Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the Tempe City Council work study session agenda.

Item one is called order.

Council meetings can be watched in real time via Cox Cable Channel 11 and at Tempe.gov/slash Tempe Eleven.

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

Guidelines for conduct of 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.

Or I will just say just please be appropriate.

I guess I can sp I can skip it.

It's okay.

I got this.

All right, so before we move into the call the audience portion of the meeting, I want to take a moment to address campaign related activity, especially as 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.

We ask all candidates, including any current council members, to refrain from electioneering or campaign related activity while participating in this meeting.

That means no discussing your candidacy, asking for votes or signatures, or displaying campaign materials such as signs, t-shirts, or literature while speaking.

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

Which brings me to item number two, which is called the audience.

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

There is a three-minute time limit per speaker.

Uh once again, I've got a couple of cards here, so I'm going to do these in the order in which I receive them.

Yes, he is, Mr.

Mayor.

Hello, can you hear you?

Yes, uh, please go ahead and state your name and city of residence.

You have three minutes.

This isn't a good time to implement more building codes in the city of Tempe.

Government regulation already accounts for 40% of the cost of development.

And the city plans to continue adding regulatory burdens.

Soon it will be 41%, 42%, 43.

The city is planning for new building codes for new chapters that don't exist yet.

We need to cut red tape and reduce the cost of housing.

The federal government wants cities to cut red tape in the executive order on March 13th included international green building codes.

In very simple terms, the federal government is saying they don't want to award cities for two thousand dollar apartments.

And if you can't bring the cost down, they're going to start to award cities that have better performance.

Any increase in cost from green building codes is not acceptable.

I want to ask the city council if the federal government determines Tempe is ignoring the executive order.

Will that jeopardize Tempe's federal funding for transportation and housing?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Okay, the next speaker I have is Kendon Young.

Please come forward, state your name and city of residence.

You have three minutes.

Howdy from uh familiar faces.

My name is Kendon Young and I live here in Tempe, Arizona.

Um I just want to uh rebring up a memo that we had sent over in 2023 on September the 18th, supporting the uh expansion and uh research around the International Green Construction Code.

Uh at that time.

We were excited that this uh council decided to pursue this, especially as a uh mandatory for city buildings code and a voluntary for community buildings under the guise that this three years says we went through and figured out what parts of the code would work for Tempe, working hand in hand with developers to make sure that this does not accrue additional costs, and that is uh developed and tailored specifically to Tempe's needs is exactly the work that we should have done, we have done, and we are working to finish.

So in this next stage of the International Green Construction Code and its adoption, the whole goal of this was to figure out what we could move into mandatory that does not affect our um uh cost of housing, um, which I do want to also add that uh there are myths around certain elements of this being uh creating more expensive development.

For example, putting solar, which reduces the cost of electricity for our residents, is 80% more expensive when we have to retrofit old buildings.

Yet creating templates that can be used just like our developers do all over the valley in the country, uh, can be edited and lead to lower cost of construction when we're using this over and over again.

This is some of the things that our city and staff has been looking at over the last two years.

We are now moving into this final uh year process, and I'm very excited to see all that we've learned and what else we can do to really start to anchor these into everyday practices that help our residents to live more affordably, to live more sustainably, and that we don't have to choose between protecting our future and being able to live today.

So thank you.

And I support the International Green Construction Code work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

That's all the speakers I have uh that were sort of pre-registered.

Uh, Madam Clerk, do we have any others right now?

I did not receive any more.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

Which means we'll move on to item number three, which is our issue review session.

Item three A is initial recommended five-year capital improvements program and acceleration strategies.

And I see.

So I see Robert Baer coming up, municipal budget director.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Robert Baer, municipal budget office director.

Tonight we will take a look at the recommended CIP for the next five years and why Dell Holmes will be discussing the acceleration strategies.

Charter requires we present the city manager's recommended five-year CIP at least 90 days before the start of the new fiscal year, which starts July 1st.

No funding decisions will be made tonight.

Um department directors are here today to answer any specific questions that um council may have on projects.

I would also like to uh start off by thanking all the departments uh that have helped us with the CIP this year and also budget staff, Kevin D.

Domenico, Scott uh Gruber, and Benesia Benson.

So tonight's presentation.

Well, the five-year CIP supports all of the council strategic priorities and a number of the performance measures.

The one two that we've decided to highlight are 2.11, the financial reporting award, and 5.04, the city's uh triple A bond rating.

In the development of the operating capital budget, um, that is a public process.

And shown here are all the public meetings that we have done and will be doing in the future.

Um tonight with the March uh 23rd uh presentation of the initial recommended projects.

We're about midway through the cycle, and you can see the future meetings we have planned.

Developing the city's budget is also a public process.

So as you can see from the pictures here, we've had a number of events.

Um we've had presentations, social media posts, and press releases all related to budget and uh trying to get the community input into the budget.

We had a survey through the Tempe Forum and one specific um for um survey for the uh mayor's youth advisory commission.

When it comes to the TEMPE forum community results, you can see those here in terms of ranking one through five with quality of life coming first.

We had the survey open from mid-January to March 1st.

We had 437 responses.

And the question specifically was how should the city invest in advancing its strategic priorities ranking from most important to lesser of importance.

The survey also asked residents to allocate 100 among programs and services.

The top 10 results of that survey are shown here on this slide.

And then for the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council, here is how they rank the five strategic priorities with safe and secure communities being number one.

And these are the top 10 of how they would allocate the $100 among the city services with homeless services being the number one rank from the Mayor's Youth Advisory Commission.

Now I would like to talk about the steps in developing the recommended five-year CIP.

So first, the departments identify and propose projects based off of their asset management plans that maintain their city infrastructure and replace infrastructure at the appropriate time.

The proposed projects were included in your February 23rd packet, and we have a revised packet in tonight's packet.

The budget office determines funding capacity for all the available funding sources we have for CIP, including pay as you go cash funding and also bond financed.

The bond budget office also met with individual departments to review their projects.

These meetings also include a number of other stakeholders throughout the city, including strategic management and innovation office, facilities maintenance, IT, diversity, equity and inclusion, and engineering.

So this graph here shows a comparison of the current adopted five-year CIP in the one on the left versus what is in the recommended CIP.

So the recommended CIP in total is about 6% lower at $1.84 billion over the five years.

And this is how we're planning to finance that five-year CIP.

The two largest slices of this pie chart are enterprise excise tax bonds.

So these are related to our water and sewer projects.

And then the second largest is the general obligation bond funded projects over the next five years, which at $650 million.

And here on this graph, you can see the split among the major functional areas of the city.

When it comes to financing our capital improvement plan, we'll split this into three different categories.

So enterprise, our largest includes water, solid waste, ambulances if they had a five-year CIP.

They're ultimately paid by user fees.

So your water, your sewer, your solid waste bill, that goes to either financing the cash necessary to fund those projects today, or the debt related to financing those projects over a longer time frame.

We also have special revenue funds that have capital improvement plans that includes arts and culture, transit, and the highway user revenue fund or transportation.

These are legally restricted, so the revenue from these sources can only be paid to fund capital in these items, capital and operations.

And then we have general government, which utilizes both bond funding and cash funding with the cash funding that does compete with operating in the general government area.

A few other funding sources include federal grants and developer contributions and partnerships, cash and bonds.

So bonds are subject to debt limits.

Bond authorization when it comes to our general obligation bonds must be approved by the voters, and if we are issuing revenue bonds, we have to have the revenue, obviously, to repay that debt.

So the city did our voters approved a general obligation authorization in November of 24.

The bond election questions were based on the adopted five-year CIP.

The largest portion of that, $301 million went to community safety and roadways.

And a third question on the ballot was approved for enhancing and increasing the supply of affordable housing.

The total of that geo bond authorization is 581.5 million.

So I do want to highlight that when it comes to our capital improvement plan, we do have some limited resources.

So starting off with general obligation bonds.

So our general obligation bonds here in the city are mostly prepaid through property tax.

The financial policies of the city limit that property tax increase to 5% on existing properties.

And we have to determine the amount we can fund with that 5% levy limit growth when it comes to determining the size of our CIP.

And this is something we're going to monitor throughout the year.

Cash obviously is limited in terms of that it competes with our operating functions here in the city.

Outside funding sources, well, you need to have agreements with those with the whether it's a federal government or a developer to actually receive those resources.

These bubbles represent the amount of funds funded by these projects on a scale of one to three, with three being highest for asset preservation on the X axis, and three being the highest in terms of relationship to health and safety on the Y axis.

So the largest portion of our projects fell into that high replacement of existing assets and high relationship to health and safety.

So these include everything from replacement of fire stations to maintaining our roadways to also maintaining our water and sewer systems.

And in the packet, there is an interactive graph too, where you can get more detail on what falls into each of those areas on the graph.

And then here's some project highlights with what is included in the five-year CIP.

Our largest projects include our pavement preservation, the enhancement to the city's payment quality index or PQI.

Park replacements enhancements are funded at $56 million.

$34 million we have for fire station number eight in the ASU Novis corridor.

$25.4 million is planned for affordable housing enhancement.

And you can see some of the other projects we've highlighted on this slide.

And now I will hand it over to Ydell Holmes to review the acceleration models.

Let's make a quick comment about the um pavement acceleration and a lot of the ways that we not not just the work that we do, but the way that we actually advertise a lot of that work through uh newsletters, whether it's coming from the city, whether it's coming from council members directly or a lot of our social media.

Every now and then now I will see someone uh kind of jump on a thread.

Many times they're taking the thread off subject, but they'll say things such as, you know, well, when are we gonna what is my street gonna get paved?

And someone else will jump in.

Actually, this happened a couple of days ago.

Another resident jumped in with the actual map with the sort of PQI acceleration.

So I didn't have to answer, or a staff member didn't have to answer, but our residents are so aware of what's going on with the PQI acceleration, not just because of the bond election in November of 2024, but also because of how much we keep kind of talking about it, that I have residents now jumping on and actually going, hey, if you have if you have questions about this, here's how you find that answer, or here's the actual map if you want to look into it in a more detailed way.

So it's just obviously big kudos to staff for the work they're doing with the PQI and everything else you talked about.

But I just love from a sort of social media and marketing and messaging standpoint that a lot of our residents go, Hey, I can give you that answer.

You don't have to you have to ask Corey anything.

I got this.

So council project, yeah, go for it, please.

Sorry about that.

I just have like one quick question.

I just have like one quick question on when you say what our CPI committee, can you name some of the kind of people who are on that committee so we can get an understanding to the comp, you know, to the community who actually has uh you know say so on that committee.

Um yeah, so we had everyone from department directors, so um Eric Irison and uh Jonathan Shuffield were on that committee.

Um we also had frontline staff.

Uh Jen Savinovich over in uh engineering was on the committee.

So um I think in total we had 16 members.

Um, so um, you know, people from all the major capital improvement project heavy departments, um, including representatives for police and fire rated the projects, people from central services like me rated the projects, and then uh um some other people that uh don't have a lot of capital in their project, you know, government relations obviously doesn't have a lot of capital in their budget, but we wanted to have also some outside perspective as well.

Thank you.

What up?

All right, then fine.

Uh good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Wydell Holmes, Director of Strategic Management and Innovation Office.

And I'm happy to present today the acceleration models as part of our performance-led budgeting.

And to your comment earlier, Mayor, about PQI, this is exactly how uh our focus and emphasis on moving our pavement quality index score from 60 to 65 in about six months happened.

And so this presentation is about the acceleration models that you gave us direction on in December at the work study session following your start tool exercise, which uh just to share again with the community is a way of aligning our resources for Tempe.

It's a prioritization exercise based on data driven from our community survey, our business surveys, as well as even our MIAC survey that was presented to you recently.

Um, I will share with you that the five acceleration performance measures were aligned with what our community also said was important to them, specifically regarding safe and secure communities and quality of life.

You'll see that most of the strategic priority areas of council is represented in these five models.

Uh would like to also uh thank the SMIO team, Stephanie Martinez, Amber Asbury, um let's say Julia Venton got a little bit of a list now these days, Megan Beardon and Zoya L for both not only their data analytics, but as well as the support of the teams and some of the workshops that were held with the performance measurement teams to lead up to today.

Uh we also have performance measure owners and strategy partners across the entire city.

You'll know that on our performance.tempe.gov webpage, we don't identify departments unless it's for clarification, like a response time or something, because we emphasize the collaboration across all of the city, where we're all responsible for over these 101 performance measures and for the achievement of their results.

So moving to the five acceleration models, as you'll see, two of them are focused on uh strong or safe and secure communities, as well as quality of life, our sustainability and our growth with our tree and shade canopy, as well as our financial stability via vitality with our quality of business services.

When these models are identified at your direction, we put together strategy teams from across the city, including external partners.

And this these teams meet to do strategy development.

This year they also did a data walk and then a strategy walk where they got feedback from their colleagues across the city.

And so we continue to advance the accountability, the leadership and succession planning in regards to managing these performance measures.

So one thing to note on the following five slides, that's all I have.

Uh, is that any of the values that are in yellow, it's because they're within 10% of the target.

And we are getting uh a little more refined each year, so we're able to kind of set these thresholds now where you're not just seeing green or red, you're also seeing where we're kind of moving in closer to uh achievement of our of our goals.

Uh you can see that in neighborhood uh and city and desert date city and desert parks for this performance measure regarding our feeling of safety in parks.

We are still holding an eight-point gain from 2023, especially in night in regards to feeling of safety.

Again, back to the investments we make through performance-led budgeting.

The fo the focus on the strategies this year is in regards to safety technology as well as as well as communicating about utilization of parks, not just the rules, but how to make everybody comfortable utilizing parks, and then also implementing a lighting audit.

And you can see that the majority of the CIP funds are related to parks lighting.

So a very similar side, this is in regards to feeling of safety in your neighborhood.

We are very close to our national benchmark target of 67%.

Strategy focus this year is on continuing our crime suppression operations within neighborhoods, in increasing our opt-in program for both residential and businesses to opt in and sharing their cameras with our real-time op center, as well as installation and repair of street lighting because we know there's a definite evidence-based correlation to safety there.

The CIP focuses mainly on technology, track traffic calming in neighborhoods, as well as road safety.

Branding homelessness, while we have a very aspirational goal of zero, and I think Tempe is one of the only cities across the nation that draws that definitive line in the sand.

We are still moving in the right direction with our point and time count, as well as with the count that we take in our HMIS system, which is our homeless management information system.

The focus this year of strategies is connection to services.

So improving those warm handoffs from one type of service need to a different type of service need or to a selection of several service needs that our community members may have, as well as a partnership that we have with ASU and NAU for creating predictive indicators of homelessness.

So basically moving before that pivot point before somebody becomes homeless, before a family becomes homeless.

What are the other indicators where we may have the ability to do pre-outreach before that happens?

This is novel.

This would be a huge innovation in regards to both regionally and nationally.

So we're looking forward to that continued work this year with our partners.

And you can see that the CIP focuses primarily on non-congregate shelter as well as affordable housing.

For our tree and shade canopy strategy focus is on our urban forestry master plan.

And I'm always very proud to say that Tempe actually has an urban forester.

Most people are very surprised as we live in a desert, they think what?

Um and then also there's a strategy focus on bus shelter design to maximize shade in our community.

So that would be both trees and man-made shade.

And then the CIP focuses on the infrastructure for shade as well as our urban forestry plan.

And rounding it out is our quality of business services of our acceleration models.

Again, we're within 10% of our target of 73%, which is a national benchmark target.

And our focus of strategies is a very specific dedicated website for economic development, so that our businesses that are staying in TIMPE, expanding in Tempe or wanting to come to TIMPE, will have all the right information at their fingertips in one place and not have to search through several different regional and local sources.

So really excited about the economic development team's work on that.

And then also we always continue that interdepartmental collaboration.

We know that we all have touch points with not only our community for our services, but also with our businesses.

Uh supports primarily technology to support business attraction, retention, and expansion through some enterprise software that will help give the teams data and tools to make better decisions on how to serve our business partners.

And with that, I will conclude.

Thank you so much.

Anyone to council any comments or questions?

All right, Robin Smith Cook.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right.

All right.

Anything else in item 3A?

We're all good staff.

All right.

That means we'll go ahead and move on to item 3B, communication and marketing update.

And let's see, Chris Baxter Ging, communication and marketing director.

Good to see you again.

Hello, Marin Council.

I'm Chris Maxter Ging.

I'm your communication director.

Um let's see.

There we go.

In 2023, you asked our team to review Tempe's look, our brand, our communication priorities.

And we spent some time doing that and came back to you in 2024 with the new branding and communication priorities, which you approved.

We went forward and came back to you a year later with a communication plan with a brand new website update with better functionality and the creation of the 2025 to 2027 communication plan.

We've been working that plan for a year now, and we'd really love to share you our results so far.

We have a couple of things that I'd love to shout out.

One is the just FOIA public record system that several departments helped to implement.

And that has been a real help for the community.

You can pay for your public records online now.

You can get them in an expedient way, and you can see where you're at in the system.

So I'd like to shout out to IT, strategic management, and a variety of other departments that help make that happen.

Also, we have some new social media tools and expert management.

And you'll see in a few minutes some of the great results that has come along with that.

So we've been working the plan for the last year.

And I'm so grateful to each one of you for your assistance and making sure that we are on point.

We have two performance measures that we go through.

The first is satisfaction of information availability and the second is the usefulness of our city's website.

I am very proud of our efforts so far on that.

If I can move the slide we've become top 10% in the nation for communication.

Almost double what the national average is and I can't be prouder of the team that we have and we won four social media excuse me four public relations Society of America awards this year for social media for our videos and for our overall communication plans.

This is a result of the hard work that everyone does all year long.

And these are industry standards that we are meeting and exceeding.

So every year we do the community survey and one of the things that we ask people where do you get your information where do you like to get your information we have 25 or 30 different tools that we use to get the word out and these range anywhere from flyers that we design to billboards podcasts social media the gamut and the top five results are produced by the City of Tempe communication team.

It's not your TV news it's not your newspaper it's the email that comes into your inbox it's the water bill that comes in your water it's the water bill handout that comes in your water bill and it's just going to the website and quickly finding exactly what you're looking for.

You can see here the number one thing is just going straight to the website and the new the new website that we did really helped a lot I think one of the things that we are very good at is making sure that people get the information that they want to make their lives easier.

This isn't glamorous information it's your bulk trash pickup.

It's you know finding out where to go to vote it's getting the street closures so that you're not stuck in traffic these are the things that most people want every day and that's what we choose to really focus on and that is what we said we would do in our communication plan but when the chips are down we will stand with you in the storm no matter what the crisis and on October 13th that's exactly what we did.

Almost as soon as the storm was over we posted to social media shortly thereafter we were posting photos of our crews cleaning up how it affected people and we gave them a website to go to so they could find out exactly what they needed to do in order to get help.

We let them know every step of the way what we were doing and then just when everything was just about over the first thing is we were asked to have a better connection between public safety and normal city communication we've been working that very hard all year we stand next to our police and fire.

We have a PIO that's dedicated to help with fire and I spend a lot of time working with our friends in PD but everything from job fairs to showing the data that our city is safer showing our police and fire working together as well as working with the city and coming together with joint statements to show our solidarity as far as the Tempe fire Instagram account goes they gained 1300 new followers in just six months and won an award for it we were just talking about infrastructure improvements and basic services that is our bread and butter we try to show the value for tax dollars in everything that we do and we use all of our tools to do this everything from Tempe Today and Instagram Facebook all the tools including Tempe this week as you can see PQI progress front page of our water bill just whenever we can update on something that your tax dollars have paid for we're there doing it we said that we would tell business stories.

We said we'd focus on economic development you got a little sneak peek of the economic development website that was just mentioned by Widell and when it came time for that Otto's Pizza One best pizza by Food Network our eater in chief was there foodie in chief having a slice and getting it out there getting the word out there but it's not just about food it's not just about restaurants it's not about those kinds of businesses alone everything from engineering firms Silicon Valley firms we give them shout outs we welcome them into our community we make sure that our residents know that they're there and again everything from social media to our newsletter to like you know LinkedIn the works but this is a data driven city and I could tell you that we're doing a great job but the numbers actually show it.

Everything from engineering firms, uh, Silicon Valley firms, um, we give them shout-outs, we welcome them into our community.

We make sure that our residents know that they're there, and again, everything from social media to our newsletter to like you know, LinkedIn, the works.

But this is a data-driven city, and I could tell you that we're doing a great job, but the numbers actually show it.

Um in the last year, we had 8300 social media posts across all of our accounts.

We had 800 topics that we sent emails out on, and those went to four million people.

Um Tempe Today goes out every week, and there's one that's going out tonight, and each episode, each issue has about 20 stories a week, and that's just one email.

So people are getting information in so many different ways and in concise bytes that are easy to read and use, just like your newsletters.

Many of you put out.

It's not it's one email, but there's usually five or six or ten different things in each one of them for those who of you who do them.

But these numbers are important because each one of them went up a significant amount.

Our social media practically doubled this year.

What do they have?

What do these posts have in common?

It's focusing on the basics, what's timely, what's useful, what's entertaining, what do you want to share with your friends?

What's gonna make your trip better?

How are you gonna see the fantasy of lights boat parade?

Oh, there's a map.

You can stand right there and see it all.

So that improvement on social media comes from more attention to it.

We're working together across all the different departments.

We have content meetings and we share the best of across all the accounts.

And we had a 400% increase in video views last year.

We pay close attention to the analytics.

What do people want?

What do they not want?

And we watch the trends and make solid decisions about their use.

In fact, John, shown here, our social media specialist, did a did a different TikTok dance in front of each one of five venues to get people to go to those.

And I'm gonna show a little video.

We have to get creative to get attention.

The topics that we talk about on a regular basis are not the kinds of things that people are gonna tune into, like a like a puppy or a unicorn.

They uh, you know, kittens.

We're talking about trash, we're talking about fireworks messaging.

We're talking about things that aren't always on top of mind, but again, they help make your day better.

So we're gonna show you a little bit about how we got some traction on fireworks messaging this year.

Silent night.

Hoy small.

And if you look to the bottom, that fire the trash can just get a little bit taller.

Oh so it's really just a matter of how can we get creative to help people find find our information accessible.

Um, these videos that I'm showing here, they got thousands of views each, whereas the previous year, they maybe got dozens for the same same messaging.

So these are the things that we've worked on this year, and those are the results that we've had.

Um, what's next?

There's a lot that can be done.

Um, we'd like to stay the course of the communication plan.

Um, we're continuing to update our website for AI.

There's some new federal standards that are changing everything, and we're working with IT, and uh we're working with diversity to make sure that we are in compliance with those new federal standards.

Um, we're gonna continue to try to get sign-ups to Tempe this week.

It is one of our um one of the best ways that you can know what's going on in your community.

And uh short form video is just going through the roof.

We're gonna keep working on that, uh, increasing it, making it more interesting.

But truly, the future is wide open.

Digital information, the way it is perceived, changes really fast.

And I want your ideas on what we should be doing.

If you have any questions.

Yes, my sweet girl.

I was gonna say your staff is amazing, and you are too.

But I have to say, you know, as a uh all of us go on, we um are at events, you guys support us with talking points and making sure that we are not just blabbering out there about the information that we don't know, but you help to keep us um organized.

So I really appreciate that also.

And John, your videos crack me up.

Um, I think I do.

I think the short video messages are just work real extremely well.

So thank you so much for doing thank you for all of that.

And I I have to say, we so I have um I'm chairing the community engagement and connection committee, and we've been going around the city to kind of ask people what they how are they communicated with what's best for them.

So we we do have some ideas that we're gonna present at our our meeting in May, so we'll have a few ideas.

But one of them I thought was really interesting was um working with our seniors um and getting information about what's happening in the city to doctor's offices so that seniors will be able to the doctors can hand something out, and it says here are the really cool activities that are happening in the city of Tempe that you can be a part of.

But just so there are a couple other really cool ideas, but I can't wait to share that with you.

I love that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Baraj.

Um, I know that you probably work with Sean O'Warner a lot, but maybe just high even on ours, highlight each neighborhood be spy piece and give something special about that neighborhood.

So, you know, that South Tempe can learn something about North Tempe vice versa, and come out not just on in like I know they have like their uh newsletters, but they actually have it out there on a on a video that they can actually see what something is done in North North Tempe versus what's going on in South at the time.

I love that idea.

There's a couple of things that we've done recently that you might enjoy.

John's been doing uh videos on all the different parks in our community, and uh one of them on Mitchell Park, I think just dropped today or yesterday.

Um, I don't know if you had a chance to see it, but Megan Pardue did her spotlight story on neighborhood grants, and it just came out last Thursday, going back 32 years to showing the six million dollars that we've put forward in all the different projects throughout the entire community.

Super proud of her with that.

Excellent.

Anyone else on council?

Any other comments or questions?

Thank you very much.

Great job, Chris.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

That brings me to item 3C, International Green Construction Code Update.

Let's see.

Let's see.

Well, hello, Brienne.

And John, how are you both?

I see Eric just kind of watching, you know, from the back over there.

So always hovering, always hovering.

Always hovering that Eric.

I just said that to see if you were listening to that's all.

Well, good afternoon, council.

Uh I'm Brianne Fisher, uh, sustainability division manager.

And uh good afternoon, uh, Mr.

Mayor and Council members.

I am John Earhart, the interim deputy director for building safety.

And today with this presentation, there's no specific ask.

However, we're following up on our request that council made when we adopted this policy.

It's just informational, it's an update on the progress so far.

So, with that being said, uh performance measures, uh, the International Green Construction Code does hit on a wide variety of sustainability goals that the city has.

However, focusing specifically today on our carbon neutrality performance measures, both the community and the municipal one, as well as the newest performance measure uh I think council has, which is urban cooling.

Uh so just for a little bit of context for the audience and maybe some council members, um, what is the International Green Construction Code?

Um, and really the IGCC is a uh code, a model code that comes from the International Building Council.

This is an organization uh internationally and nationally recognized and used, building safety professionals, electricians, plumbers, engineers coming together and updating building codes for best practices, new technology.

John and his team regularly interact with these building codes, look to these um updated building codes to make sure we're we're staying um as part of those best practices and policies.

Um as you'll see, uh the IGCC is really a compliment complementary code that advances those things listed on the slide urban cooling, energy and water efficiency, renewable energy, and waste reduction.

You'll also see on the slide two pictures of city facilities, the Tempe Transportation Center and the East Valley Bus Operations Center.

Um both buildings are uh have been in the city repertoire for quite a while, and and are green buildings.

Uh Building Green is not new to the city of Tempe.

Um, these are lead-certified buildings.

IGCC is really just a new way of reaching that same vision and that same goal.

So just for a little bit more background, November 2023.

Uh the city council unanimously adopted the 2018 version of the International Green Construction Code.

They did this um as a voluntary code for private development, and they also did a uh a policy that made it mandatory for new city buildings, so new construction.

At that time, there was three city buildings in the design construction phase.

You'll see those on the slide.

Those going through that process and the design process, looking at the IGCC as a guideline and a roadmap, we were really able to customize and cater that 2018 IGCC for what made sense for Tempe for us at Southwest City and where we were economically at the time.

And just as an aside, some staff here recently attended an Arizona Forward event, their environmental excellence award this past Saturday, and TMUC, the Tempe Municipal and Operations Center, was highlighted as an awardee and for using the IGCC, and Council was also highlighted for that mandatory municipal policy.

So kudos was given there.

Kudos should be given there.

Building safety has made a a lot of uh progress here since uh 2023 adoption of the 2018 IGCC.

Uh Building Safety has hired a green building and energy conservation specialist uh in uh Miss Annamez.

Uh they have we've also had staff get uh very uh unique uh certifications.

Uh we have two team members who have green construction certifications, and we also have the plan review manager Scott Sherman, who has the uh certified sustainability professional distinction, which is is very unique.

And what that allows uh our staff to do is really to educate uh and assist applicants and developers with how to utilize elements in the IGCC and the various codes.

Um in addition to that, uh a couple weeks ago, uh some of you may be aware that uh uh TEMPE just was uh went live with Solar App Plus, which is an instant uh permitting platform for residential solar and for battery energy storage systems.

We are one of seven jurisdictions here uh in Arizona, so very unique uh distinction there for TEMPE and for uh everyone as a whole that allows residents to have instant permitting for those projects, uh whereas that could take uh could be uh a handful of weeks, sometimes months, depending to to get those permitted now.

Uh they will have a permit within 24 hours.

Uh TEMPI is also uh building safety is also aligning with the municipal code and some cooling code requirements that we have that exist there, but they're not in the building code.

So that's something that uh uh Mr.

Mayor and council members will see in a uh soon to be proposed uh code adoption for all international uh I codes there.

Uh in addition, um we have a green design category that was awarded for a ADU, which is is allowing uh a designer to submit and uh TEMPE will review a green design that is sustainable and residents will be able to use that standard in the future.

Um, as I touched on before, with a code review and adoption, one thing that is going to be coming to uh council here in the future is is essentially the the uh updated code adoption that we haven't done in about seven years.

Uh that should be completed every three years, and it it currently uh the analysis is very much complete.

Uh the philosophy that we've taken with that was to maintain the national model codes, uh, protect uh of course the public uh health uh safety and welfare, uh, provide consistent standards, uh, address local enforcement and operation needs, uh, and support resilient and sustainable development.

Uh uh tentatively, late April or May.

We anticipate uh that coming to council public hearings are April 1st uh in person uh at the library at 6 p.m.

and noon virtually.

Um also uh not to uh go without saying uh the entire team and collaboration that is taking place here is really something special.

We have, I mean, you can look around, we have high rises for high rises being constructed within 2,000 feet of City Hall.

Uh we have many private development projects that with the voluntary adoption are starting to incorporate those elements in their projects.

Uh a couple are highlighted here for everyone to see.

Um, but there are many more that are in the pipeline uh or are currently being reviewed by staff.

So to continue to work through IGCC and uh voluntary uptick and and working on the 2024 adoption.

Um as as John mentioned, we have dedicated staff now that is working on uh the implementation and the education around IGCC.

Uh there is now uh a tracking mechanism in place which allows us to better monitor development trends.

So oftentimes the development comes in, they're maybe interested in in adopting some IGCC elements, um, and and we're able to see how kind of short or near they are towards reaching that uh certain code.

And again, that tracking mechanism will allow us to understand development trends that that we're able to then recommend future code changes on.

Uh so the with the goal of strengthening our building codes.

Um again, uh working with with John and the building safety team.

We have educational material on uh code elements of the IGCC.

Uh this process improvement.

Uh we we will be working together to get involved in the development process at the beginning of this stage, um, working again on encouraging providing some recommendations um on certain IGCC elements.

And then lastly, um we're we're gonna continue to participate in some regional efforts that are taking place with green codes.

Um, and it's really furthering resilient codes for Southwest cities and making those codes more uh consistent for developers.

As John mentioned, the actual next steps, um upcoming public meeting for for all the whole suite of codes, including the 2024 IGCC.

Uh that public meeting is Wednesday, April 1st, and then at late April, early May, uh coming to council with those suite of codes voluntary 2024 IGCC, and as a separate agenda item on that same council meeting, we will have the recommendation to adopt the 2024 IGCC.

So moving from 2018 to 2024 for city buildings.

And I would say we very much appreciate your time and attention and uh vision for making uh Tempe's built environment greener, healthier, safer for all.

Sounds good.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Just a quick note great presentation as always, Briand.

It's always great to see you.

And John, I know this is your first presentation in front of the city council, so great job to you as well.

So thank you for both being here.

Vice Mayor Garland.

Thank you.

This I love this presentation and what you guys are looking at and what you're doing.

And I think every time I meet with a developer and they at the very beginning plans want to talk about what they want to do.

I always say, I'm going to ask you in public, what are you doing with the voluntary green codes?

That's it's a question I ask everybody.

Um, and because I want to pressure them to really be thinking about it and letting them know that we are paying attention to that.

So I appreciate you doing that.

And I just want to say again, thank you for what you guys have put together and what you're doing here for the city of Tempe and congratulations on the award.

But I can't wait till I don't have to ask that question that it's a mandatory and I won't have to ask it again.

So thank you for all you guys do.

That's good.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Council Baraj.

Okay, um, also, can you just define what urban cooling is so people can understand that?

Because that's for us to understand, but maybe our community doesn't.

Sure.

Mayor, uh Councilmember Hodge, urban cooling is really a term that we use in sustainability that addresses the urban heat island effect.

So because we are a dense urban city, which we love living in our urban city, uh, the environment doesn't always love that.

Uh it captures a lot of heat, and it's hard to release that heat when the sun goes down, the temperatures don't drop, right?

So it's really that that overnight low that's not so low anymore.

We can design for that.

We can design around that, and that's what urban cooling is.

It's a positive spin on something negative that's happening.

Thank you.

Um, and my last question is when we talk about education.

I know we have like pamphlets and booklets.

Is there any way that you miss speaking with Chris?

This is all gonna bring it back together to have maybe a video that can be played on the positive effects of having um the green code added into it, you know, when they do when they come up for development.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a great idea.

Earth Month is coming up.

That's right.

All kinds of ideas.

Okay, April 22nd.

Yep, so I was just thinking that that might be something good, and then maybe even put that on our channel for people to understand what we talk about when we talk about the the green code and and and helping the community to come along with the understanding of it.

Thank you.

Actually, it's one of the kind of piggyback of something uh council per Hodge said.

When when you actually uh do come back later on in the year, can we talk about kind of what the numbers look like or kind of some graphic or statistic about how many developers have actually taken uh advantage of the voluntary codes because I know and Vice Mayor Garland also mentioned this as well.

I'm just curious since the council took that action as to how many folks in the private development world have actually said we will take you up on some, if not all of it, just because I'm curious.

Um, and because I to you know, I I understand the point that one of our speakers made earlier, uh Mr.

Sokolowski about the concept of I'm concerned about kind of adding more regulation on top of uh housing, especially because we already have challenges when it comes to housing supply and housing affordability.

But however, to Mr.

What uh what Kendon Young said earlier, I don't think the two things are frankly really in conflict.

I think it's a matter of education and thus continuing to get in front of people and talk about how some of these things would actually benefit the development, not only in the short term but also in the long term.

So I don't think that there's a real conflict.

I understand Mr.

Sokolowski's concern.

I don't think there's a conflict between building affordable and attainable housing and actually making sure that these buildings are actually sustainable in the long run, especially if they produce lower energy bills for the people who are actually living in that affordable housing because it's one thing to be able to get into an affordable home ownership or rental situation, but it's a whole different issue when you have to start paying for your electric bill or your gas bill or your water bill.

And if those things aren't sustainable, then you're actually not really living in a sustainable dwelling whatsoever.

So I would love to see those when you have a chance to come back in a few months.

Mayor, can I just ask something to that too?

Let me go to uh we'll go to council member Amberg first.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

And uh whenever you bring that back, if you could not just bring like the total number of the developers that have done it, but like as a percentage of all of the development because five out of ten is different than five out of thirty.

Thank you.

Councilmember Chin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good one.

Thank you, Mayor.

Let me dovetail on that one.

And what are the most common practices they've adopted?

And I'm sure the team shares with them when you meet with them the projected cost savings, what that means in dollars also.

And nice job for the first one.

We weren't that scary, were we?

Uh a lot of eyeballs right here.

Do it.

Excellent.

Thank you, Councilmember Chin.

And Mayor, uh Councilmember Chin, just to I think we know a little bit of some of the trends that we've seen kind of easier to adopt out of the 2018 IGCC.

Um, a lot of those were were the energy efficiencies, were the water efficiencies.

Um, some of the harder to reach stuff was.

I know uh I'm not the expert in the code, but I know that um one of the requirements since urban cooling was brought up, one of the requirements is to um have 50 percent of this site have um cooler or um a surface that is not concrete and asphalt, right?

And so that's a little bit harder to do for certain developments, especially in the downtown environment where it's a dense site.

So that's just a little bit of some examples.

Again, the tracking mechanism that we've developed will only get better data around that, but we can work together on getting uh clear numbers for you all.

Sounds good.

Council Barrage.

Okay.

Um, also I don't know how this would work, but I know other cities have been doing it a lot longer than we have, and maybe kind of given some like um data from the other cities of how well it's performing in the cities to give an idea of what we can be looking forward to in our future in the city of Tempe.

Certainly.

Thank you.

I'll just say too, just to kind of close out though, but great job as always, and really appreciate the work.

And as you talked about, Brianne, in terms of uh Arizona Forward and the awards that the city of Tempe got, you know, when it came to uh you know the TMOC building or heat mitigation and things of that nature.

Uh, it just continues to show the great work that your department's doing.

So I just wanted to thank you.

I know on behalf of all of us, so thank you for everything, and we'll look forward to a future presentation.

So thank you again.

Appreciate it.

Congratulations.

Next up is item four, call to 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 for speaker.

Uh, Madam Clerk, any cards?

No cards, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Which brings me to item five, committee of the whole.

So five A is proposed council subcommittees.

Uh per council rule seven, subsection two B.

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 city council.

So are there any proposals right now for a new council subcommittee at this time?

All right, hearing that we'll look to item 5B, Council Subcommittee status updates as needed or recommendations for council directions.

I'm gonna go down the list now and ask the chairs if they can report out, which brings me to item 5b1 animal welfare and cruelty and tempee council subcommittee.

Councilmember Hodge.

Hi, thank you.

We're in a process of scheduling our next meeting date.

We're conducting internal review contracts, collaboration with our state partners agencies like Maricopa County Animal Control and the Arizona Humane Society and our lost our home pet rescue.

So we will be back once we get a little bit more collaboration on that information.

Thank you.

You got it.

Thank you so much.

Next up, 5B2, community engagement and connection council subcommittee.

Vice Mayor Garland.

We are still gathering um the information together from our outreach that we did in the community across the valley, across the valley, across the city.

Um and we are analyzing that information and we'll we will be bringing that to our next meeting to present on May 19th.

Sounds good.

Next up, uh 5B3.

I know Councilmember Keating's not here this evening, so we're gonna go ahead and move past that one, which is the drink spike.

Oh, you do have an update on that one.

So uh five three spiking education and prevention council.

Yes, vice mayor.

All right, I do have an um uh councilmember Keating said for me to let everybody know that um they're meeting with the focus groups, communications and focus groups, um high schools, undergrad, and grad students to discuss outreach messaging.

So there will be an update on that next time.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Next up, item five before Federal and State Advocacy Review Council Subcommittee.

Councilmember Amber.

Yes, uh, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I'm actually on that with uh Vice Mayor Garland and Councilmember Keating, and we're having our first meeting tomorrow here at City Hall at 1230.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Next up, item 5b5, mixed use space council subcommittee.

Councilmember Chin.

Thank you, Mayor.

I serve on that committee with Councilmember Amberg and you, the mayor.

Uh yes, eater in chief.

Um the next meeting will be April 13th at 2 p.m.

And more information about location.

Once that's finalized, we'll be out.

Sounds good.

Thank you so much.

Next up, item 5b6, motorized and electric mobility device council subcommittee.

Councilmember Adams.

Yes, thank you.

The next next motorized and electric mobility device safety council subcommittee.

That's really easy to say.

We should probably shorten that name.

Um meeting will be held at 3 p.m.

on Wednesday, April 22nd in the third floor conference room at City Hall, and that is Earth Day.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate that.

Next up, item 5B7, revitalization of Tempe Town Lake Council Subcommittee.

Councilmember Amber.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I am joined on that one with uh councilmember Adams and Councilmember Hodge, and our next meeting is gonna be April 20th at 2 p.m.

at City Hall.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Next up, item 5B 8, Tempe term limits policy review council subcommittee.

Vice Mayor Garland.

Uh for Council Member Keating, I just want to say that uh we don't have any updates at this time and we will have some more information later.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next up, item number six or future agenda item.

So members of the city council may request that 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.

Are there any requests uh from council members for a future agenda item here?

All right, seeing that I'll close that section and move on to item number seven, announcements from the mayor and or city manager.

Uh, I don't have any announcements this afternoon, Madam City Manager.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

No announcements.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you so much.

That brings me to item eight, then which is adjournment.

The next scheduled work study session will be on Thursday, April 23rd, 2026.

We are now adjourned at 5.05 p.m.

Thank you, everyone.

Have a good Monday evening.