Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the Temple City Council work study session agenda.

Item number one is called to order council meetings.

Can we watch in real time via Cox Cable Channel 11 and at Tempi.gov/slash Tempe11.

Members of the public may also attend the meeting virtually through Microsoft Teams.

Guidelines for conduct at City Council meetings are on the table near the entrance for those in attendance at tonight's meeting.

We will now play a video with the proper protocol for ensuring the appropriate conduct at city council meetings.

Disruptive behavior will not be allowed.

Continued disruptive behavior will lead to removal from the council chambers.

We need to be able to hear everyone in the room.

Behavior that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of any city council meeting is not helpful and is not permitted.

This includes behavior both inside and outside of the council chambers.

Should individuals inside the council chambers become disruptive so that city business is not able to be conducted.

The mayor will first ask that the individuals allow city business to be completed.

There will be time for public comment during the call to the audience portion of the meeting.

If no cooperation, the mayor will issue a verbal warning and let them know that the continued disruptive behavior will lead to removal from the council chambers.

If there is still no cooperation, the mayor will issue a second verbal warning and let them know that the continued disruptive behavior will lead to removal from the council chambers.

If there is no cooperation after asking and two verbal warnings, then the mayor will ask security officers to remove only those individuals who were causing the disruption.

Security personnel should not engage in any way, but only escort them from the council chambers.

If individuals refuse to leave, security personnel shall warn them that they are trespassing, and that the next step will be arrest by a Tempe police officer.

Tempe officers may have to arrest if individuals refuse to leave.

Charges for trespass and disorderly conduct may apply, as well as other charges.

Should anyone be asked to be removed?

The mayor will recess the meeting.

Thank you very much.

Before we move into the call to the audience portion of the meeting, I want to take a moment to address campaign related activity, especially that we are now in the 2026 election season.

City Council meetings are open to the public and are a vital form for civic engagement.

We welcome all individuals, including candidates, to speak on matters of public concern during the public comment portion of the meeting.

However, because this is an official city council meeting that is both televised and live streamed using city resources.

Thank you for helping us maintain the integrity and neutrality of our public meetings.

None received for this meeting.

And I'm gonna see here.

We're entering our second year, we're actually in our second year without supplementals, and also have only approved budget requests that have revenue offsets or expenditure offsets.

Additionally, we um with the expenditure with the expenditure reductions we've implemented, all major funds are meeting their financial policies, so their fund balance targets.

So we are seeing, particularly in the retail sales, some growth over the prior year.

However, I want to be cautiously optimistic because the growth that we're seeing is not sufficient to offset the loss of residential rental residential rental tax.

We are also closely monitoring the transit fund.

We're ensuring that there's sufficient revenue in the fund to cover the to maintain the service levels that we currently have, and also to ensure that we have local match for the extension of the streetcar to Mesa and also for the pedestrian bridge on Rio Salado.

With that, before I do that, lastly, I want to thank our budget team for all the work that they've done in preparing the presentation in front of you and the long range forecast.

Specifically Scott Gruber, Kevin Di Dominico, and Venecia Benson.

With that, I'll turn over the presentation to Robert to go over the first couple of slides.

All right, good afternoon, Mayor and members of the councils.

Today's presentation of the long range forecast directly aligns with the council strategic priority of financial stability and vitality.

The goal is to maintain the highest general obligation bond rating by keeping the general fund within fund balance policy levels.

The specific performance measures are 5.04 and 5.05.

So I would like to just briefly review the public meeting dates for both the capital and operating budgets that we have.

We've held our public forums and our online budget forum is open through March 1st.

Today we are introducing the proposed capital projects along with the updated long range forecast.

Then we have the initial recommended capital projects, which will be presented in March.

We have two budget review sessions planned, one in April and another in May if needed.

The tandem budget adoption is scheduled for May 14th.

Final budget adoption is on June 4th.

The property tax levy adoption is June 26th.

And I will turn it back over to Lizette.

So we'll start with the local economic update.

State of Arizona economy remains overall stable.

Household income in the state of Arizona is up over the prior year.

Inflation has also moderated below the national average.

I mentioned earlier that we're seeing an increase in retail sales tax.

That's not specific to Tempe.

We're seeing that statewide.

Our other business categories are also coming in stable compared to the prior years.

And I have a chart to show you here.

So this chart, I'll orient you first on the information in front of you.

So we have bar graphs.

The information you're seeing in front of you goes back to four years.

So you have four years of data, and the information is for the first half of the fiscal year.

So the information is from July through December.

The gold part of the bar graph you're seeing is the revenues for the other business categories with the exception of residential rental.

So the business categories in the gold do not include residential rental.

And if you have, if you add the blue to that, then you have the residential rental component.

But if you just focus on the gold part of the bars, you can see the growth that I've mentioned.

In fiscal year 2026, you see that the other business categories is much greater than the revenues we received from the prior year.

However, as I mentioned earlier, the revenues are not enough to offset the loss of residential rental.

As you can see, the total revenues compared to fiscal year 2025, fiscal year 26 is lagging.

And again, that's because of residential rental.

Also wanted to break down the sales tax by business categories.

So you first see the retail, then you have rentals, and the very last bar graph you see is the hotel motel.

Similar to the last slide, we have four years data going back to fiscal year 2023.

I want to highlight the retail category.

As you can see, the blue bar that you're seeing is fiscal year 2026.

Retail overall is about 9% higher than last year.

And included in that retail category is online retail.

Online retail is actually up 19% compared to the prior year.

So again, we're seeing growth in retail, all the other business categories, as you can see in this chart with the exception of rentals, are stable, about the same as last year.

And then you see for the second bar graph component here, you see that rentals is down compared to last year, again, due to the loss of residential rental.

Pressing the wrong button.

Going back to the forecast assumptions, nothing's changed from this year from this presentation compared to last November.

So we have sufficient revenues and also fund balance or reserves to maintain the current service levels in Tempe.

In our forecast, we are continuing the salary plans and employee benefits that we've agreed to in our memoranda of understanding with our four labor groups that we have.

We did have to lower our interest earnings because of the drawdown of fund balance and reserves.

In this forecast, we did include the losses of revenue from again the incorporation of Santan Valley and also the federal income tax conformity.

So those two components would be a reduction in our state shared revenues that we receive from the state of Arizona.

As mentioned earlier, we have implemented proactive budget balancing strategies, which I'll go over a little bit more in the next slide here.

Some of the strategies that we've implemented is to use our available resources and prioritize existing programs and services.

And what that means is that we don't have a lot of capacity for growth or for implementing new services or programs.

We're prior to prioritizing and completing the current five-year adopted CIP.

And when I say the current five years, so the fiscal year 2026 adopted CIP.

We're also using the reserves for public safety personnel retirement system for to fund public safety retirement contributions.

Those reserves were set aside for that specific purpose.

The same thing for the OPEB or the other post-employment benefits reserves.

We're gonna draw down on those reserves to fund post-employment health benefits.

We have reduced the transfer to the transportation fund and also suspended the municipal arts transfer from the general fund.

So those two last the two, the last two bullet items that you see here, there's no legal requirements to do those transfers.

And if there's capacity in the general fund, our intention is to bring forth the continuation of those transfers in future years.

The forecast does not anticipate a recession or any economic slowdown.

That's consistent with information we've received from our forecasting partners.

So we do look at the finance advisory committee, that's through the state of Arizona, joint legislative budget committee for the highway use of revenue fund.

We look at the forecast from the Arizona Department of Transportation, and we have other forecasting partners that we have information from.

So if there is a recession or other economic slowdown, there are other considerations that we can do to balance our budget.

We could freeze vacant positions to reduce our personal costs, which is our largest operating cost.

Of course, we can implement a process to allow for crucial hiring of crucial positions.

We can also reduce our service levels to mitigate cost, shift resources to the highest priority services and programs, and we can also continue to identify any economic opportunities to increase the tax base.

So we're continuing to do that.

As I mentioned earlier, though there is growth in our sales tax, still not enough to offset the loss of residential rentals.

So we know that the work is not quite done yet.

So the budget team and I were continually looking at opportunities to reduce costs and also opportunities to increase our revenues.

Here is the potential scenario for the general fund.

You've seen this chart before.

Focus on the left part first.

So that top left, this is the chart for your revenues and expenditures.

The red line that you see is the line for expenditures, and then the blue line that you're seeing below that is the line for revenues.

As mentioned earlier, we are drawing down on our reserves or fund balance to balance our budget.

But as you can see in this forecast, to the right, the chart to the right is the fund balance policy in the general fund.

The yellow section is the policy, so it's between 20 to 30% of revenues.

And throughout the forecast period, as you can see, our fund balance is uh at 22% in fiscal year 2930.

I do want to focus a little bit on fiscal year 2025.

We did close our books last December when the financial audit was completed.

And I wanted to highlight again, we implemented proactive measures to reduce our budget.

So for fiscal year 2025, if you go back to our presentation last year, so February 2025, at that time we forecasted unassigned fund balance to be at 35%.

As you can see here, the actual fund balance actually came in at 38%, so higher than what we forecasted.

Fund balance at the end of fiscal year 2025 was 10.6 million grade higher than what we had anticipated last year.

And wanted to point that out is that's due to the fact that we reduce our expenditures and also revenues came in higher than what we had expected.

I'll turn over to presentation now to Robert to go over the enterprise fund and also to other special revenue funds.

All right.

So the enterprise and special revenue funds are consistent, which was uh presented back in November.

With water, wastewater and solid waste, those funds are stable with fund balance remaining within policy throughout the forecast period.

The revenues in those forecasts reflect anticipated future rate increases.

For the emergency medical transport fund, that fund continues to have a stable outlook.

The fund balance policy is still a work in progress as we work with FIRE on developing and refining that policy.

Moving on to the special revenue funds.

Um, first with transit.

So transit does currently have a significant fund balance, but it is impacted by the loss of residential rental, just like the general fund.

Um expenses in that fund are currently growing, and we are currently relying on fund balance to bridge the gap between expenses and revenues in that fund.

We will continue to refine this forecast next November as we have more information on proposition 479 and the distribution of those funds.

For the uh transportation fund, also known as the highway user revenue fund, um, that receives that fund receives the majority of its revenue from state shared highway user revenue funds, gas tax.

Um, the fund balance remains within policy throughout the forecast period.

As mayor and council are aware, future HERF revenues are subject to legislation and may increase or decrease the um legislation may increase or decrease the amount the the city receives.

And we continue to monitor any pending legislation related to that fund.

With arts and culture, um, despite the loss of residential rental sales tax in that fund, um that fund remains stable with revenues projected to be consistent with the November forecast.

Fund balance remains above policy levels throughout the forecast period.

And Mayor and Council, that concludes our presentation.

We would be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much.

Greatly appreciated.

Uh, council, any comments or questions on item 3A.

Noce.

Sounds good.

Well, no, I don't think so.

I think you're good.

I thought for a second there might be one, but I think great presentation.

If there's no questions, you covered it exceptionally well.

So thank you.

Thank you.

So I guess uh you're probably not going too far, I would imagine then, which will bring us to item 3B, which is in the introduction of the five-year capital improvements program project requests.

And so I guess Robert, you're staying unless that's going.

Yes, so uh long time no see.

So good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council.

Uh Robert Baer, municipal budget director.

We are here to take the first look at the five-year capital improvement plan, aka the CIP.

Um with the um the capital improvement plan and the operating budget, both of those items will come together on the April 23rd budget review session.

The CIP is a planning document.

Only the first year is adopted, but it's important to have a plan for all the city's capital and infrastructure needs so council and the public can see what those capital needs of the city are.

Um, no formal approvals are being sought tonight.

Rather, it is an opportunity to get familiar with what staff has put forward.

The CIP document represents many months of work by departments.

Um, and the department directors are available today to answer any questions you have on project specific questions.

In addition to all the work by the departments, this document really only comes together through teamwork and the hours of work by our budget staff, specifically Kevin Domenico and Benecia Benson.

So the CIP supports, I would say, all of the city council strategic priorities.

This specific presentation is tied to strong community connections and uh financial stability and vitality.

And you can see the performance measures we tie this presentation to on the slide.

We have this slide in the last presentation.

Um we included it in this presentation for posterity.

Now moving on to public outreach.

So you can see a lot of photos from our public outreach um events related to the budget.

So this includes our Tempe Forum where residents can communicate their priorities by allocating 100 among different programs and services.

This survey is open through March 1st, so it's open for a few more days.

Going back, we went on January 24th to the regional unity walk where we had a booth there and provided information on the city's budget process and also saw public input on the city's priorities.

On February 4th, we held virtual and in-person budget forums.

This meeting was recorded and posted to the MBO website.

On February 10th, we met with the mayor's youth advisory council and presented on the city's budget process and showed them results of online survey from MyAC members.

We also have a public website, of course, that contains a lot of information resources for our residents on all aspects of the operating and capital budgets.

And finally, we have continuous information going out via Tempe today, press releases, social media apps, and postcard mailings.

So now I'll go a little bit into the CIP document that you have in your council packet.

The public can also access this document via the agenda packet that is posted online.

This document contains all the proposed projects for the five year CIP.

Departments have submitted project requests totaling almost two billion dollars.

To help you navigate this document, we have a table of contents that links to overall programs as well as the 13 program summaries in the document.

So page one of the packet contains the summary of the entire five year capital improvement program.

Page two has a summary based off of funding sources.

And there are summary pages for each major program and bookmarks for each project request.

So this is a little bit of an eye test, so this is not meant to necessarily be read.

So in the next three slides, I'll kind of just walk through how the document is laid out.

This is to get you a little bit more familiar.

So this is the table of contents that is included in it.

Each program has a hyperlink that takes you to the summary page for that program.

Next, we'll go to a program summary.

So this one is for the police program.

So you can see all the capital projects underneath this program, the funding sources related to that, and the spend over the five years.

And then finally, this is what a project detail page looks like.

So for this one, we have the public safety communications equipment replacement program, but each program, each project in the CIP will have a similar page to this.

The detailed page includes project description, council priorities that are addressed by the project, estimated budget and funding sources, and operating impacts if there are any operating impacts tied to that capital project.

At any time, you can use the bookmarks in the packet to navigate back to the table of contents, project summaries, or any project detail page.

So I want to talk about next steps with our capital improvement budget process.

So really the next step is we need to determine the amount of resources we have available to fund all these capital requests, the $2 billion.

One of the things that we have to consider is our bond capacity.

The city's financial policies set a goal to limit the property tax levy growth, which is the total amount of property tax paid citywide, to 5% or less across all the properties of the city.

So the amount of general obligation bonds we can issue is tied to that capacity within the property tax levy.

We also need to maintain healthy debt to income ratios and coverage ratios to in order to maintain our bond ratings.

This year we have also implemented a cross-departmental team to score and prioritize our CIP projects to help determine that prioritization of CIP projects.

One other thing I want to highlight too is the organizational capacity.

So not only does it require money to accomplish CIP projects, but also requires engineering staff, procurement staff, finance staff, staff all across the city to accomplish these projects.

So when we're looking at the recommended CIP in a month, we will also need to consider what our staffing capacity or organizational capacity to accomplish projects are.

And that concludes our presentation.

Again, I am more than happy to take any input, questions, or comments.

Uh, mayor and council may have.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Robert.

Appreciate it.

Council, uh, any comments or questions on item 3B.

Yeah.

I'm good too.

Once again, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, that brings me to item 3C, which is the TEMPE Transportation Plan 2050 update.

Eric Iverson with Lindsay Post.

Lindsay Post.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Members of the council.

I'm just making a cameo here to introduce this item.

I am Eric Iverson, the transportation and sustainability director.

I am here with Lindsay Post, a senior planner on our transportation planning team who is going to be going through the presentation.

This is the second time that this project is coming to you all.

We kicked it off last fall, late summer, early fall.

And we have been going through tons of public outreach.

And what we're sharing here tonight is all the findings that we heard from the community, boards and commissions.

Before we go into the development of the plan, we will be coming back to you for the draft plan and more details at uh in in the coming months.

So just want to mention the importance of the transportation plan.

We've been again doing tons of community outreach.

Um, these are living documents that are really important to us, important to the whole community.

Um, the previous iterations of this plan, we do it every every 10 years.

It follows the adoption of the city's general plan.

Um, so it fleshes out really what the vision is for transportation in our city going forward.

Um, previous plans have been successful enough that we um have policies like the Vision Zero program that you're all familiar with, which is really addressing traffic safety in our city, and we've had um three years now of reductions in our serious and fatal crashes in our city, which is tremendous.

Um we also arrive at this point in time with uh the highest per capita transit ridership in the state as well as the um highest bike ridership in the region.

So these plans are important and they really do direct us towards what the future of our city is as it relates to transportation.

Um wanted to emphasize that.

And before I hand it over to Lindsay, I want to give make sure I give a shout out to the team that is working on this.

We have our um deputy director, Shelley Siler, uh Chase Wallman who's with us today, um, runs our transportation planning team.

Uh, Mitchell uh Mitchell Willard is not here today and um but but is working on this plan, and then Alex Phillips, who really has been um the right hand man for Lindsay on this on this effort.

So um I wanted to say those words and we'll hand it over to Lindsay uh for the rest of the presentation, and we're all here to answer any questions uh that you may have after.

Thank you.

Thank you, Eric.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

I'm glad to be back to update you on our progress with the Tempe Transportation Plan 2050.

Today I'll provide a summary of what we heard from the public in the last phase, give you an idea of what we're working on internally, and provide a look at what we showed the public at last night's open house.

This is our project timeline.

Uh, we actually kicked off in March of last year.

We are in shape up shape to wrap up phase two in March of this year and begin working on project recommendations and prioritization.

We anticipate coming back to the public and to council with draft recommendations and prioritization and to present the draft and final plan later this year.

The transportation planning, neighborhood services, and communication and marketing teams engaged the public in many ways.

During phase one, we presented to various boards and commissions through the summer and fall, including neighborhood advisory commission, aviation commission, and others which you see listed here.

We went to 29 tabling and pop-up events.

We also had the pleasure of attending the regional unity walk.

We had the booth next to Robert and Lissette, and I'm proud to have United Good and Evil here in that picture that you see at the United States at the regional unity walk.

Uh, we were at Open Streets Tempe, Tempe Time Machine, Gain, and many others.

We were invited to present to external partners like the Chamber of Commerce, the Centers for Habilitation, which provides residential and day program services for adults, and the McClintock High School Bike Club.

Our team also sent over 7,000 uh postcards directly to uh homes and equity priority zones throughout the city.

We also announced information about the plan in six newsletters and in various social media posts.

We in total, we directly reached over 30,000 people to announce this plan.

And we'll continue to engage the public throughout the planning process with eight eight scheduled events coming up through April.

I look forward to engaging the public at Play Day this Saturday and these other events that you see here.

All events like these are announced on our project website.

And now I'd like to provide a summary of what we heard from the public last summer in our first open house.

We received 400 unique survey responses in September.

Seven survey questions had open-ended uh questions where respondents had unlimited characters to voice their thoughts.

We got just over 700 unique responses to those.

And I'll review the survey summary with you now.

In the next three slides, I'll show you the top three responses to core questions in the survey.

These were multiple choice questions where respondents can select more than one option.

About 60% of the respondents drive as their primary mode of transportation.

And you'll see there in question one that 14.5% of the respondents bike as their primary mode.

And we can compare that to an urban national average being 1.1% of trips being taken primarily by bike.

37% of respondents wanted us to prioritize bicycle travel with safety being a close second.

And you'll begin to see a trend here with 67% of people saying they would walk more if there was more shade.

When asked, what would make them bike more?

52% of respondents said low stress bike routes and bike and vehicle separation being most important with shade being number three.

Separated on street bike lanes came up again when asked how Tempe should improve the existing bike network.

And of course, we recognize that the majority of roadway users are in their own cars.

When asked when we asked respondents how they'd like us to focus on safety treatments in our network.

In order to take transit more often, respondents indicated that they would need transit services expanded to new destinations and with faster service speeds.

When we build new destinations and vital community services, we need to also ensure that we're connecting the public to those destinations multimodally.

For instance, with the continued development of Tempe Marketplace into more than just a retail space.

We need to ensure that we're connecting people multimodally, like we did with the adjacent Smith Road streetscape improvements.

And we are in the next phase of planning the extension of the streetcar, which would take people to and past Tempe Marketplace.

When we asked how we should prioritize locations for improvement, respondents said they'd like us to focus on areas improving areas with the highest traffic volume first.

And our plan complements and supports the circulation chapter of the General Plan 2050, and this is how we plan to put it together.

Five chapters on mobility, safety, sustainability, and resilience, community and operations.

There are 27 objectives and 122 strategies that we categorize from the general plan circulation chapter to ensure each was supported by this structure.

And while not an exhaustive list, this slide shows how the council's strategic priorities and performance measures would fit into our proposed structure, which we color-coded here for you.

For example, 4.11 tree and shade canopy would fit into the chapter on sustainability and resilience.

The tree and shade canopy is one of council's current five priority measures, and the shade and heat mitigation was a need heard often by the public during outreach.

Of those 27 objectives and 122 strategies, we worked with the core working group, which is internal transportation staff, and the technical advisory group consisting of representatives from various departments like public works, public safety, and community health and human services, to develop corresponding policy statements to support the goals and strategies and ensure that our plan can support the work done by our colleagues throughout the city.

Project staff will continue to refine these policies and strategies, which will help us shape the structure of our plan.

An example of a proposed policy is on your screen to expand safe, convenient, and accessible travel opportunities for all users of the roadways and paths in Tempe.

And now I'd like to show you a sample of what we presented to the public in our second open house last night.

Our goal this round was to report phase one feedback, inform the public on our gaps and needs report, and introduce how we propose to evaluate projects.

This slide shows the projected level of service on our roadways, level of service, results describe how well a roadway operates from the perspective of drivers based on factors like speed, travel time, comfort, and delay, basically how our roadways perform and how traffic flows.

This map is a sliding map the public can use to see the level of service projected for 2050 if we maintain current conditions.

You'll see the most, and I'm let me play this for you now.

What you'll notice is the slider map will move over and show you the projected level of service for 2050, and then I'll move back and let you see it a couple of times.

The dark red, of course, is uh uh considered a level F level of service, lots of breakdowns, lots of delays.

Uh light green is a level A with a free-flowing conditions.

You'll notice most inefficiencies projected for level of service in 2050 being north of Apache on corridors like university along University, Rural McClintock, and Mill.

Um, and as Eric mentioned, part of the plan is to update the Vision Zero action plan.

The map on the right is a snapshot of a dynamic map highlighting the high injury network or the hen.

We learned that just over 50% of the fatal and serious crashes were at mid-block locations.

Using this map, visitors to our webpage can interact with the map to see different conditions around the city.

With this information, the public can help us determine where and how to prioritize projects and identify improvements.

What we learned when we analyzed gaps and needs in our current transit network is that we have the highest demand north of the US 60, which complements transit propensity areas.

However, there are minor concentrations of high transit propensity south of the US 60, such as near Priest and Elliott.

We found gaps in our transit frequency and weekday off-peak hours, which results in an unmet demand.

The map you see here is a static image of another dynamic map that has multiple inputs the public can view and change so that they can easily take our survey on our website.

We analyze gaps in needs in our pedestrian network using key indicators like distance from schools, parks, and transit.

Various web map layers allow the public to see where there are sidewalk gaps impacting their travel and access.

Of these, one of those maps that you don't see here, but is available on our webpage, is a pedestrian crossing spacing analysis, which shows areas where there are large different distances between roadway crossings.

And if we consider the emphasis on the need for shade that we saw in the public feedback, a large crossing distance is especially uncomfortable and potentially dangerous in extreme heat.

Showing this information to the public online and at the hope and at the open house helped them consider what they'd like prioritize in the next 25 years.

And this is another map that viewers can interact with to turn on different layers showing the level of traffic stress for bicyclists around the city.

It currently shows the low stress bike network, which is represented by blue and green.

Areas without blue and green are those with a higher level of stress for bicyclists.

Some needs we found in our analysis include the need to safely cross major streets and for more continuous, safe, comfortable routes.

An example of a level one bike corridor would be Smith Road, where there is a physical separation on or on or on parts of country club way where bike lanes are totally separated from the roadway.

A level four corridor for bicyclist stress would be on a major arterial road with higher traffic speeds, like on Priest Drive.

And finally, these are the factors to consider when assessing and prioritizing a project or corridor.

Our goal with these evaluation criteria is to identify projects that can be evaluated using measurable quantitative and qualitative data.

Criteria selected should align the goals and policies that define the transportation plan.

This evaluation criteria will be influenced by feedback from the collected from the public in collaboration with the core working group and the tag, the technical advisory group.

And we got a chance to see what the public uh wanted to prioritize last night at our open house.

And finally, here are our next steps.

The public survey is open now through March 18th.

We added an extra week to our normal survey period to accommodate spring break.

On our project website, transportation plan 2050.tempe.gov is now updated with the needs and gaps report, including all the information you saw and heard about today.

Our consulting partner, HDR, will summarize what we heard from the public open house and from the survey and post to our project website.

Phase three, project recommendations and prioritization will kick off next month, and we anticipate coming back to the public and council with draft recommendations and prioritization, as well as the draft and final plan later this year.

You can reach me or and the transportation planning team about Tempe Transportation Plan 2050 with the information that you see here.

And with that, Mr.

Mayor, I welcome any comments or questions.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

Let me look to the council here.

Uh, council, any comments or questions on item 3C.

No, none actually.

Right.

Thank you.

Very thorough presentation.

Thank you so much.

All right, the brief item number four called the audience.

The city council welcomes public comment at this time for the committee of the whole items on this work study session agenda.

There is a three-minute time limit per speaker.

Madam Clerk, do we have any cards?

None received.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'll move to item number five, then committee of the whole 5A or proposed council subcommittees.

For 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 are there any proposals currently, Council, for a new council subcommittee at this time.

All right, seeing none.

I'll now go down.

I'll go down the list of the current existing council subcommittees in the order listed on the agenda, and ask the subcommittee chair if they have any updates, which means I'll start with item 5b1, age-friendly Tempe Council Subcommittee.

Vice Mayor Garland.

Okay, thank you so much.

I want to first thank my uh co-chairs on this committee.

I have uh Councilmember Nikki Amberg and Councilmember Randy Keating, so thank you so much.

Um I want to say that our subcommittee um also is made up of Dr.

Sharnice Moore, Dr.

Johanna Glover, Lisa Zyrix, um Susan Stephenson, James Devray, and our um staff that has been working with us on our committee is Mary Macey, Megan Wilson, and Camden Salinger.

And I just want to say thank you so much to them for all the work that they have put into this.

Um, since uh we have um met our goal, um I want to actually also thank our action team that has done a lot of the work that that brought back to our committee so that we could be researching and um and really paying attention to what our community wants.

So our city um departments was community services.

It's Mercedes Payne and Shelby Meyer, Community Health and Human Services, Murray Raymond, Martha Williams, Melissa Leathers, Camden Shellinger, Megan Wilson, and Mary Maisie, Transportation, Kathy Hollow, Diversity Office, Monique Perry, Communications is Susie Steckner, community development is Lucas Jensen, and strategic management and innovation with Stephanie Martinez.

Our partners in the community that we have been working with to work on this plan is AARP, Ability 360, ASU Age-Friendly University Global Network, Tempe Community Action Agency.

We have a resident, um, Emma Emma Herring, who is also on the committee, um, duet, uh, Tempe Community Council, Maricopa County Depart Department of Public Health, Maricopa Human Services, one community, U.S.

Department of Veterans Affairs, and Astor Aging is also a part of that.

So I just want to just shout out of all those people.

Thank you so much for all those organizations that have helped us.

And I also want to say a special um thanks to Parrish Spice, my assistant, who's been kind of keeping us all together.

So this Cub Subcommittee subcommittee's objective was to update the five-year age-friendly Tempe, Tempe Age-friendly action plan.

And that final draft will be presented to the council on May 4th for approval and then adoption.

Our subcommittee's work has been achieved, so I will close our committee.

Great.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Appreciate that.

All right, that brings me to item 5B2, Animal Welfare and Cruelty and Tempe Council Subcommittee.

I know Councilmember Hodge is the chair, but she's having audio issues, so I'm gonna frankly cover this.

The animal welfare and cruelty subcommittee will hold its next meeting on Friday, March 6th at 2 p.m.

at Tempe City Hall, and a virtual attendance option will also be available.

Which brings me to item 5B3, Community Engagement and Connection Council Subcommittee, Vice Mayor Garland.

All right, thank you so much.

Um so I want to um thank Councilmember Amberg and Councilmember Chen for being a part of this subcommittee.

We are currently doing focus groups um going out into the community to talk to them and um about community engagement and connection.

We have five questions that we're asking the same questions everywhere.

Um so we are not gonna be meeting in March because we are gonna be working on pulling all of this data together.

Our next meeting will not be until April.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Next up, item five, before drink spiking education and prevention council subcommittee.

Councilmember Keaton.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Though though the ordinance has passed, we'll be keeping the committee open for a little bit longer during uh implementation and planning, the logistical things that the committee would want.

Just involvement in in case the vice mayor needs a crack any skulls.

So we're gonna keep it open for a little while, but we'll no longer be meeting unless there is a reason to.

Sounds good.

Thank you, Councilmember Keating.

All right, next up, item 5B5, federal and state advocacy review council subcommittee.

Councilmember Amberg.

Yes, thank you.

Uh Mr.

Mayor, I chair the subcommittee and I'm joined by uh my colleagues, Vice Mayor Garland and Councilmember Keating.

We met on February the 20th and talked about our outline for what we're gonna accomplish in the subcommittee and uh kind of split up the split up the uh topics so that uh staff doesn't have to go to every single meeting.

So thanks to everybody that attended.

Our next meeting is gonna be March 24th at 1230.

Thank you very much.

Next up, item 5b6, mixed use space council subcommittee, council member Chin.

Thank you, Mayor.

I am honored to chair this subcommittee and joined by Councilmember Amberg and yourself, Mayor Woods on this subcommittee.

We are currently scheduling out meetings and working with some um pretty crazy schedules, but we will we're hoping to get out the next few meetings um soon.

So other than that, no other report.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Next up, item 5b7, motorized and electric mobility device council subcommittee.

Councilmember Adams is not present this evening, so we're going to go ahead and skip over that one and go to item 5b8, revitalization of Tempe Town Lake Council Subcommittee.

Councilmember Amberg.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I chair this and I'm joined by my colleagues, Council Members Adams and Hodge.

Our next meeting is going to be on April the 20th at 2 p.m.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Next up, item 5E9, Tempe Term Limits Policy Review Council Subcommittee.

Councilmember Keating.

Thank you, Mayor.

We're going to have our first meeting at some point in March.

Uh Keaton's going to work with Councilmember Amberg and uh Vice Mayor Garland's AIDS to get that scheduled.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

All right.

That brings me to item number six, future agenda items.

Uh council members may request that an agenda item be added to a future issue review session, but in accordance with the open meeting law, there should be no discussion on the item other than to clarify the request.

Would any council members like to add an agenda item to a future issue review session?

Councilmember Amberg.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um I'm not sure if anybody's aware of this, but our Colorado water uh river water compact is expiring this year, and uh we failed uh to come to a consensus with the upper basin and the lower basin states to figure out what we're gonna do.

We had a February the 14th deadline, which we did not meet.

So the federal government released some environmental impact study drafts, which I have to say are all bad for the state of Arizona.

So I was hoping maybe Tara and her team, who are absolutely fantastic, would be able to come and kind of do just a little update like hey, this is where we're at from a hydrology standpoint in the Colorado River because we are not doing very well.

Um, and also what is going on uh with the compact.

Yeah, sounds good.

Madam City Manager.

Mayor, Council Member Amberg, we would be happy to.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Um, anyone other council members have any future agenda items you'd like added to a future issue review session?

All right, seeing none, I will go ahead and close that item out and go to item number seven.

Announcements from the mayor and or city manager.

I don't have any announcements this afternoon.

Madam City Manager.

Nothing this evening.

The less I talk by, the better.

Thank you, Madam City Manager.

Appreciate it.

Uh that brings us to item number eight, which is adjourned.

The next scheduled work study session will be on Monday, March 23rd, 2026.

We are adjourned at 4 51 p.m.

Thank you, everyone.

Have a good evening.