can be prohibitively expensive to attend for the vendors or for the participants, and ours is a point of access for anyone in the community.

It is completely free.

We have programming leading up to it about elements of fandom or how to craft your own foam armor or how to do realistic zombie makeup or how to write a comic.

Because reading comics is also reading and can be an initial access point for reluctant readers because there are the additional visual elements to help retain your attention.

We have a costume contest every year, a lot of which is pictured here, with a variety of age categories.

We provide a quiet sensory space for folks to decompress.

We invite a variety of food trucks, and the friends of the Tempe Public Library have both the bookstore and the cafe open the entire time.

Next up, summer reading.

We just finished this one, and these are our numbers for summer reading participation.

It's our biggest opportunity to connect with the community to encourage them to read for pleasure.

It's major and fairly universal in libraries as a way to engage youth and adults during the most common vacation time.

As you can see, our participation and completion has reached the highest numbers to date this year.

Uniquely, Tempe is offered a city-specific staff challenge in the last few years to encourage city staff to become familiar with the free resources the library offers, both for their own needs and to be able to share with the community at large.

This participation metric gauges the impact of our outreach in the community, our connection with schools, rec centers, city programs, and the larger group of Tempe residents.

This year we were fully staffed in the youth department after a multi-year deficit, so it gave us the chance to increase our outreach and programming.

And from 39% completion in 2021 to 59% completion in 2025 is huge, and the number of minutes read would amount to somebody reading nonstop for 11 years.

And we did that as a community in two months.

But more fun than that is the next slide of photos.

We offer programs for all ages, celebrate reading accomplishments, encourage folks to find things they might enjoy, and there are prizes.

We have a variety of prizes locally and through the county system to encourage participation, including a pair of mercury tickets to each person who reached reaches 750 minutes.

To complete the program entirely, you need to reach a thousand minutes.

If that sounds overwhelming, that's about 17 minutes a day throughout June and July.

If you have any commute at all, an audiobook has you covered.

You're reading a bedtime story, it counts for you and the little one you're reading it to.

All reading counts.

We did have a community member who wrote to the city manager and shared, wow, the summer reading program is incredible.

We ate out at local restaurants without spending a dime.

We went to Mercury and had an awesome family experience.

We even traveled up to Fool's Hallow State Park for free with our parks pass, and that's not mentioning that it encouraged all of us to read all summer.

My nine, 11, and 13-year-olds together read over 20 books in six weeks.

I did not spend any money, and my kids were wildly entertained.

And our next slide, our newest reading initiative, One Tempe One Book.

Community reading initiatives are designed to connect a community around a universal topic to foster conversation and learning.

Our first 11B1 book is in 2023.

Our topic was disability, and we handed out 1,250 copies of the book shown here, Disability Visibility.

By putting piles of books in spaces throughout the communities, including coffee shops, rec centers, restaurants, other local businesses, including a waxer who is very excited to be involved.

We created entry points to the library in places where our community is already spending some time.

By picking up a free copy of the book, you have a place to start a conversation.

I asked her how she liked it, and she said this book is changing how I view the world.

She did not know who I was.

She did not know I put the books there in the first place, and she really gave me the perfect sound bite.

We connected our programming in the month of October to the topic of disability and had a presenter share about using a seeing eye dog, had disabled authors reading from their books, initiated conversations about access and ableism and what it means to be disabled.

Our 2024 book was From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Dowdy, and our programming centered around death.

We talked about estate planning.

We brought in a local mortician to talk about the funeral industry.

We had a death doula, do a death meditation program.

This year, a little preview, we're doing storytelling.

We all tell stories.

Stories shape lives.

We come from a story, we create a story, we leave a story behind.

We'll be giving away 1,500 copies of How to Tell a Story by the Moth, thanks to funding support from the Friends of the Tempe Public Library.

Next slide.

Tempe Public Library is often the first place our community thinks of when they need answers.

We're an ideal third space.

You can spend the day without spending a dime.

You have access to air conditioning, study rooms, programming, restrooms, place to sit, free Wi-Fi, and of course, lots of books to read.

We host public meetings, private meetings, room rentals for birthday parties or trainings or job fairs.

In addition to this being what we already offer, we've made some improvements over the last few years.

So, in the words of the great philosopher Buster Rhymes, give me some more.

First, our brand new logo.

This is something I'm really excited about, uh, to the point where I did agree to get it tattooed on my body, and I do have it permanently inked onto my arm.

Additionally, we added a library app that allows folks to check their account, reserve rooms, look for events on the calendar.

They can even scan books that they see outside of the library at a bookstore to request a hold.

Working with facilities, the lower level got a fresh coat of paint, and thanks to funding from the friends, we were able to work with a local artist on the mural pictured here to ensure that kids could see themselves in the library.

It's got a really diverse cast of kids in there.

And for the record, the river is made of ink, which is why it's black, and it's called We All Go Where the Stories Flow.

The artists created coloring pages for us with elements of the mural so families could take home their own version.

We updated our mission and vision to better reflect how we respond to the needs of the community.

We have a short story machine, like a CBS receipt, but fun, that allows people to upload and share their own stories and download stories, print them out, and take them home.

We've experimented with programming for adults, shaking it up what people expect from us.

This photo here is from our punk paint program that was a Sunday in August at 3 p.m., 50 people came to listen to punk rock and learn some basic waters color skills.

There's so much more I can share, and if you've talked to me for longer than five minutes, I probably have.

But uh, we meet our community where they are.

We help them expand their skills, their knowledge, and their abilities.

The library has something for everyone, and we're here to help you find out what that is.

A public library is a crucial resource in any community where folks of all abilities, backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, interests, and identities belong.

And we work to reflect that in our collections, our spaces, programming, and in our service.

So with that, I have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

You always have so much energy.

It is incredible.

All the things that you um have turned on, all the programs that you have to you put together at the library have just been amazing.

And I will I will say it's a you can see the trends on how much um there are um that are people are reading books and participating in your programs, and that does say an awful lot.

I'm so proud of what you do.

Um so I'm gonna I'm gonna open up thanks again for the presentation to open the floor um to our council and our mayor for any questions um regarding the project I have first.

I have Councilmember Hodge.

Thank you so much, Vice Mayor.

Um, I just want to say, Jessica, you do a phenomenal job.

So I just love audit programs, and I love how it's everybody from the age of zero to 299 that can be and enjoy our libraries in and community.

Uh my question is I know that that you have a lot of connection within the schools and doing a lot of projects.

Is there any help that you need, or is it do you get all the kind of connections with the schools that you have?

Um, my question is do we need to help you in there in that in that service anyway possible?

Thank you so much for asking, Councilmember.

Uh, we have the connections, it's the capacity of the teachers and the schools that is really the hang-up because as we know, they are stretched thinner and thinner and thinner, and we look for how we can supplement without adding additional layers of work on them.

So we've got great connections, but if I need help, I know where to find you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, member councilmember Hodge.

Mayor Woods.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Just a couple of quick comments.

Uh Jessica, I just want to say great presentation as always.

And I think that the library is always up in your business, needs to be put on a t-shirt somewhere for the city activity.

Uh, that's my first thought.

And uh, since you quoted Buster Rhymes, I was gonna tell any Tempe resident watching this video in the words of the notorious BIG.

If you don't know, now you know.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor Woods.

Um, do we have other any other comments from our council?

I'll just say one thing that Mayor Willis, he's even funnier when he's away from you know the council.

Maybe you know you could take that comedy on the road with us one day.

Um Jessica, I wouldn't just want to say that I love the fact that you mentioned that audiobooks count as readings for somebody who has dyslex dyslexia.

Uh audiobooks are my jam.

So thank you so much for saying that.

Connections Cafe, I had an amazing coffee uh cup of coffee there.

So thank you for that.

Love, love, love the new logo.

Can't wait to see the tattoo.

Um, and the mural was oh, there you go, it's there.

Love it.

Um, and the mural was great.

And being there for the ribbon cutting for the mural was so much fun.

And my my grandson, every time we take me to the library, he loves looking at that mural.

He stops every time.

It is a fantastic piece of art.

So thank you so much.

And if we have no other questions, I'm gonna have go ahead and close this item on our agenda.

But Jessica, thank you so much.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

All right, so we are gonna go to agenda item number five, a call to the audience.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for those wishing to speak on committee of the whole items on this agenda.

The same protocol for public comment applies as described earlier.

Madam Clerk, were there any electronic speaker cards received for this part of the meeting?

Vice Mayor, we have not received any cards.

All right, thank you so much.

And we will go ahead and move on to agenda item number six.

This is the proposed uh council committees.

There are two items this evening per uh City Council Rule 7, subsection 2B.

Any two members of the council may propose the formation of a subcommittee at a work study session of the council by identifying the purpose of the proposed subcommittee and the proposed members of the subcommittee and obtaining approval of the majority of the council.

So we will go to um item 6A1, which is a community engagement and connection council committee.

And this is a subcommittee that I am proposing.

So I'm gonna read you just what we have written down to tell you a little bit about what this um committee is gonna be.

Um its objectives will focus on strengthening relationships and fostering collaboration to achieve positive outcomes, such as increasing participation in Tempe's boards and commissions, expanding community involvement and building stronger partnerships.

These efforts directly influence influence the overall health and wellness of the community by creating a more connected, engaged, and supportive environment.

They also set up for um performance measure two um 2.15 participating in city decisions and 3.34, which is community health and well-being.

And I am honored to have councilmember Amberg and Councilmember Chin um as a member of uh this committee.

I see I have hands up there just uh just a moment.

Um do any council members have any um questions regarding this committee?

So I have council member Adams.

You're on mute.

I I I've uh Vice Mayor, I'm just uh waiting for the next uh read.

So no problem.

Sorry about that.

And I'm supportive of this committee, so thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

So um like to find if we have consensus to move forward with this proposed committee.

Um so can I have a uh voice with consensus?

We've got thumbs, a thumbs up, a yes.

Yes, yes.

All right, well, I appreciate it.

Looks like we have consensus to move forward on the community engagement and connections subcommittee.

Next we have um item 6a2, which is motorized and electronic mobility device safety council committee.

Um, and I will call upon uh councilmember Adams to present on the subcommittee proposal.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Uh, I'd like to introduce introduce a proposal to establish a new council subcommittee dedicated to motorized and electric mobility device safety here in Tempe.

Councilmember Hodge will be joining me.

As we know, Tempe is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the valley.

Our compact location, vibrant downtown, and the presence of Arizona State University makes us a hub for walking, cycling, and now for electric bicycles and scooters.

These devices are part of everyday life for students, workers, and visitors alike.

But as the use grows, so do the challenges.

We've heard concerns from residents about rider behavior, sidewalk safety, and collisions.

The purpose of this subcommittee is to make sure Tempe remains both innovative and safe in how we manage micromobility.

Thank you.

That concludes my statement.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Adams.

Do any council members or mayor have any questions or comments regarding this subcommittee?

I do, and I just can't wait and excited to get started on it.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Adams.

All right.

Uh so do we have consensus to move forward formation of the proposed motorized and electric mobility device safety council committee?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Sounds like we have consensus, Councilmember Adams.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

So we will go ahead and move on.

Um, are there any other proposals for new subcommittees at this time?

All right.

Hearing none, we will go ahead and move on to um item six B.

Um, this is I will now go down a list that we have of the council subcommittees in order listed on the agenda and ask each subcommittee chair if they have any updates.

So the first is 6B1, which is age-friendly Tempe Council subcommittee, and that's my committee.

So um, I just want to give a quick update that um through our subcommittee, there is a survey that is out right now that is open until September 30th, and it is for Tempe residents 50 and over.

If you wouldn't mind taking some time to go and do this survey, it would be really helpful to form this plan for um the city of Tempe's age-friendly plan.

I will say that our um next meeting will be September 23rd, and I want to thank Councilmember Adams and Councilmember Keating for participating on this subcommittee with me.

Next we have item six B2, animal welfare and cruelty and tempee um council subcommittee.

Councilmember Hodge is the chair.

Do you have any update regarding this committee?

Yes, I do.

Um, I also brought Jackson who wanted to say something because it's animal cruelty, and he just wants to thank everybody in the council for doing it.

Our first, oh thank you, Jackson.

So our first uh subcommittee meeting will be on Tuesday, September 30th from 1 to 2 p.m.

in City Hall on the third floor.

And also council member um Adams and Vice Mayor Doreen Garlet is a part of it.

And I have one question to ask of the mayor and council.

I I heard from Councilmember Amber that she would want to be a part of it.

Is it a cutoff with three, or can we have an add an extra person to it?

Mayor.

I can take that.

Um, I mean, it would it would be a cutoff because we can't have a quorum through a subcommittee, so three would be the maximum before you form a quorum.

Okay, thank you.

Just want to make sure of that.

Check in on it.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Adams.

Thank you, Mayor Woods.

Uh, if we have no other comments, we'll go ahead and move on to 6B3, which is the drink spiking education and prevent prevention council subcommittee.

Councilmember Keating, do you have an update?

I do.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Uh, and thank you and council member Hodge for serving on the committee with me.

As you two know, but our colleagues don't.

We've had a few different meetings now and engage with stakeholders um up and down the spectrum from from Tempe PD to uh downtown Tempe authority, the Tempe Chamber.

We heard from the Tempe Coalition at our last meeting, and we have a pretty broad consensus to move forward with something.

So uh we have directed staff to start working on a proposed ordinance, which we will uh discuss at our next committee meeting, which will be the last Friday of September at noon.

This will be in person, so that's exciting stuff, and uh we'll bring it back to the full council after that and engage in the necessary necessary public input sometime in the fall or winter.

So uh we're moving forward and it's pretty exciting stuff.

Thank you.

All right, thank you so much, Councilmember Keating.

We will move on to item 6b4, which is mixed use space council committee.

Councilmember Chen, do you have an update?

I do, Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Uh the first meeting of this subcommittee will be on Monday, September 8th.

And it will be on the third floor of City Hall.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

All right, so we'll go ahead and move on to item 6b5, which is the revitalization of Tempe Town Lake Council subcommittee.

Councilmember Amberg, do you have any updates?

Uh not really.

Our next meeting is actually tomorrow on the third floor at three o'clock uh City Hall.

And if you've got any questions about it, whether or not you want to come, contact our office.

But I will say that I had a little preview today and some exciting things are happening.

We got some really good responses from the RFQ and RFP that we put out.

All right.

Well, thank you so much, Councilmember Amberg.

All right, so we will go ahead and move on to um agenda item number seven, which is the future agenda items.

Um the next I let's see, um, council members may request that an agenda item be added to a future issue review session in accordance with the open meeting law.

There should be no discussion on the item other than to clarify the request.

So would any council members like to request an item for future issue review session?

All right.

So hearing no request, I will go ahead and close this item.

We are down to agenda item number eight, which is adjournment.

The next scheduled work study session is October 23rd, 2025, and this meeting is now adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.