[Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] okay all right good afternoon welcome to glendale city council workshop session of august 25th 2020 this meeting is called to order uh conductor attendance roll call that's remember odama here council member clark councilmember hugh here council member tom chopper councilmember turner here councilmember vice mayor president and i'm present all is accounted so miss bower would you introduce item number one please presentation on the city's investment portfolio good afternoon mayor members of the council here to lead our staff presentation this afternoon is lissette camacho our director of budget and finance good afternoon mayor members of the council this presentation is to provide council an update on our investments leading the presentation is rebecca chitwood she's to my left she's the city's controller and also ash metta he's with public trust with that i'll turn over the presentation to ms chitwood good afternoon mayor members of council i'm here to present uh go over the investment policy that we have for the city so investment of public monies is set by arizona vice statute 35-323 in that statute it calls for a maximum maturity of five years when investing public monies and also defines the eligible investments that we can invest in currently in our portfolio we have u.s treasuries federal agency and securities corporate bonds commercial paper and interest bearing savings accounts so in our investment policy we have objectives that we have set and presented in order of priority is safety liquidity diversification and yield so in our policy safety is first and foremost we set our investments with the safety priority we make our purchases and they're made to preserve the principal amount of the investments that is our first priority when we invest public monies the second priority is liquidity we need to make sure that we have sufficient cash available if current expenditures call for the need for cash that we can liquefy the investments that we have the third order of priority in our policy is diversification and diversification allows for us to diversify by investment type the issuer and maturity and this is to avoid the market risk while we're investing our public monies and last but not least is the yield and that is to get acceptable market rate of return for our investments so our investment strategy is we have two portfolios with public trust advisors the first one is our liquidity portfolio and this portfolio focuses on the short term it allows for liquidity so investments in this portfolio typically mature within six months to a year and that allows for us to draw on money if needed or to reinvest for another six months to a year as those come mature at the second portfolio we have is the core portfolio and this focuses on the longer term and allows for diversity and investments and this is normally uh invested with a maximum maturity of five years which is per state statute and so we can have shorter to longer term investments in that portfolio right this question for you yes uh can you give me the amount or percentages that we keep in liquidity and in court mayor members of the council we will have slides on the dollar amounts for each portfolio it's later in the presentation all right thank you so our core portfolio is managed by public trust advisors to a benchmark to and it's following the city investment policy and we receive quarterly strategic updates with public trust advisors we meet with them correctly to go over our portfolios and with that i will turn it over to mr maida with public trust advisors good afternoon mayor members of council my name is ash maida i'm from uh here in phoenix and uh wanted to talk a little bit about our approach to your portfolio and uh we'll start off with the investment policy which rebecca just went over back in 2017 early 2018 we collaborated with the budget and finance staff to modify the investment policy for the city to create two different portfolios there would be a liquidity portfolio and a core portfolio which rebecca just spoke to the liquidity portfolio tends to be managed to the city's needs and the core portfolio will be invested out for a longer duration and is is managed to a benchmark rather than to cash flow needs this was fully adopted in january of 2019. so public trust is here all over the country we've an office here in phoenix arizona our headquarters are in denver and our portfolio managers which manage this account are in the los angeles area here you can see the team that all works with your account here and again we we started working with the city in 2015 we worked collaboratively with with the city staff to manage the liquidity portfolio as well as the core portfolio and again with with the tenants of the investment we've discussed safety liquidity yield that is how we invest the funds i want to briefly talk about the economic environment some things outside obviously everyone's aware of the current epidemic but we also have some other factors that we'd like to discuss here this chart is let's just start with this chart it starts in 2008 on the far left hand side at the bottom and this is a measure of quarter over quarter changes in gdp for the entire economy now we can see coming out of 2008 we had the the last crisis a financial crisis and consistently we've had you know around zero up to five percent and what we really saw in the first quarter of 2020 which is uh when the initial pandemic fears struck we saw a drop about eight percent in gdp for the second quarter we saw a 32 drop in gdp uh quarter over quarter so we're seeing some very extreme drops in productivity across the u.s this chart is also kind of to talk about the longer term impacts of the pandemic and the shutdown of the government what we can see of the economy rather what we can see is at the end of the end of 2007 during the last financial crisis when it really kicked off that that employment number really didn't recover for almost six and a half years so we need to be kind of aware of what's going on in the economy and and be aware of you know that this is a long road to recovery and not something that's going to bounce back pretty quickly we also want to talk to you with respect to the portfolio is is interest rates and the federal reserve's monetary policy during this pandemic what this chart shows is back in 2006 it starts in 2006 the brown line at the top is the federal funds rate and the areas in red are recessionary time periods what the what the line really tells you is what the fed is doing for monetary policy to to help shore up liquidity in the market we've dropped rate or they have dropped rates pretty much to zero and they've also been purchasing assets out on the open market to extend liquidity out in the market so there isn't a run on the banks any questions so far mayor go ahead if you could go back one slide please on the employment non-farm payrolls um am i correct in that the the baseline here is not zero it's actually 1.3 so just so for the sake of the big picture on this graph it's it's been truncated it's been truncated we're only seeing the top line of the graph not the the basis below because there's in essence as much of the graph not being shown as there is correct but this is just to show the impact you know and the time that it takes to recover back to normalized levels or what we thought was normal in 2007. okay but there's still on that slide there's a lot of employment that is not shown on that graph because the graph doesn't start at zero at the bottom it starts at 0.13 that is correct thank you if you can look at this chart here we've blown it up on the left hand side and and the top of the yield numbers are there on the left so everything on this chart i just want to highlight is below one percent now what what this chart is is a measurement of the yield curve for the four different types of securities that are authorized in the portfolio or that are allowed by state statute we have treasuries agencies corporate bonds and then municipal debt is the highest yielding currently but but really what the purpose of this graph is to show is that interest rates are all below zero and for the intense and what we can invest in in this portfolio everything is below one percent currently any questions on this slide okay now we'd like to do is talk about the city's investments um we're going to review what rebecca said we safety liquidity and yield are the three main purposes for the investments as well as pta likes to overlay compliance and transparency we like to make sure our clients know exactly what's going on in the account at all time and that we are compliant with state statute and your investment policy so in building your investment strategy this is just a short exam a quick example of different strategies that public trust offers to his clients you are in the one to five year for the core portfolio and then the liquidity portfolio again is managed to the city's needs so it doesn't invest against a benchmark again to talk about the total portfolio as of the end of fiscal year 2020 we have 192 million 870 000 this portfolio the entire portfolio in fiscal year 2020 returned uh 2.6 million dollars in income and appreciated about 2.6 million dollars due to the drop of interest rates outside of the portfolio any questions on this slide and council member clerk this will address your question in the core portfolio we have 115 million dollars and in the liquidity portfolio we have 77 million dollars which is a total market again 192 million dollars if you look on the right hand side as the total portfolio because this is the combined portfolio we have a lot of stuff maturing a lot of issues maturing in zero to three months that tends to be heavily in the liquidity portfolio and then throughout the rest of the portfolio you can see a ladder out to five years of maturities any questions on the slide okay we're going to address the liquidity portfolio um the current the value as of june 30th 2020 was 77 million the liquidity portfolio earned 1.1 million in earnings for the for the fiscal year and again you can see the breakdown it's about 65 government 25 money market and then a small piece of corporate debt as well and again as we talked about the maturity being skewed heavily because of liquidity portfolio again 40 of this portfolio matures in zero to three months and then the remainder matures within a year mayor yeah go ahead uh looking at your liquidity portfolio it looks like during the past year it's dropped by about 3 million is that correct the value no that was actually funds that were uh matured and spent it may have it's not a decrease in the value but it may have been spent on okay on cash flow requirements so if it hadn't been spent it would be in the 80 million dollar range as well for this year mayor members of the council the purpose of the liquidity portfolio is to have liquid assets to to use to pay for some of our obligations the main purpose is to pay for that service so normally the um the investments matures in december and also in january and also in june and july and the drop in the value is not a drop in the the value of the investments it's because some investments matured and we didn't reinvest up to the 80 million we used some of the maturities to to pay for debt service and other obligations that may we have how much have we expended of the liquidity portfolio in the past from june of 19 to june of 20. mayor which was how much did we take out to spend for debt etc all the stuff you mentioned mayor members of the council our goal is to keep about 75 to 80 million in the liquidity portfolio your goal was to keep in there i'm asking how much do you know how much you spent in the past year from the liquidity portfolio to cover debt and other items that you cited may or members of council if i may um so council member clark the the amount that we spend is the amount of the city's budget so it goes up and down up and down up and down as we spend it i think what you're asking is the net amount that changed if you look at the very bottom of this slide it tells you that the investments gained one point about 1.2 million so the difference there 80 million to 77 is three but you gained 1.1 so somewhere in the neighborhood of four million dollars less if that makes sense was taken out of the fund because that's what i wanted to know so that that's the answer to that question and and i heard ms camacho say the cap for this fund is 80 million is that correct or members of the council it doesn't technically have a cap we just we just continuously monitor it depending on the city's cash flow needs its target is around 80 million okay um so if if the total value of the portfolio is 192 let's say 190. approximately a little less than half is in the liquidity portfolio may remember the council it's about 40 okay thank you all right so we'll go back to the site again the liquidity portfolio makes up about 40 of the entire portfolio and the core portfolio which is your longer term portfolio makes up sixty percent of the portfolio okay again we're going to talk shift over to the core portfolio now um again we talked about modifying the investment policy in 2017 and adopting it in 2018 we began to shift money over from the liquidity or the former liquidity portfolio or total portfolio to the core portfolio in 2018 actively managing to that one to five year benchmark because of the interest rate environment we weren't able to push out duration until about february of 2020 which was very fortunate for the city we were able to push duration out in february prior to the pandemic from 1.98 years over to 2.6 years which basically means we don't don't really move to zero on the interest rate earnings of this portfolio for an extra six months by moving that shift because interest rates have dropped to zero the reinvestment risk is obviously zero or is whatever the yield is so basically what we've done is protect the assets for an additional six months by extending duration any questions on it yes mayor and this may go to miss rios she may have to answer it we didn't adopt this strategy until 2017. what were we doing prior to 2017 was everything in a corporate core portfolio um did you want to answer that listen sure mayor members of the council be prior to 2017 we had one portfolio so we didn't have the liquidity and the court portfolio so within that portfolio the investments could range per state statute for them for the um the maturities between zero to five years so it followed state statutes but we did not identify a liquidity or our core portfolio at that time so it's one investment portfolio in aggregate i i guess what one of the questions i'm thinking of is why i think it's a good strategy but why did we all of a sudden adopt the strategy in 2017 of splitting up the portfolio 40 60 percent why mayor members of the council with the core portfolio the thought is to invest the investments longer term closer to the benchmark versus the liquidity portfolio which would give us liquidity in available funds to meet obligations so with the the core portfolio you can designate and the 60 to 40 percent is based on cash flow needs the liquidity portfolio will fluctuate again based on the cash flow needs of the city um that 60 to 40 waiting could change depending on the city's needs and also with the court portfolio being extended longer term then the thought was that we would be able to take advantage of higher interest rates may or members of the council if i could add something to that so i think council member clark you're asking question about sort of the history of this portfolio so when lasset and i arrived here in 2013 the portfolio had a different investment advisor and it wasn't um being probably paid very much attention to and quite honestly it wasn't the most important thing to either myself or mr dunsing at the time or listen when we first arrived here so once things kind of stabilized we sought to look at the policy at that time it had not even been updated to allow for five-year investments the city's policy still only allowed for three-year investments so we began by changing the policy and allowing for the five-year investments we then went out to bid in the marketplace to find a new investment advisor we did hire at the time public trust advisors it took them you know about a year to get familiar with the city's needs and they proposed to us this concept of core versus liquidity portfolio we made those changes um to the policy in 2018 i believe and then we've slowly been moving assets and getting them moved over to the corp portfolio or taking them in the core portfolio and extending their duration that's taken some time because of the market and the desire on our part not to take losses in selling potentially an investment at a loss to re-invest it so it takes a little bit of time to get there and that's the direction that we're going now hopefully that answered your question it does thank you and and to speak a little bit on that if you look in 2020 what interest rates had actually begun to decline which is why we were in a position to then extend out duration prior to that we weren't able to do it again because of not taking a loss on the securities so this slide is what we'd really like to to focus on for there's two things on this slide i'd like to focus on this is uh the prior year versus the trailing year so if you look at the third box here uh third graph we look at how we invested compared to the benchmark when we weren't able to to match those securities um the prior year again is from january 2019 to december 2019. the portfolio returned 2.73 for for calendar year 2019. in february since we were able to move to that benchmark and push assets out the trailing year that's from july of 2019 to june of 2020 total return for the portfolio was 4.9 again on that farthest right over um graph called the trailing year we can see that we're much more aligned with the benchmark which is in dark blue and our total return which is in a lighter blue shade there don't have any questions on this slide okay and then we're going to talk about the core portfolio as a whole the value as of june 30th was 115 million and the earnings for that portfolio were 1.4 million for fiscal year 2020. again the asset breakdown is about 73 percent government sponsored our government and about 15 corporate assets the other uh highlight on this page is because we were able to push out duration the value of the portfolio actually increased 2.5 million dollars because of the higher and yielding interest rate securities that are in there any questions there thank you um it looking this over it looks to me like we're getting a better rate of return off of our liquidity portfolio the short-term investments than we are off the core portfolio the longer term is that typical or is that an unusual situation no that's not very the longer term portfolio should be yielding more just because of the longer term strategy [Music] i have to look at the 4.9 is the total return right so you would probably be again because we were able to push that duration the interest rate went down but because the value of the securities went up due to the the lower interest rate market we were actually able to see more appreciation in the core portfolio than we were in the liquidity portfolio because those are shorter term securities right and with the total return of the combined at 4.9 and 40 percent of that being of the investment being in the liquidity portfolio we would have anticipated a million 30 um yeah a million thirty six thousand in return but we actually got a million one hundred and seventy two thousand in return so not quite the significant better return i'm just wondering is that we talking about the liquidity portfolios or the right okay we got 40 of our money is in the liquidity portfolio but more than 40 percent of our interest earnings came from that portfolio by my numbers so i just wondering is that a typical situation or is that a inverse that we're in it's an inverse currently but typical but typically you would see a better yield from the longer term core portfolio than the liquidity portfolio but because of the the time that we did the rotation to the longer duration securities those assets actually went up the book yield went down but the value of the portfolio went up so it's it's uh okay it's an interactive relationship but the in total return was 4.93 versus the liquidity portfolio which was quite a bit lower mayor question how reactive are you um if you see over a period of months that the liquidity portfolio as council member turner referred to as doing better than the corps portfolio how agile can you be since the 60 40 split is kind of arbitrary how agile can you be to move money from the core into the liquidity sorry about that uh from the core into the liquidity when the liquidity is outperforming the core did you understand what i asked i didn't understand the question um we can talk to others that want to address that mayor members of the council if i understand the question correctly how soon can we say sell assets or investments in the liquidity portfolio and move them to the core or vice versa um that can be done fairly quickly um what is fairly quickly a day 48 hours a day 48 hours it just depends on obviously they have to do the research on the available investments but within 48 hours based on what available investments are out there so how historically how agile are you being with with our investment to move it around where it is obviously doing us the most good mayor members of the council i think what you're seeing here is is a reflection of the fact that this core portfolio is in transition so we're selling investments and we're buying investments and building up the core portfolio so when you look at its return this 115 million dollars was not all in this portfolio all at the same time so the strategy again is to get it there layer the investments out the five years and and quite frankly hold them because it is a core portfolio so we can realize those um yields if we need to yes we can liquidate quickly and move them back to the liquidity portfolio but we wouldn't necessarily want to be too reactive to something that is happening in um the market because again these are these are um they're not like the stock market type of uh investments they're more fixed income types of investments and so we we can do that and we obviously have public trust here to advise us but that's not something that we're uh prone to doing is selling them and again i as i mentioned earlier we had assets but we would have had to sell them at a loss to move them and the direction we gave public trust was not to sell them at a loss and to wait for them to mature so we could re invest them into the longer term investments i understand all that but the whole idea is to make money for the city one way or the other yes safeguard the city's interests but make money for the city right that's why we invest we we don't just put it in a piggy bank and assume it's going to earn no interest we put it in a in different types of piggy bank banks to try to earn money on our investment so i i guess what i'm asking from a layman because i really don't know anything about any of this but what i'm asking is is the driver or why isn't the driver to be to make as much money as possible from the city by moving core to liquidity and liquidity back to core not instantly but as i said before with agility so as to reap the most benefit for the city you understand okay explain so mayor council members what we work with the city to do is on a semi-annual basis is to look at the portfolios look if there's excess liquidity or cash sitting in other accounts that we don't manage as public trust advisors and see if there's an ability to move assets from liquidity to the core portfolio if there's excess cash there's a bit you know we can look a year out and say okay when something matures in the core portfolio we can move the proceeds to the liquidity portfolio to address any any cash needs but the way the the portfolios are designed is the core portfolio is managed to a five-year benchmark if the five-year benchmark uh is yielding 22 basis points we're going to manage to meet that 22 basis points so we're going to manage to meet whatever the benchmark is in the corporate core portfolio with the liquidity portfolio there's different factors that this does not manage to a benchmark it's managed to cash flow of the city and cash needs so if there is excess liquidity in the in the liquidity portfolio there's there's more than 80 million or 100 million and we only need 70 million then we can move the excess portfol the excess cash to the core portfolio and invest that out longer term if that is what we all if is what the city decides to do all of question who determines what the benchmark is you talked about a five-year benchmark for the core portfolio who determines what that benchmark is that was a collaborative communication between the city and our portfolio managers again because this so it's an arbitrary number well state statute uh limits investments out to five years no i'm not talking about the length of investment i'm talking about the number you selected for benchmark that it's got to meet over that five year period or at the end of that five year period you said that you all got together and decided what the benchmark number should be how did you arrive at that benchmark number the benchmark number is is i use 22 basis points an example but it is is a it is a portfolio of securities that exists out there it's it's one to five year securities of the us government obligations so it's it's an it's a theoretical portfolio and we invest this portfolio to meet those to meet that benchmark to try to mimic that benchmark mayor members of the council i think it's a terminology it's not a random number that we decided it's an actual recognized benchmark where did it come from it's done by financial institutions all over the world there this is the morgan stanley or this is bank of america and they create this benchmark of all securities that exist okay because what i first heard was that you all got together and decided what that the benchmark would be but now i'm hearing that there are professionally recognized institutions that give advice as to what they believe a five-year benchmark should be yes i apologize that's called a benchmark index and there's there's quite a few out there different banks run different different benchmarks and they publish that information daily thank you mayor members of the council i'd also like to add that the benchmark is also not the specific benchmark but the criteria on selecting the benchmark is also within the cities investment policy which is brought forward for city council's approval and any changes to the policy themselves are also brought forward for city council approval so if i could follow up mayor so do you indicate at the time that you bring bring this information forward to council i i just i think it's on an annual basis do you indicate to council the available benchmarks that we might consider in accepting or how is that determined i mean if it's supposed to be done with council knowledge and approval we don't know what benchmarks are out there how how do we find out if not from you guys mayor members of the council we're going to talk about that in a little bit okay we actually uh ash is going to talk about that on slide 30. okay that's remember odama thank you mayor um miss clark answered asked some of my questions but i guess just in a different way um councilmember clark mentioned you know we're we want to invest our dollars to make money and and that's really the philosophy behind investing however um and you spoke a little bit too on policy what is our strategy is it to make money right now are we conservative are we are we holding steady what is our policy that the council has said that we want you to do with those investments so mayor members council councilmember dominic i'd like to insert here just a little bit to add some context perhaps we go back to slide four and and so our investment policy is built with some goals and objectives and it's safety liquidity diversification and yield you can change any of those elements if you say we don't care about safety you might be able to increase your yield if you you could put all of your eggs in one basket not have the diversification but we have a blended portfolio that meets these investment policies that are kind of the what the council has said so the goal isn't maximum return because we could invest in derivatives and um and other types of products that that have tremendously higher upside but also at the same time have tremendously lower risk and downside so it's it's coming up with a portfolio that meets these objectives of our investment policy which is then hopefully with meeting these criteria then yields the best overall result so that's what drive it's you know you can you can you could establish any of your investment goals but for the city we stay a within our state policy and two within our adopted policies and it's a combination of meeting all of these items and when you do that successfully then we feel we're protecting our citizens assets correctly and getting the maximum amount of return mayor thank you mayor thank you city manager that's precisely what i was asking i mean yes we want to make money but unless we've changed our direction then we ask you to keep doing what we're doing and it sounds like safety is number one we don't want to lose money but no one said we want to be really risky and aggressive and start making really high dollars that's not that's the policy so thank you for bringing that up but i just want to be careful when we say we want to make money we haven't changed the projection of this portfolio thank you yeah a question i have for you is has there been a point where we've actually cost us money to have this managed with the interest basically being almost zero it's great when you want to go out and get a loan it really bites when you actually have money that you're hoping to make interest off of so you know it's a it's one of those situations that it's nice to have interest low but not when you have a lot of money sitting in the bank and you're looking to make money off that but uh curious is i don't know what your fee is uh and and with the very low interest rate return uh have we ever gotten into a situation where we've actually paid more than than what we're returning mayor members of the council no uh their fee is less than 100 000 a year and the portfolio is making over three million dollars a year perfect okay good both may remember the council we'll head back to the uh slides here this is the core portfolio again when we talked about uh investing out up to five years you can see here there's a small amount of money that's available in liquidity in liquid is 11.1 percent which is in the money market right now looking for an opportunity to reinvest and the remaining assets again you can see out there are smoothly laddered from nine months out to about five years and you can see the breakdown of the asset classes and government government sponsored entities and corporate debt any questions on this slide yes mayor explain what corporate debt is uh corporate debt would be companies like apple microsoft so it's basically the stock market is it the stock market um it is this it's not the stock market it is the fixed income market so it's not an equity investment it's a debt investment okay so it doesn't tend to fluctuate in value as much as equity investments do thank you and because of that that corporate debt that we hold in the portfolio we wanted to talk a little bit about our research process we have a staff of six members in in denver that review all of our investments in corporate debt um we do like to stay ahead of the rating agencies and this slide briefly talks about the different approach that we take here but we're not going to spend too much time on it which one you know that we do spend a lot of time trying to stay ahead of the rating agencies on any downgrades in the corporate debt that we invest in i do have a curious question mayor i guess i have a lot of them today we've got an election coming up and dependent upon the results of that election our economy could could move into drastically different directions and and so i was thinking of your six people are they developing two scenarios one if the economy goes dramatically south after the election and one if the economy continues to improve after the election how are you handling that mayor council members our team has uh models built out for for quite a few different scenarios um they spend a lot of time basically doing a lot of what-if scenarios so they do have quite a bit of ideas of what the portfolios would do based on certain outcomes follow-up questions so how quickly can you be reactive dependent upon which scenario develops after an election how quickly can you if necessary readjust the city's portfolio mayor council members uh it's really a function of the collaborative work between the city and the portfolio team so if you're if your budget and finance department tells us that we need to increase liquidity or we need to uh you know add more money to the core portfolio or extend out duration we work with with with the city to do that so we we take our direction from from the city mayor members of the council as ms camacho indicated earlier we can sell or trade an uh an investment within 24 to 48 hours if it's necessary a lot of that is also based upon maturity too correct mayor that's correct and so with with the core portfolio and the extended investments out to five years we wouldn't necessarily want to sell one of those five-year investments but we have them layered at different stages and then we have the liquidity portfolio to help us manage our current cash flow mayor council members this is again that maturity thing the maturity of the core portfolio what you can see is 11 is sitting in cash right now so that can be moved at any time to the liquidity portfolio or into your car into your bank account if needed and that may be a strategy that the portfolio managers are currently implementing right now okay mayor question again uh the 11 can be moved at any time how do have you figured out how well that eleven percent with the zero to three month i guess that's how long we hold it how well that is performing compared to the other bars on your graph nine to twelve months one to two years so on and so forth this is the in other words i'm curious enough that i want to know that how how well are how good is that 11 of our portfolio doing in comparison with the other sections of our portfolio mayor members of council if you look at this chart here this will this again will tell you a little bit about what the the money markets are basically paying about anywhere from two to four basis points right now okay um the treasury yields and the corporate bond yields this is the current value i mean the five year is everything's under one percent what we'd like to do and what we'd like to see that 11 is basically if we have an opportunity right now which there isn't a lot of opportunity to invest at you know attractive rates that may be the time right now where they're sitting in cash and trying to find a better opportunity to invest those funds okay and the next steps for this portfolio um public trust does do training events uh all over the country we're hosting one online here in september for for anyone who would like to participate um they are for continuing education credits as well as their complimentary so we'd like to it's kind of our way of educating our clients as well as the public about what's going on in the public finance sector and going forward what we like to do is continue providing regular updates our firm puts out monthly weekly and quarterly packets of information uh mon and every monday we put out monday musings which is done by our credit team where they give a kind of a brief overview of what's going on in the credit markets uh on a on a monthly basis our portfolio management team puts out economic outlook and then on a yearly basis we meet here with the city to discuss the portfolio we are going to continue working collaboratively with the budget and finance staff to meet the liquidity needs of the city and then as we discussed a little bit prior to this is that every six months we we meet collaboratively and discuss whether there's extra assets and cash that could be earning more in the core portfolio or liquidity portfolio may or members of the council if i could also just on this slide point out as i said earlier this is the current benchmark that public trust is managing to it's uh the bank of america one to five year aaa double a government credit index that's the most comparable to the types of investments that we're allowed under state statute to make and again it captures that desire and strategy to take advantage of the longer term investments and ladder them between one to five years are there any other questions mayor thank you i've asked this in previous years i'll ask it again this year how is our portfolio combined performing to pierce cities mayor members of the council we don't have that information with us today but we can certainly send an email to the city council thank you good there are no more questions i turn it back over to that or mayor members of the council that concludes our presentation thank you mayor i i have one curious question from mr maita which has nothing to do with investment um would you happen to know a gentleman by the name of jam sheed mate that's council remember clark i met him so you're not related to it i am not related to him but i do know him yes okay thank you okay item number two was removed from the agenda by our staff ms barrow would you introduce item number three please special event season update for fiscal year 20 and fiscal year 21 and review of the chocolate experience event mayor members of the council uh we're excited today to talk to you about our downtown special events update and here to make the presentation will be led by our director of parks and recreation special events mr jim burke thank you mr phelps good morning mayor because thank you mr phelps good afternoon mayor and council it's a pleasure to be here today we want to do a review of the special events from this past year and a look ahead and what is coming next this next year and we'd like to have at the end of this council feedback and consensus on potential changes that we present i'd like to turn over the presentation to heidi auriga who's our special events administrator and have her walk through the slides with you before i do that one last thing we did make a change and you had a new powerpoint delivered to you today the actual text slides and the page numbers are the same as the previous one you had we just added pictures to it and then there were a few minor edits in the slide particularly on slide number nine which we'll cover when we get there today thank you sorry good morning mayor council it's good to see you all again today like mr burke said we'll review the fiscal year 2020 events we'll talk about the preview of the events for fiscal year 21 and we'll get your feedback and consensus on a few items as well what i'd like to start off with this slide is a refresh on what was presented to you for fiscal year 20 for the downtown season we kicked off the season with glendale glitter spectacular weekend it was a little rainy but we made it happen we then went into the downtown in december where we had lots of great things going on in the downtown area that we helped promote the glendale glitter and glow party we had the beginning of january we had the new chocolate experience that was held at the glendale civic center and we have slated the live at murphy park series for the month of april 2020 but due to the pandemic we had to cancel that april series just a quick recap also on what was approved for budget for fiscal year 20. a total of just over a million dollars was allocated for the downtown of special events and it's listed out here for you it includes the holiday light program as well as the citywide special events staff what i'd like to note here is although it says we have four full-time employees those four full-time employees are not only designated for downtown events and festivals they do other events throughout the community as well as well as the special event permitting process which has been revamped this year and we take more time in that as well as the special use permits but before you go on one of the things that it's my understanding that the prices that you're showing up there glendale glitters 124 914 is not exactly a true number because we have other costs involved in that that's not being shown transportation police sanitation so unfortunately i wish that we had that because i think it would i think it'd make a lot more sense to a lot of people we hear frequently from people saying well it's not that expensive but if we had the total impact of what it actually cost us it's easier for people to understand why we do and what we do what we don't do so if there's a way that you could get that information out i think that would be helpful to all of us members of the council if i could just for a moment um we we can try to capture that but it's difficult because they're sort of indirect costs um however i would like to say that in the past we we have um sort of made a an estimated or educated guess that it adds about another 20 on top of that cost so when you're looking at 1 million in overall costs here the cost including those items is somewhere close to 1.2 million so moving into the fiscal year 2020 event recap we kicked off the week we kicked off the series with glendale glitter spectacular weekend which traditionally falls the friday and saturday after thanksgiving the estimated attendance this past season was 68 000 people and just for reference fiscal year 19 we had about 77 000 people estimated in attendance although the number this year was a little bit lower really weather we feel played a big part on that is we had severe storms just prior to the lighting that evening on friday with regard to this slide if if the actual expenses were 117 000 plus and the formula is 20 more for those indirect costs that brings it closer to almost 140 000 for the event wouldn't that also reduce the revenue generated by 20 000 as well so the revenue would be more like 48 000. mayor members of the council that's not a net number on revenue that's not the revenue less the expenses that's just the revenue so to get the net you'd have to take the 68 and subtract 117. okay so but to keep in mind that actual expenses of 117 we can add just automatically add another 20 percent of whatever that figure is to the cost members of the council that's that's traditionally what we've estimated the additional cost to be yes thank you mayor um so there's been a few comments on justifying costs so there's one that uh i i think you said at 20 percent for some of those other costs that are not on here and then i've heard councilmember clark about that the revenue may be lower but let me ask this question there's a marketing value to the city when we put on these events our name is out there and we're out there quite a bit so there's a value to that and then there's sales tax that our downtown businesses gain and have to pay so or revenue they make and then sales tax they make have you guys ever can you guys quantify those values to the city have you ever broke that down mayor members of the council it's difficult to quantify a market value as far as name recognition and that type of thing we have in the past looked at the revenue sales tax revenue for the downtown merchants but i don't have that information here we didn't prepare that information today mayor thank you miss rios and i wouldn't expect you to but just just for the just for our citizens who are watching when you look at this and you say 124 000 914 to put on that event plus an additional 20 and we're only making 68 000 you reduce that a little more sounds like why are we even doing this but there's a lot more value to putting on the events in downtown than just revenue i don't know that the i don't know that the philosophy or policies of the city were to say let's put on this event solely to make money so i want to just be sure that our citizens that are watching and listening the the that i know of the events weren't solely to to gain uh revenue and there's other benefits to the city when we put these on so thank you so much appreciate it thank you mayor thank you councilmember a few featured elements that we had incorporated into this year's season that i believe we had talked about last year was snowfall at the amphitheater throughout the weekend we were also able to offer a free home depot kids workshop and as many of you i think i saw pictures took uh saw the 16-foot large walk-through led ornament that was in murphy park i had we have a couple of recaps of some things that helped promote glendale glitters we have the poster and one of the newspaper ads that was printed this next picture is just another example of something that we did in the park this was the 16-foot walk-through ornament this was a great attraction to the downtown area and like i had mentioned we offered a free home depot kids workshop and i'm not sure if any of you really know the impact of this but the home depot stores the first saturday of every month offer a free workshop to families and kids and we were able to get home depot to donate these kits and the hammers and all the tools needed and we set up a space from the glendale glitters and kids could make these reindeer and sleighs and the response we got back was really great from the families and the kids a recap on the downtown in december 2019 series what we did here is we created a whole month long of advertising and things that took place in the downtown to encourage people to come walk downtown stroll through the lights shop and dine we had the walk-through ornament that remained up the entire month of december we did bring additional restrooms into the park which was in the recommendation of the downtown merchants we had community performance groups on the stage fridays and saturdays leading up to the hall to christmas and we had holiday banners that were installed on street light poles surrounding the murphy park area a few more pictures to show you what our promotional materials did look like for the downtown in december campaign these right here were the digital billboards and a glendale star and peoria times ad the next slide shows the banners that we did on these street lights we did produce 26 of them to put up in 26 different locations again surrounding murphy park glendale avenue and you'll see in one of these pictures we actually the council member aldama had the downtown merchants participate in a photo op of hanging the banners mayor thank you mayor uh was this uh the banners were they part of the budget for downtown december council member mayor yes they were okay thank you a fiscal year 20 recap of the glitter and glow festival the estimated attendance for this was 65 000 as a gauge for fiscal year 19 the attendance was 55 000. the reason it was much lower in fiscal year 19 those we did have to shut down the festival at 8 o'clock due to severe weather the featured element that we had for the glitter and glow were the shaped balloons and again there's some promotional materials a great job that we did getting the message out in these colorful creative elements some pictures of the shape balloons i don't know how well you can see them up on the screen but we did have the lovebird balloons and you can see a side view of the pumpkin here a reason for really getting these shape balloons out here is the marketing and promotional side of it and a lot of these shaped balloons have a following too and people like to come and see them and see them in different environments in different festivals another photo of the pumpkin shaped balloon with one of the bands that we had here on site that evening what i'd like to do now is do a recap of the fiscal year 20 the chocolate experience the first year of this new event it was held at the glendale civic center here in this building the estimated attendance was 15 000 people for this first time festival this festival featured wine tasting and chocolate pairing we continued to do the free shuttle tours to seretta's candy factory we did some downtown promotional opportunities with the merchants and we had 37 chocolate related vendors here inside of the civic center i wanted to read to you a little bit of feedback that we received on this chocolate experience from the chamber the feedback was overall everyone seems that this was an elevated and sophisticated event and would like to see more of this happening from economic development here within the city the feedback they received was overwhelmingly positive when they asked vendors how sales were many of them said they did better than when they were in the park and it was noted that the customers were a higher paying demographic the other feedback we got were some in from individual downtown merchants and that feedback was that they supported the chocolate exhibitors being inside the civic center it was an impressive group of chocolate and having both gardens as a walk through for music and wine was a great idea some of them did say even though their store sales were down they thought it was very well done and hope it continues in the future the next slide shows you a couple of the marketing pieces that we did for the chocolate experience one being the event poster and the second one is the flyer that we had created for the downtown merchants that participated in the chocolate experience with us and what we did is we reached out through the chamber to all of the businesses to see what they wanted to do to tie into the chocolate experience and we printed up flyers that we passed out on site as well as we printed large a-frames that we posted throughout the downtown area here's a photo of what some of the signs looked like again it was held at the glendale civic center we offered live music out here on the fountain terrace and one of the greatest things of the event i think was the wine tasting and chocolate pairing that we did out on the patio this was a huge hit and the wineries actually sold out of the wine glasses holding this experience indoors here at the glendale civic center allowed more chocolatiers to participate in this event and it wasn't just chocolate candies we had chocolate crepes dessert hummus and things creative like push pop brownies that's a recap of the fiscal year 20 downtown events i'd like to review with you the tentative schedule for the fiscal year 21. in previous meetings we had talked about possibly bringing the live at murphy park back here in october 2020 and this is the change from the slide that you had earlier this was not listed but we did want to mention it because of where we are with the pandemic we have decided not to move forward with an october date for the live at murphy park we will kick off the season with the glendale glitter spectacular weekend that friday saturday right after thanksgiving which is historically in tradition for a lot of families in the area we will continue with the downtown in december campaign and this year what i'll interrupt you for a second so glendale glitters is planned for november but what happens what happens six weeks from now if things aren't going the way they're supposed to then what what's the plan mayor council that's a very good question we had talked about a few options and what we would like to do and you'll see it in a few bullet points down here is we'd like to take that money that was allocated for glendale glitters and create a lighting series in murphy park for the live at murphy park series in 2021 and by bringing lighting into the park it helps that connectivity from the amphitheater to the businesses up on glendale avenue elaborate just a little bit mayor and council so the the lights are a huge part of the downtown area as we know just by having them up during the holiday season and so what we would like to do is bring those lights back for these nighttime series that we will be doing live at murphy park and the trees yes sorry lighting the trees and murphy park so that there is another reason for people to come down and so would they would they be permanent i guess is my question mayor and council they would not be permanent well mayor members council so yes we will look um at where we're at with the pandemic look what the governor's office is recommending in terms of allowing large people to gather safely and and then we'll make that decision if uh what what the special events team has said that if we're not able to do the um the kickoff event after thanksgiving we will take those dollars that we would have expended on that promotion and then add it to the which you'll get to in a second the live at murphy park over the months of march and april and maybe allocate those money to a temporary lighting uh that just that will help overall ambience and then that might give us a platform to look for down the road does it make sense perhaps to have a permanent lighting in downtown it gives us an opportunity to at least see what it looks visually and get response back from our you know from the people attending the events okay good thank you i and the rating i was asking is is the the parade committee the christmas parade committee i just met again and and literally has made the decision that they're going to go another month before they make that call of whether to go one or not go on safety is priority to everybody but we certainly want people to have a good experience so that's that's where the christmas parade committee is right now they don't know exactly what they're going to do we're yesterday was zero deaths i mean what what a great what a great report and hopefully that continues going going down so mayor all right good yeah similar to that and thank you for asking those questions um so the city manager has often said that you need an you need ample time to create these magnitude of events so i'm not too sure that by november we'll be ready to have that many people in one one area so how much time do you need to let the citizens of glendale know that we're canceling we're not having it or because right now it sounds like yes we're doing it this is the schedule so going all gold yeah no go yeah mayor and council that was that's a very great question internally we've had discussions on it and we think we need to have that deadline as october 1. by october 1 we won't have expenses and a lot of out-of-pocket expenses on the festival and it allows us to give the vendors that are booked and talent that we could book other opportunities mayor if i may and uh mrego thank you so much and then again this is all based on i i would assume i guess it's a question this is based on what cdc guidelines that'll allow us to to move forward in in november is that what we're using to determine we can have the event mayor members of the council it's really it's really the governor's office was who we primarily are staying in line with who's also then working with the state health department and of course the cdc okay thank you thank you mayor um i was doing some math as you were talking to to figure out the glendale glitters came in i guess apparently under budget about seven thousand three hundred eighty nine dollars and um the downtown december came in about twenty one thousand seven hundred eighty two under budget and then the glitter and glow 22 987 so that's a little over 52 000 what happens to that money that was programmed for downtown events members of the council that money goes back into the general fund at the end of the fiscal year okay the reason mayor if i could the reason i ask the question is because you're i would i would like to see that money program program for other events downtown or you know work with the downtown manager the money's already been allocated for downtown events so i mean and so the money the money for uh what's it called murphy park live live at murphy park whatever it was um that didn't get used either right so all of that just went back into the general fund mayor's member of the council that is correct sorry that is correct okay that that's that's normally what we do with with things like that may i'm sorry mayor members of the council yes we we don't carry the budget over into the next year so it just goes back into fund balances savings funds that we didn't spend remember this is these are the costs from last year so they're the actual costs that were incurred last year and last year's closed out now so whatever we didn't spend it just goes back into fund balance right i understand that but we knew we knew we we came in under budget at least we knew we were under budget for the glitter the glow and the chocolate affair before the end of the fiscal year that we sh we i would think we would know that wouldn't we we were under under the amount that was budgeted so there was a there were additional funds there that could have been used for something something else rather than going back to the general fund so i'm just saying um and then the other thing i wanted to ask is i guess this presentation is only for downtown special events are we are we looking at any programming for anything with westgate and we had also talked about arrowhead town center is that a whole another conversation or does that mean this is the only special events conversation that we're having mayor and members of the council thank you for the question this is just in regards to the downtown festival season the special event department still will continue to do the other events throughout the city movies by moonlight falcon heritage things like that mayor when will we know what other events you're going to be working on for this upcoming season for example um something in conjunction with westgate um something and we had some money allocated for something uh some sort of music i think it was in the amphitheater at arrowhead town center so when will we know or can we get an email or some sort of report letting us know what other events um your you had you have an allocation for because of the way the budget was laid out this year it was basically just a number it was not specific so mr phillips yeah mayor members of council councilmember thomas if you recall last year we had we had proposed staff proposal was to provide some funding for both arrowhead mall and for westgate and then when we had the chocolate experience discussion uh we we did a pivot based on the council's recommendation and so those we did not enter into any kind of an agreement with them at that time while we are focused today on the on the major more the larger programming elements of our special event season certainly this could be an opportunity uh to receive feedback from the council and if if the if the council would like us to uh to kind of track our expenses as we get into the special event season and perhaps find a way to either as you mentioned either increasing the number of events that we're doing downtown or to look for other opportunities to partner throughout the community we'd be more than glad to uh you know get that consensus and direction and come back to you with some recommendations um yeah so there's no money i recall i mean i i remember very well the chocolate affair conversation from last year because it was completely eliminated and we at that workshop just decided to even though money had been programmed for events at arrowhead town center and i think it might have alvin arrowhead sound center but i don't remember specifically but to reprogram that money to the uh the chocolate affair um but there there was was no money in this last budget cycle for any programming anyplace else but downtown that would may remember this account i'm sorry councilman telling you would you kind of reframe the question i don't know so in this past budget because of the way the the budget book was laid out it was impossible to know was there any money allocated for any events other than downtown for this fiscal year in the budget yeah we all you know we have a whole number of other um if you want to go through that heidi yes mayor members of the council let me i'm sorry council member tomato let me clarify that we we do have money in the budget for other events as well we will continue to do the folk and heritage festival and there's money carved out for that we are looking at continuing the movies by moonlight series in a different format for this upcoming season and we are looking at doing uh smaller some smaller community events as well okay i guess my point is we we had we had taught i believe we had had conversations with our arrowhead town center about doing an event there and we we reprogrammed the money because of the way that whole chocolate experience you know was was i got a little sideways on all of us last year and i'm happy that we did that and it looks like it was a successful event so i'm not sorry that we did that but my point is we had money programmed to do events at arrowhead town center um and so there is no money program for that this year is what i'm trying to find out yeah members of council what what when we put our our budget together for 2021 we assumed the council wanted to continue with the the focus on the chocolate experience and so we didn't propose because remember the money the money was the same amount of money as the prior year but again i you know there could very well be that we'll have additional savings when we as we enter into agreements and contracts on media sometimes we're able to buy a little bit more effectively and like i say i think this would be an excellent opportunity if the council would you know would say that there'd be a priority perhaps on partnering with other events you mentioned arrowhead mall you mentioned westgate we could certainly do that and track that as we get into the special event season and based on council direction we could enter into some additional programming outside of downtown or if the majority of the council wants us to focus and increase the amount of stuff happening within downtown that's one of the reasons for today's workshop is really to get direction from the council in terms of how you best want to spend your budget right mayor one more if i may um so i didn't realize we were exchanging one for the other when we i mean i understood we were exchanging one for the other last budget year because the budget had already we were finished i didn't realize that was going to be an ongoing proposition i feel like it's important especially for our hood town center i mean that is a huge revenue generator and we all understand the complexities and the problems retail especially large brick and mortar has and i feel like we shouldn't abandon the idea of trying to draw people to arrowhead town center so given where we are right now and there's been no money programmed i would really be in favor since i looked through what we what we came in under budget last year was 52 000 we should be able to do something going forward this money keep track of the unspent money and allocate that towards some other area of the city for some some you know music or special event mayor members of the council councilman thomas what i would recommend if that's the if that the council has interest we one we know we'll have potentially some savings on the um if we don't do the uh the kickoff weekend for glitter and so again we had had talked internally about reallocating that money towards maybe lighting for the live at murphy park but if the council would would prefer to see that money maybe freed up and we could talk to arrowhead mall and other entities if you want to go that route so my thought would be is we'll we'll make a determination here very quickly about about what happens in november and we can we can certainly get back to the council with you know what that decision is and what we believe is some available resources that could be expended and then really we'll just take direction from the council in terms of how you want to allocate it mayor i would be in uh very much favor in creating an annual event or events over uh towards the town center over there as the council members outlined i think it makes sense it's a different region of glendale and there's no events that are sponsored from glendale over there and i think we should do that i think it's a great idea and i could be very supportive of that and mayor if i could thank you councilmember just to clarify i'm not talking about pilfering money away from an event or if we end up not being able to do the glendale glitters event and taking all of that money but i don't imagine all that money would be needed just to light up murphy park for the music festival that any unspent money at least for this cycle and then next budget year i'd rather have a little more robust conversation rather than assuming have a conversation about what kind of special events um would we like to see i i especially like i said i feel bad because the money had been allocated to arrowhead town center and then we we did something else with that money and i feel like we really should do something there and they and they're going to need it um i mean you know malls are struggling all over this country um so if we could generate more foot traffic there it's in the best interest of the entire city um to try to do that so and they've got a beautiful amphitheater there too so um i'm not talking about taking money from any downtown programming but money that's unspent i would like to see if we could use that someplace else to generate some other events mayor members of council you know i think we had uh councilmember thomas we had ten thousand dollars budgeted for both westgate and for arrowhead mall to work with their merchants association uh if you know with uh with just a little bit of uh feedback from the council would be glad to try to look for savings as we come up and then maybe we say the first ten thousand we will you know we'll uh figure we can we can enter into this relationship in the next ten 000 anything left over we can then work on as you say repurposing for downtown lights maybe we can scale it back a little bit different to achieve the savings so the staff was very supportive as you know last year it was the recommendation the staff to try to you know to um uh you know to kind of look at events kind of throughout the the community uh but as we learned you know that the council had a real strong passion for maintaining the uh the special events at the for the chocolate festival so i think we can accomplish that again we we think i mean look there there's a chance that the glow event i mean i i think we're all hoping that life gets back a little bit normal um but uh but it may not and so if if that mayor if that's kind of if there's support on the council of doing that i think it's an excellent idea and what we can do is immediately start and we'll report back out to you as we get into the special event season it wouldn't take us long i don't believe to work with the arrowhead mall merchants association and to westgate to come up with some creative community-based events uh that would be free and uh and open to our citizens i don't think it'd take us a long time to figure something out with them perfect thank you mr phelps uh one question i have just i'd like to be clear do you anticipate that we will have a good strong idea at our first workshop of october um mayor uh members council yes i think that uh we'll we'll for sure know about um what's happening with the uh the kickoff weekend and um i think there we know there's probably enough resources freed up that we can um start moving towards what councilmember tomlichoff and aldoma have suggested but my question was is the decision making that decision can we anticipate that we would be able to do that at the first workshop of october certainly okay here you have a question yes please thank you um maybe a few so regarding glendale glitters and opening weekend um at this point we're planning that it would be in essence the same type of an event that we've had in previous years last year and the year before if if we can't have large crowds and that sort of thing describe what the event would look like then mayor and members of the council we've had a lot of internal discussions about that and we're still researching a lot of options a lot of other cities not in arizona but in other states as well have have been coming out with some ideas and one of the ideas could possibly be a virtual we still have the lights that are being installed in the downtown area we still have the people that enjoy watching them maybe it's a virtual event where we have you all either gathered in one place at separate locations and still can continue that tradition okay so that would be for the throwing of the switch and maybe the the dancing and the other activities that occurred on the amphitheater itself but i guess what i'm hearing is that we will still we fully anticipate of having downtown lit with lights for the entire season that we normally do from friday night after thanksgiving through the second or so weekend of january and whether we'll have whether or not we'll have the other crowd gathering type activities remains to be seen but we will have glendale glitters we'll have the lights we will have the uh special attraction like the walk-through globe or whatever and uh i would suggest if we if we look if we're thinking that if we're going to be shifting if if if we have to shift away from having the larger amphitheater type events and all of that then maybe we could use some of that money to create or to purchase or lease more of the smaller type things like how the globe is but more of the selfie taking opportunities that couples and families can do together and they can be sprinkled around you know the downtown and down into catlin court to help encourage people to cover the whole chorus with a map and that sort of thing so they still have a reason to come down here a reason to to to wander about and to see the the different shops and restaurants and things like that so that they're still you know that that's still there and that if we're not doing the you know if it turns out that we wouldn't be doing the major um opening night event and of course there's savings in lots of areas like shuttle buses and all of those kinds of things that maybe we could look at increasing the level of programming on the weekends throughout the season we've pretty you know we've calling him it seems like we're calling him downtown in december which is a new phrase to me i missed it if you introduced it that way last year but that there could still be for instance these selfie stations and maybe some kind of music whether it's a church choir or a dj or something like that that would you know provide some activity some you know some sense of you know an occasion and that would still have the interest for our community so mayor and members of the council i think you read my mind you must have read my script which if i could move on to the downtown in december that's exactly what we're looking at doing okay um we are planning on having an attraction here in the murphy park area like the walk-through ornament and we are right now planning on doing some really neat skylines which are lights that go across the street that will help the connectivity from murphy park up into catlin court and what we're working on right now is making these daytime visible activities so not only will they light up at night time but there's that daytime presence as well which will help engage people in coming down to the downtown area during the day so we are looking at doing a few of those things already so i think these are some great ideas thank you go ahead i hate to sound like the grinch who stole christmas but i'm very pessimistic um about our ability to encourage large groups to gather probably until january of next year i just see it coming and i'm upset but i think that's the way it's going to be when y'all come back in october that first workshop in october i would like to see two alternatives the the one where we can do glendale glitters basically as we've done it because all the restrictions will be lifted and we can all gather joyously together and another scenario that prohibits us from encouraging large gatherings and what can we do that's innovative and creative to replace the fact that we really we may be prohibited from from encouraging large groups together so it is my hope that you would be creative enough to bring us to two alternatives two scenarios and whether we'll even know whether we can move forward in october is up in the air so thank you i i'm just concerned mayor mayor and members of the council if i can move on for the tentative events schedule brings us to the chocolate experience being the first one here at the glendale civic center we really thought it was a unique event and had lots of great feedback and we'd like to continue that here at the glendale civic center and improve on what our successes were last year lots of great feedback and we see that being a real tradition here in the downtown area we also would like to propose live at murphy park bringing it back in 2021 but proposing a two-month series for march and april we still are working out the logistics and the budget on making it a two month long series but we'd really like to bring that activity here to the downtown area for both those months on this next slide what i would like to talk to you about are some changes that we would like to put in place for fiscal year 21. the biggest change is increasing the access to the businesses around the park and by doing this we open up flow in and out of the park and the surrounding streets we allow fewer vendors in the park we eliminate the beer garden fencing which eliminates the alcohol sales and by doing this we're increasing we're asking the patrons to go into the local businesses to make these purchases and eliminating at least for this year the kids rides in the downtown we would and add hand washing stations and rest and hand sanitizing stations to all of the restroom areas and by obviously knowing eliminating alcohol sales is a huge impact on one of our partners the glendale ambassadors and after this we would reach out to them and figure out other ways they can participate in the festivals and help making them whole so i want to make sure that we recognize that but we feel by eliminating that it really helps the access in and out of the park and helps the congestion there at the pinch points thank you um i understand that the ambassadors have suggested on their own part about downsizing the space that they have is that a consideration or are we only looking at totally eliminating what they're doing mayor's a member of the council even by downsizing their space we still need to have all the pedestrian fencing in the downtown area because of ingress and egress and an alcohol perimeter the cost related to that would not be significant just downsizing the tent cost savings i'm sorry mayor what what about i i i think that somehow whether that beer festival is an integral part of the experience what about doing it in front of the civic center you have that large expanse of grass you're talking about downsizing it wouldn't that be an appropriate location then you don't have to fence off all the streets you just have to fence off the grass area is that something that you all considered at all mr phillips yeah members of council if you recall i believe it was two years ago may have been three uh we it was two years ago we had proposed relocating that a little bit farther down on uh on i guess glenn uh a little bit more towards the east and we had quite a bit of you know of a pushback by the you know by the ambassadors who are running that i think it's important to note that you know that when they put a tremendous amount of work and effort and volunteer hours into it um but but it's been the the sales have been declining and the costs are expensive and um you know as a fundraiser for them i believe the number was 218 dollars is what they made last year after all you know for a full weekend of activities so we thought from a staff that we one we think it's an important civic uh activity to support because they're what they do a lot of good things in our community that we would find ways to engage them in our weekend whether it be helping with being ambassadors to help do direction and other kinds of activities where they can utilize their volunteer hours and then we could go in and we can help support them you know by by providing them reimbursement for the hours they give us so we're looking at that but certainly we could go down by the civic center but even just pushing them down really was i think was down about 50 feet more to the east they felt it really impacted their sales but again i want to also emphasize that our our goal here would be to try to drive as many of those adults wishing to have an adult beverage ideally into our restaurants that are there and so that's that was part of the reason the staff came up with this recommendation here so i'm all for supporting our adult beverage dispensing businesses in downtown glendale both as a council member and just as a resident i do my part to support them but i also know that during these particular this particular season they're pretty much wall-to-wall anyway you know they're really they're they're packed in quite quite well it seems like i may hear from them shortly to say oh no they could hold a couple more but it seems like you know this is their high season and we're doing well on that um it's my understanding that the ambassadors historically have been able to make as much as 35 or 40 000 during the glendale glitter season and that it with the changes that have been being made it's been tapering off but uh i just the ambassadors have don't even recall whose idea it was 20 some years ago to put that together but they've grown into a really useful and supportive part of our community this is it's community that they're doing and all of the money that they raise goes back into the community they're all volunteers and they do a wide range of things that benefit the community they're i mean they're always ready to help i just i don't want us i want us to be sensitive to their ability to continue making money because they they do funnel all of that back into the community i i have a question i don't and i don't know who this is too but some of our merchants in downtown i understand no longer have a liquor license i understand that there's one or two that won't be in business within the next month or so so i would be curious how many how many establishments are we going to have in downtown glendale that can sell alcohol or some somebody can get that figure for us and let us know we'll have to gather that and get it back to you mayor all right i'd appreciate that mayor thank you mayor um yeah the city manager thank you for being uh thoughtful about our restaurants and those who sell alcohol at the restaurant in downtown because that is important but i i too have not heard in fact i've heard the contrary that during these events that restaurants do really well that serve alcohol i have not heard anything different than that the ambassadors do a very good job in returning those dollars to our community as the council member suggested so i don't think at this point i think it's a great suggestion uh to help our restaurateurs who sell alcohol but i can tell you that uh as often as i frequent downtown i have not heard that during the events that they're hurting for um liquor sales i think there's enough there there's a different ambiance of having to drink in the restaurant as having one in the festival some will have a couple there and they'll walk over the restaurant do the same so there's a lot of value in keeping the uh the ambassadors in this event so i would be supportive in keeping them but thank you for suggesting that the thoughtfulness and supporting our businesses so thank you mayor looking at me thank you mayor um yeah it's my understanding that this is this is how they fund their what they do in the community i mean they do have some other smaller events i think but this is their this is the the lion's share of their fundraising is the money they make with this um with this operation that they they have with glendale glitters i felt i believe that's that's the case um i would like to find a way to accommodate them i think that's um they do a lot of good work in the community i like councilmember clark's idea possibly maybe the civic center um so the i just the idea is not to close down any streets is that what you what you're proposing mayor's a member of the council the streets would still be closed but we would not have all of the pedestrian fencing that bike or bike rack known as also lining the streets uh creating bottlenecks throughout the festival and really closing off the park no mayor if i could so so the so basically the the footprint is gonna remain the same as it was before as far as where where the barricades and all of that that's all going to stay the same mayor's member to the council correct okay i think we could find a spot for them then you know if we're going to can we're going to go ahead and put the barricades out i would think we're going to be able to find a spot for them to do the fundraising they do do a lot of good in the community um and and it's my understanding that that this is where they this is this is how they generate the money that they give back so especially since we're already closing down the streets um i mean maybe you know where they're where they normally are right adjacent from the park might not be the best spot um but i i i'd like to see us find a spot for them to set up their team so mayor members of the council um yeah so just one thing operationally because it's alcohol you have to fence that in and so that's that's kind of where the physical barrier kind of from a movement of people but again uh heidi what was the amount two years ago we distributed to them uh for glendale glitters in fiscal year 19 they made 1047. so they've made 1047 and 218 dollars in the two years and so staff you know we were very sensitive to what an important part they are of our of our um of our community and but but essentially they've averaged over the last two years about six hundred dollars to distribute back into the community we felt like you know maybe the win would be as we find a way to be able to provide them resources that they can continue to fund the programs in the community but in a way that's more productive for their for all of their volunteers they're putting volunteer hours in so that's that's why staff came up with the recommendation we can we can clearly keep it where it's at we can clearly move it but i just want to reemphasize we because we uh the weight the costs are fairly expensive to do this so i know councilman returner mentioned the 35 000. again all i know is that in looking the last two years of what was distributed back to them it seemed to be disproportionate for all their hard work that they put into it and so we were just trying to come up with the way that quite frankly uh would acknowledge their hard work and their contribution to this event in a way that was more financially productive but again one of the reasons we're here today is to receive feedback and input from the council and we'll be more than glad to um you know to make the necessary modifications based on the conversation today i'd like to i'd like to offer a suggestion uh if i'm not mistaken the liquor liquor control has what they call an extension of premises and so a licensed restaurant that sells alcohol can extend their their location by by putting up a barrier fence around their location on the condition that they i believe is they have to share 25 percent of their alcohol revenues with a 501 c 3. there might be a possibility we can get both we can help our ambassadors and we can also turn around and and emphasize or push people to go into our local restaurants i'd like somebody to follow up on that i i don't think that we have more than a handful of liquor establishments or restaurants that sell liquor in downtown glendale any longer i don't believe so so it might be a way that we could help them out they could extend their premises we wouldn't take up a lot of extra room and ambassadors could still could still make some revenue from it it's just a suggestion mayor i did have a follow-up if i could um there another possibility for the ambassadors is i don't know how the wine worked at the betty's did say that they ran out of wine at the chocolate affair they might possibly be interested in participating there also um especially if one vendor went ran out of wine we might need another one anyway but that might be another opportunity for them to do some fundraising that's and probably an easier set up and tear down for them also uh thank you mayor i was distracted i missed that comment so i hope to hear that again um [Music] so i just got a message that last year the ambassadors brought in about 6 000 that included the water sales i guess the chocolate hot chocolate they do the tips that people leave that they actually get put back into the fund they're not tipped the the volunteers don't keep the tips that all goes back into their contribution funds so um that's that's what i understand the uh so i'm not really in favor of putting an end to it right this season particularly without their input alignment but what i am interested in looking at is that as part of our our events we've been talking about um the live at murphy park series and i would like the ambassadors to have the first shot at being the beer and wine vendor for those weekends that might be a way to adjust it to where they can be doing what they've been doing the weather would be different and probably a little more conducive to having a glass of wine or a cold beverage but uh and then that would give them you know that that money-making opportunity um i don't want to say that for myself that oh you know i don't want to determine or have the city determined here's what you'll do you know with your you know you're here to volunteer and here's what we want you to do you know some of you go do this and some go do that the ambassadors have been a self-created self-driven self-organized self-managed organization and they've done well with it and i'd like to see them be able to continue it if if for whatever reason or reasons that the glendale glitter season isn't the time then i certainly think we ought to give them the opportunity to do what they've been doing through our our april music series thank you ah thank you mayor um the numbers that i've heard are that the liquor sales for the glendale ambassadors have been very minimal but yet we do have a number a greater number that's been reported from other activities you know i i kind of like the mayor's idea of of doing something with the restaurants that would allow the glendale ambassadors to participate and receive 25 percent of the pros i believe is what you said 25 percent of the proceeds um as well as allowing them to still continue to do some of their other events such as you know you mentioned hot chocolate sales and water sales and perhaps other ways that they were making money but but don't require the fence scene perimeter because it seems to be that the parks is saying the fencing perimeter and i agree every time i've been there i didn't quite understand what the fencing perimeter was all about now i understand it better um to me it's it's a major obstruction uh for the entire uh programming for downtown uh i don't believe we we should just eliminate the opportunities for the ambassadors to to make some revenue but i think there's some other alternatives here on the table that would provide both the the elimination of the perimeter and still allow some money making opportunities for the for the glendale ambassadors thank you thank you very much mayor members of the council what i'd like to do then is go to the next slide which shows the budget for the fiscal year 21 downtown glendale special events and i believe as the city manager had mentioned nothing had changed from the previous year budget amounts would all remain the same one thing i'd like to note here though the holiday light budget on this chart is a hundred and eighty eight thousand and i know there was just the approval of the contract for two hundred and thirty thousand that hundred and eighty eight thousand that you see is what it costs to do the traditional holiday lights in murphy park and the surrounding streets of just wrapping the trees the additional money that was approved will come out of the december in downtown budget and in the glendale glitter spectacular budget there are line items allocated in there the overage from the 188 000 allows us to bring in things like the 16 foot walk-through ornament and these skylines that we're talking about to help the connectivity from the park to catlin court and on the last slide here is next steps and what we're asking for from you today is consensus on the changes that we just proposed and answer any questions that we haven't already censored mayor question before consensus so are you going to come back to us uh the first workshop in october and might that not drive whatever consensus is achieved regarding everything really between now and the beginning of next year so are you coming back mayor council yes we can come back in october and report to you where the status is of the pandemic and the measures and what we can do with gathering and then report on any alternatives we have the time because that might change whatever direction we give today and and i'd hate to set you all down a path that could change in october and actually i i think it's important that we give them a direction now with a caveat that we may have to change direction immediately okay but but at least i think they need to at least have that direction you have a question about yeah um the consensus yeah um so councilman clark mentioned something uh really interesting earlier i alluded to it but she said it so you know it's really we don't know what's going to happen we don't know if it's going to get better or get worse it's the the news is really good on cobin um however here you write you wrote down eliminating kids rides covid19 if you have to eliminate kids rides because of cobia 19 you're eliminating the whole event so i'd like to leave the the kids rights in there should everything be good we have kids rights we take it out now it's out we're not putting it back so um if the council would support that if covet is eliminated or to the extent that we can have people in crowds why not have rides for kids let's just want to take it out of the budget and then can't put it back in but mayor maybe hearing that then kind of a couple areas i think we're looking for direction it sounds like and and maybe this i can frame it sounds like uh based on councilmember thomas and councilman odama that we're going to try to identify through the course of the special event season to try to identify monies that may be freed up based on a change in schedule or through other kind of cost-saving measures that we could uh work with sounds like there's two major hub areas one would be the westgate entertainment district the other being the arrowhead mall area uh that was kind of the first maybe just to make sure we got consensus on that um we can certainly look at the at the kids rides i don't know how long we have to have to enter into a contract uh we can work through that um and then the third would be the uh i guess you know a direction in general regarding the uh the beer garden and and the ambassadors i i have a question on the kids right we do not pay the vendor for the kids rights they they come out and set it up and they collect money is that correct mayor council that is correct but we're not out any money on the kids rights we do mayor council we do receive a percentage of the kids rights and this past glendale glitters it was a thousand dollars one thousand dollars okay i'm not getting in the kid right business right here who else had a question um yeah before we move on i'd like to spend just a little bit more time on the chocolate experience and it certainly presented some testimonials that of people who enjoyed the experience or thought it was an improvement but i don't think that that was a universal sentiment i don't know if there's a way to tell whether there more people actually liked it better or didn't like it better but i i do know that you know there were i received some negative feedback about it though i will say for myself i thought there were lots of positives uh associated with that but i don't want you know i don't want people to think that the ones who had a different point of view are being ignored or not hurt they're at least being hurt they may be being ignored but at least they've been hurt so i you know i think we should acknowledge that the estimated attendance was 15 000 and the number of vendors was 37 according to what you said earlier how does that occur to the chocolate affair from some of the previous years mayor members of the council just give me one second to get back to that slide please in fiscal year 19 attendance at the outdoor festival was 60 000 estimated now keeping in mind that fest keep in mind that festival was reduced in fiscal year 19 to a two-day festival we had eliminated the friday night portion of that i'm sorry what was your other question number of vendors i don't have that number on me i'll have to get back to you on that do you have a ballpark i don't don't recall whether over the last 20 years we typically had 75 or 80 vendors or yeah we'll have to look it up and get back to you i'm sorry we'll look it up and get back to you okay well be sure to share that with everybody and then on the slide on page eight the budget is 50 000 the actual expenses were just over 48 000 revenues identified as 1 294 dollars [Music] where does that revenue come from uh mayor members of the council that revenue of 1294 dollars was from soda and water sales that the glendale ambassadors did for us at the chocolate experience that's the city's share of their sales mayor and council members that actually is almost all went to the glendale ambassadors the way we net it we give them the net after all of expenses and our expenses were very minimal because of donated product that we had left over from previous festivals so the 37 vendors didn't pay anything to be vendors mayor is a member of the council this chocolate experience this past year due to the short time frame that we had to get the chocolate experience up and going there were a few things that we did not offer and that we did not get revenue on one of them was sponsorship with it being so late in the game it was very difficult for us to go out and get sponsors and being a first year event another thing we did not do at this experience we did not do paid parking we're for glitters and glow and the glow for glitter and glow and glendale glitters we get a revenue on parking also for this event because we were in such a small time frame and we really wanted to make this experience chocolate related and not the traditional vendors that we have access to for vending in the park we did work with an outside company to really go and get these exclusive vendors for us and they paid her directly so that we could get this experience up and going in such a positive way okay well as much as i enjoyed the event it doesn't sound like a sustainable model under that design so we need to change the design and you know come up with a better business plan for it and it does seem to me like it was a so an enjoyable event it was definitely a significant difference from the previous experience both financially and also with attendance probably with the number of vendors and most likely with the impact revenue impact on the downtown and calling core merchants as well so if we're going to have a conversation about it i think we ought to have the information that we can look at all of that so next time let's get better thanks mr obama you're up thank you mayor uh just on the contrary and this is just from the council member i'm just the council member for downtown to some but i will tell you that when decisions like the decision that we all made to reduce the footprint of the chocolate affair and move it over the council member for those that district and happens to be mine gets the blunt of the blame for losing such an event i will tell you that it was a really tough pill to swallow and i had to go out and talk to a lot of our merchants however while that were it was very difficult to watch it leave from down from the park over to the civic center the contrary is that a lot of merchants called me and emailed me and said that was a great event just needs to be built upon needs to be improved this is good not as bad as i thought now if you were to have lost the event that had been something else but i'll tell you what i i called kevin said hey that wasn't too bad at all i think we've got some improvement to do but um mr you hit the nail on the head you didn't have a lot of time we were down to the wire we were going to cancel it we were going to move it back to the park and we were moving back to the civic center i've got really good emails from downtown merchants that said i'm glad you guys didn't eliminate it some were not you know they were curious if it was going to go off good or not overall i the return was that went well let's improve on it and i think that's the message that we need to send to our staff that okay wasn't the best last minute planning i think we can do better so just as a council member for downtown i'm telling you that the merchants were okay with it i think you just get better from here lose the event that's built on it councilmember clark thank you i visited the event i think that you guys did a fantastic job considering the time constraints that you were under i think it is very unfair to compare a first year event created within a very short time span with an event that had previously gone on for the past 10 or 15 years it's like apples and oranges there's no comparison i think that there is an opportunity to build this event i would hate to see it go away or be relegated back to the park again simply for the product that's being made available chocolate melts in heat and sun and keeping it in an air-conditioned venue is is an important ingredient of such a type of food festival i think that there's more space in the civic center that can be utilized to enhance the event and i'm sure that you're creatively looking at those opportunities now but i i think it's tremendously unfair to compare a nation a brand new event first time out of the box in a short time frame with something that's been going on in in the park for many years it's it's not a fair comparison thank you mayor okay go ahead just one thing quickly mayor if i could i agree i think i think it was worth salvaging as uncomfortable as it was for some of us um i think it was well worth salvaging i think it's uh i mean it we're a community these are the events that tie people to to their community and give them a sense of of belonging in a community and i hate to let go with some of this stuff but i i think it could be very successful last year i mean we need to we need to market it early and and we need to make sure that the vendors who thought that it was cancelled because they they were told it was canceled are aware that we have pivoted into the civic center and that we had a successful first year and that would try to get the vendors to come back so i am i i do want to give you guys kudos for being able to put it together in such a short amount of time um this i look forward to be quite successful this this coming year i think it's really something to we can improve on and and p i think people will enjoy it okay can i hear if i could just one final because i'm concerned that maybe my comments were misconstrued i said that i went that i had a good time that i enjoyed it i heard good things about it but i didn't hear universally good things and you know that should be part of i think the presentation and the other thing that i'd like to say is that as i recall council's instruction to staff was to move the event it wasn't to rename the event reimagine the event redesigned the event make a new event it was to move the event so therefore i think it's fair to make the comparisons and i you know as to how what was the turnout for it what was the financial return on it how many vendors and all of that so and i'm not saying you know i i think i said i think we should continue doing it i had a positive experience from it but i think we need to look at the full picture i don't want my comments misconstrued about being unfair to staff i just want to make sure we're looking at the full picture and and and that when council gives direction that direction's followed thank you okay can i get a consensus on what was presented yes yes okay you have that thank you city manager report mayor members of the council i have four items to bring to your attention today first it as as part of our strategic planning where we continue to engage with our employees we're just setting out again to survey all 1700 of our employees using the phoenix business journals 2020 best places to work this allows us to benchmark improvements we've made or areas we have to to work on and so again going back into prior years we've been able to make adjustments and add elements to how we engage with our employees based on this survey and so again there uh it'll be a great benchmark not only for other governments that participate in the survey but really gives us an opportunity to benchmark our performance with uh within the private sector uh oftentimes we compete for many positions in the private sector and uh so we'll make sure we get back and and share the results once that is done um the second is we're excited to talk about a a program that tomorrow that the city and the glendale chamber of commerce will be launching called the glendale gold star program and this has been essentially a partnership of the the glendale chamber and the cvb and is to really to recognize our glendale businesses that have kind of gone above and beyond in making sure they're doing everything to keep their estab establishments safe uh so the public can feel comfortable in um you know going and patronizing them um you know again our citizens have also done a great job um and we've we've had very few problems during the pandemic of people not following the recommendations that have been set forth um so the glendale gold star program will just help recognize those businesses we'll be able to communicate that through a variety of channels to our citizens and hopefully give them even more comfort to get out and to patronize those businesses that are that are still in the pandemic we need to be cautious about um the third uh is um the if you're if you're aware the the dod established um uh under the president a new a new division the united states space force and and so they recently announced that they are looking for a permanent location for their space command headquarters and the city of glendale in coordination with our with our friends at the luke air force base have made our intentions known to the department of defense that we do have an interest perhaps in pursuing glendale as being part of the the headquarters for the space uh the space command headquarters and uh so we recently were indicated that um that we now um have um that they've kind of accepted our application um and that uh will or that we can apply for it and so by august 30 we'll be submitting an application uh with blue air force base and we'll see where that goes we'll certainly keep the council informed um as to what's going on the the final thing is that the city manager's office did receive an unsolicited offer for a remnant parcel of land we'll be we'll be bringing this back most likely at our next next executive session it's a pretty straightforward analysis so we don't the staff won't need a long time to to validate but for our policy i i am recognizing that we are we have received an unsolicited letter of intent to purchase some real estate and that concludes my report thank you city attorneys report no report thanks thank you council item special interest council member has the opportunity to indicate topics i'd like to have discussed by this council at a future workshop mr aldana done at this time thank you house member clerk none at this time thank you councilmember hugh none mayor excellent councilmember tom shaw yes mayor i do have one i'd like to bring forward the workshop on the city-owned property um i know we were given the list but we've never actually had public discussions and gone through a list so i'm and i imagine it's not something we can accomplish in one day but bring back starting with the largest parcels um and working our way down on what we have what parcels of land what we have available not stuff that's being used like libraries and things like that not right of way but start with the largest parcels where we can have a discussion on whether or not we have any interest in selling the property if we have any future ideas what we you know to grow with that property but at least starting with the largest parcels would be a good starting place and then we can work our way down the list on discussions on city-owned property thank you okay councilmember turner uh none of my own but i would like to support councilmember thomas i think that's it's high time that we bring that back thank you vice mayor uh thank you mayor i do have one item i'd like to place on a workshop agenda um a code review committee um discussion uh we from the code committee will be providing a recommendation on parking that has gone through our consultant and we will be providing that information back to the consultant as a final and i'd like to bring that forward as a item of special interest or as a council agenda item for a workshop to discuss what has been recommended by the council so that we can move forward as quickly as possible on some of the recommendations thank you okay and for myself i don't have anything but i i believe i'm almost positive i got a a list of properties seemed like it was about a year ago maybe a little over a year ago we did get the list but we never actually had a workshop where we had i mean we with open meeting law we can't have discussions about it unless it's brought forward i misunderstood i think that you haven't gotten we have the list but we've never had the discussion i thought we did i was pretty sure that we got that so um with that uh can i get a motion to go into executive sessions in motion councilmember o'donnell second council member hugh going to this executive session any discussion on a motion i don't hear any so all in favor please vote aye aye any opposed about nape you guys have it do you have it we're going down the hall right okay very good with that this council meetings recessed [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] foreign