Good afternoon.

Welcome to the Tempe City Council work study session.

Item number one is call to 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 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.

The public appearances portion of the Tempe City Council agenda welcomes people to address the Tempe City Council on city related issues.

Speakers will generally be taken in the order in which they have signed up to speak.

No visual aids or pre-recorded materials are allowed.

People may speak once during public appearances for up to three minutes.

If there is a large number of speakers, the mayor may limit the amount of time allotted for each person.

The city council as a whole is prohibited by state law from discussing, responding to, or taking action on matters that are not on the current agenda.

However, an individual council member may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the public body, may ask the staff to review a matter, or may ask that a matter be put on a future agenda.

The City Council rules of procedure provides everyone with an opportunity to speak.

However, rules of decorum are in effect and behavior that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of any city council meeting is not permitted.

This includes behavior at the podium inside or adjacent to the council chambers.

Speakers shall refrain from name-calling, making personal or insulting comments or slanderous remarks while addressing the city council or while attending the meeting.

Should a speaker become disorderly, action will be taken.

First, the mayor may issue a verbal warning, and if the speaker continues disruptive behavior, the speaker will forfeit any remaining time for public comment and will be asked to leave the podium.

Further disruption beyond that may result in removal from the council chambers, and the mayor may ask security officers to remove the speaker.

If the speaker refuses to leave, security will warn the speaker that they are now trespassing, and the next step is an arrest for disorderly conduct, trespassing, or both.

If necessary to maintain order, the mayor may recess the meeting.

Your right to address the Tempe City Council is important to us.

These rules are intended to create an atmosphere that is conducive to thoughtful public speech.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Item number two is call to the audience.

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

There is a three-minute time limit per speaker.

Uh, let's see.

Madam Clerk, I have one call to the audience.

Is he in the virtual room?

Yes, he is, and he can unmute his mic.

Okay, so our first speaker here is David Sokolowski.

Mr.

Sokolowski can hear me.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

You have three minutes.

My name is David Sokolowski.

I live in Tempe.

I'm disappointed the e-mobility subcommittee is proposing changes without including the Transportation Commission.

I think meeting with the Transportation should have been the first priority.

And I assume the city would include the Transportation Commission before the final recommendations.

When is the city going to include input from the Transportation Commission?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Uh Madam Clerk, any other speakers.

Not at this time.

Thank you.

Anyone in the audience wishing to address the council at this time?

If so, can you please get my attention?

Okay, seeing none, I'll move on to item number three, which is our issue review session.

The first item here is three A Tempe Tourism update.

And I'll look to Michael Martin, the Tempe Tourism President and CEO to present on item 3A.

Good afternoon, Mr.

Martin.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Craig Hayden Community Services Director.

I'm here just to provide a very brief uh introduction to somebody who doesn't need an introduction, Michael Martin, President and CEO of Tempe Tourism Office, but also just to acknowledge the strong partnership between the City of Tempe and the Tourism Office.

Myself and Councilmember Adams have had the pleasure of serving on the tourism board and get a chance to see up front just the great work of Michael and their team, their dedication, their passion, their expertise, and really see the benefits that tourism provides the city, both improving quality of life, but also supporting our economic vitality, providing jobs, supporting local business, supporting events, our hotels and our restaurants.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Michael and I'll be here if there are any staff questions, but I'll turn the presentation over to Michael.

Thank you.

Great, thank you, Craig.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present today, our annual update from Tempe Tourism Office.

So I'll just start with a quick recap because I realize people in the audience or on listening may not be familiar with who we are.

The Tempe Convention of Visitors Bureau is founded in 1988.

We promote the city of Tempe as a leisure and business travel destination.

Our office is in downtown Tempe at 140 South Ash.

Our budget is made up of three sources.

First, the city of Tempe bed tax, which is part of a six-year renewable contract.

Second is what's called Prop 302, which is a county tax on hotel and car rentals.

And then the third is private funds through advertising cooperative funds from the private sector.

If we sell any advertising in our visitors' guide website, that type of thing.

Looking ahead to fiscal year 26, 27, and then our participation in the community.

And of course, if you have any questions at the end.

So first to start off with, I want to align our strategies or our goals with City of Tempe performance measures.

They follow the three performance measures, which are financial stability and vitality, quality of life, and strong community connections.

These are specifically tied to our managing of our budget and making sure that we are fiscally responsible and providing economic impact for the city of Tempe.

We also work closely with the City of Tempe's parks and recreation and special events, as well as our partners at DTA, the chamber, and so forth, to help with bringing in events or supporting special events that are in place.

Disseminating information, this is important because this includes things such our visitors guide, any content that we share, social media and so forth, and then finally branding the destination, which is basically our paid advertising efforts throughout the United States.

Well, domestically.

On an annual basis, we conduct a survey through tourism economics.

They do the impact, they actually do an impact of tourism on the community.

And so this past year, I've been letting our board and city know that the tourism industry was very flat across the board throughout the year.

And as you can see by the numbers, it's very obvious how flat it truly was.

In 2024, we had 4.46 million visitors, and then in 2025 it was 4.48.

The interesting thing about this particular increase year over year, which is very slight, is that was made made up mainly of day trippers.

So people staying in the valley, other parts of the valley, and actually coming to Tempe for visitation, or they're coming for more than 50 miles outside of Tempe, coming for a day, say they're coming to innings festival or coming to the Festival of the Arts or whatever might be.

So that slight increase was reflective of day visitors mainly than over overnight visitors.

Tourism jobs increased slightly as well as our direct spending.

So we went from 1.2 billion dollars to 1.13 billion dollars in 2025, which is a fairly decent increase considering how flat we were as an industry.

So rooms in Tempe.

At the end of the 2025, we showed 7,180 rooms, which is a slight decrease from 2024.

This is mainly due to some hotels going through renovation.

When they do that, they drop rooms off of their inventory.

So this number will actually show to be different after January 1 of this current of this current calendar year 2026 with the closure of the Double Tree Hotel.

So this number includes the double tree still in our inventory.

As I said, it just reflects the fact that some hotels drop rooms whenever they're renovating.

Total rooms sold, as you can see, I mentioned earlier about visitation.

Overnight visitation was slightly down.

So we went from 1.76 million room nights sold in the city in 2024 to 1.75 million sold in 2025.

And then our occupancy, I I'm actually, this is the one area we were in we increased 0.1%.

I want to state that we were the only submarket, including Tucson, that had any increase in the calendar year 2025, even though it was a 0.1%.

I still celebrate that as a win for Tempe.

So a little victory.

That's good.

Our average daily rate, these are important because our hotels really pay attention to this, and you can see again, flat year over year, 147 dollars on average.

And then our total hotel revenue that was reflective of the slight drop in room night sold.

We had about 256 million dollars in revenue in 2025 versus 257 million in 2024.

I want to focus attention on our three departments.

We have sales first.

This group was all Olivia, Matt Melora, and Lucci.

They market and promote Tempe to meeting planners and sports rights holders.

And over the year you can see some of their efforts that they put into their marketing efforts.

One of the things that we do every year is our annual spring training event, which is held at, of course, at Diablo Stadium, where we host up to 40 attendees.

Our support of sports groups this past year, including Ironman, which is celebrated its final year in November, Shribble Crown, which is very important, comes in every March, Legends CrossFit and Desert Study Classic, which are both the ASU Fitness Center, and then MLS Next.

I want to call this one out because this was an opportunity that came to us late summer last year through the city of Mesa and their Parks and Rec and their city tourism office.

This is a soccer tournament that we were able to host.

It was a citywide.

This one event alone in December brought over 7,000 room nights to Tempe.

And the reason you see that one 0.1% increase in occupancy was probably because of that event.

And so we're working with the other cities to make sure that that event comes back this coming December.

Even though it's held out at the fields out in East Mesa, the rooms obviously expand across the valley all the way to Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler, and so forth.

We also received a partner of the year from the Rise of Dream Foundation, which is a nice accolade for us.

And the main thing that we track is our sports leads and group leads, which are through April of this year.

I don't have the final fiscal year numbers yet.

We have about 681 leads and 157 bookings so far.

On the marketing side, that's Adrian, Crystal, and Alicia.

They manage all of our paid placement as well as our website.

So they this past year they changed things up a bit.

Just to give you an example, our winter billboard campaign in Chicago led to 93% increase in website visits.

We initiated a new partnership with a publication called Dem, which is a Conde NAS LGBTQ plus publication.

And that partnership led to a 51% open rate in newsletters.

Our in-flight Wi-Fi media campaign on flights between Phoenix and Seattle and Phoenix in Chicago.

This was interesting.

You had to watch a video on Tempe before you could actually access the internet.

So that was a nice plug for Tempe on every flight going between Phoenix and those cities.

And our overall media influence, 57,000 trips to Tempe, and that's an estimated $6.4 million.

So we we track the attribution from advertising to actual visitation in the marketplace.

We also this past summer started our Taste in Tempe with 19 restaurants.

This coming year, actually, next month, we have about 25 restaurants that are participating in a two-week campaign in June, sorry, in July.

And we also have our summer hotel participation, which we always work with our hotels to try to promote the slow summer season.

And then this year we actually did an activation in Anaheim at the Angels Stadium to promote and push spring training leading up to this coming this last year's spring training season.

And we also had a couple of awards to celebrate.

Crystal won the Person to Watch award from AZ Big Media, and then the American Marketing Association Awards for Arizona chapter, gave us the best marketing campaign for nonprofit for the Taste and Tempe campaign.

And you can see our visits, visitation to our website and new users.

I think that's me, sorry.

And finally, our communications team that's Kylie, Kylie.

Eiley and KJ, I just I just blended their names.

So Eiley and KJ, isn't it like Brangelina?

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

So they had great engagement this past year through May, over a million total engagements and 22 million total impressions on our social platforms.

We hosted our appreciation event this year at the Weston at SkySill, which had about 30 plus 36 plus influencers.

They got a sneak peek of a new restaurant that's opening at the Weston on the top floor called Sushi by Bao, and that should be opening hopefully by the end of summer.

And then moving on to collaborations with social influencers.

We do that on annual basis, bring new influencers from outside the state into our community to push and promote different themes here in Tempe.

And then we rely heavily on blog content.

So we have an update of about 100, we have 100 blogs roughly on our website, and we ensure that that content is updated on a needy basis.

And then in terms of travel blogger exchange on the very bottom, it's called TBEX.

We are actually they're going to be going to TBEX here in about a week, and that travel show has about 450 travel bloggers and influencers that they can network with and hopefully encourage them to write or come to Tempe for a visit.

On the research and planning side, we finalized our strategic plan this past fall.

We have five imperatives that we are be working that we will be working on.

Most of the work will start in the new fiscal year.

So you can see here there are five imperatives that we identified elevating the brand through a targeted niches, greater connections with our hospitality partners, repositioning Tempe, I'm sorry, the tourism's value to the community, share and extend operational excellence and develop strategic funding roadmap.

And then I talked earlier about our economic impact study.

You can see the results here.

We do that study every year, and so we will obviously report back whenever we have the 2026 report next year.

And on a weekly and monthly basis, I receive data from Smith Travel or CoStar, and that gives us a pulse of what's happening in Tempe in terms of total rooms, occupancy, rev part, revenue per available room, and so forth.

I share that data with Lizette and her team at uh here at City Hall, and we are now scheduling meetings so we can meet, I think it's every other month, so they can get an update from us in terms of what we're seeing in the industry, so help hopefully help them with future projections in terms of revenue for the city.

And looking ahead, as I mentioned earlier, we have our summer campaign.

This year we're switching it up with our hotel promotion and doing a booking promotion through booking.com, which is the first time we've actually worked with booking.com.

Um Tasting Tempe will start in mid-July, and we have a local ad campaign with through TV, social, digital, and billboards.

Our strategic plan, as I mentioned before, we will start initiating that most of the work in the new fiscal year, and we'll be doing a little bit of restructuring, adding a new CO, COO role at the organization.

And then the most important, well, one of the most important things I see is development of a new dashboard so that we can provide industry data on at any given at any given time on our website.

So that is something that we're going to work hard to produce this coming year.

We also will have our social influencer campaigns, annual content creator event next year.

And of course, we will look at new media partnerships to see if we we always review all of our paid media on annual basis just to make sure that it's returning is giving us a good return on investment.

And if it doesn't, then we switch it up and make new recommendations.

And this past year, I wanted to also celebrate our involvement in the community, and I think we do a great job working as part of the Team Tempe group.

So our annual event, which was in February, had about 200 people.

I thank the mayor again for being part of the opening opening video.

We also have support for our partners, so downtown Tempe Authority, they produce, of course, the Fantasy Lightsboat Parade, Tempe Blooms, Juneteenth, and Pride Festival.

So we are sponsors of those events.

We support the Tempe Chamber and all of their events that they produce, as well as Greater Phoenix Equality Chamber, one community and local first and ACL.

We also supported Open Streets this past year.

We were the sponsor for the artist for the artwork for the t-shirts.

And of course, we partner with the city whenever it's possible for us to support special events.

In this case, this past year, Iron Man Rock and Roll and MLS next with Mesa and our other city partners.

We also have a cooperative campaign with the producers of Innings Fest.

So that marketing campaign takes place outside the state of Arizona to encourage people to travel here for Innings Fest.

And then on the nonprofit community, we uh our team has opportunity a couple times a year to do a volunteer program.

So we worked with Save Our Starving Children this year as well as the Arizona Animal Welfare League.

Our GEM award, which is at our annual event, was awarded to Mikey's League.

And then we, for the first time produced a fill the bag food drive for TCAA, and that's that photo.

And we do that with our team Tempe partners, the city DTA and the chamber.

Hopefully, we'll be repeating that again this year.

So that is a quick roundup of this past year.

I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Sounds good.

Thank you so much for presentation.

Uh Vice Mayor.

I just want to say I I love this presentation.

I love the monthly report that you give us that we can see what you're doing.

And I think what you have done here in the community has has been incredible.

I just I love your leadership that you have, and I love the fact that you work so well with our team Tempe.

And I just want to give a shout out.

I did not see on this list, probably because it was in a huge revenue generator.

But I just want to say thank you so much for you and your team for working with the Tempe South Little League with Brienne Briel Carter.

Um I don't know how many people know that, but Tempe South Little League this year hosted the um state Arizona State Tournament for the 11U um uh age group, and it it was a big deal to the Tempe South Little League to host that, and the fact that we were able to work with you and your team was able to help them and then also with the chamber to be able to help to get discounts for those families that were coming from all over the state.

So it was a small thing compared to what everything else that you showed us, but it was amazing what you were able to do.

So thank you so much.

Yeah, it may be it's small, but it's important for for the community and especially for summer business.

So it's great.

Thanks for sharing that with us.

I'm so happy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Vice Mayor.

Anyone else on council?

Any uh further comments or questions?

I appreciate it.

No, all good, great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

All right, the next item was the call of the audience for committee of the whole items.

So once again, we welcome 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.

Also, rules for speaking during the second call of the audience shall be the same as stated earlier for the first call of the audience.

So, madam clerk, do we have any uh speakers here for item four?

No cards were submitted.

All right, thank you, thank you.

Uh, anyone in the audience wishing to speak?

If so, can you please get my attention?

All right, seeing none, I'll go ahead and move on then to item number five, committee of the whole.

First of all, five A proposed council subcommittees.

Uh there was actually one proposed council subcommittee item this afternoon, once again per city council rule seven subsection two B.

It need two members of the council.

They propose the formation of a subcommittee at a work study session or 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, item 5A1 here is community solutions for livability and well-being council subcommittee, and I'm going to turn to Vice Mayor Garland.

All right, I appreciate that, Mayor.

Uh, so looking at uh important things that are happening in our community.

I think this subcommittee is going to fit really well within some of the things that we need to be looking at.

So I'm going to read to you what the um proposed subcommittee will be.

The purpose of this proposed um community solutions for livability and well-being council subcommittee is to work collaboratively with community stakeholders, residents, businesses, faith-based organizations, and service providers to conduct an environmental scan of human services needs and programs related to supporting increased livability, well-being, and equality of life for all residents of the city.

The council subcommittee will review and analyze financial resources, economic opportunities, zoning and land use policies, housing development opportunities, and strategies to address homelessness to achieve stated objectives.

The council subcommittee will also evaluate the role and potential structure of a homeless commission in advancing community goals.

The findings of the environmental scan and analysis will be used to identify community strengths, service gaps, and emerging needs to inform the development of policy recommendations for city council consideration.

I am going to be um looking at this council with um or this committee subcommittee with council member Amberg and Councilmember Elect Bobby Nichols.

And if it meets with the approval of our council, I'd like to pass it on to you.

Okay.

Sounds good, Vice Mayor.

Uh, everyone okay with this subcommittee.

Okay, mayor.

Mayor, just a quick uh note to city attorney.

Um I'm under the assumption that this wouldn't go into effect until after July 1st when Councilmember elect Nichols is sworn in.

Uh, because we won't be having a committee.

Okay, so I if it makes it easier, I will just say this is a committee with Council Member Amberg and myself.

Uh, no, it's fine.

I just I wanted to make sure it's clear because the uh your subcommittee rules require that uh only council members can be so um I think if as long as it's not effective until after July 1st, it's okay.

So perfect.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Yes, Councilmember Kitty.

Um I would like to make a change to the um, I'm not sure if this is appropriate time, Mr.

City attorney, let me know if I do that during my update or if I do it right now.

Make a change to the uh term limits working group as far as scope of work.

Would you so would you like to do it right now or should we wait?

It's it's your discretion, Mayor.

How you're uh free to take things out of order as chair of the meeting.

So all right, let me look here.

Then council no, we can move it up.

No, no worries, we're already on.

So uh let's go to the item five B9, Tempe Term Limits Policy Review Council subcommittee.

Councilmember Key.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

I would like to propose and hopefully get the consent of my colleagues at the Tempe Term Limits Policy Reviews Subcommittee.

Also, takes a look at other election related issues up to including but not limited to a district system and a ranked choice voting system.

Okay.

Anyone?

I'm fine with that.

Good.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good business.

Yeah, I think we're good.

I don't recall who was on the committee with you.

I apologize.

It's myself, it's Councilmember Garley, and it's Councilmember Amber.

Okay.

I wasn't sure if there was any of the non-president.

Yeah, or the non-present members, so I just wanted to make sure there was.

So don't get ahead of me, Mr.

City Attorney.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Alright, so we we have consensus on item 5b9, whatever to move forward with the um kind of the amended changes that council member Keating just uh just laid out and also you know early before two.

We also had consensus on the item that uh Vice Mayor Garlet presented as well, just to make sure if anyone in the public couldn't hear that, make sure it's very clear.

All right, so then let's go then to the next item here, which is 5B, council subcommittee status updates as needed and recommendations for council direction.

First of all, item five B1, age-friendly Tempe Council subcommittee, final draft of age-friendly Tempe 2026 to 2030 action plan.

And I'm gonna call upon Megan Wilson here, our community health program manager, and Mary Maisie to present on item 5B1.

Good afternoon, Mayor Woods, Vice Mayor Garland and members of council.

I'm Mary Maisie.

I serve as one of the deputy directors in our community health and human services department for our well-being and empowerment division, and joined today by Megan Wilson, our community health programs manager.

This year, our team had the pleasure and privilege of providing staff support to the age-friendly Tempe Council subcommittee, as well as convening internal and external stakeholders to create an updated age-friendly Tempe Action Plan.

And so, with this action plan, our goal is to improve the quality of life for older adults, and this plan also enables us as a city to retain our designation as an age-friendly community through AARP.

I'm gonna turn it over next to Megan to provide a brief overview of our plan, and then we'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

All right, good afternoon.

Mayor, vice mayor, and council members, thank you for having me.

Also, Megan, too.

Uh, either we can pull the microphone up or actually there's a button on the right hand side if you want to lower the table too.

So, well, being the short person after the tall.

Hey, I thought you I have the same problem every time.

No, all right.

Well, good afternoon.

Thank you for having me again.

My name is Megan Wilson.

I'm the community health program manager, and I'll be presenting our age-friendly Tempe plan for 2026-2030.

I'm also joined by our age-friendly, some of our age-friendly team members, including our coordinator Camden Solinger.

To begin, I just want to highlight that our age-friendly plan is connected to three of our strategic priorities focused on the quality of life for aging adults in the city of Tempe.

Also, um, this plan was developed in partnership with ARP around the eight domains of livability that you will see on the left hand side.

Each of those domains plays an important role and has a direct impact on our AARP livability score, which is on the right hand side.

Um the TEMPE score sits just above the national average at 50, with the highest score being 73 and the lowest being 23.

So our goal through the implementation of this plan is to achieve a score of 55 by 2030.

Our age friendly team was supported by council subcommittee led by Vice Mayor Garland with additional support from Council members Amberg and Keating with their direction along with an action team made up of 29 partner organizations.

We were guided through our project timeline, as you can see below.

These phases of convening, assessment, strategy development, all led to where we are today, which is ultimately our final presentation of this plan.

So ensuring the voices of our residents were represented was a top priority in creating this plan.

Over a six week period, we collected 317 surveys, held five listening sessions across Tempe, and had 43 residents in attendance for those.

This resulted in a total of 360 opportunities for feedback and input on this plan.

Several key findings emerged from these interactions.

Some most residents view Tempe as a positive place to live.

They feel that parks are well maintained and safe, and they expressed a strong desire to remain in their home as they age.

We also identified some important growth opportunities through this feedback.

There's a clear need for greater awareness of senior resources, along with improvements of how information is communicated and distributed.

We want to see more residents accessing the services they need and engaging with programming offered at our senior centers.

Additionally, concerns about rising costs were a reoccurring theme through the survey and our feedback sessions.

So we believe this plan outlines a number of objectives that will directly address many of those challenges.

So I'm pleased to share that our 2026 2030 plan addresses all the domains of livability with a total of eight goals and 29 objectives.

To highlight a few of these key goals, we heard from residents they want easier access to information and greater opportunities to engage in their community.

These needs will be addressed through our communication information and civic participation employment domains.

These include efforts around effective newsletters, expanded pathways for paid work, civic leadership, and meaningful volunteer opportunities.

We also heard clearly that residents want to stay in their homes.

Under the housing domain, we plan to coordinate with community partners and nonprofit organizations to maximize housing resources with a focus on home modifications that support safe aging in place.

Finally, one of our most exciting initiatives falls under our outdoor space and buildings.

Tempe aims to be a national leader by developing one of the largest dementia-friendly parks in the country, a beautiful and engaging safe outdoor space designed for caregivers and their loved ones with memory loss.

This is an ambitious plan, and it would not have been possible without the dedication of our council subcommittee led by Vice Mayor Garland, and we are deeply grateful for your support in bringing us to this point, and we look forward to our continued collaboration.

Cam and myself are happy to take any questions you might have.

Thank you so much.

Greatly appreciated.

Anyone uh comments?

Uh, Council Bikini.

Oh, where do you want to go first?

Vice Mayor Garland.

Thank you.

We'll ping pong back on some.

Um, I just want to clear one thing.

It'll be the first dementia friendly park in the United States.

We have figured that research out.

So it'll not only be the largest, but it will be the first.

So that's I think pretty significant and pretty incredible that it's coming out of the age-friendly book.

So the action plan is here, and you can see my little tabbies on the top.

So I'm I just want to read a couple of them because I mean it's really impressive what we were come up with.

So it's like under communication information.

There are these steps and things that we're looking at.

Um, and you know that we have increased service awareness, and it's um increased community awareness and accessibility of existing services by enhancing both digital and print-based resources.

That's one of the things we're gonna do.

Home modification supports, um, it's established formal referral partnerships for safety assessments, funding assistance, and home modification programs to help older adults remain safely in their homes.

Outdoor spaces, we just talked about Dementia Friendly Park.

The other one I absolutely love is install buddy buddy benches.

Buddy benches highlight the ASU Buddy Bench as a volunteer opportunity for older adults and explore adding city-maintained buddy benches in alignment with the parks master plan.

So we'll be adding those.

We have provide inclusivity and cultural responsiveness training, reach home reaching homebound adults, and that is to evaluate current programs and identify gaps through feedback from older adults and caregivers, implement additional services to meet those identified needs.

Intergenerational connections are incredible.

Expand volunteer-led rides.

That's explore volunteer-led ride programs with nonprofits, senior centers, faith groups to promote community on reduced fare options and explore satellite options for 55 plus to apply for reduced fare passes.

There's so much more in this plan.

It is absolutely incredible.

And I have to say, working Mary and Megan and Camden, your team is absolutely incredible what they were able to research and the breakout teams that you guys, the action teams that you were able to have, and all those people that took part in this.

It's an incredible plan.

I'm so impressed with it.

Thank you so much for doing this with us.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Council Ricky.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I just wanted to thank you for your work on this and committee members, Garlet and Amberg for their work on it, and all the members of the public that participated.

Obviously, it's a very good work product that the Vice Mayor is very excited about, as am I, and we just appreciate the work that you've done.

So now the difficult part starts, but our city will be better off for it.

So we do appreciate your efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council McKay.

Anyone else?

We just want to also give a big shout out to our communications team.

So Chris Baxter and her team for that beautifully produced uh final plan in terms of the layout that can really help tell the story of the plan.

So thanks to them.

Absolutely.

On here on your slide, the tempe.gov forward slash age friendly is where they can find the plan.

Correct.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Alright, next up, item 5B2, community community engagement and connection council subcommittee.

Final report recommendations.

Let's see, Mr.

Spies and Ms.

Kalani.

Please come on up to present on item 5B2.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council and City Manager.

I'm Parish Spies, the assistant to Vice Mayor Garland, and with me is Zina Kalani, our council intern on this subcommittee and our recent ASU graduate in public policy.

So we just take you through what we uh what we came up with in the subcommittee.

The objective of the subcommittee really was recognized the importance of strong community engagement and connection to lead to the results of increased uh community trust, uh, increased community participation and civic uh life, as well as strengthening community relationships.

We uh we looked at a few things.

We looked at internal practices, we looked at external practices, our communication marketing office does a great job uh with engaging the community, especially in social media.

Uh, neighborhood services is very active with working with neighborhoods, and we also looked at our youth perspective.

We had members of the mayor's youth advisory commission on the subcommittee.

We also engaged with the ASU School of Social Work.

Uh, they told us about the loneliness and isolation epidemic and how that uh negatively impacts civil discourse.

We also heard from the Flynn Foundation and their partners on a report of civic engagement and community health and that correlation between getting involved in your community and the health of your community.

We also looked at what other cities were doing, and we, of course, asked our community what their thoughts were on the subject.

Now, to just give you a brief overview of the peer city results uh will be Xena.

So we reached out to several cities in the valley and out of state who had a good reputation for community engagement, including Dayton, Ohio, and we asked them the same set of four questions, and their answers created seven categories that informed the following scorecard, and these insights contributed to the recommendations that we have for how we can improve our approach.

Tempe scored a nine out of 14, but what distinguished the higher-scoring cities was that they all offered civic engagement academies and more novel practices like uh Dayton's citizens' Assemblies and Goodyear's Topics on the move.

We then drew some key takeaways and learned that civic learning opportunities, clear participation pathways, and multiple layered outreach methods that are tailored to how residents actually engage or important.

And now Parrish is going to talk about our community input results.

Thank you, Zena.

So what we did was we hosted five focus groups as well as an online survey.

We asked them five questions.

It was very engaging discussions we had with those who attended the focus groups.

And what we discovered with the results is they sort of there were patterns that emerged, and we identified seven categories.

All of them are important, but of course, trust building, government responsiveness was number one.

What this means is what people desire.

So these are opportunities.

It doesn't say this is not what we're doing.

Says this is what people want, and this is definitely an opportunity for us.

And the key takeaways here are that people want to feel a sense of being heard.

That's probably the number one thing we heard.

Also, residents want to know how their engagement, with their input, how did it affect the city decision?

So kind of closing that loop on I attended a few meetings, this is what I said, and I don't know what happened to that information.

Now that information is out there, that kind of leads to the fragmented information that people aren't sure where to find it.

So that's something that is an opportunity for us to work on.

We also understand that people want to get involved, but sometimes they don't know how to get involved.

They don't understand the process, sometimes they're not really comfortable with the topic.

What could I say about something?

You know, so uh engaging that way is something that uh is important to do.

There's also uh another opportunity that people want to uh engage more when they know that their input was used, or considered at least fairly.

Uh, the other thing is that people want to engage more informally, so maybe not necessarily coming to a council meeting to engage, but more community-oriented events like Arts in the Park, Gain Night.

There's actually a call for more game type nights.

So, and this actually correlates with the Flynn Foundation's research that civic involvement for them is just being an opportunity, right?

That's kind of where we talk about uh later.

We talked about social infrastructure earlier, you saw that.

Uh, and anyway, this leads to the final recommendations.

The full report is or the full recommendation list is in the report, but some highlights is to create a civic engagement academy, establish pathways to increase boards and commission involvement on city decisions, empowering neighborhood advisory commission to be proactive and in working with neighborhood associations and HOAs, including owning a master directory of uh neighborhood associations that they can communicate more effectively with, elevating that community response so responding uh more directly to residents on their questions, enhancing that community feedback loop again, telling them how their information was actually used to make a city decision, uh developing opportunities to reach out to renters to bring them into the community so there's a creates that sense of belonging, and also consider new technology platforms as well as improving accessibility and search tools on existing digital platforms, and there you have it and uh open to any questions you have.

Great, wonderful.

Thank you so much, greatly appreciated.

Anyone comments or questions, Vice Mayor?

I just have I just want to just thank our uh council subcommittee and stakeholders.

Along on this committee, I had uh council member Arlene Chin and Councilmember Nikki Amberg, Chris Baxter, is a director of community uh communications and marketing, Shauna Warner, Director of Neighborhood Services, Jared Morris, Director of Information and Technology, Dr.

Belisha Hume's, Chief Diversity Officer Cara, or City Clerk was part of our meeting.

Um, Tanya Chavez, Director of Mayor and Council Relations, Julie Kent was a community member that was part of this.

Frank Lynn Zyrik is a community member, Candice Lindsey from the Human Relations Commission, Lane Careway from the Neighborhood Advisory Commissioner, uh Suri Wall from the Neighborhood Advisory Commission, Brandon Castaneda from the Mayor's Youth Advisory Commission, Grace Wombacher from the Mayor's Youth Advisory Commission, Dr.

Elise Kawam from the School of Social Work from Arizona State University, Parrish and Zena.

So I just want to give a shout out to all the people who um took part in this.

Really appreciate all the work that we did in it.

We did sit through some long times listening to people talk about how important the communication is and the engagement that we are going to go that we are working on.

I would like to ask our city manager if we could have a um like a work study presentation, maybe in like six months or something to talk about the recommendations that we have.

They're more detailed than on the slide.

But what we could do, what that would look like if we could get an update on like what the status is for some of these.

Especially, I mean I'm really excited about the Civic Engagement Academy.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, of course, absolutely.

We'll put it on the calendar now and make sure that you have the update.

I appreciate it.

I just want to say one thing.

We we were trying to figure out what a civic engagement academy would look like, and we had a backstage pass a few weeks ago.

We had a number of people that showed up that was really great, but we talked about what would that um academy look like on giving people information about the city and how the city where it runs and how we do things here, and we got some great feedback.

But the most incredible thing was how many people reached out and said, I did not know that about the city, I did not know that.

And the other one was that they thought Parish was just incredible.

Um so I just want to say thank you so much for your presentation.

We appreciate it.

Excellent.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Carl.

Anyone else?

All right, wonderful.

So we are good to go forward on that item as well.

Yes, uh Vice Mayor.

Closing out committee.

Uh, yes, would you like to close that?

So uh Vice Mayor is suggesting that we close out the subcommittee.

Is everybody okay with that?

Okay.

Great, all right.

So we can consider that one closed.

Thank you.

All right.

We're gonna move forward here to remaining council subcommittees on the agenda in the order they appear to ask each subcommittee chair whether they have any updates.

And so, first up, I'm gonna start with item 5b3 animal welfare and cruelty and tempee council subcommittee.

Councilmember Hodge.

Yes, thank you.

I would like to thank my fellow committee members, Vice Mayor Garland, Councilmember Adams, as well as the city staff, committee partners, residents, and who contributed to this discussion on animal welfare.

This subcommittee was established to evaluate the city's approach to animal welfare, identify opportunities for improvement throughout our work, we review our various ordinance, we review received input from the community partners, city departments, and explain the programs and contracts that support the animal welfare initiative.

As a result of this review, we identified recommendations updating the strengthening the city's animal ordinance, which is scheduled for a first read tonight at the series regular city council meeting.

Having complete the work outlined in the subcommittee change.

I would like now to formally close the animal welfare and cruelty committee.

Thank you so much, Councilman Hodge.

Uh, and thank you for all your work on that subcommittee as well.

Uh, is everyone okay on council closing that subcommittee?

Great.

Okay, all right, wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Vice Mayor Garvel.

I appreciate it.

Sorry, Mayor.

I did not close out the age-friendly uh tempe subcommittee, council subcommittee, so I'd like to close that one out tonight.

Also, thank you.

Okay, so going back to item five B1.

Um, so Vice Mayor Garvel's looking for consensus to close that subcommittee.

Everybody okay with that?

Thank you.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you.

All right, next up, I'll go to item five before drink spiking education and prevention council subcommittee, Councilmember Keating.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Um, first of all, thank you, Councilmember Hodge and Vice Mayor Garland for serving on this committee with me.

As you both know, we have our final meeting tomorrow at noon, right here.

So be here for it.

It'll be the event of the noon tomorrow at City Hall.

Um, and then after that, um, can I say we'll close it out effective after that meeting, Mr.

City Attorney, or do I have to wait till next work study session to close it out?

Uh I think that's fine with the consent of the council that's great.

So we'll be closing it out then um at the uh conclusion of that meeting tomorrow.

Okay.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Keating.

Uh, everybody okay with that?

Yeah.

Okay, wonderful.

So that will be considered closed after the meeting tomorrow.

Next up, we're gonna go to item 5b5, federal and state advocacy review council subcommittee.

Councilmember Amber.

Yes, uh, Mr.

Mayor, I will not be closing that one yet.

Um, seems like that's the pattern.

We are gonna have our next meeting on June the 23rd at 11 in the third floor conference room at City Hall.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Next up, uh item 5B6, mixed use space council subcommittee.

So Councilmember Chin is not here this afternoon with us, so we're not gonna get an update on that item at this time.

That will take us to item 5B7, Motorized and electric mobility Device council Subcommittee.

I know Councilmember Hodge is also on that subcommittee.

Uh but Councilmember Adams, who couldn't attend this afternoon, asked me to read the statement on her behalf.

Said over the past several months, I've worked with Councilmember Hodge, staff, stakeholders, and members of the community who have worked together to evaluate opportunities to improve and modernize our city code.

Through that process, we have identified ordinance changes that provide greater clarity, support effective implementation, and better align with the needs of our community.

These proposed amendments reflect thoughtful discussion and collaboration while maintaining our commitment to public safety, transparency, and responsible governance.

The proposed ordinance is scheduled for a first read later tonight at the regular council meeting.

Therefore, I would like to close the motorized and electric device safety council subcommittee.

Council Burhaj, I should probably ask you first.

Are you okay with closing that subcommittee?

Yes.

Okay.

Is everyone else okay with closing that subcommittee?

Yes.

Okay, so we can also then consider that one closed as well.

Item 5B7.

Next up in item 5B 8, revitalization of Tempe Town Lake Council Subcommittee.

Councilmember Amber.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

We probably are not going to meet until August.

Okay.

Sounds good.

All right.

Everybody good with that?

All right.

All right.

We already did item 5B9.

So we'll move on to item six here future agenda items.

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.

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

All right, seeing none, I'll close that conversation then and move forward to item number seven, announcements from the mayor and or city manager.

I don't have any announcements.

Madam City Manager.

Nothing for me, Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

That takes me to item number eight, which is adjournment.

The next scheduled work study session will be on Thursday, September 3rd, 2026.

The mayor and council will reconvene in the council chambers at 6 p.m.

this evening for the regular council meeting, but this meeting is adjourned at 3 49 p.m.

Thank you, everyone.