good afternoon thank you for joining us we'll begin today with an invocation and please welcome our chaplain nick petrucci good afternoon thank you for this honor let's pray god we just as we come here today for this uh this meeting this council meeting with mayor gallegos and our city council lord i just pray that you would just bless this meeting lord give them wisdom and discernment as they go through the agenda for today lord father i just thank you for each and every employee of the city of phoenix and i just i pray that they know how important their role is in this city as well and all the leaders lord i just pray for protection for each and every one of us lord but i just pray that you would be with our first responders that are out on the streets 24 7 protecting and serving us lord so father we just i just pray that we always remember who we represent and i thank you for the provision and the opportunity to serve here i pray this amen please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance our vice mayor will lead us thank you to our chaplain and our vice mayor we will call the meeting to order will the clerk please call the roll councilwoman i'm sorry here councilman decision here council member garcia here councilwoman guardado here councilwoman o'brien here councilwoman stark here councilman waring vice mayor pastor here mayor gallego here thank you for joining us mario barajas is with us today to provide interpretation mario would you introduce yourself yes mayor thank you hello my name is mario and i will be serving as a spanish interpreter for today's formal meeting i will now take a moment to introduce myself to our spanish-speaking audience yes thank you mayor thank you mario will the city clerk please read the 24-hour paragraph the titles of the following ordinance and resolution numbers on the agenda were available to the public at least 24 hours prior to this council meeting and therefore may be read by title or agenda item only ordinance is numbered as 48689-48966-48967-48971-4891-49035 thank you i'll now turn to our city attorney to explain the role of public comment in council meetings thank you mayor members of the public may speak for up to two minutes to comment on agenda items to be discussed comments must be related to the agenda item and the action being considered by the council general comments that go beyond the scope of the agenda item must be made in the citizen comment session at the end of the agenda the city council and staff cannot discuss or comment on matters related to pending investigations claims or litigation the city code requires speakers to present their comments in respectful and courteous manner profane language threats or personal attacks on members of the public council members or staff are not allowed a person who violates these rules will lose the opportunity to continue to speak thank you agenda item one meeting minutes councilman decisio do you have a motion motion to approve mayor second we have a motion and a second any comments all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed nay passes unanimously item two boards and commissions vice mayor motion to approve mayor and city council boards and commission's nominations second all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed nay passes unanimously we do have members of the public who are serving our city who are here to be sworn in i state your name and the constitution and laws of the state of arizona that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic and that i will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of the office of according to the best of my ability so help me god congratulations thank you for serving our city the council members would ask that you go behind the podium so we can thank you thank you for your service to our new commissioners the state of arizona manages liquor licenses and the city of phoenix serves in an advisory position we next move to that portion of our agenda vice mayor do you have a motion motion to approve items three through 20 and 23 except item 21 and 22. no noting that item 21 was withdrawn item 23 was revised and now is now recommended for approval second we have a motion and a second any comments all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed signal nay item 21 was withdrawn item 22 is brunch house in council member garcia's district i will turn to him for a motion um do you want this would you like to hear the speakers first we do have multiple here people here to speak and would note that officer jones is here with the phoenix police department we have one individual registered to speak and two in support who are available to speak if necessary particularly if council members were to have questions we will begin with donald deed thank you good afternoon um i just wanted to come and um ask that you guys give jamaica graves a chance to obtain a liquor license unfortunately it seems like she's been sorry i'm trying to think of um i'm sorry um well me and mrs jones i believe had an incident unfortunately because i have a trucking company and my trucks were parked in the uh in the wrong place i guess it was parked on dirt and mrs jones came to tow all of the vehicles and it was kind of a frustration situation because all of my trucks were there and obviously you know it's very expensive to tow them and she told them and you know i explained to her if they get told i would lose them so we kind of had a heated argument and unfortunately right after that um jamaica applied for liquor license and the same officer who i had those previous dealings with became the officer to handle her stuff and she realized the connection and sent emails and let them know because of that previous dealings that she was going to be handling this situation differently with jamaica which seems wrong um so i've just asked that you guys give jamaica you know a fair chance you know she's a law-abiding citizen she's never been in trouble i don't even think she's ever even had a speeding ticket you know um i just asked you guys you know to give her a chance you know she's uh this is her first business and you know she's a single mom and i would you know like to see her succeed in life and you know make something for her kids to leave you know leave something for her kids i'm sorry [Music] that's all i would like to say thank you for your consideration thank you for your testimony we do have lamarcus reed and charles mcrae here registered to speak if necessary do any council members have questions for them if not then we will turn to our staff for a brief report good afternoon mayor and council members i am renee blakely the licensing services program manager with city clerk here with me today is officer melissa jones with the police department and also laurie van haren with prosecution the request is for a new liquor license for a restaurant this location was previously licensed for liquor sales and does not have an interim permit the 60-day limit for processing this application is september 25th 2022 staff recommends disapproval of this application based on police department recommendations for disapproval the police department disapproval is based on concerns with possible hidden ownership and police investigations involving the ownership this application has not demonstrated the applicant sorry has not demonstrated the capability qualifications and reliability to hold and control a liquor license thank you thank you i understand that the other two registered speakers would like to speak so we'll begin with lamarcus followed by charles mcrae good afternoon honorable kate everyone else on the board my name is lamarcus reed i've been a business owner in the city of phoenix since 1996. the trucking company that my nephew was talking about i am the official owner my trucking company grosses around about 100 000 a week i have 16 diesels and the incident that happened with my nephew down there um i went down there and stopped the argument that he was arguing with molest officer melissa and melissa sent a report out that she said that i was being investigated for fraud by the phoenix police department which is not true never been investigated for fraud never did fraud in my life doing it was the owner that used to own the property that was been investigated for fraud not me but in all the report it's lamarcus lamarcus lamarcus that's slander don't slander me just tell the truth and i'm here to make sure that the truth is heard it isn't nothing stopping me if i wanted the business i could have bought the business did what i wanted to do me and jamica was together for about 18 years we haven't been together in about about two two years but i'm still there to support her i only have about a year to left to live because of the cancer and all the rest of that but i just want to make sure that she succeeds and make sure that the kids succeed um i had talked to officer jones about two weeks ago she never she said well well about two or three weeks ago if i'm correct and i told her the whole situation my father had purchased the property at 6622 south 66th avenue the property is in my father's name thank you so much for your testimony okay our final spiegel speaker will be charles mcrae good afternoon everybody my name is dr charles mcrae i'm actually a senior pastor in district 8. jamaica lamarcus they're actually members of my church i'm also a business owner on other levels as well the brief overview that i have with looking at everything my concern is is that a young lady that's trying to start a business that doesn't have a background or anything that's being attached to janika is being attached to her name so we all know the same guilty by association it seems like she's not just being guilty but she's being being almost ostracized and her future is being predicated upon somebody else's decisions in their past and so if she doesn't have a record if she's not investigative for fraud if she doesn't have any of those legalities concerning her why as the business owner is she being penalized or future business owner for somebody else that's not a part of the business that part is bringing me clarity on and then for lamarcus again his trucking company produces the amount of money per week that was given to her and if all of that can be spelled out and specified why is the license being held up or not considered so i just wanted to ask that for consideration and maybe officer jones can give that consideration as well thank you thank you that concludes public testimony councilmember garcia thank you mayor and thank you all for coming to speak today um so we're recommending body to the state um and so today i'm on a motion for no recommendation so it's not for approve or disapproval um so you'll have an opportunity to figure out at the state so motion for no recommendation second we have a motion and a second roll call i'm sorry yes decisio garcia yes yes o'brien yes stark yes waring yes pastor yes diego yes passes 9-0 thank you that concludes the liquor license portion of this meeting clerk are we ready for ordinances resolutions new business planning and zoning yes mayor all right vice mayor motion to approve items 24 through 89 except the following items 28 29 30 31 37 38 52 53 59 71 noting that item 36 is continued to december 7th 2022 item 68 is as revised and excluding these items for virtual public comment items no okay then i can go and can the clerk confirm if there are any other items that should be excluded in the in-person public comment thank you vice mayor there are no other items to be excluded second thank you vice mayor and councilwoman stark any corrections roll call i'm sorry yes decision yes garcia yes yes o'brien yes stark yes waring pastor yes gallego yes passes 9-0 items 28 29 and 31 are related government affairs memberships do we have a motion i move items 28 29. so i go throw in 31. okay i was gonna say 28 29 and 31. but what about 30. what about 30 20. i think we have someone who wants to take that separately thank you a second okay 28 29 31. wonderful so uscm national league of cities arizona league of cities we have a motion in a second roll call i'm sorry yes decision nope garcia yes yes o'brien yes stark yes waring pastor yes gallego yes passes 7-2 item 30 is the maricopa association of governments do we have a motion imove item 30. second with motion in a second roll call i'm sorry yes decisio garcia yes yes o'brien yes stark no waring pastor yes gallego yes passes 6-3 thank you thank you to mag for the work that they are doing i got to join them this week for work on behalf of older arizonans at the age friendly summit item 37 is a public hearing on the proposed i-17 and dear hollow lane annexation open the public hearing we do not have any members of the public here to comment close the public hearing the the vote will be held at a another date item 38 is the public hearing and the proposed 95th avenue and broadway road annexation open the public hearing there are no members of the public to comment on this item close the public hearing no void is required today we next move to item 52 which is a contract with lutheran social services of the southwest do we have a motion i move item 52 second we have a motion and a second we'll turn to councilwoman ansari for comments and i actually do have one question for our staff okay um thank you so much i have some comments and some questions today very supportive of this contract um i think as we've said over and over again there's no question that the housing and homelessness crisis on our hands is one of the biggest that we face and every type of shelter is essential to serving our unsheltered residents so instead of just continuing to build new shelters which is equally as important i'm so glad we're partnering with churches to utilize existing spaces to provide much needed emergency shelter very happy to know that rachel and scott are both experts in this program i know they've run similar programs in surprise avondale and the east valley my office is also waiting on a timeline for the 35th avenue and lower buckeye possible new shelter and we have more in the works but also just want to use this opportunity again to call for the need for more bathrooms cold running water at all of our parks more transitional and permanent housing and more shelter beds but a couple of questions and i believe rachel will be answering about this specific contract rachel or gina i was hoping that you could tell us how many beds lutheran social services is estimating that they'll be able to provide through the ihelp program could you check your microphone is it it's not working test this one works mike to the rescue um so lutheran social services i help program is estimating to get many congregations um to house uh 10 to 12 people per night at those congregations so they'll have a congregation that they move to each night and a total of 10 to 12 beds at each location wonderful but you're not sure exactly how many congregations yet so they're hoping it's best to have like at least a two-week cycle so have 14 different congregations so that you're at the same one um at once every two weeks so you're not putting too much of a burden on any one congregation okay that's great um it's also my understanding you know that you various churches throughout the city will be made available for this do you have an idea of the hours are people going to be able to stay there for 24 hours a day will they have to leave in the morning what does that look like great question so it will be a centralized location that people will meet at and then they'll be transported to the location so it will not be 24 7 they will meet at typically 3 pm and be transported to the location for the overnight for dinner and an overnight stay they'll also have restrooms and showers available at those locations as well okay we also we've had this conversation many times about the barriers that comes with belongings that individuals might have and the need for more storage will there be storage provided at these emergency shelters or what does where will people be able to put their belongings so lutheran social services will handle that not all of their belongings will be able to come with them to the to the congregations but they'll have a centralized location for some belongings okay and then will these shelters only be for single adults or will families be avail able to use them as well we're focusing on single adults for this program are you focusing on a certain age population um it would be adults 18 and up okay okay um relatedly i just wanted to mention that just yesterday some members of my team were out at 51st avenue and baseline which is you know we've been working on pretty extensively in that area there they were able to speak with about 20 individuals many of whom were dealing with fentanyl issues many of them were young and so i was wondering if there's any work we're doing in that regard or if that could be a renewed focus as well to really focus on these areas and outreach points with young people i think with our new public health advisor coming in with her experience dealing with the opioid crisis in ontario i hope that that is something that she'll be able to work on here as well in dealing with our unsheltered population and then in this particular item i know it mentions that there will be crucial information and this is a quote to health care resources like counseling and substance abuse care that will be provided i'm wondering if these resources will be provided on-site or if individuals will be referred elsewhere so the individuals will be referred through the lutheran social services network to other service providers so they won't be provided on-site okay they can certainly bring providers on site but that's not a part of the the program that we're investing in okay and then um my final comment just has to do with transportation i think um we were just told that we just ran out of our 31 day free transit passes that we have been doing through a pilot program through arpa obviously this was a very popular program and one that i think we should see expanded but in this case will the city be providing transportation for these participants to get to other services if needed and if not will we prioritize churches that are close to buses or light rail this contract actually provides for transportation for the individuals so they'll meet us at a centralized location get on a lutheran social services bus or van and be transported to the location and then transported back in the morning okay that's great well thank you so much rachel i know you and gina and scott have been working so so hard on this and i think this is a great model and i hope that it is extremely successful thank you thank you councilwoman we have been doing so many things with so many partners we've done um child crisis center a new leaf cbi homeward bound this is our first time bringing eye help to the city of phoenix as my colleague mentioned our peers in other cities in the valley have felt this would be a very successful model if churches want to join and partner with us how what they should what should they do they can connect directly to me and i can get them in touch with lutheran social services wonderful so you can connect with rachel um one of the things that that rachel and i talk about a lot is the important of casework and how many workers and how soon someone can get access to caseworkers i think this is a good news story can you tell us when you join this program how soon will you have access to casework so lutheran social services will have their staff every night at the location at the centralized location for the pickup those staff will be at the location during the congress the dinner service they will not be there overnight they have volunteers that stay overnight but they will provide the case worker during the evening hours wonderful thank you so people can get case work right away because our goal is to end the unsheltered situation and so the more we get people resources and for all of our provider partners i i hope that will be the model where we can get it as soon as possible since july 1st how much have we put into fighting homelessness we did an analysis this morning and since july 1st 2021 we're at 107 million dollars in in various different shelter repertory housing outreach um all kinds of services all in various stages of development wonderful and that is just the housing portion we are also doing workforce and other programs throughout the city in multiple departments so we're going to keep doing more but i think it is important to recognize that this is an unprecedented level of commitment for the city of phoenix and we would welcome other levels of government and other municipalities who also want to do more any additional questions council member garcia thank you mayor i just wanted to thank uh lutheran social services for providing the needed services to the unsheltered population i know they've participated and helped a lot with the immigrant and refugee population and they also have different services at their disposal to be able to support folks i think with the new shelter on 28th street and washington we've learned a lot about what wraparound services looks like and that program's been really successful so i feel like we need to continue to make it a priority to get as many beds online folks are in different situations in their lives and i think being able to provide different options for them to find a place to stay is really helpful and a church might work for someone a shelter might work for somebody else and so i'm excited to vote yes for this thank you vice mayor yes i have several questions i help what it says right here creates a personalized service plan for each participant and outlines steps necessary for transition to to a life of stability if i am entering um in a space of crisis and there's no case manager there and they're volunteers i hope these volunteers are trained to a level that's able to handle de-escalation and a crisis so i would like to know about the volunteers in the training vice mayor i can i can definitely get back to you on the training that the volunteers receive but i would just clarify i'm sorry that the lutheran social services staff will be present for the evening hours until it's time to go to sleep they just don't spend the night at the congregation okay and then [Music] my other question is what's what happens once there's stability where do they go where's the transition because i think that's one of the challenging pieces uh that i have heard with several unsheltered uh population is that they're entering a entity and then are kind of bounced around and then they just could just get discouraged because they've been bounced around so how is this going to be different in the sense of uh they enter into the in into this piece and then where do we transition them to uh vice mayor so this this program provides just the shelter piece um everyone will have a uh an assessment a vulnerability assessment and then go on to the by name list for a housing voucher in the future within the homeless service system so whereas lutheran social services might not be the provider of the housing they'll provide the safe shelter space until those residents are able to get a voucher to move on to their permanent housing solution so basically i'm having an emergency or i need emergency shelter tonight i qualify for this or i'm i'm assuming find this agency i then get emergency shelter for two weeks did i hear that correctly or there is no limit on the number of days that you could stay in an i-help shelter okay so there's as long as i think i understand now as long as i am i guess we're in the line because i'm i'm assuming uh i go i i'm part of i help on monday i don't have any housing tuesday i want to have be in a safe space so then i go to where i need to go to and there's i'm assuming a limit of how many people then can go into the emergency shelter mayor vice mayor there the the program will be dependent on how many churches are involved and as far as the number of beds i can tell you that from past experience with this program um in my previous jurisdiction the the the folks coming in um to the program work very closely with lutheran social services and so they are they are part of a program they don't have to find a space every night they they come back to wherever um the the main places and they work with those caseworkers to get them into um then their their next um place in their journey whether that be a voucher sometimes rapidly re-housing in order to to get them housed and they get help with employment and all of the case management services um that we're discussing in terms of other programs and what makes it successful it's more like a mobile like a mobile shelter it's not in one place but multiple databases what metrics are we using so we will use our standard emergency shelter metrics with this program so we're going to be looking uh for uh lutheran social services to tell us every month the number of people that they've served the length the average length of stay each individual serves the number of positive exits from shelter and the number of permanent housing solutions from shelter and those are the metrics we created or we're anticipating they're going to tell us like i you know how i am about metrics and i want to look at success and i also want to look at what's not successful so that then we can determine what we need to do or where the gap is so uh i'm assuming rachel you're the one who created these metrics or i don't know who created them but so these are the standard emergency shelter metrics that hud creates to determine levels of success within shelter i think that's important for people to understand all right thank you thank you councilman waring thank you mayor so 107 million is a big number and i just in my experiences with this gina i talk to you pretty much every single day you're grimacing i know it's worse it could be worse could be poor steve martos getting the text at four or five in the morning saying somebody's sleeping at a bus stop i try to spare you that he's up apparently so um and i'm not trying to be funny that's happening all the time i texted you or called i guess last night as i was on my way out of door knock at tatum and the 101. so and and you guys are good about following up uh where you can with what happens with these cases i'm trying to recall a success story because i i sometimes see a lot of the very visibly same people that i recognize because i do a lot of driving and frankly i go around and i'm looking for this i think my constituents frankly are tired of it i personally am tired of it um and this isn't a reflection on your work but then you hear the 107 million dollar price tag and i just don't i know we're very very confined law enforcement wise about what can happen but we're talking about the metrics i mean is this doing any good i guess if i had to boil down my question is this doing any good councilman waring mayor members of the council the hundred million dollars is at various points of in the process of those funds being distributed and so we need more places for people to go so even the ones who who really want to get into shelter or improve their situation we may not have in on any night places for everybody who might be wanting to go so the first step is to really have expand our capacity for um for different kinds different models of shelter the pocket um shelters like with ihelp is a start um is is one more tool in our toolbox um hotels uh the congregate shelters there's a lot of models that we're in the process that 100 million dollar investment i believe that it will make a huge difference in our ability to provide services to people for those who are ready to to enter into services and so it is a very visible issue phoenix is is not unlike other cities throughout the country that are that is experiencing um this issue and so for us our challenge is not only the affordable housing but places for people to go once we get them into shelter or immediately into housing but but safe places for people to be for those who who are are ready and um as you mentioned it is it it's hard to to see visibly right now but we do have many projects in the pipeline and and and i believe that the that investment will make a big difference in our ability to address the issue mayor if i could follow up so and this isn't a criticism of you your team or anything but certainly but but i'm trying to i can think of one time where the person it was at 40s and thunderbird that the person um uh said they were willing to go to treatment and then you know they were right back out there a day or two later and i suspect last week we're out again because i could complain about a full shopping cart being abandoned same thing i was hearing a few weeks earlier it was just a little further up the street more by a coma for those are familiar with the area all of what you're saying is predicated on the idea that the person wants to get off the street and wants help and other than the one time the one person said i'll go tomorrow and i think did but then was right back at the same behaviors and at the same location within a few days i'm trying to think of another time in all the calls to you which have been dozens if not hundreds again another grimace for those who couldn't see it um sorry but you know i i just feel like i have to say something even if it's not even close to my districts i do it for downtown too you know are any of the people we're contacting actually it's great to have the shelter beds and stuff but if nobody wants to go to him then it's kind of a moot point right um councilman wearing emma rams of the council there are admittedly when there are substance abuse use issues it can be very difficult for those treatments and to take over them to be ready to accept services i can say that um for for example our washington um street shelter it has been at capacity um every almost every night since maybe we're in the in the very beginning ramping up it wasn't but it's been at capacity and we have had many positive um outcomes with respect to that and so um so the spaces that we have are full um and and so those who are accepting are having positive outcomes and so we have examples of success stories but i um it is true that it is uh for some it does take multiple attempts to um of theirs and and ours and outreach to um get them to a positive place i wish i had a it was a simpler uh response councilman but i hear what you're saying i do believe that that when we provide the right services for those that are ready that it can res it is resulting in in positive outcomes again getting back to laura's question about the metrics i mean do you have a percentage of who accepts and who doesn't or is that something you're going to start tracking or mayor councilman waring members of the council we we don't have it like i don't have it right now i'm off the top of my head but that it is something that we we can that is available in the hmis and the homeless management information system for providers that we can we can see what data is available and and can provide that unless you have rachel can also maybe speak to that no i was just going to say that's something that we can definitely get from our street outreach providers their level of engagement with every interaction that they have so we'll follow up with that i guess what would helpful for me mayor is if we had that also kind of by area if not district then at least some geographic because you know the problem downtown may not be the same as the problem up north um so i'd like to see that i'd also like to see like long-term success stories like it's not enough that for a few days people are off the streets or something if if it's not if it's going to be a month later you're going to see the same person at the same places which i have done i've seen then then that's not success even if they accept just simply accepting for a few days that that's not changing you know where we're at so i mean because it's it's just a lot of money to be spending if it's not being effective then we've got to do something else mayor members of the council councilman waring if i may just add a comment one of the investments that the council made was expanding our internal homeless services team and we are currently building that team that was approved in this budget as of july 1. rachel is is a product of that investment that you made and we are actually in the process of hiring someone to focus on data related to our homeless solution services and and being able to tell the effectiveness story if you will of what we're doing with relation to these programs and all of the services that are in place as well as being able to share information regarding the timeline of when those services will be coming online as it does take some time to get things you know in place as far as new facilities and those sorts of things so even though we are not able to provide you with the data that you're asking for today we are going to be able to come back to you very soon with some much improved analytics as we will have a full-time person focused on providing that information because we think that that role is really critical in being able to analyze the outcomes and analyze how effective we are in providing these services and we know that we're able to look at things individually we produce data on a weekly basis related to the washington street shelter and the outcomes there but we need to be able to give you an aggregate picture of what the investment is doing and how that's improving our community and how we're actually improving lives as well as some individual stories not necessarily naming names but giving you a feel for for the lives that are being impacted because it is happening and and we need to do a better job of being able to communicate that to you and that's what the individual that we're bringing on board is going to help us do as well as rachel's leadership and scott's leadership as well as gina's on our homeless services team as that's being built out and we're able to provide those services in a way that we can communicate better to you all and to the community so i hope that that helps and we can do that in the near future right thank you i'll look forward to that report but um i hate to class of myself as a skeptic but human behavior being what it is i just don't know that people's answers to the question do you want treatment it just seems like the only time we have any successes in getting people actually out of the bus stops or wherever is if they have warrants other than that it just seems like it's right back to the same old behavior and i don't this isn't a sustainable model you got people dying out in the street i mean it's just so something needs to change and um i just i hope this works but you know i'm looking forward to hearing that and hopefully you'll have some success stories in there thank you thank you we'll go to councilman o'brien and then the vice mayor thank you mayor i appreciate the question that vice mayor asked as well as councilman waring about metrics and i know that you talked about the standard emergency shelter metrics but but i'm also interested in the long-term metrics and one of the things i think we need to understand is what is the recidivism rate and i use that as you know who is returning how often are they returning and and you know what is that time frame is is it three to five you know if we can keep somebody on their feet and we don't see them again in three to five years is that truly a success that metric is really important um to me and in district one um i i shared with rachel earlier that just last night i i went to a block watch meeting and drove around that community um and it is a community that has quite a bit of homelessness uh and and drug use and and they're very those folks are very concerned and um want answers and and i'm asking them to to work with us and they are and to be patient but but that that long-term metric is also incredibly important to me and i also look forward to when we can look at the the data and um i pray that we see a lot of success with these programs vice mayor um i would like to thank the team regarding the data because i think that's key to all of us because we have a huge investment in this and trying to figure out how do we define success because that's what we need to figure out in the data how do we define success because what how i'm looking not just in this particular piece but it's part of a bigger piece is then how does phoenix cares plays into this and what data are they collecting how does cbi collect their data now i help what is happening with ihelp and how what's the data that we're collecting and then can we see a pattern of possibly an individual saying okay they were and i help and they came here and they came here where's the gap and how do we help because ultimately what i define success is is being able to uh help those that want to help themselves in the sense that in the situation that they're in and get the services that they need in order to be successful i also want to help those that are in the frame of mind or the mindset of i don't know exactly what to do so this is what i do in order to numb what i'm feeling or what is happening to me that's a little harder and i'm not sure if us as a city as much as we have put in and we we care about our community if we could do it alone and that's where i feel the mayor and the council are advocating for others to come help us across our cities because this is not just the city of phoenix situation and we need the resources that we need in order to help our population that is growing and so i think it's critical at this point that's why i was glad to hear about the data person because that's what's going to determine how we're going to move forward and if we can move forward with the finances and so i think it's it's it's important for all of us to see thank you thank you vice mayor we'll go to townswoman stark thank you um i i believe that tempe and perhaps mesa and tucson already have this program in place is there a way to reach out to them and start to talk to them about the success stories what's working what kind of data they've collected uh councilwoman stark absolutely yes um uh scott and i actually were uh helped to start the avondale uh i helped program as well as surprise i helped and then worked closely with tempi and mesa as we did that so happy to reach out to those other i help programs to to get some of the metrics that they're seeing well i'd like to see some of the information if you could share with us i know we tried to do and i have i helped in the sunny soap area and just we couldn't get traction so i'm excited to see that we're doing it but i think talking to some of the other communities that have had it for a while might be helpful vice council member garcia thank you mayor um i think just to add to this conversation some a human aspect i don't think this is a fight against homelessness i think it's us trying to provide for our residents um we have over 500 people that have passed away already this year due to heat and for being in the streets um i think if we're going to be as critical and i know we're it's a huge subject but i think the fact that we're being critical on this particular contract of an addition uh to what's already happening i i think is unfair um the reason there's so many unsheltered folks um there is fault of of our own there's there's fault in zoning decisions we make there's fault in the fact that we haven't invested in new housing for over 20 years and there's fault that we have and so i would hope if we're being as critical to lutheran services for trying to provide the service that we would be just as critical of ourselves and the things that we've lacked and not done that have allowed us to get to the point where there's thousands of people on the streets and hundreds dying each year and so i hope the fact that it's it's the biggest crisis we're facing right now and that all these issues and things that folks have brought up do not sway us for from supporting this particular contract that i think is very important and the last thing to councilman warren i would love for you to come see the 28th street and any of the other colleagues that want to join us on the 28th street shelter i do think this is a hard conversation to have especially when you're talking about humans and we're relating on the data and metrics um in connecting and then having conversations with those that are in shelter that have either been at the shelter in other places yes some of them may need 10 or 15 contacts before they say yes to go in some of them may relapse and need even more support and so just reminding folks that we're talking about humans as we're having this conversation thank you councilwoman and sorry thank you um i also just wanted to add to this i think um while it's true that we i think the hundred some million that we've spent is incredible obviously many of it is still in the works but i think we do also need to recognize that there's three very big factors that that are contributing to the fact that we will continue to see rising homelessness obviously fentanyl is one and we've discussed it but it's also rising housing costs and rental costs and the fact that people are still getting evicted every single day so i very much appreciate gina and rachel that you mentioned that these new shelters that we have started have been very very successful they are all wasteful and they have very good reputations among people as well like i did heat relief this summer in my in the zone and everyone knew about the 28th street shelter they wanted to go there they you know as soon as they knew there was a couple beds available they wanted to go there um and we went and visited those people two weeks later and they were still there and having a great so also there there's a lot of data that already does exist you know i think we receive daily street count numbers by the zone daily monthly reports out from 28th street from raspiro from cass about how many people have been served how many unduplicated people have been served and so from my view i think these investments are great i i have said we need to do a better job communicating them i think it's clear that you know even within our council and ourselves like we're not seeing the success stories enough in some of these personal stories so very excited about this person who will be focused on this because i think the city of phoenix has done a lot i'm so thrilled that there is more in the pipeline in terms of models replicating 28th street because we need to be doing everything we can to help these individuals i think um you know asking if this the spending has been effective i think it has and it will continue to be it just we're up against a lot and you know we clearly can't keep up with the pace of the challenge um until we continue to increase our you know housing stock and focus on affordability and everything else that's leading to this so i just yeah just want to add my two cents to that and thank you again because i know that you are dealing with something that's incredibly difficult and obviously getting calls from all of us all the time about every issue in every corner of the city so thank you so much thank you we'll go to councilman decisio and then councilwoman guardado just a couple comments is all i mean realistically you've got to be able to provide the type of data that vice mayor pasteur and jim warren were talking about because if you can't provide that you can provide those success stories we're putting a lot of money into this i mean and you should at the very least be able to do that and the data needs to be something that needs to be sent over to the city of phoenix it really needs to happen not to do that i think is going to be a problem the second thing is that individuals you know at least this is my opinion the reason you don't really see a lot of individuals that are homeless during the night is because they are in the shelter beds you know the shelters in a in a great part at least from my position are there to for how for people to sleep there and then they come out just like anybody else would they're not going to stay in a shelter all day long as a general rule they're probably not going to do that so you know that's why i think what individuals end up seeing during the day when people are out and about they see the homeless out there and the reason why is because you know at night they're going to go and find a bed because that's where you're going to want to sleep you know they're you know they're not nocturnal you know they're like us like everyone else so they're going to want to do that and then the third is you know from my end i'd like to see more of a focus on those that have the mental illness and what needs to be done i mean i think as a society we have a moral obligation ethical obligation to take care of those that can't take care of themselves i know that there's a situation and there's some rulings on it that says that you know they have every right to do that but i think it's morally reprehensible to allow individuals that have you know either a mental condition that they can't take care of themselves to be able to make decisions for themselves i really do that's just i know that's more of a court case but at the end of the day why is it good for them to be able to sleep on the street you know at 110 degrees why is it you know why is that morally a higher ground than getting them the help that they need and putting them in a situation where they're required to take the medication that they need to take to get better um you know that's just more of my two cents worth on that i just think it's just horrible to think that it's okay for anyone who has a mental health issue that they and they don't have the capability of making their own decisions to be able to be on the street because that's what they choose to do because when in fact they are not capable to do that and that's a bigger role a bigger discussion to have but i do think that whatever we can do to help those that have those kinds of issues i think as a society we are required to and i think it's by god that requires us to take care of those that can't take care of themselves thank you mayor thank you councilwoman guardado thank you mary yes i i couldn't agree more we are talking about humans here i think i want to thank you guys for all of your hard work and everything that you guys have been doing i think it's true that we have been spending a lot of money but i think as a city it is our responsibility to give people a hand when they need it and i think that you know all we've been we've gotten very innovative in terms of taking what we've done in the past and making it and making it better each time i think for all of you guys that have not gone to the 20th street and washington center that we have there everyone should go there and take a look i think the services that are provided there the way people are treated people are treated like human beings people feel great when they come in there and try to it and try to get the services that they need and i think we do have to look at this a little bit more comprehensive there's a lot of these folks that would not be in this situation if they had a good job i think we also got to find out a way how do we hold these big corporations accountable when they come and ask for stuff from the city to making sure that when we're building anything in the city of phoenix where we have some say over it that we make sure that these are good quality jobs because i'm sure that if a lot of these folks had a had a good job they wouldn't be having an issue with a lot of these issues that they're having right now so i think as much as we're saying that we're spending a lot of money then we also need to be holding accountable the big companies that do come in and ask us for a lot of money and we hold them accountable and we also ask them to help provide those good quality jobs that a lot of our constituents need to be able to stay housed to make sure that they have the health insurance that they need to deal with their with their health issues that they have and i think one once we don't once we don't deal with that we're going to continue to deal with this issue and i think as a city it is our responsibility to continue to help and do whatever it is that we need to do um to help folks and give people a hand i don't see it as helping people i see it more as us giving a hand to someone that needs it so that they can get back on their feet and and i do agree i think it'd be great to hear all of those success stories i know that i've seen a couple of them that have come through um district five now that we're talking about project haven in d5 i know that we've had a couple of folks that did come in and testify and talked about how they now have a good job and how is it that they've been able to get back on their feet but i think it's true i think we should be talking more about those stories but i do think that one of the big one one of the problems not the problem but one of the problems is making sure we can get people into good quality jobs so i just want to thank the team for for your guys's work like this is not an easy task that you guys are up against and hoping to be able to continue to support all of you guys thank you we'll go to councilman waring and then our vice mayor will finish us up thank you uh thank you mayor are there in any of the contracts or any of the groups that we partner with are there requirements to show success councilman waring um yes all of our contracts have required indicators and outcomes that they have to report on monthly so you have all that data and you can provide it you just don't have it sitting in front of you right now correct okay so i don't know can we have a can we have another agenda item or a policy or something to see the success stories or some kind of report maybe a public safety or something um so that this doesn't drag on and so forth uh or that you're not just sending it to our offices and then people watching at home are kind of wondering hey what's going on with this that's what i'd like to see um councilman waring uh members of the council we are planning on providing an update we can do it for the public safety as well but for the community and cultural the cci subcommittee i'm forgetting the acronym um in no for the november meeting where we'll be providing an update um in general and homelessness and can provide outcomes but we're happy to provide a report um and on this information in whatever format that the council would like to see ma'am members of the council we can actually add that into a general information packet as well so that the entire council can have that information yeah it's just november seems like a long way away and you know if you're coming if it's coming in so automatically so quickly i just if it was all good news or even some good news it just seems like we'd be shouting it from the hilltops but that hasn't been what i've noticed so i'm understandably curious like what do those reports say um but but i would also say to to really kind of everybody's point you know we this is a two-way street we just this is not a sustainable path that we're on the fatalities that were mentioned are tragedies but we've sort of set up a system that enables people to stay on the street people giving money at street corners and so forth we've sort of let this go on now and so now people are dying we have to have people help us help them too there has to be i just i don't know exactly what the answer is but but this is just not a sustainable course and it just seems like it's getting worse and it was something that i don't even remember seeing at all certainly not in the district i present which is different than other districts that we've had that discussion 10 years ago so it's definitely expanding and rapidly and i just think if we ascertain that this 107 million dollars isn't doing the job then we've got to change course to do something else and i'd also like some suggestions of what that might look like within the confines of court cases and department of justice investigation and so forth um because i think lack of police is also causing a little bit of this too uh i wasn't happy to contact steve martos at like five in the morning on a saturday two saturdays ago because somebody was going to the bathroom at the corner of tatum and greenway that affects the quality of life for those residents too including me that's not acceptable behavior so we can't have that and just say well you know that's that's not going to fly people will make changes definitely be unhappy if that's if the policies that we're enacting here continue this so i would also like some suggestions of what more we could do than what we're already doing thank you vice mayor i have two to one question in one statement uh any can any religious affiliation call and be part of the network vice mayor absolutely it's it's not limited just to churches any congregation is welcome through lutheran social services for the ihelp program okay so any interfaith group can be part of it so do you work through the interfaith network because there's a whole network that i believe lutheran social services does yes okay that's how i was just curious and then um i do want to give kudos out to councilwoman councilman garcia for 28th street in washington when he entered office that was one of the areas that he wanted to talk about and really wanted to change and advance in the sense of stability and bringing the human uh peace element to what is happening within our within our communities and 28th street in washington at first was like okay we're gonna do what and how are we going to do this and and and we were very fortunate to do and lift 28th street in washington now i also know that councilman garcia was didn't do it alone and there were many that helped him lift the 28th street in washington but it really was part of his vision of placing or at least keeping people safe and be able to put the wraparound services that were needed for those individuals so i do want to give a shout out to him because he does bring that human side even though we all are have that human side i'm more of a business operator and data and so i just want to thank him for that and also thank thank the council for supporting it and making it happen because that is one of our successes there's many but i just want to highlight that one so thank you thank you vice mayor one more piece of data since we just renewed our membership with the american association of governments they had compiled how many housing units were zoned but not yet built and came up with a number of roughly 200 000 in maricopa county so as that supply comes online that should make a positive difference on this issue and then back to the item at hand which is the request to enter into a contract with lutheran social services roll call i'm sorry yes decision yes garcia yes yes o'brien yes stark yes waring yes pastor yes gallego yes passes 9-0 by unanimous vote i help is coming to phoenix item 53 is the abandoned shopping cart retrieval services do we have a motion i move item 53 second we have a motion and a second we do have daniel tennyson here in support and available to speak if necessary first we'll begin with councilman waring thank you i just have some questions for spencer answer you probably watch my interaction with gina and we're thinking i'm actually also thinking about taking out a restraining order against you councilman waring but um spencer hears me a lot about shopping carts so these questions are not a surprise so this is a little bit of performance art but um i again i contact you probably i try to leave the weekends alone but i monday morning that means you get a list you hear from me a lot about the shopping carts i think it's an excellent well-intentioned program that could frankly be better utilized but the first thing is they're supposed to be gone in 48 hours right mayor counts councilman waring yes our vendor arizona car services has two days to remove the carts from the time that we submit the work order to them how do they prove that because because as you and i have discussed i mean i've got one example right now that obviously that hasn't happened it's still sitting out there it may not be gone by now but it was sitting out there yesterday um after several days does that include weekends i mean like what's and how do they show oh yes we got them within 48 hours councilman wearing so they do report those back to us and we also have a validation check not for every cart but we do go out and make sure that they are removing those but it is as reported by the vendor okay um well i know what my eyes see and and that you know we've talked about specific examples no reason to belabor it i i don't think they're making that mark and you know sometimes they are but not all the time uh a lot of the issue revolves around bus stops uh sometimes the carts frankly pile up we go out and clean the bus stops and i was unaware until recently that you don't even go through the process there's a communication between the bus stop cleaner and the vendor is that right with no no middleman is that that's correct uh the uh the vendor for the public transit department graffiti protective coding has a direct line to arizona cart services for those removals and mayor spencer how often do we clean the bus stops uh that okay that's ideal sorry all right um i see jesus so maybe he he can answer like because i just i call in too many from bus stops and i see him start to stack up you know so i'm kind of curious what the answer is going to be because i just assumed it was left to me to call in it never occurred to me that somebody else was actually obligated to be calling in and maybe wasn't doing it councilman warren good afternoon thank you for the question yes we've been talking a lot lately bus stop cleaning is based on usage ridership as well as what we see out in the field so council may remember earlier this year we started a new contract that we're basically upping our game in terms of um cleaning some of these bus stops we used to do three four five times a week sometimes you know or rather according to ridership and we're increasing that based on what we're seeing because we also are seeing an increase in trash and things left at bus stops so to answer your question it's based on ridership and what we're seeing in the field but we do have a whole host of bus stops where we have absolutely increased the cleaning frequency because of what we're seeing the mayor jesus so so at the minimum you're cleaning any one bus stop a few times it sounds i believe the minimum is three times a week and there's some that we're doing five to seven times a week okay so sometimes it's every night i mean you know spencer can attest i'll be like hey there's and you know i'm driving so i'm trying to remember all this i'm obviously not writing it down but i try to be like okay there's one here one here one here and then i i write up little notes to myself if it's after hours and i send it to you the next morning but there are many times where the you know they must not be getting called in because they're there you know a week later if i forget for example and then sometimes you know i've told spencer and it still doesn't doesn't seem to happen i definitely don't think there's any way that the people cleaning the bus stops can be you know every time they see a cart directly you know sending that in and then that they're gone in 48 hours that has not been my experience uh some of the time sure but but definitely not the majority of time i wouldn't say that's in any way possible but it sounds like it's a relatively new program i'm trying to think if i really seen it be better and that that might be true uh but if you want to save spencer sanity you know if you can make sure that they're actually like understand this is part of your job because that's that's every bit as much trash effectively or cluttering up the place as actual trash is when they're cleaning it yes councilman waring spencer and i have been talking a lot in the past couple months because of this and my understanding is our contractor that does a bus stop cleaning does have that direct line to the vendor that takes care of the bus stops rather the cart removal and they'll literally send them a picture and say you know here's the location here's the card you know and then it gets handed off to them um you know these are contracts that come up so it would behoove your vendor they want me to support them in the future that's part of the deal so um you know i would appreciate if they would make a special effort to make sure that they they do that um you know the the carts that are full of trash and have been abandoned spencer this just came up so you can't just take those away spencer those are you have to wait and then does the stuff in there have to be itemized and everything or after 24 hours it's fair game to be thrown away great question so uh we our program is related to abandoned shopping carts and and we want to make sure we're doing everything we can to ensure that we are not throwing away anyone's personal belongings and so our process is to tag the cart and then after 24 hours our public works department will go out determine if the card is still there if the materials are still there it's deemed abandoned and so they'll discard the contents and at that point the public works department will collect the cart and bring it to one of our locations to be picked up by the vendor and then there's just there's one company that does this kind of work correct to date there's only one vendor who has ever responded to our rfp to our procurement processes there's only one that we're aware of here in arizona however in in this current process we did have a late submittal and so that is something that we'd like to explore uh you know are they able to do this work what kind of work do they do after this process is completed i am just i assume this is a money-making contract or the one company or now two companies maybe wouldn't bid on it so there's obviously money to be made and i think it's good for everybody right that we get we basically ransom the carts back to the stores correct so they don't have to buy new carts and we get the carts off the streets which can lead to more blight and so forth i just think this is this is a well-intentioned program it's a public-private partnership so it's great i was excited to hear that we're part you know we've got two companies partnering up to make sure they get done quicker it's just i'm tired of contacting people about shopping carts it seems like we actually have a business that's getting paid to do this so i would just implore you to ask them to do it a little more expeditiously than they're doing it i mean it is it's what they signed up for and it's not like we're talking about millions of carts um i would also i've asked this before i always think when i see these cards how many city trucks because i see city trucks all over as i'm driving around how many city trucks drove right by these carts or the graffiti at the bus stop or whatever and didn't say anything about it you know i've talked to ed zerker in the past i think probably mentioned it to jeff too it just seems like just as people who live here and work for the city it would be nice if our employees also had some sort of direct line like hey you know i just drove by the shopping cart radio it in or whatever you know it just seems like they should all be doing that i don't think that's too onerous of an ask so that's something i'd like to see a little more cross-department collegiality to clean up the city and councilman i i just want to note that jesus and i have also been working to pull graffiti protective coating and arizona cart services together to work on their process flow and determine are there opportunities for us to expedite and get it through our process as well especially for filled carts which arizona cart services is not equipped to to do so we are looking at some process improvements there and in terms of working with other partner departments i think we probably could do a better job advertising and talking about my phoenix 311 which is an app that certainly is available to the public but it but it's also available to all of us as city employees when we're out driving around seeing what's going on in the community so to make sure that they know not only for the car retrieval but for other services that they can submit tickets through my phoenix 311 that that is something that's available i mean most of these cards there they're not hidden up in neighborhoods they're out on pretty major streets bus stops are for obvious reasons sort of a natural attractor um again that's just something i would ask i just think it is one thing that we could really do well that we're doing but not as well as we could so it's not reflection on you guys i appreciate you hearing me out and i'm i'm sorry i forced you two to spend so much time together but um uh i appreciate anything that we've done to improve the system thank you thank you councilman decisio i'll keep it quick just to follow up to jim's points on that um you know for example i mean i call staff all the time every time i see a pothole in the city you know just because we eventually get used to things and the thing is is you never get used to things that are just not something you want to see in your city so whether it's a shopping cart or whether it's a pothole or whatever it is we should always be diligent even as a council and as a city of making sure our staff knows like hey look that's really not just something we want to see here and it's something i teach my kids at a very young age how you do the small stuff is how you do the big stuff and if you're not doing the small stuff which a lot of people would think is small calling on a shopping cart but it's actually a pretty big thing because that means you're allowing you're accepting certain things and certain visuals and certain things to happen in your city because if you're not willing to even do the smallest thing it's going to be hard to do the big things and it gives us a level of success saying we just don't accept that and whether it's potholes shopping carts you know deterioration that we see in our city we should just we should just not find it acceptable a bad street you know infrastructure that we definitely should be able to be on top of but we should be on top of those things all the time just as a point so if there's a way to communicate that with your staff i think you really need to do that thank you mayor thank you roll call i'm sorry yes decision yes garcia yes o'brien yes stark yes waring yes pastor yes yes gallego yes passes 9-0 did it we next go to item 59 contract with the greater phoenix chamber foundation for elevate ed az workforce development program noting that the vice mayor will not be participating in this item do we have a motion a motion to approve item 59 second emotion in a second roll call i'm sorry yes decision yes garcia yes guardado yes o'brien yes stark yes waring yes yes passes 8-0 exciting program item 71 is improved bus service councilman ansari thank you mayor i do have a question for jesus so just while you're coming up this is a good news item for district 7 and district 6 i understand the piece in district 7 just for everyone to be aware is a one-mile extension so to expand transit service to businesses between buckeye road and lower buckeye road also adding a transit connection with route 28 on lower buckeye road it is a small one but i think it's just an example that shows that there is definitely a need for increased transit access in the western part of the city which is something that we've been working closely together on i really want to thank you jesus for engaging with my office and community members to understand this need even further and explore paths to address it just last week we met with some representatives from the school districts in the west valley and they were mentioning to us they have difficulty keeping teachers on staff specifically because of the barriers of lack of public transportation in that region specifically and i understand that one of the biggest reasons we haven't been able to accelerate expansion of our transit service is because of driver shortages so i was hoping you could tell us a little bit about what we are currently doing to pursue both attracting and retaining our drivers yes thank you for uh the question councilwoman i'm sorry um we have been keeping a close eye on vacancies that our contractors are experiencing and i i will point out this isn't a localized issue of course this has been a hot button issue in the transit industry overall worldwide not just even in the us and during the pandemic you know as with many industries we did see you know the great resignation and it is taking a while for some of these uh individuals to come back it is mostly drivers because that is the largest contingent of transit personnel so we are working closely with valley metro we literally just had a meeting today talking about the types of incentives recruitment retention things like that that our contractors are undertaking we have seen some gains in recent months we did see the peak of the vacancies was about january of this year and the way we monitor is how much um of our schedule are we able to meet and that number has steadily come down so i'm happy to say that you know we we've seen some positive movement in recent months so hopefully we can continue that we're having regional discussions on how to do that um and as i said i we had a meeting a joint meeting today with our service providers and with valley metro to talk about how do we keep that and that momentum going we've done joint job fairs with valley metro for all sorts of positions and then as i said our contractors are doing things like retention and recruitment bonuses to get people through the door and keep them on staff one of the unfortunate things that we are seeing in the transit industry is once they get their cdl their commercial driver's license they're lured away by other companies that pay significantly more so we're trying to stave that off but the bottom line is our contractors locally have seen some positive movement in recent months we're monitoring it very closely and we hope to see that continue you may not know this off the top of your head but do you know what sort of driver increase the number of drivers we would need to actually be able to expand services to those areas in australia that are so desperately asking for it um i don't know off the top of my head counselor i'm sorry i can look that up and get back to you but one of the things that we uh have been looking at from a system perspective you may recall that during the pandemic because of the impacts to the labor force we kind of shrunk the day we cut back on the early morning hours of service and the late night hours of service because that was that's where we were seeing the least ridership since then we have restored the early morning hours we did that with council's approval last year we have not yet restored the late night service number one because the right ship's not there yet and number two because we don't have the labor force um available right now so one of the things that we would have to do is have a full discussion with with mayor and council about if the workforce does can you know return do we restore service to pre-pandemic levels i.e late-night service or do we look at other areas possibly for uh restoring service because when i sat here multiple times during the pandemic i was asked well when can we restore the service to its full pre-pandemic level and of course my answer then was you know we need the workforce to come back so if we see those numbers come back depending on how many we need we can have that conversation as to do we restore the late night service or do we look at other areas for potential changes okay i understand that obviously that's going to be a complicated discussion i think obviously support late night service i don't want to be put in that you know situation of one or the other but i also think it's absolutely unacceptable that there's low-income working-class neighborhoods huge swaths of our city past what is a 60-some avenue to all the way to 107th avenue that don't have the proper service can't get to work can't get to school what not that's also not acceptable for the fifth largest city in the country so just want to keep continuing having that discussion anything we can do to accelerate the hiring because this is that that and just the lack of all sorts of city services in australia whether it's the regional park not being built for 20 years whether it's no libraries no nothing we don't have buses going there it's the bare minimum so that's a big priority of mine and i hope to work with the council to figure that out because it is a big chunk of our population thank you thank you vice mayor first emotion i would like to move item 71. second of a motion in a second and then if you have any questions i do want to make some comments um as the city of phoenix runs uh our is the sole provider for the bus routes in the city of phoenix and we also are part of a connective regional piece with valley metro and i think it's very key to understand that we have to make sure that we're operating seamless operations because we connect to other cities in addition to that there is a big dialogue or there is a great dialogue going on with valley metro regarding bus drivers because the city of phoenix is doing a good job in retaining their bus drivers but our other connectors or other regions and cities where we connect those operators we don't have enough bus drivers and so we are talking in a global space of what what do we do and what does that look like and how do we attract bus drivers as i was in dc last week what was advertised was there was a 150 bus driver positions and that they were going to start hiring at 20 an hour so labor and salary and all that's going to come into play in the near future of how do we sustain ourselves and make seem have seamless operations throughout the valley so i just wanted to put that out there the second thing is that i think the one ways that we can add additional routes would be in supporting and really pushing and a national and i'm asking the audience out here to advocate in the future for this type of system as we go forward for a prop 400 and a pro prop 400e is a statewide initiative and being able to advocate for more bus routes longer hours you're going to start to hear that conversation and so i want to put that out there because it's very important it's our transportation piece and we're going to need you to help us lift that piece so i just want to put that out on the statement so thank you thank you vice mayor and thank you for continuing to push to make sure that our county has our fair share of transportation opportunities and the chance to weigh in on whether to continue our existing structure and i i would um say that we want to thank our workforce team because they have worked to make our cdl programs more available for people in our community who do want to pursue a commercial driver's license roll call i'm sorry yes decision yes garcia yes yes o'brien yes stark yes waring yes pastor yes gallego yes passes 9-0 that concludes our agendaized item i will now turn to our city attorney to explain the role of citizen comments thank you mayor during citizen comment members of the public may address the city council for up to three minutes on issues of interest or concern to them the citizen comment session is limited to 30 minutes the arizona open meeting law permits the city council to listen to the comments but prohibits council members from discussing or acting on the matters presented thank you we will begin today with steve schumacher who is online oh there we go thank you mayor i appreciate it um i just want to take a a minute or two with the mayor's city council members and i just basically expressed my appreciation for one of the city employees who is his name is chuck emmert many of you know that i've been working pretty hard on my own for the last couple years to increase awareness and education of phoenix history and about a year and a half ago i connected with chuck he's in charge of updating the facebook page and uh instagram and now tick tock and uh i think he's become more of an expert on phoenix history than i have and he's just been a a joy to work with and open to feedback and accuracy is a paramount importance to him and i just wanted to say thank you to chuck and make it publicly known what a wonderful job he's doing and and helping me turn the corner and trying to increase the awareness of phoenix history and so forth so thank you mayor gallego i appreciate the time and city city council members thank you we'll next go to ian lopilo hi can you hear me we can thank you um members of the council i'm here today to talk in favor of a um group of citizen petitions that are going to be read into the record shortly i believe that transparency especially in government is very important and there has been a lot going on recently in terms of signal and whatsapp chat uses anybody that works in a movement near politics in politics understands that one of the main functions of these app is to talk about things in a way where you don't have to be tracked and you don't have to like report it or it's not going to be accessible information to the public later on and so it's just clear that some shady stuff's been going on in the city and so i'm speaking in favor of these citizens petitions because i think it's important that the public get to see and understand as much information that they can from council there's been a lot of use of active litigation as kind of like a firewall and council members and definitely mayor kate love to hide behind that statement of active litigation but i think that that is interesting um and kind of a reflection of a failure of our system because it is a clear admission of something being wrong within the system um because if there's any reason to not speak about the issue while active litigation is going on it's because you're worried about looking bad and implicating yourselves and so um i just want to make that public and visibilize that at the meeting today and i again speak in favor of those citizens petitions because the public should be have access to all the information they want about their politic thank you very much thank you we will go next to kim baker followed by salvador reza and then to esther cook who will speak from her seat sorry thank you citizen petition thank you um briefly i was here a couple of weeks ago speaking to the council and this again involves with the same matter as i shared with you all i did receive a death threat that i was a dead left on my vehicle october 21st 2021 today i'm here to ask the council and mayor to direct the city manager to get these three questions answered for me for us number one why did i have to wait for about two hours for officers to respond and they never showed up on october 21st it wasn't until the next day that assistant chief connolly directed officers to my home i waited two hours no one showed up number two why is this police department allowing a lead person david carson the private investigator to obstruct justice per arizona revised statute 13 2409 when he has text messaged me and all of his text message meet the criteria of this law and the third is am i being permitted full protection of the law per this statute that i just quoted if they won't fully investigate all suspects and leads then i'm asking you all to take a look at the attachments a b c and d these are these are conversations that took place with this pi in my last petition i directed it to the police department which actually blocked you all out i'm coming now again asking you all to direct the city manager to find out these questions or these answers to these questions we can solve this here mr carlson know who it is that is involved he spoke with the people and was shortly after his conversation with them that i get this death threat i can take care of myself and i'm going to continue to do that but if put my shoes on your feet and just wear them for a while this has been hanging over my head since october 21st wear the shoes and see how they feel i'm asking you all to ask the city manager to get these answers for me appreciate you thank you mayor thank you we'll go next to sal reza followed by esther cook good afternoon i wish i could say it was a joy to come and speak before you but to tell the truth i'd rather not come here but things are getting out of hand the displacement of mobile home parks is out of hand right now just yesterday we found out that in uh laura pastors district they're about to displace weldon park they displaced gcu is already displacing 50 residents las casitas is also being in the process of being displaced and there is no answer to it to me when they tell me that they cannot do anything about it who controls the sony the city of phoenix controls the sony they could zone areas that already exist as mobile home park zoning other cities have done it austin did it the state can do a lot of other things but i'm not going to get into that there's nothing you can do about the state right now but you have the zoning control right now uh gcu and the developers have you controlled most of you not all of you but most of you have you controlled because you accept displacement of people only because they postpone the date that they're going to displace them you don't even look for avenues how can you get those people not to go into the homeless situation which you guys were talking about just a little bit ago how do you do that a lot of those people are elderly and a lot of them are kids that are going to be thrown out of the school districts it's going to affect the school districts too so what i'm asking you is don't take the hands-off approach look into the zoning ways of controlling that you could declare certain zones mobile home zones you have residential zoning you have all kinds of zoning look into that that's all i wanted to say thank you thank you esther cook will be followed by alondra ruiz my name is esther cook i'm here with my husband david cook i also have i live in periwinkle mobile home park we have lived there for 16 years and the grand canyon university is displacing us we do not think it is right to make us move when we do not have anywhere to move to we are both on a fixed income thank you thank you alondra is next followed by dr sylvia herrera [Music] council members mayor my name is alana ruiz i am a resident of the mobile home park of periwinkle along with the 45 other families we are still being displaced by our greedy landlord grand canyon gcu or grand canyon university gcu they own the land but we own our mobile homes we are still under the threat of displacement during this national housing crisis with fear of homelessness grand canyon university originally were displacing us this upcoming um october 30th of 2022 then after meeting with council member betty wardado it was changed to february 28th which is literally in the middle of the school year so we complained again and we reached out to senator raquel terran in our mobile home um uh you know with our mobile home residence um and then the date was changed again to uh may 28 of 2023 our mobile home park is a stable community we are hard working people we are low-income hard-working people and we treat we truly fear homelessness we are in the middle of a national housing crisis and um if we are displaced without compensation from gcu we don't really know what we're going to do afterwards our community our community would like to get compensation from grand canyon university according to the federal guidelines for displacement of low-income residents gcu's mission speaks of being a christian university they speak of christian beliefs and christian values and christian practices they state that they state that they are um intentionally committed committed to the community well i am that community yet they're not treating me in any kind of christian way and they're not treating any of my neighbors that way either excuse me the process that gcu has taken to displace us it's been very demeaning to us and we want to just ask them to follow those christian values that they speak of in closing i want to ask grand canyon ranch university what would jesus do what would grand cayman university do while displacing us thank you thank you dr herrera is next followed by priscilla salazar good afternoon mayor and city council i'm here today to let you know that mobile homes are the most affordable housing that there is in phoenix and throughout the united states right now we're in a housing crisis and these particular developers are wanting to displace the residents out of their mobile homes right now mobile home residents need remedies not useless referrals to people that cannot help them or they don't qualify for services what these residents need is an emergency response from the city to look for solutions to this crisis to look for even temporary uh fixed while you investigate it further as to what you're going to do on the long term other cities have addressed the problem by imposing a moratorium on mobile home parks other cities have actually created resolutions to address the problem so why can't the city of phoenix address this problem that we have and it's not going away by turning uh the cheek and saying oh it's individual mobile home parks every day we're getting calls of residents that are being given improper notices from these developers saying you have to be out in 30 days 60 days they have a right to stay in their mobile home park for 180 days if given the proper notice and yet these developers are banking on the fact that these residents might not know their rights so i'm asking the city to look at a more permanent solution and to look at even a temporary moratorium on mobile home parks it's time this that the city looks uh look at this uh and uh take it seriously to uh come up with innovative and a comprehensive solution to the problem thank you thank you priscilla is next followed by alejandro rodriguez i'm sorry my daughter just stepped up trying to get some of the other community but we have one of the other gentlemen that's right before so and priscilla is not here but alejandro is about to bring somebody else alejandro is here okay alejandro yeah we're all doing the same thing okay [Music] homes yes i'm happy to be here i don't know any of you but i'm still happy to be here i live in a mobile home at welton park i'm here to ask for help we're at the point where they're trying to make us vacate our mobile homes our kids they go to schools here and they're trying to get kick us out with their machines with no compensation i pay taxes i pay property taxes i pay federal taxes so i'm here to ask for help or for you to interfere in this process they're offering and they're giving us very little money we know that our trailers are valued at about forty five hundred dollars but uh they wanna give us fifteen hundred dollars so i'm here to ask for your help they wanna kick us all out our kids go to the schools here what are the schools going to do when they don't have these kids so we need help for the residents of this mobile park area thank you thank you mario very impressive we'll go to rosalva revere roselva followed by carmen prieto okay um i think we'll still go is risalva here all right priscilla hi council members my name is priscilla salazar i reside at 1631 east weldon avenue it's district 4 i believe try to do a little bit of investigating so i can know more or less who we pertain to we are a small community of 65 to like 70 mobile homes in our community we have been united and some of us for up to 30 years we've been living in our mobile homes emotionally and most importantly financially we are not able to just get up and move to pay thousands of dollars per month i am a low income single parent and when what we pay now makes it hard we have a home that to us is our families is home this is more than just a notice and get out we are going to be homeless this is for all of us arizona residents sorry it's emotionally and hard to do that this affects these laws and acts that are outdated how do we get offered a thousand five hundred dollars for homes that does nothing for each and every family a friend starts at at least two thousand eight hundred dollars if not more plus first month's rent last month's rent and a deposit they say we can't move they also told us that we can move our mobile homes when we know and have been told by professionals that our homes are not movable if that's not possible basically we are homeless if we get kicked out unfairly we are low-income we are a low-income community with elderly people men people with mental health issues single parents families that need help and are not financially capable to just move to a place that we can't afford emotionally to be kicked out of our homes that to each and every one of us is where we lay our heads with our children is very stressful some of our residents don't understand what's going on and it is unfair to know that they are not going to be taken care of again my name is priscilla salazar and i speak on behalf of everybody on welding court including my family that we get some kind of help that helps actually helps not just some outdated laws and acts that were thrown to us then we don't know what's going on thank you thank you is rosalva here carmen prieto followed by dominic pesch hi my name is carmen prieto i also live on 16th street i mean on weldon court 1631 east weldon i hate to see my children because pretty much they've all grown there i've been there most of the people have been living there for 30 years some of them 20 i've been there 10 years and if it wasn't for that little place it's really nice it's really community real decent nice place eventually there we watch our children grow and their children grow in that community and for one day and another just just slap a step no you have 180 days to get out of there by april the first we have to be remote they offered us only a thousand eight hundred and seventy five dollars to move out uh obviously the the statues have not been updated they've been there since 2017 and we're already in 2022. and with 1875 there's no way we can move my other daughter just moved into a two bedroom i live i'm 62 years old i have a daughter that's also she's mentally ill i have a grandbaby a one-year-old and i have my daughter-in-law that's pregnant that she's due in two months i also have my other grandbaby that i raised there and my children do they have grown there and lived there and i know my neighbors my neighbor's little girl she's mentally ill too and her name is sarah and her little girl is mentally and she cries she goes why are they kicking us out she doesn't understand and she won't understand all she understands that we're being kicked out and she wants to know why she wants to know where are we going what are we doing what's going to happen we can't answer those questions yet because we can't look into it we also ask them out because they're throwing this uh can we go and apply with section 8 will they bring us above you know first because emergency homes for us for the people that do want to go most of the people all of the people they don't live up to nobody they live up for their own my back their sweat they all work we are there we don't go out in the streets and live and big in the streets and which they have choices our choice is to work i'm disabled i worked all the rest of my life so i think it's only fair that we get at least the fair something to be moved out we understand that they sold and they want to build other apartments there we understand it but give us a decent price for our home maybe they're old but you know what we've kept up with them we put work in and we put roofing my put roofing cost me four thousand dollars and i'm on low income i live on disability and i had to put a roof in and i really do appreciate it thank you thank you dominic is next followed by luis hubert good afternoon city council my name is dominic petch i'm here today to help encourage everyone to stay safe and listen to the science uh if it's okay i want to sing a song to a to a instrumental on my cell phone is that okay okay how's it oh my time started okay we got this guys we got to save lives [Music] hey hey hey what's going on you with the pick and roll shout out a little fouchy i'm a sickle mode small guys let's save lives together my vaccine card i think i left it in the booth at the gate outside dr fauci finis swoop jump out boys that spies our boys up in the coops got my fifth vaccine but i think i need a boost give me the boost i'm just getting started [Applause] [Music] we're in this together we need to mandate vaccines let's go we got mandate booster shots we gotta save lives let's go let's go he's in love with who i am back in 2020 i was on only fans now i hit the walgreens with a wit in my pants i get two vaccines half an hour i'm a fiend hide me out like a light ay like a light ay like a light a vaccinate my wife me and my slimes weren't n95s yeah social distance gotta save them lives eight boosted up nothing nicer i hate big pharma except for pfizer pass that vaccine to my dog i swear it makes you wiser we out here saving lives unlike the science deniers that fifth booster came in handy joe rogan killed my granny he takes horse to warmer it's called ivermectin i watch transformers when i'm off that jenker january 6 worst day of my life pray for aoc alex stein's wife dr fauci i'm in tennessee give us your vaccine for white supremacy hey he's in love with who i am back in 2020 i was on only fans now i hit the walgreens with a wii in my pants i get two vaccines half an hour i'm a fiend hide me out like a light like a light like a light like a light like a light hey vaccinate my wife ay pass that needle to my dog i swear i get you right ay monkey pox is here lock down sound nice ay refuse the science i don't have it in me elon musk where's my stimmy klosh schwab i will eat those bugs oh nothing and be happy sounds like a dub hey daddy government i'll get to my knees i need that inflation make me say please those racist republicans they are so evil don't leave dr fauci you are my needle thank you and i will say as meeting chair i will review the council rules i cannot remember rules in this area all right luis you are up good afternoon uh as a concerned citizen of citizens of phoenix i am here to address the hiring of nicole des bois witt as the public health advisor of phoenix her latest position was a ceo of the windsor essex county public health department of ontario canada in that capacity she forced closer closure of businesses and churches pushed for mandatory vaccinations and vaccinations for children she attempted to implement vaccine passports and shut down the truckers who were principally protesting we saw that when the same kinds of draconian practices that were practiced in canada were put in place in arizona the economy suffered school children suffered and the general morale of the public suffered what we need is less government not more regulation such things as vaccinations and masking should be a personal choice not a government decree we do not want to see the dictatorial measures that mr witt implemented in canada take place in arizona thank you thank you next is patricia pegliuca hello okay thank you i'm sorry to the gentleman that received the note with the n-word on it and is here seeking help from city council who did call out sarver the former owner of the phoenix sun for using the n-word and demanded accountability for that but refuses to demand accountability from the nation's most deadly police force for their continued misconduct and cover-up of all of their egregious mishandling of the 2020 protest jim waring you're looking for solutions for item number 52. this council seems more offended by shopping carts than a police force that continues to violate our constitutional rights and then tries to destroy evidence and cover up all of their misconduct i would stop texting steve at 5am he has much bigger issues oh it looks like steve left but kurtenbach is still here who are both passed up for promotion at ppd because no one in the force can be trusted they had to bring in michael sullivan to handle the doj investigation and we all know that he's working for them so there's not a lot i can say here that has not been said by black and directly impacted leadership over the past two years or by dave viska being on the news or by everyone that has been speaking out in solidarity with that leadership i would like to state my support for the petitions that will be read here today we are demanding that you immediately release asu's independent report into ppd's violent response to the 2020 uprising we know that's been available since february and you have refused to release it that's absolutely unacceptable and the petition will also read that we need you to release your policy on using encrypted messaging for city staff which we see that steve martos opened up that signal thread with just the top phoenix employees we'd like to remind you that it is your job you are paid to listen to community demands and yet we have to take time off work here to continue and show up and ask you to take as seriously as you do grocery carts in your wealthy neighborhood the misconduct of phoenix police department violating constitutional rights trying to cage protesters for up to 100 years it should be embarrassing to you that the doj has been here since last august we don't have any faith in them we understand they are just police trying to police police it's not going to work but they have clearly demonstrated they have no intention of doing a valid investigation when they won't even look at the maricopa county attorney's office who was colluding with your police force and on your website you have the little hierarchy of how the city should work we have the people council the city manager and then the police so as someone that pays your bill that pays your wage i ask you to do your job and demand accountability from the nation's most deadly police force thank you thank you that completes our 30-minute uh public comment we are adjourned you