Vice Mayor Quasman. All right. I'd like to It's 5:05. My apology for getting a late start here. Thank you for being here. I'd like to now call the January 13, 2026 uh regular city council meeting and work study session to order. Uh, city clerk Ben Lane, will you please give us a roll call? >> Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Lisa Bowski, >> present. >> Vice Mayor Adam Quasman, >> council members Jane Debasquez, >> here. >> Barry Graham >> here. >> Kathy Littlefield >> here. >> Maryann Mallen, >> present. >> And Solange Whitehead >> here. >> City Manager Greg Kaitton >> here. >> Interim City attorney Luis Santea >> present. >> City treasurer Sonia Andrews >> here. >> Acting city outcluff >> here. >> And the clerk is present. Thank you, mayor. >> Thank you. This evening we have Scottsdale police officer uh Kyle Sholac, Officer Ray Wilburn, and Sergeant Eric BS, as well as Scottsdale firefighter Ethan Ritterbush and Logan Kohler. In the event anyone requires assistance, please let a member of the uh those individuals know or a member of our staff here at the desks. And for the pledge of allegiance, I'd like to ask Councilwoman Dvasquez to lead us in that. One nation under God, indivisibley for all. >> Thank you. And for the invocation, I'll ask Councilwoman Whitehead to help us with that. >> Uh, thank you, Mayor. I am looking for Pastor Jackie. There she is. Okay, great. Um, well, I'll I'll read a few uh remarks. Let me pull my notes up here. I am um first of all, happy new year. Uh and I am pleased to have brought um Pastor Jackie Parks here to give us an invocation. Um she is um the recipient most recently the recipient of the 2025 Scottsdale Leadership uh Francis Young Award and she is recognized as um the visionary leader and pastor of the South Scottsdale Presbyterian Church and the f uh for founding the community house, a day relief center for people experiencing homelessness. and she's just a treasure um to our community. So with that, Pastor Jackie, please come up. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Um Mayor Barowski Council, it's it's my great honor to to be here and to serve the city of Scottsdale as a pastor and a leader that um cares for and leads um our community to love the unhoused. So would you pray with me? Spirit of wisdom, compassion, and shalom, we ask for a blessing upon this gathering and upon our leaders in the city of Scottsdale. May prophetic love stir our hearts, calling us to see clearly, to speak truthfully, and to act courageously for the good of all. Guide us to give particular tender care and attention to the vulnerable and those pushed to the margins. And may you give imagination that shapes policies rooted in dignity and justice. May our deliberations lead us to be participants in your peace. And may we be moved by your kindness and compassion, seeking the common good with humility, cooperation, and hope. Amen. >> Amen. Thank you very much for joining us here today. We appreciate it. Before I give my mayor's report, I'd like to extend uh my deepest uh and sincere sadness and um well wishes to the family of our former attorney general, Mark Bernovich, who uh I learned passed away today. So um my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. He was a great man and great service to our state. Um, and our thoughts are with his family and and everyone that knew him. So, as my as informed my mayor's report tonight, uh, first I'd like to thank everyone that was here last week for our downtown summit, Oldtown Summit. there was a um such a great attendance and so many passionate stakeholders showed up to give their thoughts and ideas about Oldtown and the downtown area. And uh as a result of that meeting, I'm pleased to announce that I am moving forward with the creation of the mayor's ad hoc downtown Scottsdale task force, which will be a 15 member group that will focus on key issues like uh marketing, tourism, parking, and the downtown character area plan and all kinds of ideas that will ideally benefit and advance the goals of Oldtown and downtown and our city as a whole. Uh the representatives of the task or of the uh ad hoc um committee will represent uh areas including historic Oldtown, Fifth Avenue, the entertainment district, and the arts district, which will include merchants, property owners, and tourism leaders. And if you are interested in becoming part of that group, please reach out to our office. I really uh would love to hear from you at the mayor's office. Moving right along at the pres presentations tonight. We have one presentation which relates to our employee recognition program where the city council recognizes employees with 20 or more years of service as of January 2026. Presenting on this topic we have Holly Peralta, interim senior director communications of communications and public affairs. Thank you for being here Holly. >> Thank you. Thank you mayor Barowski and members of city council. In 2026, we will proudly recognize 810 employees reaching service milestones ranging from 1 to 40 years. And among them, we have 159 employees who have dedicated 20 or more years of service to the city this year. And we will be recognizing them at the start of every month. Tonight, we are recognizing employees who in January mark 20 or more years of service with the city of Scottsdale. At 20 years, we have Christopher Kare and Laura Roberts. At 25 years, we have David Alvarado and Paul Harumi, Ed Moral. And 30 years of service, we have Chris Lechner and Burke McGee. And if any of you are here tonight, we invite you to come forward where we can um give you a round of applause and thank you for your service and take a picture. But we do thank these employees for their impact that they have made and for helping make Scottsdale a stronger, resilient city year after year. We thank you for your service. >> Thank you so much. You got to lay down. Okay, sounds good. And that was Sergeant Alvarado who has 25 years experience. So, thank you for being here tonight and thank you for your service to the city of Scottsdale. All right. As is always the case, uh there during tonight's meeting, the council may make a motion to recess into executive session in order to obtain legal advice on any applicable item on the agenda. If that happens, the C uh executive session would be held immediately and will not be open to the public and the public meeting would resume immediately following the exact session. Next, we have the approval of the meeting minutes. Uh and if there are no revisions, I will entertain a motion to approve the work study session minutes of October 7th, 2025. Regular meeting minutes of October 7th, 2025, special meeting minutes of October 21st, 2025, and regular meeting meeting and work study session minutes of October 21st, 2025. >> So moved. >> Second. >> I hear a first and a second. >> Uh so all those in favor, please indicate your vote. Thank you. Uh, and I see that uh, Councilwoman Whitehead uh, would like to speak on an issue. Go right ahead. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um, I would like to um mot uh move to have my council support uh the residents who are here to speak to suspend council rules and allow those here to make public comments to go ahead and speak at the beginning of the meeting right now as opposed to waiting until the end. So, I hope how many people here are here for public remarks? Are there some Yeah. So, thank you. Thank you for being here. We really do appreciate it. So, I urge my council and colleagues to go ahead and allow these uh residents to speak now as opposed to waiting until the end of the meeting. Thank you. That's my motion. >> I'll second that motion. >> Thank you. >> Just to clarify, you're referring to non-aggendaized public comment. >> Thank you, mayor. That's correct. I would The motion is for non-aggendaized public comment and to hold that at the beginning versus the end. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh we have a motion and a second to suspend the rule as it applies to the order of public comment. Please indicate your vote for that. Oh yes, excuse me. Uh Vice Mayor Quasman, there you are. >> Thank you, Madame Mayor. So unfortunately, we're starting 2026 with controversy unnecessarily. And it is with it it saddens me that there's no need to be able to move right back into division that was already something that we settled and dealt with in 2025. I understand that the vote did not go for the uh proponent for Solange in the last oh uh city council member Whitehead, sorry. um for council member Whitehead in 2025. But again, I think that in the spirit of 2026 and people need in in a contentious council already, there's no need to continue to rehash this over and over again. I hope with this vote this is um people you'll understand that rule changes occur in multiple councils and that a deep respect for first amendment rights was balanced with proper uh flow of the council. And so I urge my colleagues to uh remember their vote in 2025 and and allow this council allow this council to move forward. Thank you. >> Thank you, Vice Mayor Quasman. I uh I'm all in favor of having non-aggendaized comment first. Um so I'm going to vote on this motion just in a vacuum on what it stands for. I was opposed to the rule change and uh you know so so be it. Uh there are 11 people on the non-aggenda as public comment. I have no problem having you go before the the business at hand on the agenda gets going. So I'm going to vote yes, but uh let's just have the vote. All right, that motion does not pass. And so we will move right along to the consent agenda. And if >> if I don't know who's who's saying that, but if you could keep your your uh outbursts, I don't mean that pjoratively, but um it'll make the meeting go smoother and quicker as always. So uh consent agenda. Next, we have consent agenda items 1 through 17. Uh, does anyone have anything they'd like to ask questions about or pull off the agenda? >> Mayor, we need to approve the minutes. >> Oh, we need to approve the minutes. >> We approve them. We did. >> Oh, >> thank you, Kathy, for confusing me. >> I'm sorry. >> Did you vote? I >> Yeah, you voted. >> Okay. >> All right. Uh, >> I apologize, mayor. >> No problem. No problem. All right. Does anyone have any questions or wish to pull off anything on the consent agenda? >> Uh, I don't see any indication to speak, but I hear that Councilwoman Dasquez has a comment. Is that right? >> On number 15. I realize that. So, I was speaking to the council. I don't see any uh questions or desire to pull anything off. And so with that, I will move to public comment before we take any vote on the consent agenda items uh 1- 17. And I'll call on Roger Lurri, followed by Neil Neil Shear, please. And we're going to go right over here. Excuse me, Mr. Lurri. We've changed things around a little bit. The uh public speaker podium is over here to my right. I don't have any. >> Uh, good evening, Mayor Barski and members of the city council. My name is Roger Luri. I chair the Human Services Advisory Commission, but I'm speaking tonight uh personally to urge you to adopt ordinance number 4699 to increase the volunteer utility billing donation for Scottsdale Cares to $2 per month per meter. For more than 30 years, Scottsdale Cares has been one of the city's most effective tools for addressing community needs before they become crisis. Through partnerships with wellrusted local nonprofits, this program supports housing stability, food assistance, healthc care access, and critical services for seniors, families, and individuals facing hardship. Each year, Scottsdale Cares funds uh services for reach more than 6,000 Scottsdale residents and prevent more costly outcomes. Increasing this donation to Scottsdale Cares is fiscally responsible for in a preventative investment. It strengthens proven programs, protects our most vulnerable neighbors, and helps preserve the quality of life in Scottsdale. I urge the council to support this ordinance. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Lur. Neil Shear. >> Good evening, your honor. Members of the council, thank you for your service. By the way, I'm Neil Shear. I've called Scottsdale home for over 45 years. Um, and I know it uh sometimes could be ill- advised to pull an item off the consent agenda, especially when you support that item, but this item is near and dear to my heart. Um, I was privileged to serve as the human services director back in 1995 when the city council first authorized Scottsdale Cares. And over the last 30 years, we've had the opportunity from our generous residents to raise over $5 million to support local nonprofits. So, my chair, my chair on the commission, my colleague, Roger Lurri, covered really the importance of this program. So, I just wanted to take a moment and thank the the people who worked incredibly hard to get it to this point. Uh, and that would include your amazing human services staff, uh, which I know you do that, you know, they do incredible work every day. The utility billing team was very critical to this. They rarely get any public notice at all, but they were very helpful in uh working out the details to bring this forward. Of course, the the legal team and the city manager's office um were extremely helpful. And so um I just wanted to be here to for the sequel from 30 years ago to now. And I'm looking forward to raising more money for these important causes. Our nonprofits in this community do so much heavy lifting and the fabric of our service delivery, social service delivery in Scottsdale is made up not only of the city and not only the faith community and the charitable u uh foundations and the educational components of our community, but our our nonprofits really do great work and this recognizes them. And every dollar that comes into this program goes through a very rigorous review process ultimately for city council approval and every dollar ends up going through it's a pass through directly to our nonprofit. So thank you. I appreciate your support on this program. >> Thank you Neil. Appreciate you coming to speak to us. Uh Councilwoman Mckllen. >> Thank you Mayor. Um, I just wanted to thank uh Chairman Lori for his service to the Human Services Commission. And I did want to give uh Neil Sheer a shout out. Um, he did say that he was on uh staff at the time. He also happened to be my supervisor when I worked in human services when this program was created. And it's it's been a long time trying not to get choked up. Uh Neil served um exponentially in creating this and the fact that he could be here for this and to thank all the people involved. Uh just yesterday, Partners for Pyute got a huge donation from our firefighters association, all these nonprofits working together um in our community, Community House that Pastor Jackie Parks runs, all these wonderful programs really um continue to grow because Scottsdale Cares uh invest back into them. Um so thank you Neil uh for all you've done for the city and thank you um human services commissioners appreciate it. >> Thank you. I don't see any other requests to speak and so we will that concludes uh public comment on this uh the consent agenda items and I will entertain a motion to approve the consent consent agenda items 1 through 17. Uh, mayor. So moved. >> Thank you. All those in uh actually or opposed, please register your vote. >> All right, moving on to the regular agenda. Uh, item number 18, fiscal year 2024 annual financial audit. This is a request to accept the fiscal year 2024-25 annual financial audit reports submitted by the city's external auditor Hinfield Meech and Company. And presenting on this topic this evening uh is not Lakeoff. Oh, it is going to be you. Okay, there we are. Someone else uh and acting city auditor. There she is. Brittany uh Williams of Heinfeld Meech and Company, acting city auditor, Lake Kluff. And this is Britney from >> Thank you, Mayor Baras. >> I know who Lake is. I read those together. Pardon me. Thank you. I'll just do a brief introduction before I hand it over to Britney. So, on the agenda tonight, we have a presentation on the audit of the fiscal year 2425 financial statements. Included in there are the citywide financial um annual comprehensive financial reports along with the financial reports for the four community facility districts and the municipal property corporation. Um those reports are prepared by the accounting department and then audited each year by our CPA firm Heinfeld and Meech. The auditor's office manages that CPA contract on behalf of council and we have contracted with Heinfeld and Meech for the for this year to do the audit. Um the state law does require that the firm present the results to council within 90 days of completion of the audit. Um it was completed in November and it went to the audit committee December 12th. So with that, I'll hand it off to Britney to go over the results of that audit. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Lei. Uh Mayor Barowski, members of the city council, thank you so much for having me here this evening. Um again, I'm Britney Williams. I work for Heinfeld Meion Company here in our Scottsdale office and it is always a pleasure to be here. We work directly with Anna Henthornne and her team in finance and Lei in uh internal audit and meet several times a year with the audit committee. And so I'm familiar with many of you and you've seen the reports, but we will go ahead and briefly cover everything uh that we have here in the presentation tonight. So, as Lelay mentioned, the charter does require city council to designate a CPA to audit the financial statements and then present this at the city council meeting. This is just uh the face of the independent auditor's report that we issued on the city of Scottsdale audit this year. As you'll notice, the first paragraphs are the opinion on the financial statements. We issued a clean opinion. Everything looked really good as um as it has for several years now. We also do the same uh auditor's report, independent auditors report on all four CFDs as well as the municipal property corporation. All five of those component units also received an a clean audit opinion. Um after we issue our audit opinion, I also send a communication directly to those charged with governance. So, it's a letter directly from me, the independent auditor, to uh the audit committee members and and ultimately city council so that um you know of any significant things that took place in the audit. If there were significant estimates, any audit adjustments that we needed to make, any sort of disagreements with management, difficulties encountered during the audit, they would be in those letters. Um I issue that u you know right after we issue our audit opinion. We had no issues. It was again a clean audit and everything looked really good. Uh we will be issuing our single audit report uh in its totality but we have issued our independent auditor's report on internal control over financial reporting which is required when you have a government audit. Obviously governments get to do lots of extra stuff related to internal controls and so we did we had a clean clean uh report on that as well. There were no material weaknesses, no significant deficiencies, no non-compliance. Everything in internal controls looked really tight. Uh we will we are actually u you know Anna and I were and the team were talking just today. We're very close to issuing the single audit report which is where we review federal grants uh on a riskbased uh process and we audit a couple of grants every year. So far this year everything looks good. It's going to be a clean report. Again, no material weaknesses, no significant deficiencies or non-compliance. We also issue a state funding compliance report for the highway user revenue fund money saying that those monies were issued are being used in the proper way and that looked good. We have some more reports to issue uh that are due at the end of March. That would be the HUD react uh for housing as well as the annual expenditure limitation report for the city. So, as you can see, the audit just goes all year long. It never really ends. As soon as we issue all of the reports, we just start again. So, um, and then I believe this is the accepted or the requested action to accept the audit report. But I'm here for any questions should you have any questions for me at this time. >> I don't see any questions. So, if that concludes your presentation, did you have anything else to add, >> Mayor? No, that was it. Thank you. and we have not received any requests to speak on this item. So with that, I will entertain a motion to accept the fiscal year 202425 annual financial audit reports uh submitted by >> Yeah. So moved >> Seinfeld Meech and Company. >> Sorry, it removed from the screen so I'm unable to Okay. Yes. I So moved. Thank you. >> Second. >> All right. We have a motion in a second. Please register your vote. Thank you. Thank you, Heidi, for being here. Next, we have item number 19, the 2026 legislative session update update. This presentation and discussion uh will be about and possible direction or action to city staff and the city's state lobbying services contractor who will provide an overview of the legislative environment, state budget outlook and major policy issues expected to be considered by the Arizona legislature. That sounds like a lot. And presenting on this topic this evening is Sarah Sparman, government relations manager, and Dr. Mark Osborne of Coutac Rock. >> Good evening, Mayor and Council. U I'd like to take a moment to introduce Mark Osborne. Dr. Mark Osborne of Cout Rock. As you know, um Cout Rock is now our state lobbying firm. Uh the legislative session gave in yesterday. The 57th second regular session is officially in full swing. Uh we will be coming before council uh monthly to provide these legislative updates during session so that you can be informed, ask questions. We'll keep them on the regular schedule. Um Mark's here today to give you kind of a brief overview. We have seen a lot of bills dropped. We're about 450 right now. know we anticipate by the end of the week that could double because of the first house deadline. So I will let Mark kind of give us a big picture of the upcoming legislation. >> Thank you Sarah. >> Thank you uh mayor and members of council. For the record, Mark Osborne with QC Rock. Um in the time frame that Sarah was walking down from her office, uh they dropped 11 more bills. So we're now up to 460 bills on the first day of session. So, um, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of give you a a sense of kind of what the big picture issues are, then narrow down a little bit towards the more municipal focused issues and then kind of talk through it. At any time during the presentation, feel free to ask questions or wait till the end, whatever uh the mayor would prefer, but I I I'm have no preference one way or the other. Um, as Sarah mentioned, uh yesterday was the first day of session. Um, we will typically see a massive drop of legislation this week. All House members are in have a bill limit unless they drop bills uh by the end of this week. And so we'll see probably by the end of the week another 3 400 more bills. I would anticipate based on the folder openings, meaning the legislative ideas that we're going to be close to 2,000 bills. And we've heard rumors we've never gone over 2,00 that they're already trying to figure out a alternative numbering source. So, not to say that there's 2,000 good ideas, but there are 2,000 bills. Um, key governor's priorities and and I'll give you a little riff on the presentation because I I'll give you a little sense of what was in the governor's state of the state yesterday. Um, but her focus K12 education, uh, education, water policy, modernizing state government, and I'll drill down on that in in just a minute. Uh, I think the overview of the whole legislature is we have a kind of a what I call a challenging fiscal background. We're not in a deficit. We only have about a 68 million surplus, which you think about that on an $18 billion budget is basically rounding air. The biggest challenge that I think we're going to see is what and the biggest political fight and it will actually begin as early as tomorrow is what to do with what we call tax conformity. Uh every year the legislature it sounds it's normally a fairly procedural thing where we try to basically take the tax code if there's federal changes at the state level we want to mirror those because it creates convenience for taxpayers. However, when you have a big tax policy change like you did in HR1, those changes have a fairly large fiscal cost. And we're looking about $450 million per year in full implementation. And those are things like uh no tax on tips, uh expanded deductions, corporate uh income sourcing, things of those nature. And what you're going to see right off the bat is some real debate between the governor's office and the Republicans in the legislature about what they're going to conform to. The governor has already stated she wants to focus in on no tax on tips. Some of the more what she calls middle class. I think the Republicans want to go more aggressive, more towards full conformity. uh what I hear is not quite full conformity, but picking up more of the tax incentives and economic stuff on the business side. And so at some point during the budget process, um they're going to have to reconcile that. I think the one thing that uh we've been chatting with Miss Barman about is making sure that anything that adjusts uh state share revenues that we have, we're anticipating that and and uh no harm will occur. Uh obviously um it's an election year and so we will have all kinds of uh posturing and fun on both sides and that's nothing new but it will just be heightened because it's election year. Um state budget um as I said before we're looking at about a $68 million surplus. Uh the other thing that is really challenging the budget is with some of the cuts to the state Medicaid program the and the SNAP program that the legislature is going to have to make some decisions along with the governor on do you increase the state contribution to hold those programs harmless. What adjustments do you make? Do you change reimbursement rates for providers? While it's not a direct impact on kind of our piece of the the state budget, I mentioned that because it's such a large piece of the state budget that anytime there's a cold in the the Medicaid program, the whole state kind of gets sick because it's such a large piece of the budget. Um the governor came in with a fairly con uh conservative uh budget approach asking agencies to keep spending under 2%. Um and so any new spending is really going to have a high bar to get over uh in terms of a state budget. So I think in a lot of sense it will be budget as we know very flatline but focusing on those target areas that I just described before. Um other major budget items um probably the biggest other fiscal issue is what we call Proposition 123. Uh about 10 years ago, the legislature and the voters approved of a provision that allowed um out of state trust land, the state to draw more of that corpus down quicker or the interest on that corpus quicker. It generates about $350 million of K12 spending. Um and that has since expired, so they need to renew it. There are some fairly significant policy differences between the Democrats and Republicans on how to restructure that, but that's a big piece of the budget and and getting that resolved I think will have an important issue. Infrastructure and capital backlog is always a continual issue. I think a lot of the key things when we were in the surplus years, a lot of that funding that came through in the capital budgets, making sure that it's protected, particularly in the transportation and local government range as they try to uh balance the budget. Um water is going to be, as it has been the last couple years, a huge issue. This year we're really focused on cap, what's going on with uh the other basin states and how the state will adapt. There's working groups. You're already seeing legislation this uh this afternoon. Uh the one of the committees passed legislation to increase a litigation fund over the Colorado River allocation. So, we're already anticipating that that may not go as smooth as we would hope. And obviously with the upper basin states uh really digging in their heels, I think that may get more contentious. Um and then you you'll probably see some discussion about tax policy, economic competitiveness as we always do. Uh so those are kind of the the bigger picture major issues. Um couple other areas are really focusing on housing affordability still a big theme. I think we're starting to get out of the continual like zoning is the problem. I think we've I think a lot of the advocates on on that side of just getting rid of zoning or I think it's starting to wear thin and we've actually done a lot in that area and I think now they're starting to look at other issues. As an example, one of the issues that uh they're looking at is how to bring more condos into the market and they're actually realizing that it's a litigation environment on construction defect that's the biggest detractor right now for getting new condos built. So, they have a working group on that. Good news is they're not going after local government authority. Uh but they're looking at other parts of the problem which I think is thoughtful. um water policy implementation. I think you'll start to see some stuff on the recently passed a to urban and some of the other major wall some kind of refinements of that. Um but I think really all the oxygen is going to be sucked out of the Colorado River discussion and how as a state that we're going to respond. Um border security will be a continual political football. Republicans trying to make the governor look weak. the the governor trying to say how how she's done great things and wherever you're on either side of that, they're going to squawk about it. So, um that's just a normal election. And then divided government, as I said before, um it's election year and everyone wants to uh upscale their uh fight. So what I the more targeted issues um I think you're starting to see kind of a little bit of I wouldn't say buyer's remorse on some of the expand of ADU where they're kind of saying the legislature more and more folks are saying maybe we went a little too far and maybe we need to start uh looking at some refinements to that legislation. I know a number of folks in our delegation are looking at things and and supporting our efforts on sprinklers, but also looking at if we're going to have ADUs, let's make sure they're for housing and not another vehicle for short-term rentals, particularly in certain areas where we have housing shortages. Um, you know, local control. I think we're still going to be fighting some of those efforts to basically that folks that believe that zoning still is the problem. And so we'll be positioning Scottsdale to retain that local control, allow us have our destiny, allow us to protect our property rights. I think the short-term rentals, this is, I think, an ongoing fight, but I think we're starting to see a little bit more of a what I'd call a tipping point where I think the externalities of some of these short-term rentals in these communities, you're seeing more and more citizens become concerned, and each year it seems to grow and grow. you know, before it was just Sedona and then it was Paradise Valley and Scottdale. All a sudden, I think it's we're starting to get hopefully to some type of a critical mass. I'm not sure we're there quite this year, but to give you a sense, I think the short-term housing or short-term rental industry has created their own new trade association in anticipation of more and more uh fights on that. And so I think that's going to be a very very interesting area on the area of public safety and technology. I think the legislature is going to look to probably put some guard rails or handcuffs potentially on license plate readers and making sure that they're used appropriately. And so I think we need to guard against kind of that overreaction to say this is a valuable tool. Let's just make sure it's used properly. I know some of the police chiefs have gotten together and kind of done some proactive legislation that kind of says here's some reasonable guidelines and hopefully that type of approach will win the day versus kind of the knee-jerk reaction like we typically see in photo radar like no photo radar and balancing that. So I think you're going to see quite a bit of discussion in those areas. um uh fiscal stability and revenue. I think you you're I think on the proactive side, you're also seeing some members start to really look at as governments are modernizing. Do we really need to rely on newspapers as the communication technique? More and more citizens or very few citizens use some of those techniques uh to find out about public meetings and now how can we modernize and we Sarah and I have seen a number of different bills that have kind of got on that area and I think we'll figure out which ones make the most sense. Um and then obviously uh transportation infrastructure. We've talked a little bit about water and environmental policy will continue to be uh with water really driving that issue. Um to give you a a little bit of a sense of how quickly this moves. So um you know the legislature will basically address 1,800 bills in about four to six months. U if they go four months I'm usually pretty happy. If they go six months, I'm really grumpy. Um, but usually about four to six months, hopefully more on the four month side, mainly because they have an election year. Um, and so maybe they want to get out and start campaigning. But you can see kind of some of the key deadlines. So, usually by the uh the the 20th, we'll have a sense of how many bills total we'll have. Early February, we'll know kind of what the major universe of bills is. And then each time that we'll come to you uh and present, it's kind of a narrowing down of more and more bills die because they didn't make it through the process. And then our efforts become less broad in interpreting all the bills and trying to categorize them, see what we care about to focusing in on those bills that we really care about, our proactive agenda, those type of things. Uh, and then my partner Dan Rom who's sitting up there in the second seat, he's optimistic and he put uh 425 is the date that you will be safe from the legislature. Uh, and with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you and welcome aboard. We uh approved your contract not too long ago. So, thank you and good luck this session. Uh, I don't see any questions or comments. So, uh, and meaning no direction to Oh, Councilman Graham. >> Thank you, Mayor. It was a good presentation and just it's, um, you know, I don't know how dynamics change last year. It was a rough year for local control, especially in Scottsdale. But really, I mean, these riots apply to all Arizonans and uh, it was a tough year for all of them. And um so you talked about, you know, how are things different in an election year? I mean, it just it's just at this point I'm just kind of thinking year to year, you know, session by session. I appreciate what that you brought all that up and talked about it, addressed it. Uh I was kind of flumxed by how many bills bill numbers there are. I mean, because you said, you know, there's only there's probably a finite number of good ideas, but there's infinite number of bad ideas. I mean, what's the saying? Um, the difference between stupidity and and idiocy is that stupidity has its limits. And so, um, it's, uh, I'm just concerned about chipping away at our short-term rental, you know, short-term rental, the invasion of that and, uh, using our housing for housing, um, local control and housing preeemption. And then you talked about water sustainability, water policy. Um, it's huge. Like Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield said, and I agree with um I am interested, but we I don't want to get into a rat hole with this, but I am interested in the the joint legislative budget committee, how accurate their forecasts typically are because they say that they're basically saying that revenues are going to meet expenses or expenditures. But um I am curious maybe like their batting average but you know we don't have to discuss it today but I appreciate um that you're taking these headon. Um I think that you know especially doing what you're doing in the first 90 days of the session um when you know there's the most zeal and um sort of catal catal catalytic impetus to get stuff done. Um and I look forward to I'm sure all my colleagues up here look forward to you returning and keeping the residents and the council updated. So thank you. Madam Mayor, if I can respond to JBC question really quick and I'll be focused. They actually do a a very thoughtful job about it. Um what happens is they have a group of economists UVA, ASU, uh number of experts and they all sit on a quarterly basis and try to dissect where the and then the governor's office has a similar and then they during the budget process they try to link them up and sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, but they're usually within a percent or two. >> Oh, good. >> But when you think about a percent or two on a $18 billion budget, that's a lot of money. So they're >> I know. And the the big challenge is when you have something like HR1 with all those multiple tax changes, it creates a lot more uncertainty and so the potential to be off um is significant. We do have a very big rainy day fund in case there are, you know, big issues. Um, and kind of go for >> Oh, yeah. Know the tax conformity is a big one because, you know, it boils down to, you know, how you define adjusted gross income, modified adjusted gross income, you know, whether deductions go above or below certain lines and what that rolls forward to to the uh to the form 140. And so, are you enjoying this this uh tax discussion, Vice Mayor Quasman? Um, so it's something that, you know, CPAs are geeking out about and panicking about and we'll be watching it. But thank you, >> Vice Mayor Quasman. >> Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, thank you, Mr. Osborne. It's fantastic. And as a former member of the JBC, um, I want to tell you that there were members of the legislature who tried to put bills through that uh were closer to Tabore. So instead of trying to predict how the weather in the future, it was all we would do in order to budget for Arizona was to spend as much money as tax revenue came in the year prior plus inflation plus population growth. I think that that responsible approach is also something that we can do in Scottsdale and um looking forward to working with uh with my colleagues to maybe putting something there as a way that we uh we manage our budget. All right, looks like that's all we have for you. Thank you for the presentation. >> Thank you. And one last part where if there's anything I do better in the presentation, just let Sarah know. This is my first if I'm not hitting the right notes or things you want us focused on. Constructive criticism is uh requested. >> Thank you for that, Miss Dr. Osborne. All right. Uh moving on to item number 20. Uh item number 20 asks for consideration to adopt resolution 13584 amending the 2020 rules of council procedure. And presenting on this we have uh interim city attorney Luis Santea and uh city clerk Ben Lane. Gentlemen, >> thank you. Mayor, uh, mayor and council, we have a, a brief presentation for you all today on two proposed rule changes for our council rules. Uh, next slide, please. Um, just some quick background. I know we went over this recently, but our council rules were first adopted in September 2011. They have been amended seven times since then. This would be the potential eth amendment. Uh, traditionally, these changes have been discussed with each new council. And um we will be so we only have two rule changes today. Uh we'll be talking about each of them individually and just the proposed changes are noted in green font and with strikethroughs. Uh next slide please. So the first one would be a new rule and basically what it would do is it would allow the city clerk with the concurrence of the manager to uh cancel uh meetings if the clerk has provided advanced notice at least two business days. uh that basically a quorum of the council can attend the meeting. Um the council would be required to present that that notice to the clerk by email. So each council member would need to email the clerk and say they cannot attend a meeting. And then um once a quorum is determined that a quorum can't attend, I would administratively cancel the meetings. Uh so that's the first change. Uh next slide please. Uh so this practice is already done by our boards and commissions. It is done by several of our peer cities as well. Uh the benefits to this is it does provide advanced notice to the public that the meeting will be cancelled so that the public doesn't come down here for a meeting that can't be held. Uh additionally, there's some resource savings as well. As you all know, uh there's numerous resources that go into a council meeting, including resources related to public safety, uh the city manager's office, uh the communications office and and the clerk's office as well, along with all the staff that attend uh on at meetings as well. Um so there there would be resource savings there. And additionally, um, while the council, uh, did during the last, uh, time we looked at the council rules, they did remove the polling to the polling provision that would allow for individual items to be added. We still have a polling provision that allows the council to cancel a meeting through a poll. This would reduce the need for that type of polling because the council would just individually notify the clerk and then the clerk could cancel the meeting without having to do a poll. So it does reduce polling requests greatly. So uh before we move on to the next role, is there any council questions or or feedback on this one? >> I I do before I see councilwoman Whitehead has one as well. Um has this ever happened as far as you're aware in the city's history that four council members could not attend a meeting? Uh, mayor, we we did have a meeting back in October um that was a special meeting that was called uh that four council members didn't inform me uh that they could not attend. They called me individually and um and and you ended up uh cancing that meeting. >> I recall they wanted to cancel the meeting, not that they could not attend. So, is this just a So, I guess that that begs the next question. Uh, is there any criteria meaning they'd be out of town or is this just a way to cancel a meeting? >> Mayor, this would if a council member can't attend, this would just allow them to contact me and say, "I can't attend this meeting." I don't know if we set up any specific criteria related to that. Mayor and members of the council, just to weigh in um in terms of what my colleague is saying, this is similar to um other commissions and and boards. Uh so it's something that has been traditionally done for those um for the administrative reasons been talked about uh and um it's an efficiency measure. >> Okay. And would the names of the council members be known and published that indicated their intention not to attend? >> Yes, they would be because um they'd be sent in an email which would be public record. >> Okay. All right. Thank you for those answers. Councilwoman Whitehead. >> Thank you, Mayor. I don't know where this idea came from. Governments aren't supposed to be efficient. We're supposed to be effective. And we have repeatedly this past year shut down government, shut down the voices of the people, shut down the voices of businesses, and now it appears that if four members of the city council don't like a subject matter, we shut down the meeting. This makes absolutely no sense. And just as a reminder for anybody who may not know, boards and commissions are not elected. They're appointed. They make they provide guidance. They don't decide. The council does. So evading tough subjects by getting together and finding three pals to say we don't want to go to the meeting is silly. Now come on. You all wanted to be up here, I presume, which is why you ran for office. So, let's put this to rest. This makes no sense. I have never in my 30 years known of a council that couldn't show up to a meeting, especially in this day and age when frankly you can call from Hawaii or wherever the heck you are. So, I strongly oppose this and I think it is a waste of time and to call it efficient just makes me pretty cranky. So, I will be opposing this. Um, so let me interrupt our council debate up here because I want to call on the two speakers uh Steve Sutton and Dan Isaac on item number 20. Steve Sutton address on record. Good evening, Honorable Lisa Barowski, mayor of Scottsdale and council members. Last year, I was going to all the parks and recreation commission meetings. So, I've seen a few commission meetings. You know, this kind of makes a good it's probably a good idea for commissions and boards made up of volunteers and they're not elected. They don't have a charter that requires them to be conducting meetings twice a month and uh of course the attendance of commission meetings is quite low compared to what we have at council meetings. However, I and I think most Scottsdale residents are becoming more and more aware that we are going to have our intelligence insulted repeatedly by certain members of this council. Now, it's quite obvious what this is about. This is about allowing a four-person block of political votes to cancel meetings they don't want to have occur because they don't like the subjects of them and most likely directed toward trying to stop the mayor from calling special meetings. Keep this up. And believe me, you're just getting more attention to the electorate and they are definitely going to respond to this kind of kind of behavior. It's quite obvious what you're doing. There's a reason why you all have a nickname. I just can hardly believe what's going on in this city and I'm so tired of having to fight this battle. But I am not going to give up until November to make sure that this city gets back on track. This is outrageous. Never in the history have we had four people just show not show up. That's almost I don't know. Mr. Isaac here is a whiz at these kind of things. I'm sure he can probably statistically figure out what the odds are that that's going to happen because I think they're going to be incredibly low. Um I just I just can't believe you think you're you're just going to get away with this and people aren't going to notice. You need to be here. We have video monitoring of the council so that people can see what you're doing. Like Mr. Quasman looking down, I think on his phone right now, he's not really paying attention. Or when Mr. Quasman is constantly getting up and leaving the ka, that's communication to the residents. Just like not showing up for a council meeting is communication to the residents and will be videotaped, pardon me, video recorded. I'm showing my age. It's so obvious and you know we have social media now and uh people can can afford full page ads in the newspaper and write letters to the editor. there's going to be so much coverage of what's going on. You really need to rein it in and find some place in the middle. Um I keep seeing little legal maneuvering done here and believe me, people know exactly what it is. Thank you for your time. And Mayor Barowski, I believe I believe I am first person to speak at public comment. I'd like a few minutes before I have to speak a public comment and I'd like to give my first slot to uh D Logan to speak rather than me. >> Uh oh. >> And speak either speak at the end or whatever. >> No problem. >> No problem. And I see Vice Mayor Quasman. Did you want to say a word in response? Not in response, but period. A word period. >> Just it's not in response. Um many many members u Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, many members of this council have uh uh iPad devices that they look down at and take notes on and and uh happy to use that. Um, furthermore, um, uh, I believe that the speaker spoke truthfully when I did get up quite often in the last meeting. Um, I don't know if you see this, but I want to make sure everybody can see the three bottles of liquid that I have in front of me. Now it is very true that upon uh ingestion of of uh certain liquid that certain nature does have to call and everybody is a little different. Um it's something that I deal with and I apologize that I have to get up frequently and in fact I'm going to use this opportunity to go right now. So thank you. >> All right, Dan Isaac. There's always astronaut underwear you can wear. Um Dan Isaac, address on record. Um there are two items in this proposed change and I want to speak on both of them. Uh the first one on its surface doesn't appear illogical until we take into account the current state of play of this council. We have three members who actively worked to throw our mayor out of the office. So this is a blatant attempt to prevent the mayor from scalling from calling special meetings. Now those three members there's Bad Barry whose mouthpiece Rod Pritchette Scottfdale voter routinely disparages the mayor. There's Adam Quasman who sent vulgarladen threatening texts to the mayor threatening to physically remove her from the office. And all of this is available data. And there's the recording of Jan Devoscus where she made it clear that they're trying to remove the mayor from the office. That is also the tape where she referred to the mayor as a Now, if this were a normal, well operating council, this change would make sense. But it's not. It's vindictive. In my 61 years on God's green earth, I believe I have used the words audacity and hypocrisy more in this room than I have at any other time in any other place on earth because this council reeks of it. And Adam Quasman beginning this meeting by saying he wants to put the contention in the past is laughable when he was tweeting at the last meeting, the special meeting that the mayor called, talking about what a waste of time it was. So his hypocrisy and audacity is ridiculous. As far as the second change, the fanatic four want to limit public comment for efficiency purposes, but now they want to introduce an opportunity for council members to speak adnauseium on any topic at any time during the meeting. How is this efficient? More importantly, council members can work with the rest of the council and the city staff to agendaize topics that should be discussed by the council. They do not need an additional opportunity to blather on about their accomplishments or for political purposes. Both of these changes weak and are disgusting and they're about contention and divisiveness. and this needs to stop. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dan. All right. Um, do you I'm going to move to Councilman Graham. Do you want to speak to the rule of procedure that's on the table here? You're on the list. >> Oh, I >> You don't have to. I >> Oh, I didn't I didn't mean to press the button if I did. >> Okay. Vice Mayor Quasman. >> Thank you. Uh, Madame Mayor, I just want to remind members here that not every rule change is an attempt to subvert and remind everybody of a very short his history that um I believe it was last year that it was the mayor who wanted to cancel a regular meeting um unilaterally. I think that that happened roughly February of last year which is was within her was in her right. Um she did it within the 24 hours. And so before we again in the spirit of making 2026 something that uh we don't turn every issue into a hugely contentious and hotly contentious issue. I beg my colleagues to seek the the positive as quickly as possible as as as first first of all and then we could always have robust debate and battle it out up here. But um before we cast dispersions toward villain, we make sure that we look at the history and we look forward. Thank you. >> Thank you. And uh Vice Mayor Quasman is absolutely correct. I did for policy reasons uh which was my right to do under the rules of council procedure uh move to indicated uh the cancellation of a meeting at which point um anonymous polling went on behind the scenes to stop the cancellation which was in opposition which was not provided for in the role. So interesting times at city hall. Uh but I you know for the record I think uh if you're going to do that, you should do that out in public and for the public consumption and knowledge and not in the shadows of darkness behind the scenes. So there's a whole difference as to what happened then according to the role of council procedure out in the open and transparently and what we're talking about now. So uh with that I don't see any other Oh, Vice Mayor Cosman. Oh, I just I just want to say so I'm I with with due respect to the mayor's statement, um I think that having this rule change, just as the city attorney stated that anybody who seeks to cancel a meeting will be made public, that does bring it out of darkness and into light. And so in that spirit, I ask for everybody's support. Uh yeah, but it doesn't include the reasoning and the debate and the public transparency that comes along with uh doing this. So, you know, I I I I think it's a solution in search of a problem or a problem that's persistent and needs solution. Uh so obviously I'll be voting against this and I don't see any other speakers. Do you want us to take these one at a time or what? Mayor, if it's okay, we can take them both together. >> Okay, no problem. Move right along. Thank you very much. >> Uh, next slide, please. >> So, uh, the other change, mayor, is at the towards the very end of the agenda, right before adjournment would be and it would be a new item and it would be council member reports. Um, this would be very similar to the mayor's report for each council member. It would be for information only with no discussion. Uh, next slide, please. So, it does provide an opportunity for each council member to note items of interest, either items they're working on or items that are happening in the community. This is a practice that is done by all our peer cities um in one form or another where the council members do have an opportunity to provide an update. Just to clarify, it would be optional for each council member and again, it would occur at the very end of the meeting right before adjournment. Thank you. >> All right, council. I I don't Anyone want to speak? I should have asked that. The two speakers. Are we Did you you you commented already? Okay. Councilwoman Mckllen. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um I have a few questions on this. It seems very vague to me. Um in other cities, they do it differently. I would like to know if there's a time limit. We have a time limit on public speakers. Would it be two minutes? Are people allowed to use video? Would they be using staff time to pre to create these videos? Would it be um a burden on the staff for these type of reports? Or would they simply be a two-minute report, verbal? What What is the definition of this? It's very vague. You could have someone come in here and do a circus and someone else do um just a comment. I would like parameters on this. So, mayor and members of the city council, the intent was to mirror the mayor's report at the beginning and give the same opportunity to the individual council members. Um, if the council is so inclined to um put a limitation in terms of time limitation, it can do so. Um, as you know, there's the um using city staff is already addressed in the city uh the council rules in terms of what you can do and how much um uh time can be used because sometimes city council uses city staff for other reasons and the rule specifically calls up calls out I think is it eight hours? If you if it's going to take up more than eight hours of city staff time, the council has to do it as a vote vote as a whole. Mayor, may I clarify? So, are you saying a staff person could use eight hours of a council person could use eight hours of staff time to create their report if it happened to be a video or something? >> Right now, any member of the city council can cause up to eight hours of city staff time to be used for many different things. So, this is nothing new. Um if if the council wants to reconsider the rule on use of city staff time in general um it can it can do so but right now the council has the right to use city staff to a certain extent up to eight hours worth of work. >> Okay Counciloman Macallen just to add to that in addition to putting a time limit you you could also say that the presentation would be verbal only. You could you could add that that limitation as well if you >> So am I allowed to amend your >> then I would move to amend it to two minutes if it well well I I don't even think we should do it but um I would move to amend it to two minutes make it the same as the public comment move to amend it to three so it's the same as the citizens So we're not taking more time than the citizens >> to do whatever. >> Councilwoman Whitehead. >> Oh, >> I don't know. Can I want to say that? Do you want to state your motion? Did you make a motion? >> Yes. And >> well, are we are you motioning on both? Can we separate the two items? I mo >> let's let's hold off on the motion if you don't mind. Okay. >> So again, this is a council that from day one has tried to undermine the authority of the position of mayor. When you run for council, you choose to run for city council. And yeah, you don't get as much attention. When you run for mayor, it's it's a different role. And the type of government we've had, the position of mayor has worked in this city has made us the most uh the best run city until 2025, probably in the country. And this constant chipping away at the role of the mayor and this desire by my colleagues to speak but not listen. The reason we got rid of public comment is so many of the votes that this council majority has taken have been extremely unpopular and have not have have gone against what our public believes in and um their priorities. So rather than saying wow we made a mistake we've just put public comment at the end. And so, um, I just, again, we have a process for bringing up whatever topic we want, and that is the mayor, um, council agenda items so that the public knows in advance what we're going to talk about. And we have a little bit of an opportunity to vet the material so we don't just sit up here and um, make up stuff that may or may not represent the facts. So I I believe so I guess I do have a question. The mayor's report and this is uh Mayor Barowski is the third mayor that I've served under and it's a very generic um report of what is happening such as um whatever it could be the month for a certain kind of cancer that we talk about. It is not a it's not a bragathon for three minutes or whatever else this is proposed to be and I'm not you know perhaps there's really good intents here but who who writes your mayor report every uh every meeting >> it just depends uh I can say it's it's mostly staff driven you asked me the question so I'll respond um and it does center on what's going on you know generally in the city but continue on >> it is this is just completely unnecessary. I urge my colleagues to quit pretending that this is just a way to add more information to the public. We have a process. If you have a topic you're interested in, please put it on mayor council items. Please spend more time listening to the public, less time having to a desire to talk. I am deeply concerned that the um what will be set up here will not be vetted, will not be driven by the staff, may not align with even the city's policies. It's just a kind of a bit of a free-for-all and perhaps rather than me um being upset about this, why doesn't all of my colleagues postpone the vote on this item and let's add some um guard rails? Let's add I like the idea of a time limit. Let's try to present something that doesn't have backlash with the community as this certainly will and something that the seven of us can agree on and does in fact mirror the mayor's report which frankly is a little bland but very informational. It's just what is happening in the community. It's not some kind of political speech. So I just want to add again guard rails. this actually helps all of my colleagues so they don't, you know, mistakenly come across as doing something other than representing the public up here. So can um I guess what I would do right now is move to um reject uh both of these or both resolution um both items in resolution number 13584 um and postpone until we have a work study session and so that there's clear direction as to what each of us wants to do. there are guardrails to protect the public and the time and we um don't start another um you know public outrage session. So I I hope >> I second your motion. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Uh Vice Mayor Crosman. >> Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, I want to uh just state just talk about what was most recently state said, which was start another public outrage session. With all due respect to my colleague uh uh council member Whitehead, it just seems like the person who's outraged is behind the disast. And when there are items that we want to brag about that might not be an order of business, it come might come periodically. And I would I would absolutely uh uh entertain uh entertain variations or uh the types of uh other types of ways to do the same thing. There's reasons to brag on the on this city. There's so many wonderful things that might just not be agendaized that day or it might not require a vote and it would in my opinion it would be imprudent to uh to put on a regular agenda. And I'll I'll I'll give you just a a personal example of of having met with I I just took um a couple uh combat veterans out uh hunting, right? And they're Scottsdale combat veterans and in order to be able to showcase them in an official manner. I don't have an avenue uh a traditional avenue to be able to showcase uh those special people. Um, and I don't want to I know the mayor, every time I have asked the mayor to help me showcase somebody, she is very much accepted and been very very sweet about it. So, I want to be I want to put that on the record. That's really important. But there's opportunities to say to be very positive and to showcase things that um that other people don't get to do. And I think um I think this is a way for the council to be able to do just that in a positive uh and uh communal way. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh I'm going to call on Councilwoman Littlefield and then I'd like to say something before I go to you again, Councilwoman Whitehead. >> Thank you, Mayor. Well, some of this upset I think is my fault because I had something I wanted to discuss and I was not allowed to do it because of the current rules of discussion and possibility of offgenda items to be brought up in council. So, I went to our lawyer and we set this up to make it possible for the council to make announcements on things that are not on the agenda for the citizens to know about and to hear about in a public meeting, a public arena. So, that's what started this and I appreciate the help that I got from our legal uh consultant. Um, but I had something I wanted to tell people that I thought was important to them. And I still have something I want to tell people that I think is important to them. And now if we pass this, I can do it. If we don't, I can't. It's that simple. This is a benefit to the citizens, not to the council. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh, and I'm glad we know the source of that uh this initiative because that's helpful. And as uh Vice Mayor Quasman pointed out um and Councilwoman Littlefield, I would hope that you would know, anything that is of interest to uh one of my colleagues or important to them uh would be appropriate to uh to ask the chair to recognize you as you you know you know, Vice Mayor uh Quasman. and I would certainly um defer uh a report or time aotment to the council and uh council member doing so. So there's no problem with that whatsoever. I've never been asked by a council member to uh take a few minutes to recognize something or talk about something important and denied that. So, uh, again, I think this might be a solution in search of a problem. And, you know, while, uh, I'm not a paranoid type of person, it does seem to fall in line with the, uh, with the consistent and persistent, uh, changes to make us all mayors up here. And I'm not sure what the goal is um, with that. And I think it's it's a sad situation because it just shows a lot of ego and uh and uh insecurity and jealousy candidly. Um and so you know there's always the opportunity to run for mayor. I did it twice and uh I would encourage those that want to be mayor to do it instead of trying to change the entire structure of the mayor's uh role in Scottsdale, Arizona. I think that's a fool's errand. and has been. So, uh, that's all I have to say on this. I'm opposed to both of these initiatives, uh, solutions in search of problems. Again, uh, Councilwoman Whitehead. >> Yeah. So, I would propose, um, you know, I hear Councilwoman Littlefield, first of all, most of us, certainly the Littlefields I do, uh, many of us have newsletters. We write op-eds which always get published. uh TV reporters are always calling, willing to speak. So, we have plenty of avenues of getting our messages out. Some pertain to city business. Some may pertain to our political aspirations or just our our life. you know, we and so again, what I'm looking for is to make sure that city hall is a place of city business and that we uh have guard rails and um I like like I said, time limits is just one of those. And so if in fact this is an idea that has merit, then a work study session that will in fact come out with a um proposal that again seven of us can support. If the desire is unity, if the desire is in fact to work together and to stop all of the um the issues we had last year where this council was constantly in the press, but not because of good behavior. So, that has not benefited any of us. So, one way to solve that is to go ahead and have a work study session. Um, and then work out some of the details and make sure that like the mayor's report, the council report is strictly limited to city business and has some uh again guardrails and oversight um by the city staff to make sure that we're, you know, accurate and in fact focused on a city related project. So with that I move I if I can uh yeah I know I am would like to I guess um I guess take uh I don't know how would I reject my motion and replace it with uh Louis >> just withdraw it. >> Okay. Can I withdraw I'm going to withdraw my motion. Okay. I I would like to withdraw my motion. Do I have a second for that? >> I'll withdraw my second. >> Okay. and I wasn't sure. All right. And thank you. And I would like to encourage in the name of starting 2026 in a better um unified front uh request a um a work study session. So continue uh resolution number 13584 um until the city council can convene a work study session uh to discuss this these items further. >> Thank you. I don't hear a second on that. Councilman Graham. >> Oh, I'll second that. >> Okay. Councilman Graham. >> Thank you, Mayor. the um you know these uh these these um changes were staff initiated and I think it was important that we give them a hearing and think about them thoughtfully and um you know when I listening to my colleague Councilwoman Littlefield it's you know her request makes sense I mean she wanted to probably brag about somebody in our community or brag about something Scottsdale And um I respect that the um I trust that our professionals were thoughtful in these changes and there was some audacious audacious claims about perceived motives but I don't see any of that. I think their rules of procedure are changed constantly and if it if the rules if the changes don't work, we we'll fix them. I mean, we keep open minds and um you know, we're constantly refining these procedures. Um you I'd like to just make it more positive because there's so much to be thankful for and Scottdale so blessed. We've got I mean Forbes just said that we were the best public employer in the state of Arizona to work for. Um I mean what we're doing as far as the budget and paving our roads and bringing priorities back to the basics. Um tourism is record high. Um, we're bringing financial scrutiny that's residents have long asked for and we're bringing resident focus and resident values to city hall. So, I'm incredibly optimistic and I think there's a lot to be positive for. Um, there has been some negativity. Uh, but I think that I think there's way more reason um for POS to celebrate and for positivity and I respect all my colleagues and I respect that they um that they um argue these um and debate these in good faith. Um I just simply don't agree with um some of the perceived motivations that were speculated about. Um, it seems like a thoughtful um, refinement to a rule of procedure. And I was especially touched by Councilwoman Littlefield when she shared uh, with us a few moments ago um, what she was thinking as far as, you know, finding an opportunity to um, celebrate our community and share something share something about it. So, I appreciate all my colleagues. I respect them. And uh with those thoughts, I'll make an alternate motion to find my place here. Um adopt resolution 13584. Thank you. Second, >> Councilwoman Dasquez. >> Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, city clerk, as far as the um, council comment, you said that all of our peer cities have something like this. >> Uh, yes. Thank you. Uh, mayor uh, Councilwoman Duboscus. Yes, all our peer cities uh, do allow for some type of comment by the council uh, during the meeting. It's normally towards the end of the meeting. And have you uh taken a look at several of those and sort of thought about how that would mesh within this rule when when you and and the city attorney crafted this? >> Not specifically on that point, but I think it will actually help with open meeting law compliance because um council members can't be randomly called upon to appine on anything, right? It has to be agendaized. And we've had many instances where pe where council members talk off track. Um not necessarily um not calling out any individual, but um this helps because they someone has a burning thing they want to say. Now they have a scheduled time to do it. Uh and um and we you can't just call on a council member at any given moment to talk about something that hasn't been properly agendaized. So, that's part of the whole point and the intent here. >> Thank you, >> Counciloman. To add on to that, what what I've seen in other jurisdictions, um, in in cities with districts, and I I know we don't have districts, but in cities with districts, the council members would talk about things that are going on in their specific district. Um, it also, as Vice Mayor Quasman mentioned, it it's an opportunity to provide kudos um to residents or uh or note something of interest uh to the public that maybe that council member is is working on um is what I've seen. Thank you. >> And you're suggesting that it be the very last item? >> Uh yes. Yes. Right before adjournment. So it would be at the very very end of the meeting. >> Okay. So, you're assuming that there won't be a large audience necessarily here to hear us, but if someone wanted to stay or was observing on the video afterward that they'd have the opportunity to to do that. Um, was there a reason that you didn't put a time limit or did you um, you know, the interim attorney mentioned that uh, it would be like does the mayor's have a time limit? Is there a reason for the time, you know, lack of a time limit here? >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, uh, Councilwoman. Yeah, the the mayor's report does not have a time limit and, uh, I I could definitely do more research, but I don't believe other jurisdictions have time limits. But, um, >> but I I do think, you know, if if the council wanted to put some type of time limit just that that does make sense. But >> And would you say that other jurisdictions they don't have time limits, but they sort of have a customary expectation that you're just doing a little one minute maybe two minute thing and so there's a um a trust among council members that this is not a 20 minute campaign speech, >> right? Well, and yes, thank you uh councilwoman. Uh and there obviously are are limits already in place about campaigning from the dis. So those are already in place. And additionally, yeah, what I've seen is it's just very normally very short um by the council members just because there's a realization that there's six or seven or eight or nine council members that need to speak and that takes time. >> And so sometimes when we're out representing the city, you prepare speeches for us, your team does. Um and we speak on behalf of the city, isn't that right? >> Uh that that's correct, Councilwoman. And so in those times, um, we don't seem to put guard rails around what council members do and don't say, uh, in public events. And, um, so it seems a little bit funny to me that we would want to put guard rails around council members, uh, at council meetings, um, when generally speaking, we don't have those types of guard rails other than the basic expectation that we're we're here to to work on the business of the city and really to focus on that. Would that seem a little bit of a um contradiction to you to have guardrails in one situation and not in another? >> I I think with that, Councilwoman, that's to me that's really up to the the council, but I I do I do see I do see your point. But in terms of what the council rules are, it's it's obviously the council's discretion to modify the rules. >> Okay. Thank you. Um I trust my fellow council members. I think that if there's something great that you want to talk about in the community, if uh Councilwoman um McCallen wants to talk about Partners for Pyute, I think that would be wonderful. I would love to hear some of the things that she's doing during the week. Um if we all have the understanding that it's intended to be just brief and we may not each choose to speak, it may be that none of us chooses to speak at a certain time, but if there's an announcement someone would like to make that could benefit the community, I think we should have the opportunity to do that. Thank you. Councilwoman Whitehead. >> So, I appreciate this discussion. Wouldn't it be nice to have a work study session rather than have this sort of dumped on us? You know, um I think that I agree with a lot of what my colleagues said. And I think if we hadn't so effectively um shut down the public, then the idea of having more dialogue from the council would seem more appealing to me. And yes, we're all out in the public and we're all doing things. When we go to an event, we are it is it's true. It's a it's a trust factor. We're expected to talk about the event we're at and the people that are represented by that event, whether it be a ribbon cutting. Um and so that's the kind of guard rails I guess I'm looking for to make sure that um we you know just again having a healthy discussion about a major change to council rules seems like a very normal non-threatening um proposal. I realize I'm going to get voted down. We made massive changes to uh council rules last year. This is not normal. I've going on my eighth year. Um but I uh definitely think that um this idea could have merit and if done properly um it could also earn public trust and maybe over time it will. But as it stands, um what we talked about is districted cities where um one council person may not know what's going on in another district and just sort of just some vague things. And um I do want to say something. Uh interim uh city attorney mentioned that there's open meeting violations because a council person might speak off of off topic. I have I've never seen that happen. I mean, there has not been people have gone off topic and the city attorney, whoever's sitting at that desk shuts us up pretty darn quick. So, I I don't see that as a problem we're trying to solve. But anyway, I you know, I I think this again, I think in a environment where the public was encouraged and enabled and uh to also contribute, then this this would be more appealing. But it it does it it feels a little overbearing at the moment. Uh but I will go with the majority. I will oppose it but support the outcome. >> Vice Mayor Quasman, >> I just want to remind the members here that a member of the city council is not the arbit the arbitrator of public trust. like you just because council member Whitehead decides this is bad does not mean the public has been is has been hoodwinkedked. Um and a an executive session or I'm sorry a study session to have a robust discussion. I don't know if anybody else has been here for the last 15 to 20 minutes but I would call this a robust discussion on the rules with variances and questions and answers asked and answered. So, um, uh, I I just I just want to be very clear that you we don't need unonymity up here for, uh, to to, uh, have respect for one another and to move forward. And I'm not going to let members here get away with saying that unless unless I like it, the the city's in disarray. The city's going crazy. unless I like something, it's bad. And that's just not correct. And I know again, I go back to the fact that that it's a campaign year, and I understand that. However, we I'm not going to let members get away with the fact that there's going to be a lot of 52 votes and 43 votes um in 2026, and that's okay. And I think that a 20 minute discussion out in the open. Not everything in the uh is is more than adequate and not everything in the world needs a study session and more time taken if we have this is pretty innocuous if we need to change it later on. I'm sure that the members of the council will be ready and and willing to do so. So with that, I'm I again I second I second I reiterate my second to uh >> Oh, and I'd like to call the question. Thank you. >> Uh I'm just going to close. Uh, I have a comment for city clerk Ben Lane. Um, in response to that the council rules of procedure change all the time as clerk Ben Lane told us they've changed seven times and presumably 75 years. You know, I think they were instituted in 2011 in a formal way, but it's not very frequent. It's been it's been way more frequent on this dis. So with that uh we will take a vote and the motion on the table is to approve these rules. Please indicate your vote. All right, moving right along. Where are we? Uh that concludes item number 20 and we're going to move on to non-aggendaized public comment. And public comment is reserved for Scottsdale citizens, business owners, and or property owners to comment on non-aggendaized items that are within the council's jurisdiction. No official action can be taken on the items the speakers raise, and you will have three minutes to do so. Uh if you'd like to speak on a non-aggendaized issue, please see uh a member of the staff, the city clerk in particular, and I'm going to go through these names, although I feel like a lot of people left at the beginning when we didn't suspend the rules, but I see Steve Sutton and Dan Isaac here. So, we'll start with those two. Steve Oh, he's uh he's granting this time to uh uh D, right? D. Yeah, D. Sorry about that. She's She's coming right right down. D Logan, that's right. I was gonna call you D Bloom. I'm not sure why. Okay, D Logan, thank you for joining us. Of the famous Godsdale Farmers Market. >> So, I think I'm coming from an alternate universe. I just want to say that right now because that's nothing that we're going to be talking about. Um, but I wanted to um, first of all, um, this has been sort of a little bit of a rough ride for the, um, OldTown Scottsdale Farmers Market. So, oh, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm D. Logan and I'm the senior coordinator for the Oldtown Scottsdale Farmers Market and the founder of Arizona Community Farmers Market Group. Anyway, um so we're, you know, like, um we're in a position right now where there's a lot of um confusion. There's a little bit of misinformation going on about where we're going to be. And it's going to be kind of difficult to get all of that information out. We're here at the parking corral through June and um per our contract with the city, we're going to be over at city hall parking starting in October and I think that's what's going to happen. So anyway, um so the one thing I just want to say is our first concern and I'm using um a letter that somebody sent me. Um our first concern is that um we um are continue with our market mission which is um basically um doing its important work as an economic driver a small business incubator for all forms of one agriculture which includes specialty crop growers, ranchers, apiarists, wild crop foragers and other significant ventures. All of this is different kinds of information streams that the council and the citizenry may or may not have access to, but um we have to deal with it on a daily basis. We also have specialty foods that are produced and curated that are local and produced and curated by our groups. And all of this somehow comes together to make um a Saturday morning experience for the community here in Scottsdale, which I hope is happy and fun but also important. So um with this and then I just wanted to um let you know that with all these goals that we have um which are uh you know something that are dear to the hearts of people who are participating in the market who work with the market group and um also with community members who kind of touch in and experience a little bit of that um entrepreneurial spirit that um we want to continue with that, but we also need some help in making sure that the public knows that, you know, like we're here um and you know, like we want to be here and we have a history being here and we're going to be moving. So, help there, please. So, I just wanted to then lead to an acknowledgement of the people who have been helping us. Oh, is it time already? Shoot. Okay. >> Can I continue? Oh, thank you. >> Okay. I just want to acknowledge for the folks who've been helping us >> and um so Rachel Smintana um who um took on um cheerfully um you know us when she became the director of um the uh economic I mean of tourism etc. and then Cheryl Sumers who's been holding my hand and our hand for many many years getting through us. And then um also with council members, all of the council have given us her full support and I really really appreciate that. Um, Mayor uh um Baroski and Maryanne McCullen and Solange Whitehead were there at the very first when we were struggling to figure out, you know, like what was going to happen and we were getting input, you know, like about um what was going to happen to us and they um sort of went okay, you know, like um we've got you, but um it's a process. And so that has been almost a year now. Wow. So anyway, um and then what happened also I just want to say throughout this um we have a market mch who has been supporting us in different ways and that is um Solange Whitehead who comes regularly almost every Saturday for her honey, her bread, her fresh fruits and vegetables. I've seen a lot of our council people there. The mayor was there, Maryanne McCullen. I know that you've been through all of you guys. So, thank you very much. But, um, I do also want to make um an a real statement that the city has been behind us helping us through and with um Solange asking these questions, you know, like um a few months ago, like what is stopping you? Why are you not wanting to move forward? and she listened to my concerns. Um, and then she went behind the scenes that she can do and talked to, um, the city manager, Greg. Thank you. And then, um, to, um, the city attorney, Luis, thank you. Um, you know, like to help us support our objectives. And so, um, we're we are celebrating. He was market um, Solange. Thank you. So anyway, I just wanted to let you know that um behind the scenes, the city has been supporting our move um but trying to understand what we need because they're not in the business of putting on farmers markets. The council has been supporting our moves. Um but again, it's um it's scary for us because we've been there for 15, 16, 17 years and now we're moving into a new area. So, I just want to say thank you. Um, thank you all for all of that and letting me go over time. That was really nice. So, I'm back to my other reality now. >> Thank you so much. And thank you for hanging in there, D. >> Okay. >> We'll do whatever we can, at least from my perspective. I support you and and uh we'll help you get established over there, even if it's just by word of mouth. So, but hopefully more. Thank you. Uh, going back to the list, Melissa Kemp, still here. Oh, Dan. Dan, did we skip you? Dan, I thought you already spoke. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Let's No, Dan, you're next, but Melissa will go and then Dan. >> So, thank you for letting me be here. I'm Melissa Kemp. I have a home in McCormack Ranch where I have lived for 25 years. I love this city and I love my neighborhood. Until recently, I have been very invisible in local politics. I have watched. I wasn't disinterested. I read, I go, I see, I watch, and I have been fairly confident that governance here in our city operated fair enough that I didn't need to be here. Well, that has changed. You know, one area that I am very passionate about is sustainability. And I was so dismayed at last year's first action to repeal the sustainability plan. Against so much visible present public opposition to that, it was stunning. And for that reason, I started paying more attention. What's become clear to me is that that wasn't an isolated incident. Uh in fact over and over this council has in the face of many citizens coming here speaking to you and caring about things essentially ignored that public comment and gone ahead with some very divisive majority decisions. So no matter how sizable, how audible, how visible that public input was, it did not appear to have any influence on the counselors sitting in front of me today. In December of 2025, this council made a procedural rule change to restrict public comment to move it to the end. The open public comment is now 7:00 at night um after two hours and and I actually thought it might be later. So I think with that decision, I decided I couldn't sit on the sidelines anymore that it was time to stand up, be recognized, and be heard and get active because that's just the wrong way to go. Open public comment serves a very different p purpose than speaking on an agendaized item. Open public comment, among other things, it functions as sort of your um your canary in a coal mine. It's where your citizens can step up and tell you what's on their mind and what's of concern to them early enough that you have a shot at understanding things that are bubbling up before they get big, before they get expensive, and before they get out of hand. So when you shut down open public comment or when you push it to the back and you don't listen to it and you ignore it, what you've really done is cut off your own source of early intel for what's going on in your community. That's doesn't strike me as very smart. When you quiet or delay an early warning system, those problems don't go away. They surface. They just don't surface early. They surface later when they're bigger. They're harder. They're more expensive. And they're more disruptive. As a resident, as a taxpayer, as a homeowner, I need to trust that my local government is there for me, responsive to me, listening to me, and that trust doesn't require me to agree with every decision you make. It is fair to have decisions that don't meet the will of the people every time. What isn't okay is that we watch our leaders. We try to speak with them and it seems that it doesn't matter and they don't hear. That's where you lose trust and that's where you lose respect and that's where you find people like me who you've never seen before standing up and saying stop. Thank you for letting me speak. >> Thank you so much Melissa and thank you for being here. Carl Oh, Dan Isaac. Sorry, Dan. >> Apparently you don't want me to speak again. >> I I do. I do. >> Uh Dan Isaac address on record. Uh, I want to speak to the December meeting that I missed because I have a life and don't come to all of these meetings. Um, and it applies to tonight's rule change as well. I'm all for data. I'm an analytic. I believe decision should be based on data. Here's the problem with the data that was presented in December and tonight. One, it is not random. Two, it is not complete. And three, it is not accurately summarized for the council to make a decision. For example, the fact that the council member had to ask, do any of the cities have a limit on how long the council members can paddle on? Should never been asked. It should have been in the materials. Similarly, it was discussed at the last meeting that Phoenix has public comment at the end. Nobody mentioned that the Phoenix meeting started, I believe, at 2:30 as opposed to 5. So residents don't need to wait until 8:00 PM to speak. That's an important data point. If this council is going to say that they're using data to inform their decisions, then get the data. And our city staff did not do their job because they did not provide that data. Moreover, I don't understand why anybody on this council aspires to be Phoenix or any other valley city. Scottsdale is exceptional. Scottsdale is special. I do not believe most of these council members want to emulate Phoenix with regard to their zoning in their building. I don't believe that this council wants to emulate Mesa or Tempee with regard to many items. So using a peer city in the valley as justification to silence the public is absurd and hypocritical. Council member Littlefield, you said that you had to vote against the Axon memorandum of understanding because all of the emails were opposed to it. First of all, that was factually incorrect or you lied. I don't know which one is is true. But the December meeting was 98% opposed to the changes in the rules of procedure for the meeting. So, you claim that you have to listen to residents, but you repeatedly only listen to residents when it aligns with your belief or what Barry tells you to vote. That is inconsistent, inappropriate. But anyway, this council needs to use real data and demand our staff to provide the data to make the right decisions. And please do not aspire to be Phoenix. No Scottsdale resident chose to be in Scottsdale because they couldn't get into Phoenix. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dan. Okay, Carl Frasier, followed by Ryan Johnson and then Whitney Orman. >> Good evening, Madame Mayor, members of the city council. um hopefully bringing you a non-controversial one, nice and easy to start off the year. I want to speak to you all tonight about my concerns over non-compliant board, specifically the seemingly ever embattled public safety personnel retirement system board. It's prescribed by ARS title 38, chapter 5, article 4, and adopted by the city. The PSRS was created to provide uniform, consistent, and equitable statewide program for public safety personnel who are assigned hazardous duty, an employee of the state or political subdivision thereof. You guys, as required by AS38-847 and adopted by the city, the administration of the system and making provisions to the system are vested in a local board. Local board is to be constituted of five members including the mayor, the mayor's design. two members, one who shall be the head of the merit system or the head's design and two members of the police department elected by secret ballot for the police local board or two members of the fire department elected by the fire department for the fire local board. If what I've said so far is confusing and you found yourself lost, buckle in. Says the least confusing part. If I go over time, I kindly request that the council indulge me to finish addressing this issue. Unfortunately, the Scottsdale local boards do not seem to be in complian with the board composition I previously described. The last time where the board met as five voting members was on December 12th, 2024. Since then, the board has operated, voted, and taken action as a fourperson organization. Vulga board has a duty to report the members, secretaries, and legal council changes to a statewide board within 10 days. You would think at the same time they'd notified the mayor so that they can begin the appointment process if necessary, but the bylaws were last updated in 1983 for that committee or board and don't require that. Additionally, it's my belief that the current chair/mayoral designate of the board was most recently appointed by Mayor Ortega and approved by the council at the February 2nd, 2021 meeting. If my interpretation of a ARS 38-847 is correct, their term would have ended on February 2nd, 2025. Yet, they've continued to act as chair without further appointment or approval from this council. Now, you're down to three members. On top of that, it's my belief that the other citizen member, who is also the head of the merit system, has no record of being appointed by the mayor and approved by the council prior to beginning their work for the board on January 19th, 2023. Now, this could be due to Scottsdale's interpretation of ARS 388-847 is adopted in section 2-366 of the Scottsdale City Code, which seems to interpret it as an automatic seat. However, the most common and widely accepted interpretation of that statute still requires that the seat be appointed by the mayor with approval of the council. Now, a fivep person board is down to two members. When I saw this, I got concerned, went to apply. I've served on and chaired boards before. Um, and I believe that rules exist for a reason and compliance to them is important. I got a call from a very nice person in the city clerk's office saying that I needed to choose if I wanted to serve on the fire or police board. However, ARS 38-847 and section 2-366 subsection B of city code states that the citizen members will serve on both boards. I'm sure that the city's clerk's member of the city clerk office is not familiar with that specific statute or code, but I want to make sure you all are aware so we don't risk further muddying the water. I don't believe that the responsibility for this fiasco rests in the hands of any one person. It's more likely a misinterpretation of the statue by the city. There's no clear procedure written of who is responsible for making notifications of vacant seats or ex expiring terms. And this board is not one that is scheduled to be reviewed or has been reviewed by the audit committee to catch these deviations from procedure. However, I do believe it's the duty of this council to course correct and bring the board into compliance. Now, what I'm requesting specifically from this council is as follows. In accordance with council rule and pro council rules of procedure 7.6 Six, that the council ask the staff to review my claims that two appointed members currently operating on the PSPRS board have not been appointed and approved by the council within the last four years. Two, to seek advice on the city's interpretation of ARS 38-847 in regards to section 2-366 of the city code and interpretation of an automatic versus appointed seat for the mayor ahead. Three, the staff to make recommendations on what action or actions should occur to bring the board into compliance with ARS 38- 847. Four, for staff to make recommendations or provide justification for deviation from the commonly accepted interpretation of ARS 38-847, ensuring that section 2-3366 of the city code meets the standard for the merit headboard. Five, provide a written response to council and myself if possible. Six, depending on the results of the staff review, add agenda items to a regular or special meeting to appoint and approve one to three nominations to bring the board back into compliance as soon as possible and potentially revise section 2-366 of the city code. At best, city staff will find documentation, but trust me, I've searched and haven't found it, of mayoral appointment and council approval of the mayoral design and citizen members occurring within the last four years. Then all that needs to happen is one citizen is appointed to fill the spot that's been open for over a year. At worst, a board who has a fiduciary duty to Scotsio's police and fire personnel, as well as a statewide retirement system for our public safety officers, has gone rogue and operated that way for almost a year, potentially opening the city and its public safety retirement system up to future litigation. Madame Mayor, if the staff review shows what I believe it will show, I'd appreciate an opportunity to discuss with you how I might be of service to the city and ways that we can prevent anything like this from happening again. Thank you. >> Thank you. And I did I did allow you extra time. Uh that almost qualifies. Thank you for coming to speak to us. It was very interesting. Carl, right? >> Yeah. And uh clerk, city clerk, uh can I can we convert that to a citizen petition because essentially what he asked for was the same as a petition. What can we do on that? >> Mayor, members of the council, I'll ask the um answer the question. We did change the rule about how we um submit um right petitions. It supposed to be in writing >> and it's is it what's the what's the requirement again? Two days. Two days. Two business days. Two business days. Yeah. It's not agenda. So, um let's let's hold that thought for now and I'm going to continue on with the speakers. Uh let's see. We've got Ryan Johnson. Is Ryan still here? All right. Whitney Warman. Whitney. Uh, I see Sonnie Kurtley was here. Did she leave? She took off. All right. David Glman. Nope. Uh, I do see Pat Lman. So, you're up. And then I see former councilwoman Linda Milhaven who will close the public comment. >> Thank you mayor and councilman. I have two items that it's going to be short. Trust me. Um, when preparing to speak at this and this being my first time, I read the multiple paragraphs of explanation on and needed it sorted out by a I need to have it sorted out by a friend. I mean, it was to me it was like, dare I say, word salad. Um, where is the one button for requests to speak? I am asking to simplify that system. get rid of all that verbiage in there so we can understand. Push the speak button and have it sorted out within the questionnaire. I that it's what I would suggest. Okay. Second, regarding public comments, I suggest there needs to be further discussion on your moving the public comments to the end of the agenda. The message you are sending to the public has ended up on Next Door and multiple other discussion groups. Messaging being the is being sent is that residents go last or hope they won't come. Maybe that's something that's that's the reason it's at the end. I know compliments are far and few between and it's hard to get anything but trust me if you start listening to residents and responding to them directly you will be getting more kudos that's just how it works I know uh yes we all have families children activities senior activities etc etc if allowed to speak at the front end of an of the agenda Everybody everybody's busy. We can manage that. But sitting here for two hours over two hours and waiting and think I guess every half people have left. Uh you know if I had kids at home I would have left too. So I think there's a lot being left there. And my question to you is, what do you think your messaging is to the residents by what you've done based on what's being talked in in social media, I don't think it's what you want to hear. And if they knew that you were going to keep your promise of residents first, I mean, isn't that why they voted for you? and that's not how it's ending up. So, I just ask you to keep your promise of residents first and not the residents last. That's all. Thank you. >> Thank you, Pat. Always great to see you. Uh, council, former councilwoman Linda Milhaven. >> Mayor, members of council, Linda Milhaven. I live on McCormack Ranch and uh I'd like to start um by wishing all of you a happy new year and spend my time looking at the future with some hope and positivity. Um while many of us may while some of us may not have voted for all seven of you, uh we all pray for your success. There are 240,000 of our neighbors sitting at home tonight uh leading their lives who all hope that you are doing the right thing for the greater good of the community. I believe as neighbors, we all have the same shared goals. We want a safe, clean, beautiful community with a high quality of life, first class services and amenities, and that you're good stewards of our tax dollars. We I think we all while we all agree as neighbors on the goals, we may disagree on the means. And as we discuss the means, we trust that you will study the issues, listen to everyone, especially when you disagree because we know when we have a robust disagreement, we often come up with a better third idea that is better than anything any of us could come up with individually and then make decisions uh based on the greater good. So, as neighbors, we hope that you will rise above petty disagreements that you will cooperate, collaborate, and be transparent and uh forthcoming. Residents are smart people, and they we hold our electeds to a high standard. We want you to uh walk the talk. Actions speak louder than words. We've heard some great words today about moving forward with positivity and so we will be looking for you to walk the walk. We pray for your success because our community depends on it. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right, that is our last speaker. >> Mayor, I apologize. >> Are you taking your time back, Steve? >> Steve Sutton. >> Oh, okay. Well, go right ahead. Mayor Barowski and council. I think it's really interesting that u what uh Miss Kemp said, Mr. Isaac and some of the other speakers said about uh allowing the people to speak to you and how important that is. I take note of how many people who signed up for public comment tonight, but just couldn't stay this late to do it. Now, there's so much misinformation about so many things I've heard in this council. I'm going to address one specifically about public comment that's been repeated again tonight by somebody who should know better since they are an attorney. And that is Councilman Quasman. It's not justifying your change of public comment rules be and saying that you took into consideration first amendment rights. There is no first amendment right to speak at a council meeting. So stop trying to say that you were considering that since you certainly didn't. You're an attorney. You know that the justification for removing audiovisisual support for uh people want to speak up here. I talked to three lawyers about that. The concern about copyright infringement, the concern about obscinity. Uh they gave me a pretty long explanation about just how minuscule the possibility of those events happening are. And I asked him, "What how would you summarize that?" And it was basically it's basically what comes out of the south end of a northbound bowl. Now, you're going to get the biggest comment, public comment in your entire political career soon. You're going to have thousands of angry people about building a parking garage at the parking corral. Uh you are grossly grossly miscalculating what public sentiment is on this. It grows in leaps and bounds every week. It's now just on the residents petitioning about 3,500 signatures and it's only been going on for two months. More importantly, since you seem to be more concerned about developers and business owners rather than the actual residents, I think there's about 60 businesses down in the little oldtown area there between Indian School and Second Street and the east side of Brown and Scottsdale Road. And I've talked to over half of them now that have signed a petition saying they don't want this. They're concerned about how it's going to impact them economically from the loss of shared customers. They're concerned about how construction is going to impact them. And they certainly have a history to know that. I believe it's Carlos Santana who said something about those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Well, we already know of at least two businesses that went out of business because of the building of the parking corral. And that was a relatively minor construction project compared to what we're about to do. Thank you very much for your time. >> Thank you, Steve. And that concludes our uh public comment for this evening. Next we have uh we we have no citizens petitions and Carl, we're gonna Oh, yeah. There. We're going to ask you to get in touch with the city to tell you how to do that. Uh let's see. Next, we have item number 22, which is mayor and council items. Uh request from Councilwoman Whitehead to direct the city manager and treasurer to agendaize the Oldtown Scottsdale advertising marketing and PR services contract number 2025192 COOS and resolution number 13562 for a presentation discussion and possible action by the council. Again, we're going to ask to have that you're go right ahead and why don't you speak to >> Yeah. Thank you, mayor. So, uh, yeah, last year, um, after 10 years of having a marketing contract, there was a request, I don't know if it was, uh, business owners request to put out an RFP and consider new, uh, marketing, uh, companies. And after a seven, eight monthlong RFP process, one company was awarded the contract and then denied at a council meeting. And I think there was a lot of misinformation uh and misrepresentation and clarity needed. F first of all again these are voterapproved tourism dollars for marketing and the city's always had or for 10 years has had a marketing uh contract. And so all I am asking of my colleagues today and I know Councilwoman Littlefield and I have spent a lot of time uh in in Oldtown working on behalf of businesses there. um is simply to bring this back and allow certainly allow the winning uh company the CEO of the win company to answer questions and make sure that if in fact we're going to deny this contract it's based on accurate information. So I uh and thank you to staff for uh allowing time for this to be continued. And I I'm motion to uh as stated in item 22 agenda a presentation discussion and possible action on the Oldtown Scottdale Advertising Marketing and Public Relations Services contract. Um and I hope I will get support for that. >> I'll second that motion. >> Thank And again, this is not approving it. It's simply to allow further discussion before we uh vote to deny, approve, or modify. Thank you. >> Thank you, Councilman Graham. >> Thank you, Mayor. Are we We really This isn't I'm begging you for debate on if I can ask the parliamentarian because I kind of have some responses to that that I wanted to say, but I kind of feel restrained by limitations, rule limitations. Mayor and members of the council, we did in the the last rule change allow for some minor discussion or limited discussion when it comes to these items >> and it one one shot for each council members. >> Okay. >> One >> one one shot for each. >> Yes. >> Okay. Um, I think that, um, I was speaking with city manager Greg Kaitton on this and he is, um, well, I mean, you know, part of the reason that the city went out to look for a new marketing vendor was because we weren't getting value for our tax dollars. and um you know we're spending over a million dollars a year here of bet your bed taxes to market Oldtown and um you know really we were faced with I I wouldn't even call it diminishing return that would I would almost call it invisible returns um there didn't seem to be hardly anything and we had the prior vendor for a very long time and we got a lot of feedback from merchants and other stakeholders in Oldtown saying uh you know begging us to um take a look at this because they did not feel the push from the marketing. And so we got a bid or we got several bids which you know one aspect of it that I wasn't comfortable with was that one of our existing vendors was part of the selection committee. Um I had big problems with that or concerns with that that made me uncomfortable and um you know that was sort of gave me pause for when that came to council. Something else that gave me pause uh when it came to council was that um the contract was for 1.3 1.4 million dollars and the vast majority over a million dollars was going to be going to administrative overhead. Um so you you were going to give us through bed taxes over 1.4 call it 1.4 4 million over a million dollars of that was going to be going to fund uh somebody's overhead and administrative overhead. And that became clear to us that that wasn't um a good return on investment for your tax dollar. And so talking with the city manager, we have deployment of funds um coming out uh forth with and um my position uh that I expressed at that meeting was let's give our city uh tourism department a shot, a crack at it and see what they can do and see what they can do and see how the stakeholders you know, after a few months, maybe as we approach fiscal 20, we're be approaching fiscal 27 here. Um, see what kind of value we're getting out from um our own personnel. And so I see the city manager um s slightly nodding. You know, he's always restrained. That's um but um so I'm excited. I'm really excited for that path forward. They're already mobilizing resources to do exactly that. Um um definitely we all agree up here I think seven and0 seven and not seven to zero that um we agree that we couldn't keep doing the same thing and hope for a different result. Um so um you know staff maybe maybe the stakeholders aren't satisfied with how we do it but we can hear from them get feedback and we can always come back and do another RFP. Um so I uh appreciate my uh my colleagues uh approaching the issue. Um but um I think we let our staff members operate and we instead of us deciding up here um how this goes, let's see how things go and then hear from a bottomup standpoint what we get from our stakeholders and and what they tell us about uh the results of this program. So with that, I will uh move to uh take no action. Thank you. >> Second be a motion on the floor. >> So there was a motion on the floor. So I I don't know what your >> Oh, alternate. I moved I al I alternately move to take no action. Thank you, Mayor. >> Uh no problem. So C Let's finish the discussion. Councilwoman McCallen. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um I do think that the agency that was selected was not given um the ability to defend themselves publicly. Uh I have received a lot of email about this item and the concern the vendors the businesses the people have called. Uh this week we have an Oldtown mixer where all the merchants will come and I am sure they will let us know how they feel. Um and they will let our city manager, our tourism department know how they feel about us um taking this on our own. I don't believe that. I think the perception that the contract was 40% overhead um was not lined out correctly and we did not allow the James agency to defend themselves. I would like um us to actually investigate that more. And I think that's what Councilwoman Whitehead was getting at before the alternative motion. Um, if this does get uh voted down and it is staff that's working on this, of course, we want you to succeed. Um, but we also have to know uh when to choose the professionals who are actual marketing professionals who solely do this. Um, and no uh disrespect to our staff, I know they're they're they are stretched beyond um with the tasks that they already have to do and doing this at a time where we're at the height of the season is not obviously ideal. Uh so we should be looking to the future and the RFP already for the future uh because we need marketing professionals to be handling this for our businesses that have entrusted um the city to build up the old town. That's my opinion. Thank you, mayor. >> Thank you, Councilwoman Debbas. So, um, I had the pleasure of seeing an ad, uh, for Oldtown Marketing pop up on Facebook today and I speaking with the city manager, Greg Kaitton, and we started advertising today. So, our program has taken effect. Um, city manager, can you give us just a brief uh, description of the work that you've done so far and and the launch point and the plans for the next little bit here? >> Yeah. Uh, thank you. I was saying yes to my colleague who was uh encouraging me to be brief in my response. And so, uh, madame mayor and council member, yes. Uh, this is the implementation of a memorandum that I issued to city council on December 26th after uh the decision that was made in early December and quite frankly, we were left without a firm. I wanted uh to ensure Oldtown's success for the remainder of the fiscal year. So in the short time between uh December 26th of sending this out to city council, we have stood up an internal team which is made up of approximately nine nine individuals. And so it's a team effort collaboration across four different departments. And so a little bit of the reporting out to city council that I anticipate is regular uh weekly correspondence on our ads, our campaigns, uh and reporting measures and particularly the metrics. We talk a lot about metrics in our group uh as we've stood up several uh meetings over the last few weeks. And so much like uh some of the legislative updates that you get or the Westworld updates, many of those on a on a real regular basis, I I think uh some might say uncle at at some certain amount of time where you get a lot of information. Uh anticipate that coming because uh we've been doing a lot of uh organization uh within our team uh and and really excited about ramping this up. as you referenced it got launched uh today uh in kind of a soft a soft launch I would refer to it and we have the skill set we have the skill set within the organization uh I'm familiar with managing this at a high level in my previous organizations and bring that to the team the team is is very skilled and they have skills I don't have uh it's again cross-dep departmental and uh I'm impressed I'm impressed uh which I am usually on a daily basis with the skill set that we have. And I think what you'll see, I know what you'll see over the remaining uh five and a half months here is you're going to see presence. And uh if you don't, uh it's because we're marketing to people that aren't familiar with Oldtown. We're marketing to the leisure market. We're marketing to the traveler who is here and uh looking to experience our community. And so, uh, that's a lot what we'll see over the next five and a half months with regular, uh, reporting and also significant engagement, uh, with our Oldtown merchants. I'll stop at that. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, council. >> Thank you. I'm going to jump in before I call on Councilwoman Whitehead again. So, it would seem the the fix is in, if you will. Um, I had concerns when I saw the email that we were essentially developing a PR firm subdivision of the city based on direction of council from the last meeting. Well, I sat through the m the meeting. I didn't hear that direction that we would scrap the the idea entirely of the PR contract and put it inhouse whereby we would have uh we would be empowering you to develop a PR division of the city which you've just outlined. So I have real concerns about that. I've heard that um not that you can't do it. I just have concerns that that's a policy decision that we heard just now that uh Councilman Graham and Councilwoman Dascis have discussed with you. But the rest of us were at least I'm speaking for myself. Um I was surprised to see that when I left the last meeting, I certainly expected that that contract, which for the record was to be overseen by the director of economic development uh um tourism, right? our our city's department. So, there was play in that. It was not a fixed uh I think Councilman Graham said a million out of the 1.3 1.3 contract, $1.3 million contract would be dedicated to overhead and administrative, you know, payments. I didn't see it that way at all. I saw that as an estimate. Uh there was an estimate of what would be used on the advertising budget and that was to be overseen by our department head and could be tweaked. There was no doubt that that was not a it was not a fixed allocation and there was play in that that could be um dictated by our staff who's empower empowered to do that. So, I have real concerns and I guess um I'm going to say a few other things. Uh I guess that's all I wanted to say on those two. Oh, uh here's the other point I wanted to make. You know, Councilman Graham, I'm sure you've heard from people about their dissatisfaction with the prior vendor on the Oldtown Marketing um contract. I never heard from anyone, so I'm not in that 70. So, I I never heard some widespread disappointment in the external uh in the external marketing contract. That certain certainly wasn't anything that was directed to my office. So, I'm not included in that 70 vote that thought they were doing a really bad job. In fact, I heard from people that they were doing a good job. I really have no opinion on the prior firm because I didn't study them. I didn't study what they were doing. I did I was impressed by the contract that came forward from the James agency. They're known, they're reputable, and I think there is a special talent that comes with uh doing PR and advertising and one that may not be within the city's uh scope of expertise. So, I really have some concerns about that, but you know, I see where this is going. Um, and you know, it sounds like that's already the fix is in and we're going to see what happens with it apparently. So, I'm going to move right along. Uh, you know, I I'll leave it at that. Um, Councilwoman Whitehead to close us out. You know, I just want to thank the happy agency and I want to thank the James Agency. I guess one important reason is to bring this forward is not to take it away from staff or to to predetermine the outcome of the vote, but disparaging our businesses in Scottsdale and not allowing clarification. Uh it has been repeated again and again in the paper that >> point of order. Are we allowed one time? >> That's correct. Each person is >> Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Dascus. I do want to thank the Happy Agency and the James Agency because I I think both have done good work. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Uh that concludes this item. I know there's a motion on the table. Uh there's an alternate motion which we will take a vote on and I believe the alternate motion, Councilman Graham, if I recall it correctly, was to take no action. Is that right? >> Thank you, M. Thank you, Mayor. That's correct. >> Thank you. Okay, let's vote on that. All right, so that concludes that item and moving on, we have a work study session. Uh, did you have a comment, Councilman Councilwoman Littlefield? >> Before we Oops. Before we adjourn our regular meeting, um I I would like to add something if I could. We approved the request of mine to allow individual comments at the end of a meeting. Is that correct? Regarding issues that have to do with the city, of course. >> Yes. But that will be effective the next council meeting because um it has to be agendaized. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome, ma'am. Okay, we're not adjourning. We're moving to a work study uh session. And then uh work study session of course pro provides a less formal setting for the mayor and council to discuss specific topics uh at length with each other and city staff and give possible direction to staff. And uh this evening we have a work session item on the fiscal year and 202425 uh financial report. And for that we'll hear from Sonia Andrews, city treasurer. >> Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. Um next slide. Our fiscal year ends on June 30th and we close our books and we prepare our annual financial report which is then audited um by our firm Heinfeld Meech whom you heard from earlier tonight. And we then present the results of the audit to our audit committee in November. And tonight's presentation is the last step of our process to close out our 2425 fiscal year. Next slide. Before I begin the presentation, I'd like to take a moment to recognize and thank Anna Hanthorne, who's in the audience here. She's our assistant city treasurer and the whole entire accounting team who worked incredibly hard and put all their efforts into uh producing the annual financial report. We earned the GFOA um award for excellence in reporting for the last 52 years and we will be submitting our 2025 report for this award again this year. Next slide. So for tonight's uh year-end presentation, I will be highlighting the audited results including balance sheet and also a few financial trends for you and we will also report on the expenditure limitation. Next slide. Starting out with the operating results. Next slide. Starting out with our general fund. Total general fund revenues for fiscal year 20425 were 11 million or 2% higher than the prior year. And that's because of increased sales tax fees and charges and a lot of um additional unrealized investment gains. It was offset by a decrease in state shared revenues. um our expenditures went up by 7 million or 2% pime uh across the board primarily from personnel costs and other cost increases. Other sources and uses decreased due to lower transfers out to our capital projects. Next slide. And here is a breakdown of the major categories of our general fund revenues and expenses. As you can see, sales tax increased by 2% primarily in our auto, miscellaneous, retail, construction categories and offset by a decrease in our residential rental sales tax fees and charges increased by 10% due to increases in Westworld and TPC and other event fees. And you can see that some of the ones I will highlight um uh capital outlay decreased by 13 million or 93% and that's because those are various equipments including subscriptionbased technology arrangements and these are capitalized um assets that are not regular annual expenses. So there are usually fluctuations from year to year for that. Um next slide. So the other uh large funds that we have are our capital projects funds. Revenues in our capital projects funds increased by 23 million or 51% mostly due to the regional transportation sales tax that we received from MAG for our life cycle program. Next slide. We also issued 107 million in our um third issuance of the bond 2019 debt and expenditures were uh transfers in were again lower because of less transfers in from the general fund. Expenditures were lower primarily because of completion of projects and timing of our new projects as well. Next slide. And so for our um can you go back one slide? I think we skipped one slide. These are our other restricted revenue funds. Mostly it's the preserve tax fund, the tourism uh bed tax fund, the transportation sales tax fund, and the debt service funds. And these funds are pretty um stable year-toear. We collect the revenues and we pay the um expenses for which the restricted revenues are used for and primarily the lower expenditures is because of lower debt service. Next slide. And our last group of funds that I will talk about is our enterprise funds. That's our water, sewer, solid waste, and airport revenues increase primarily in this group of funds primarily due to water and sewer increases as well as solid waste increases. And on the expenditure side, we also actually had water and sewer and other operating increases, but they were offset by a um adjustment for the sewer fund equity in joint venture. So overall there was a net decrease. Other sources decreased primarily due to lower development uh developer contributions. So next slide. Moving on to our balance sheet. Next slide. We ended the fiscal year with an increase of 240 million in cash and investments. And primarily that's because we issued debt towards the end of 2025. We issued 107 million in bond 2019 debt and we also issued about 120 million in water sewer debt and those bond proceeds have yet to be spent as of six uh June 30 and that's why the cash went up and that that's the reason um assets increase primarily because of our projects and bonds and loans increased because of the debt we issued and we paid down some of our uh pension liability and also other liabilities. So, breaking all those um components of the CA uh balance sheet down, next slide for the 1.3 billion in cash and investments, you'll see that that's uh this pie chart shows the breakdown of the cash and investments by all our major funds. The general fund has 270 million in cash restricted funds 261 million. the capital projects funds 391 million and again primarily a lot of that 3991 million was unspent bond proceeds at the end of the year we issued bonds same with the enterprise funds we issued debt towards the end of the year so those funds haven't been spent down yet um and next slide and just to share a five-year trend of our liquidity it's positive the city maintains strong liquidity for emergencies and unexpected ed events, economic downturns. We are also self-insured for some of our insurance programs and we have um resource for capital needs as well as maintaining our AAA bond ratings. Next slide. And on to our uh capital assets. We have 6.7 billion in netbook value for capital assets made prime made up primarily of our land which includes our preserved land, water and sewer systems, street and storm drain systems, building and improvements. So that makes up all our capital assets. Next slide. On the liability side, we have 1.3 billion in debt and pensions as of June 30th. You can see this is the breakdown of our debt and pension liabilities. Our pension liabilities being the largest at 336 million. Next, it would be our water and sewer debt, property tax supported debt. That's the bond 2019. And we still have some bond 2015 program debt and other excise tax debt as well. And next slide. And the ratio that we monitor is the uh debt service and required pension contribution as a uh percent of our total revenues. Here's the five-year trend. Um our rating agencies look at this ratio as well. So for example, S&P assigns a an A rating for this ratio if it's between 14 and 20%. Overall, our bond rating is still AAA. Um but our uh debt service and required pension contribution ratio is a little higher than than a rated credit. The peer city average that we look at their ratio is about 15%. So our target is to stay at or below 20% for this ratio. Next slide. For the pension funded status um we are the uh yellow line is our fire pension the PSPR's pension. We are at 81.5%. The orange line at the bottom is our police PSPRS. We have been increasing that with our extra contribution. As of the end of um the 2025 valuation, we're at 74.8%. And um our pure cities are at 82 and 83% for police and fire. And we have, as you know, budgeted an additional 50 million for this fiscal year, which will bring that funded status for police up to 83%. And um next slide. So for the year that just ended, we maintained our strong AAA bond rating and our city's finances are sound. We also recently provided city council with a more detailed financial conditions report with more ratios and trends and analysis of the city's financial condition. And that ends my uh the section on the um year end report. I will move on to the next slide which is the report on our expenditure limitation. Next slide please. And next slide. So for the year that just ended um our expenditure limitation which is imposed by the state and calculated by the state is 613.4 4 million and our preliminary estimate, we're still working on the final estimate is not due till uh later in the year. Our preliminary estimate is currently 564.5 million. So we're at 92%. The recent voter approved increase for our expenditure limit is not effective till this fiscal year, which is 2526. And that ends my presentation. I can take any questions that you might have. >> Thank you and congratulations on the award. Excellent work. Lots of years in a row. So that's very impressive. Uh I don't see any questions or comments. So I think you're off the hot seat. Well done. All right. I don't that's concludes our evening's uh agenda and that concludes the study session. So with that, I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> All right, we're out of here. We're out of here.