no opportunity to provide public comment thank you for joining our glendale city council workshop okay good afternoon welcome to glendale city council workshop session of august 10 2021 this meeting is called to order uh we're not going to do a roll call everybody is in their seats so if you would take note of that mr power please and at that point if you'd go ahead and introduce item number one bickman industrial a n-226 annexation located at the northwest corner of glendale avenue and reems road good afternoon noon mayor members of the council here to provide staff report is our interim planning manager tabitha perry thank you mr phelps good afternoon mary council staff is seeking input and direction to proceed with the proposed annexation an226 on approximately 75 acre site located at the northwest corner of glendale avenue and reems road the property is currently sorry apologize for that the property is currently located in the county with an ru-43 zoning district and would allow for single-family residents when a property is annexed into the city boundaries the city most compatible light sony district is initially applied which would be rr 45 rule residential following the annexation the applicant intends to rezone the entire site to pad planned area development to allow for industrial development totaling approximately 1.1 million square feet for distance context the annexation site is located approximately 11.9 miles west from city hall the current annexation map represents various annexation cases surrounding the subject property area this conceptual site plan illustrates how the site may be developed based on the fiscal impact summary provided tabitha hold on a second uh two things could you turn the volume up it's a little difficult to hear and then secondly uh councilmember thomas off had a question thank you appreciate that mayor because i did not hear you said it's 11 point my and then i couldn't hear the rest of what you said um mayor council members would you like for me to start over the distance it was from wherever you said i didn't i didn't catch what that what that uh fact was if the if the video audio guys could turn the volume up that would be awesome okay okay so we'll go back here just for a consistency is that better okay i'll just project my voice a little bit more until they fixed the microphone um for distance context the annexation site is located approximately 11.9 miles west from city hall the current annexation map represents various annexation cases surrounding the subject property area this conceptual site plan illustrates how the site may be developed based on the fiscal impact summary provided the completed project would generate a positive net fiscal impact with one-time fees estimated at 4.5 million dollars and could result in a net impact to the city of 222 thousand dollars per year fiscal impact chart just shows another illustration of how the revenues expenditures and net benefits would occur if council gives consensus to proceed with this request the next council action steps with hearing dates to be finalized are the blank petition tentatively scheduled for august the 24th city council public hearing and the adoption of annexation natively scheduled for september the 28th city council public hearing and if approved the 75-acre property would be added into the city boundaries 30 days after the adoption also the resulting application to rezone the property to pad is tentatively scheduled to be heard on september the 28th which would be on the same agenda public hearing as the request for the adoption of the annexation the potential community benefit of proceeding with the annexation request is it would allow for the city to determine the type of land uses influence the type and quality of development and provide employment opportunities to the community marion council that concludes that presentation i'm prepared to address any questions you may have leading to your direction on the request thank you thank you questions from the council on this item good thank you mayor i just want to make sure i'm identifying the right parcel because i'm having a hard time figuring it out on this map is it the former golf course council mayor council member i'm tama chop no it's not um i'm trying to see if i can get an aerial map up here doesn't appear that we have one hold on do you have a cross street intersection anything like that dreams and glendale yes mayor councilmember it's the northwest corner of glendale avenue and reems road okay northwest all right so um mayor if i could so it's surrounded by residential basically that's what i was trying to figure out at least on the north and west it's surrounded by and then on the east by reams road is that okay so um mary and council it is surrounded by rural residential to the north which is in maricopa county and to the east is agricultural land which is a future industrial development for the cubes at glendale and then to the south is agricultural which is within the county for once again that ru-43 which would allow a single-family residence and then also to the west is within the county with the rural residential zoning of ru 43 that would allow for the single family residents okay all right thank you any other questions good thank you mayor um not a question so well there's a question inherent in this um sometime in the past the council had requested that land use actions annexations or development out in that 303 area that our paperwork include the set noise contours for luke air force base so we can see where the property lays in respect to that i don't see him in today's either of today's so perhaps in the future we can do that i'm particularly concerned about the 65 decibel that's really the make or break it decibel line for me but others may wish to have all of them but and that helps us to also figure out how this relates to our general plan and whether or not it's going to require a general plan amendment or if there'll be one requested in the future thank you mayor and council duty no do it do it noted councilman turner we will make sure that information is included in future patrick packages but to answer your question for this item the property falls within the 70 ldn and the 75 ldn north contours of the luke air force base thank you all right if we could just expand upon that just a little bit uh is luke aware of this project or are they supportive of the project mayor council members staff is going through the review process now with the application that the applicant filed so luke is being has been made aware of the application i'm not certain if luke has provided a determination on it as of yet but when the application comes before you with the rezoning we will make sure you have that information perfect perfect any other question okay and no no actions required right now mayor council members i need a consensus to move forward with the annexation request or not say it one more time i need a consensus from the council on whether to move forward with the anticipation okay is there a consensus to move forward yes sir okay very good you have it ms bower would you introduce item to please hopewell a n-228 annexation located at the southwest corner of northern avenue road i'm not sure if i've gone deaf for the last five weeks but if everybody could speak up and speak into your microphones i'd appreciate it or if the guys in the back would turn the volume up or both please okay mayor members of the council here to provide staff report again is our interim planning manager tabitha perry thanks again mr phelps mayor council staff is seeking once again input and direction to proceed with the proposed annexation on approximately 104 acres site located at the southwest corner of northern avenue and reems road the property is currently located in the county with our u-43 zoning district and would allow for a single-family residence when a property is listen to the city boundaries the city's most compatible light zoning district is initially applied which would be rr-45 rule residential following the annexation the applicant intends to rezone the entire site to pad planned area development to allow for industrial manufacturing warehousing and distribution land uses totaling approximately 1.6 million square feet of development for distance context the annexation site is located approximately 11.9 miles west from city hall once again the current annexation map represents various annexation cases surrounding the subject area this conceptual site plan illustrates how the site may be developed based on the fiscal impact summary provided the completed project would generate a positive net fiscal impact with one-time fees estimated at 6.2 million dollars and could result in a net impact to the city of three hundred and twenty thousand dollars per year this is a chart that kind of illustrates once again the revenues expenditures and the net benefit to the city if council gives consensus to proceed with this request the next council action steps with hearing dates to be finalized are the blank potential excuse me the blank petition tentatively scheduled for august the 24th city council public hearing and the adoption of annexation tentatively scheduled for september the 28th city council public hearing and if approved the 104 acre property would be added into the city's boundaries 30 days after the adoption the rezoning application to resolve the subject property from rr45 to pad is tentatively scheduled to be heard on september the 28th which would be on the same public hearing agenda as the request for adoption of the annexation the potential community benefit of proceeding with the annexation request are is it will allow for the city to determine the type of land uses influence the type and quality of development and provide employment opportunities to the community mayor council that concludes that presentation i am prepared to answer any questions you may have leading up to your direction on the request thank you thank you questions on this item good thank you mayor um do we have based on the um estimated development fees that's a pretty sizable amount do we have an idea of of who the who the end user is going to be here or what type specifically what type of development that's going to be manufacturing seems like that that would be a high because it's a lot much higher amount mayor council from my understanding at the time of this application um it would be spec buildings at this time so there's not identified in user so the fiscal impact summary took in consideration if the development was for industrial manufacturing were housing and distribution so all those different type of uses was considered in the summary okay thank you mayor and i have one more question um hopewell is that the name of the property owner is that the name of a development company what is what is that what is hopewell mayor and council members um the the project name is hopewell northern and rings um and with that i want to find it real quick so i can be correct okay okay all right thank you make your computer easier to use windows will read and scan this list automatically go ahead uh mayor members of the council so the reason why the amount on this annexation application was greater was because of the size so if you go to if you go to slide number six the assumptions are for the economic analysis that we assume that half of the space would be in warehousing and the other half in manufacturing the prior annexation agreement was for about 1.1 million square feet this is for 1.6 million square feet and so that then changed all the inputs and that's why the economic impact is greater on this than the prior application again until they identify uses they could be heavier on the manufacturing side or they could be heavier on the warehousing side and that would adjust those numbers ultimately good yeah any other questions okay and what action are you looking from us ms perry mayor council members i need a consensus to proceed with the application all right consensus to move forward yes sir there you go okay item three miss bearer presentation regarding proposed regulations for temporary fencing mayor members of the council here to provide staff report on item number three today is our development services director jamshid mehta thank you mr phelps goody good afternoon mayor and council before you is the first draft ordinance potential ordinance of temporary fencing this was something that the city code review committee had discussed several months ago and it was triggered by concerns from some of those on that subcommittee that fencing remains uncontrolled in some cases unmaintained therefore unsightly potentially unsafe if it's unmaintained and some of it would last longer than one would hope it would it was indefinite and did not have a time frame so with that in mind what we have here mayor and council is a proposal that was prepared by staff and the intention is to reflect what the wishes of the court committee review was to have an ordinance ready for your consideration so here's an example of what i would call a good temporary fence in the sense that it it's temporary because it does not have permanently implanted fixed footings generally you'd see sandbags on the side and that would make it a temporary fence but we obviously have several experiences of seeing the worst of these kinds throughout throughout the metro area and also within the city limits several valley cities already have an approval process for temporary fencing some of the cities that we know do have a permit process include tempe city of phoenix scottsdale and the city of buckeye so if this is the general course direction provided by council and of course i'll go through a lot more detail but the intent would be that it could be included in the unified development code the zoning rewrite process and then would be part of that within the walls and fences section so by definition it's a fencing system that encloses outdoor activities it will be fully contained above ground no permanent footings are are allowed that by definition but then when we go to the next slide which has to do with the when and how long is it effective temporary fencing will require a building permit it's not a requirement today uh as an initial permit it could be up to 180 days or less if it happens to be like for example a special event that only lasts a few days and it can be extended under certain circumstances those could be maybe it's an ongoing environmental remediation going on a continued safety hazards that haven't been addressed the site could actively be developed and hasn't concluded at 180 days there could be extenuating circumstances insurance settlements haven't happened yet or there could be some litigation issues also on the temporary fencing that requires a permit the exception would be if it's already included in a construction permit it could be a special event it could be a city-initiated abatement process for example unsafe to occupy structures then continuing with the conformance criteria once permitted uh what would be known to us and will be displayed at the site would be the permit details the contact information so we know what the responsible parties are and also location of emergency access signage the temporary fence could be as tall as eight feet and as long as it meets the site visibility triangle criteria temporary fencing will not uh will not cater to barbed wire on on top so some of sometimes there is barbed wire especially if it's got some security issues associated with it but if it's temporary in nature we would not allow that it's unsafe especially if that fence were to topple over and the barbed wire would be then at a lower level and further for consideration of visual light and to prevent that there would be either a mesh or a fabric screening that could be required it's not mandatory every time and that would be to ensure that there's uniform color and material the adequate information on it showing what's coming next behind that building if it happens to be new construction people would be curious to know what it is as long as there is no off-site advertising associated with that with that screen material then finally in terms of code compliance this would be to ensure that the site defense itself is maintained it's safe it's not unsightly and it's truly is temporary so therefore it would be part of our code compliance issues if we notice something that's without a permit we would work with them grant them the 30-day notice leading to a final notice and we don't expect this but the process could eventually lead to a civil citation so with that mayor and council members i'm glad to answer any questions and seek consensus to move forward if that's your pleasure mayor question good thank you mayor with regard to the fabric screening i've got a couple questions after you answered this one do you know why for what specific reason contractors use the mesh around their construction sites on those fences i could venture a guess here uh councilmember dhamma uh sometimes it's just the dust that could be blowing as well but also if there are some security issues there they've got heavy equipment over there they're storing construction material if they'd like to conceal that that could be an option for them thank you and if that's the case can you do a little research if that's the reason why they use it may maybe we should put it in the permanent approve that they have it to prevent that from that coming into the city and then if we do and if we don't do we need to have a uh standard on the color of fabric there's there's the traditional black and green but there's also blue and a bunch of other colors i've also seen some contractors just use old banners and so if we're going to use a screen the question is can we do a standard and then to include the perforations in it so the defense doesn't blow over prematurely council member of mayor council member dhamma all of those are good suggestions definitely the idea is to standardize it in the text that we've provided you in the package that is the intent to have standardized color make it all solids don't don't go too graphic uh but the intent is identify what's behind it have the folks who are responsible for the project name and their contact information available to us so all of that could be definitely part of that ordinance excellent and then um that was it thank you so much for bringing this forward uh thank you mayor i just had one question regarding the permit uh under the the ordinance that you've drafted it was a little unclear to me what uh say you have a contractor who is building a building or is remodeling a building uh is the fencing permit going to be part of that building permit or will that they'll still be a separate permit mayor councilmember in most cases as it relates to construction usually the fencing is part of their sites of metal there's no need to have an additional fence permit then it's part of the construction and it can stay valid as long as the construction is going on okay thank you thank you mayor thank you mayor um thank you mr meadow for the presentation i think this is a this is a good thing but i how does this apply to there's other vacant parcels around the city that are zoned i just think there's i know there's one on 59th avenue that we've had ongoing issues with the fence kind of falling over torn up screens things like that is this only going to apply to construction zones or how are we going to apply this to i mean i understand that this type of fencing in some neighborhoods is a backyard fence and that's fine but if the idea is basically just to fence in a vacant lot that's not there's no nothing happening it's been like that for years how how will this apply there so uh mir and councilmember thomas it's not necessarily related only to construction related work although that seems to be the more common reason why it's there it could be abatement procedures which is tied to construction there's a permit associated with it but there are also instances where a property might be lying vacant there might be a structure there it's being targeted for graffiti very often at some point the owner decides to restrict people from entering the property and painting the sides of the walls and they put up fencing if it's temporary fencing then this is what the ordnance would do this particular proposal is has to do with temporary fencing which means the posts are not permanently embedded in the ground hence the 180 day limit and we expect the owner to then come back either for renewal and show us there's evidence of some progress happening on the site otherwise there's no point in extending it we want to see actual progress being made and if if they aren't making any progress then the permit is not issued or not renewed in that case they have to come back with some permanent solution okay thank you um i am looking at the um the screening material part of this um and i don't see that it says must be maintained in good condition because sometimes it gets torn up and so i don't know whether we might want to add that but one you know monsoon storm when it gets all ripped up and then it really looks bad so if they're going to screen it i i would think we would want them to maintain it in good condition you're absolutely right uh councilmember and there is a provision in the same line where we talk about uniform color and material and must be maintained in a condition free from i'm looking right at it and i didn't see it okay thank you councilmember clark thank you mayor is that odd now you're on um your last section of the or zoning ordinance states failure to comply with the conditions yadda yadda will be a violation of the ordinance and will be enforced as such so what are the penalty provisions if um this is not maintained mayor uh councilmember clark code compliance uh would be very much aware of every permit that's issued so if they are passing by a site with temporary fencing they can look upon their laptops that they're carrying with them whether it's permitted or not and if it's not then they would do some research on the property ultimately issue a 30-day notice to the property owner whoever is responsible for that that could eventually lead to a final notice which usually gives them an additional 15 days to respond ultimately it's a civil citation all right what does a civil citation entail does it include any kind of monetary fine do you know i would i do not know the details mayor councilmember clark but i believe whatever the civil citations associated with property walls which which which would be in line with fences as well if there is a violation for example extra height then was required uh those those kinds of citations would be similarly applied my only concern is it's it's nice to say what they must do but it's got to have some teeth that if they do not comply that there will be some kind of penalty and hopefully some kind of financial penalty because apparently that's the only thing that most people pay attention to thank you a couple of things let's talk about what councilmember clark was just talking about if it's a temporary fence typically they're rented or leased fences will you have a requirement that the owner of the temporary fence would have panels listed with their names and phone numbers on that is correct they that that would be a requirement that it be listed not only on the permit but also on the fence itself okay so uh with that said if there was some sort of violation with that particular fence panel or multiple would code enforcement call the land owners or would they call the fence company mayor that would be a question they'd have to decide at that time depending on what's wrong if it's that if it's a fence that's tilting over and it's in disrepair it would be with the rental company which has a responsibility to maintain it if it doesn't go any forward then i think the next step would be the owner okay all right and i was hoping that would be your answer uh and so this probably won't have anything to do with this although i think it sort of does i've gotten multiple calls from different owners that have lots where they're getting illegal dumping in on in on their property they're not ready to build on the properties yet the city won't allow them to put fences up to stop the illegal dumping but they're they're in violation if somebody else comes out and dumps on their property if if we won't allow them to put up a permanent fence which i never totally understood that why we wouldn't do that if we won't do that they're allowed only up to 180 days to put a temporary fence up and then they would never be allowed to put that or to get another permit is that correct so mayor it's in line with it with the thought that if we issue a temporary fence so that they can do something on the property that would ultimately solve whatever the issue is behind it if it in fact is a permanent situation where the property ownership or the management cannot handle or is not handling illegal dumping on it or taking measures to clean it up faster then i don't think putting a fence is the ultimate solution the ownership has to take responsibility for occupancy to make sure that uh dumping of that nature doesn't occur if it were a 180 day permit that's issued then it is uh it is a temporary situation and if in fact the owner's problem are more permanent in nature then it has to be a different approach yeah i and and i guess i disagree with you on that um if if somebody is illegally dumping that shouldn't be a penalty for the landowner although i understand that the landowner is responsible for his property but if we don't allow him to put up a fence to prevent that it's a catch-22 for the landowner it's not i don't think it's fair for the landowner i i would like somebody to put some serious thought in to allowing landowners to put up temporary fences to prevent illegal dumping because i think it's a prudent thing to do we nobody wants illegal dumping going on i think it it devalues the the properties around that but by not allowing them to do that we're sort of creating a problem that we don't want i don't know if everybody agrees or not mayor mr obama thank you mayor um to to that point um i don't i've not heard that they're not the vacant property owners are not allowed to put a permanent structure if they are i'd like to hear more about that however with uh with the thought of putting up a temporary fence i think that's reverse blight so you're preventing the dumping which i wouldn't want to see i get it but then the temporary fencing itself over a year's time in a residential area becomes a blight and a nuisance so i think that's what that's where i am with that um but i want to clarify councilmember tomlin chop's question would would this ordinance um address issues for example in my district i've got some vacant properties and residential areas that have been fenced for years 15 years 20 years would it address those so we'd have to revisit those owners say hey we've got a new ordinance or is this just construction period i wasn't clear on your answer mayor and councilmember aldama this ordinance pertains to temporary fencing only so if in your district or wherever those fences have been there for a considerable amount of time chances are they aren't on sandbags they are embedded in the ground and they continue to be used they do not require a permit unless it was exceeding a certain height exceeding six feet by zoning and uh seven feet if it's got any structural uh aspects to it yeah thank you that answers my question and yeah back to the uh temporary fence and on on um and for example right here uh down just down the street here we've got a pension that's been there for years it's a blight people want it gone and so i get what you're saying it prevents the dumping but the temporary fence itself homeowners will complain that it's there too long well but on the other side of it is the the landowner has been told he cannot put up a permanent fence to protect his property from illegal dumping means there's not a building on it which he's saying this doesn't make sense to me i mean and i agree with him and that's why i asked i didn't know that if that's the case we should probably bring that back and find out why because if you have a home you can i don't know if there has to be a home before you can build the block wall but i agree with you there's an issue there so to that question mayor perhaps it will be prudent that staff does some additional research and get back to you and what are the conditions under which permanent fencing can be permitted under certain circumstances if in fact the property as you explain is vacant no structure on it and it's being dumped upon by others yeah and graffiti is an issue but but the dumping seems to be the bigger issue and we've all seen it and unfortunately in pretty much all the districts you had a question well i was just going to suggest that maybe we check into having some other category to accommodate people in that situation and if the graffiti is a problem then maybe we wouldn't want to allow screening on those type of fences so you can you know there's if there's nothing to write on then there's nothing there's paint on there's nothing to paint on so but i think it's a good idea at least to look at because it's an expense i mean i know people who own vacant muscles around different places around the valley and it's an ongoing issue to be hauling off stuff that people dump on their property so thank you okay so your action is consensus consensus to allow us to refine this we'll work in concert with the attorney's office make it a part of the ordinance and introduce it when we bring back to you the unified development code yes okay very good thank you miss power would you introduce item 4 please council item of special interest bus stop and bus advertising mayor members of the council here to provide staff report today will be our transit director kevin link thank you mr phelps good afternoon mayor and council i'm happy to be here this afternoon to talk to you a little bit about bus stop transit advertising and the purpose of today's presentation is to get your feedback and direction on several transit advertising options that we have as a city we'll discuss a little bit about what other cities are doing in the region and the framework that their contracts are built we'll talk about the advertising standards that are used throughout the region mainly the city of phoenix's advertising standards and at the conclusion of the presentation i'd ask for your concurrence or to move forward with a request for information which we would like to develop and put out to the to the region to gain more feedback on market conditions and what they think what the industry leaders will think will work in glendale so we can move forward and i'd also like your concurrence to move forward if we choose to go this route to move to adopt the phoenix standard so there are a number of different media categories that are used and transit advertising on your screen are the four most popular the static are the posters in in the kiosk you see at bus stops um they provide a lot of of exposure and a lot of eyeballs so they are the most popular and they're probably the easiest spots to sell bus advertising is another very popular means you'll see i'm sure everybody's seeing the phoenix buses running up and down arterials with their buses wrapped digital led and audio are the least popular at least for now mainly due to the infrastructure cost the cost up front and the limited exposure that these two options provide so on this slide this shows of the compares the four cities that currently advertise on transit at transit stops and using their buses and stuff so you'll see the number of stops that they make available varies across the four cities the contract term also varies and i'll talk a little bit about more about that in a second so one of the biggest things is that will help determine the amount of revenue that comes back to the city is how the contract is is configured and what's all in and what's not so the maintenance of the actual bus stop the trash collection the power washing that is a big component of it you can see that chandler requires their ad agency to do all of the bus stops in the city cleaning collecting the trash power washing mesa they require their ad agency to do just the stops that have advertising at it and then they they take care of the rest of the stops through a separate city contract peoria maintains all their stops individually and then phoenix their con ad agency maintains the kiosks themselves while the city maintains all their stops through a separate city contract next you'll see the types of advertising that are offered by each city obviously all four of them do offer static phoenix does have the bus robs the bus wraps as they're one of the two providers in the region of fixed route service and chandler has a digital component in their contract with their ad agency however the agency is not elected to use that yet to implement it just due to the small return on their investment and it's just not profitable at this time chandler mason peoria all have cooperative language so if we choose to move forward that would be one avenue one opportunity for us rather than go on our own we could elect to link up with one of their contracts and then the last line is the annual revenue you'll see a quite a disparity and this comes back to what is required of the ad agency in in mesa for example the ad agency purchased 50 shelters and 50 benches purchased them installed them and so they have to amortize the cost of that upfront capital over the life of the contract hence the 10-year contract then at the end of that 10 years the city would retain ownership of those assets phoenix is kind of a separate animal they've got over 1100 bus stops plus 600 buses so their numbers are way you know very high just due to the sheer volume they collect about two and two and two million on the furniture and then about one and a half million on their buses so what factors into revenue generation um first of all the ad policy what would be our policy what businesses what kind of products would we are allowed to advertise the city of phoenix's standards is pretty pretty exhaustive and they have a pretty good list and and but even if we were to adopt that that doesn't mean that we could not you know allow some advertising where they may prohibit number of spaces available currently we have 189 shelters deployed in the city our thought is that we probably won't advertise on all of them the first thing that an ad agency would do once they come on board is to do an analysis they'll go out they'll do a vehicle count they'll find out the heavily traveled corridors and the busy intersections and that's where they'll recommend us placing their ads infrastructure improvements the majority of our arterials are covered on both on all four legs so we wouldn't necessarily need additional capital or assets to deploy but we would have to go back and retrofit because our current situation is with our stops we don't have room for kiosk standalone kiosk so there would be some investment there again we'd have to decide on who maintains and cleans the stops and shelters it is my recommendation that we would maintain and we would retain that and do it to our current contractor our current provider just so we have a little more control and then that would not reduce the amount of revenue that comes in through the ad agency length of contract plays into it of course the market demand after the pandemic hit the market really kind of bottomed out as it did with everything on advertising it's slowly coming back and then restrictions and that has to deal with mainly the flow the funneling of the revenue if we were to advertise on our current fleet of buses that revenue would have to stay in transit as those are federally procured buses and purchase with federal monies whereas that's not the case with our shelter so something to consider so i talked a little bit about the placement with shelters and benches obviously the ad agency wants to use locations that have the highest amount of traffic highest amount of pedestrian traffic and that lends itself to the high traffic town intersection and intersection locations the standalone kiosk we would put adjacent to our bus shelters none of our shelters are currently configured to handle advertising we would either have to buy some new shelters or install separate kiosks and pour the pad and that kind of thing buses buses are certainly as i mentioned very good option currently there are no um advertising in the region on paratransit or circulator fleet that doesn't mean it can't be value our phoenix does use it obviously valley metro the other large provider of fixed route service does not allow advertising on their vehicles currently on their buses they have talked about it but there hasn't been a decision on whether or not to change their policy and then of course our discussion with the the private partner our ad agency once we get them on board that'll help us determine a lot of where to place these advertisements what would be the most profitable for both of us i did mention the phoenix so transit we receive credits from their advertising on their buses in the city of glendale based on the amount of revenue miles they operate so every year we get anywhere between a 40 and 43 000 dollar credit which offsets the cost of that contract and then as i mentioned there's currently no advertising on the valley metro side or the dollar rider circulators so the standard that is used currently by all four cities is the phoenix standard and it's very comprehensive and it's very productive and it's stood to test in the courts there's in all four of those contracts they also have 10 percent of their location set aside to use for city advertising for events news current you know whatever is going on in the city of course the first thing we want to do is sit down with our new vendor and go over the the ad policy all four cities currently allow their ad agency to approve or disapprove the ad content but if there's a somebody wants to come and buy a space an ad space that is gray area or it could be thought of as a questionable area then the ad agency refers that to the city and the city has a final say on whether or not that content is allowed we would have to decide on who would manage this contract in all four cities it's the transportation transit department that monitors those contracts and administers them with the help of their marketing department we checked into the sign ordinance currently there is no sign ordinance or any other ordinance in glendale that would prohibit us advertising either at our stops or on our buses so here's just a few examples the one on the left is a full bus wrap of the city of phoenix and the one on the right is a partial wrap the problem the full wrap is it kind of limits the vision in and out of the buses also wrapping buses tends to can damage the paint so it can reduce the lifespan of a paint on a vehicle if we're wrapping unwrapping wrapping and unwrapping so that's something to consider as far as the full wrap it's interesting to know value metro rail is currently looking at possibly reducing their advertising below the windows on their trains just for the security aspect of seeing in and out of the windows as i mentioned there's no advertising in the region on the smaller buses but here are a couple from around the country again it's the main drawback with advertising on the small cutaways is just a limited space it's a smaller space to put your ad on you can't necessarily read all the the writing sometimes but it doesn't mean it can't be done and we'll certainly look at it and we hope that rfi will give us some more input into that if it could be successful and the other issue that i'll we need to look at and consider is it covers up the brand we just recently rebranded our gus service going with the new colors and the new scheme and the logo and it'll color it'll cover up those that logo and that brand a couple more examples of advertising the one on the left is a standard kiosk in mesa and the one on the right is a two panel channeler again a couple more examples the standalone kiosk and mesa's on the right or on the left excuse me and one on the right again is in chandler these two kiosks were installed way after the original shelter was was installed so it can be done and we just have to make some modifications the example on the left is a kiosk in peoria and then the one on the right is a bench in phoenix oftentimes what ad agencies will do with benches is if they can get a client to buy two or three spaces somewhere in the city they'll throw in a bench for a reduced cost you know just to kind of entice them to to buy some advertising here's a photoshop of what it could look like with one of our current stops in glendale this is at 67th and myrtle and it's a kiosk a standalone kiosk just to give you some idea of what it could look like should we elect to do that and then another example at 67th and glendale on the eastbound side with the kiosk standalone there adjacent to the the shelter so that concludes my presentation i would like to get concurrence moving forward with developing the information or requests for information the rfi to put that out to get some idea on the market conditions of what the industry thinks glendale could support also like to get some input on your thoughts on the phoenix the phoenix advertising whether or not you agree or if we should adopt that one the standards or come up with our own or just get some general feedback on on advertising in general be happy to answer any questions thank you mayor um when i had originally brought this this item and i know other council members have as well i had hoped for the creation of some a revenue generating source but i was looking at the less intrusive um types of advertisement which would be digital and audio although apparently they're they're not in popular use or current use at this time i had considered bus raps and static but i also consider them to be visual pollution and i'm not sure i want to go down that path especially to when you learn that the kiosks will require additional investment and pay money to make money in this particular instance doesn't seem very proven um if the majority of council decides to pursue this i would like to keep the digital and audio option in even though they may not be pursued at this point but at this point i'm not interested in wrapping our buses or establishing kiosks and and it did bring to mind another um if we're going to go down that route of wrapping things wrapping vehicles then we ought to consider sanitation trucks and city vehicles cars as well but at this point i'm no longer interested in moving forward thank you thank you mayor um so i i think that there's wrapping buses is not the only option and one thing one thing we i would would hope we would consider is that phoenix buses come into glendale and the residents and the riders don't know the difference whether it's our bus valley metro bus phoenix bus so buses with advertising on them are operating in glendale already because phoenix comes into glendale so um but i'm interested in and now mesa didn't generate a lot of revenue but you said something that really caught my interest is that they um basically did an in-kind i think for for shelters and things like that i would be very interested in that because we've you know we've opined over our desire to have i mean a lot of our bus stops are literally a sign in the dirt that's it so if we could you know generate revenue to cover the cost of upgrading our bus stops um i would be willing to you know put some signs up and put some things on buses to get that done for our residents so um you know i'm i'm in favor of we're discussing this as uh at the board at valley metro i don't know where it's gonna go but i would be at least interested i don't do you have any numbers for glendale um as far as like the number of bus stops and what the possible did you run any uh performer to see like what would be the possibility based on i mean it's hard to know what everybody else is doing but i know phoenix you said i was aware phoenix is generating two million on infrastructure and a million and a half now we don't have nearly the the miles that they do or the bus stops that they do but you know the the cost for us to provide transit continues to go up so quickly and that and it's an important thing that we have to deliver to our residents that i my personal opinion is we should be open to generating revenue to a lot offset the cost where we can the paratransit program was supposed to be a couple hundred thousand dollars and it's up to a million and a half or so right now just to provide paratransit so um and you know there's federal mandates and you know the region decided that we were gonna we were gonna offer this service and and but it's expensive so i would at least like to take the next step forward and investigating and how we can better if we look at it from the perspective of how do we better serve our residents especially those that use transit in the city and we can provide bus shelters and other things that we're a long way from being able to do i'd like to at least pursue this at least to the next step and mayor councilman tolman chop thank you for those comments i i think that's you know a lot of that might be flushed out through the rfi you know if we go ahead and even if we issue the rfi it doesn't mean we have to move forward with the advertising program but it would give us an idea of what the market could bear you know we we've talked to a number of agencies advertising agencies in the region and the the two corridors that always come up or bell road and 59th avenue they they strongly think that those corridors could do well selling advertising so and and there's you know there's no question as to why just with the traffic counts and the eyeballs that are on the street so those are one of the two and then camelback and bethany also so i think if we go forward with the rfi we can flush some of that out we can see you know get an idea of what we're looking at we can certainly look at upgrading our shelters um like i said most of our arterials all four legs are covered we've got shelters on all four legs of our arterial so that the infrastructure's there but that doesn't mean that we couldn't upgrade you know go to a more modern shelter of course that would reduce the income because they have to amortize sure so but thank you yeah and a comment that i have thinking about what councilmember thomas had just said i do agree uh and i think all of us are aware of spots that really should have better bus stops uh benches and things uh but uh i seriously enough thought and i think you probably know this i fought for a long time to try to get the benches to where they have those dividers in them so people can't sleep on them and transportation's done a great job this last two or three years of really starting to make that happen i don't want to go backwards on that i want to make sure we keep doing that and i mayor and council i i've neglected to mention in the that could that could limit our advertising on benches but i don't i don't think benches are that as far as advertising goes if people are sitting at it you're not going to see the ads anyway so the the vandal bars that you speak of that could limit our advertising on benches but realistically the mono the money and the revenue is in the panels the kiosk and then on buses the other thing with buses is you know our circulators are pretty much limited in the geographical area that they operate so again the rfi might tell us yeah advertising on gusts might be a good thing or it might not be just because of the limited exposure in the geographical area so it's all something we'll look at well and with that said i understand on the circulators the concern about blocking the windows off for visibility for the safety of the driver and the passengers i agree but i i do think having the back of that bus or circulator as a spot i think it's something that should be discussed at the very very back it's a it's a great platform that doesn't mean that you lose your logos onto both both of the sides of it and then one final thing we have a a few places where the bus stops are almost shelters and and it encourages people to set up camps and and i i would hope that whatever you do that that they're designed in a way that that will not happen uh that they're open rather than than shelters uh to prevent people from from setting up home thank you mayor i um to stop right over here at 59th and glenn right you know it's a custom bus stop and we've had an issue there for years so we removed the back the side panels in the back panel that seemed to have helped um but will certainly any new design that we would look at or look at implementing or coming up with we'll certainly keep that in mind how you know does it allow for or you know help with keeping the transits out or you know so absolutely we'll keep that in mind right mr milner uh thank you mayor um i agree with many comments have been stated here today in particular i agree with the comment about advertising pollution i mean i'm looking at your city comparison i mean mesa brings in 25 000 peoria 32 000 i'm not sure that if that's the kind of numbers that we're going to be bringing in that it's worth having that kind of advertising pollution in our city however if it's significant i like the idea of using the monies to improve our stops in other areas but it's got to be significant enough to to justify in my mind you know the advertising pollution as as was coined here to to accomplish that thank you anyone else here um thank you given the low dollar numbers that are returned doesn't make me very excited about going down this road i am willing to learn more about it and if if uh if you think the market would you know be willing to do a informational uh report for us we don't have to decide today we can always get more information make a better decision but just for the sake of you know discussion here i'm not just there's no money in this and it is a burden on our residents and i'm not thrilled with it maybe we can find some other funding mechanism to add in those bus stops that several of us think are important to have thank you mayor thank you yeah i feel it's a an endeavor worth worth traveling um so i heard rfi it's worth sending rfi out and see what we don't know so i'm supportive of going forward with that thank you i i will not be entirely accurate on my numbers but i'll be pretty close i believe we've got over 500 bus stops in the city and approximately under 200 have been improved there are a lot of bus stops that are simply a sign in the dirt but i will say that after nagging for a couple of years we do have a bus stop improvement program embedded in our cip it it doesn't allocate enough dollars and it's not fast enough but at least there is recognition of the need to upgrade bus stops and i i i again uh i guess i agree mostly with councilmember turner and councilmember malnar it would have to be a significant return on investment for me to even consider that and and also i would like it as council member thomas indicated any revenues generated directly and specifically only to the improvement of bus stop shelters but but at this point of first blush i i don't think it's worth it at this point thank you mayor thank you um just based on and i i mean they would have to do a study but if you're looking at peoria they have 30 bus stops we have over 500 so most of them are not usable but but what i'm saying is i i i'm hopeful that the amount of money that we would be able to generate would be somewhere in the three 400 000 somewhere maybe in that neighborhood because of bell road because of um and and based on the you know the the research that we've already done at valley metro but we we don't know that so until we don't know that but i mean i i believe it's going to be at least probably well over 200 000 probably over 300 000 that we're going to be able to generate which could go a long way every year and adding bus shelters and things like that so we don't know the number but we do have we we have fixed route service in glendale and we have a lot of bus stops so um you know i look forward to seeing uh what you bring us back thank you and if if the consensus is to move forward with the rfi the plan is that we would bring the results back to council the results of the rfi either through a memo or another workshop study session it's just to give you the information that we we collected and what the industry says as far as opportunities in glendale so we wouldn't necessarily move forward with an advertising program immediately we would wait and see the results of the rfi based upon the discussion that you've heard here today some of the things that people would like to to understand better yes sir yes sir mayor yes i would comment and say that i would think it would necessitate a future workshop you can't achieve consensus by a memo and as you can see this council is not entirely sold on the idea at this point and it would depend be dependent upon the results of your investigation after you get the information required yes ma'am all right consensus yeah yeah okay okay thank you sir thank you okay we should be up to number five by now uh item five has been pulled from the agenda so now we're up to number six 2022 proposed water and sewer rate public outreach update mayor members of the council here to provide staff report will be assistant city manager vicky rios and water services director craig johnson uh thank you mr phelps good afternoon mayor members of council before we start i'd like to just do a brief recap of the meeting we had on june the 8th on our water and sewer rates just to recap we did a detailed explanation to council on the rate study we provided two recommendations on the water sewer rates option one and option two and we did we presented our public plan for the public outreach uh council decision was at that time to move forward with option two which is basically the level combined 3.7 percent increase from fy 22 to fy26 and to proceed with the public outreach plan so today we're going to update you on the public outreach plan and we're going to be showing you uh presenting the proposed option two again for you to review and then we're going to be seeking council consensus and direction for going forward with the proposed five-year rate plan to be considered at the october 26th voting meeting finally we'll go over the next steps in the process before i start on the public outreach update i i want to take a minute and i want to congratulate the public affairs department especially sue bredding and her group without them we couldn't have done this we learned a lot with them from them going through this process because we were not used to doing this type of a pres of a outreach and i think it was very successful and i'm really proud of the work that they did for us guiding us through this process um so in working with public affairs they helped us develop the public outreach plan using a new approach which is leveraging our outreach through social media what the first thing we did was is we developed our dedicated web page specifically for water sewer rate increases we had information on the public meeting in there we had the information on the council workshops and the voting meetings we had frequently asked questions with answers we did an informational video staff worked with public affairs and and they produced a great video that lasts about two and a half minutes that highlights uh the value of water and also it informs our viewers uh on the valley water excuse me and we also have a customized uh email address water rates glendaleaz.com all of this is still active on the web page and we are still getting hits occasionally on the on the web page the also what they helped us to do is they designed posters for us which were really eye-catching and they did a good job on those posters and we pre we installed those at public areas in the inside the city buildings customer service and building the adult center all of our libraries foothills rec center and aquatic center and the glendale community center so and outside all the elevators in city hall we also distributed 4 500 electronic newsletters to subscribers who uh who received council districts the glendale uh chamber and the registered neighborhood newsletters so there's about 4 500 of those and then we also changed the online hold the on hold message in in in the city's phone number so people could get information on that from that also continuing on we also did press releases to multiple television outlets radio stations and print and web media newspapers we conducted staff interviews with two radio stations we utilized the social media that you see up there heavily and postcards with public information were mailed over over uh sixty thousand of our services addresses and this is this is the postcard to win hopefully everybody on the council got one of these now the public meeting format prior to july the 27th in our last public outreach that we performed for water and sewer rates back in 2017 back then we did the we had four venues and we did our standard open house which we had easels and we stood around and we answered questions from people that came to view what was going on we did those in the evening hours and we did them on on weekend time frame and so we presume citizens were not being at work at that time and would be able to attend the the meeting results were low turnout so we expected to see more people and we um we were all there and we were ready to answer questions but our turnout was pretty low over the past year we've gotten accustomed to attending virtual meetings that have gained popularity for a host of reasons tune in at your home or in your office uh there's no travel involved uh and it's convenience to watch it at your leisure and i think you'll see from the views that that was a pretty good plan so on july the 27th we hosted the virtual meeting at 2 p.m here in the chambers and the meeting was live streamed on facebook youtube and channel 11. the meeting was hosted by public affairs assistant director sue bretting we had two presenters because we made a presentation on a uh on a powerpoint and we'll give you the subjects of those in a minute and then we had a panel of three people that answered questions staff monitored the social platforms before during and after the presentation so we could gather up answers to questions while we were still present uh in the meeting so the i the items we covered in the uh in the meeting were water and sewer systems rate objectives operating and maintenance expenses water supply infrastructure improve improvements and rehabilitation the 2022 proposed rates and rate comparisons the value of water assistance programs next steps and questions and answers the uh we had some public show up for the meeting was there were around 20 there um and i thought that was pretty good they they had a number of questions and they were very good well thought out questions but here's the here's the important information social media views we had over 202 youtube views we've had 696 facebook views so we're close to 900 views totally total and we've not seen numbers of attendees in any in any of our in-person weekend meetings before to follow up on our questions and answers i wanted to divide them into some common themes so the common theme for the for these were again well thought out uh not so much concentrated on why are you raising rates or whatever i think the explanation through the presentation was uh was adequate because we didn't get any direct questions like that what we did get was what about your water capacity do we have enough water to make it through the drought we have projects like crystal lagoons coming are we okay with doing that or whatever so we explained to them our 100 year assured water supply in our portfolio and how it's built and how it's divided up between srp and cp and and our well water and then we also shared with them that we've been preparing for a drought for a long time so and and the drought has been we're going on 22 years now and drought the state of arizona so we are prepared uh we shared with them that we do have the drought management plan and um that's and i didn't get i didn't seem to get follow-up questions to that so i assumed they understood what we were how we were uh going with that and then with respect to crystal goons i told them that chris lagoon's yes it's a 20 million gallon uh lake that will be filled but uh 20 million gallons is a lot of water i'm not going to argue with anybody on that but in the big scheme of things that's a salt river project um area served by salt root project we've got 55 000 acre feet which equates to about 18 billion gallons and off in authorizations from srp that's a 20 million gallon which is about 60 acre feet and that's about it's less than one percent of our overall allocation uh we did share with him that we are very interested in the engineering there we're in we're interested in their evaporation techniques and how they're going to do it and so we're very interested in that so whenever we do get an economic development project in here we always look at their sewer demands mansion always look at their water demands to make sure that it fits within our expectations for the area where they're going to build that seemed to be accepted from that person who's asking that question the um the next question came up a theme was uh using a federal infrastructure funding i think that's our part of funds and i'll let vicky kind of she kind of handled that one yes mayor council i handled this we did have a couple of questions about that about the use of those federal funds and what my answer to those questions was that we're still looking at the available uses or the allowed uses of that and that we'd be meeting with council and that would be um part of your decision making would be how we were going to use those federal funds so again that seemed to satisfy it was asked a couple of times and we just answered that we're still looking at it and that you'd be making decisions about that uh in the near future council member tom nice mayor if i could just make the point quickly because i have been working on this issue the amount of money that's owed to the water services fund uh leftover from the transfer to the nhl is 13 million 458 750 i think i think i have that memorized by now um so and there are ongoing conversations and when arpa is brought back i have i will have some information that i want to share um on on possibly um arpa is for sure eligible for water infrastructure so we could probably reduce the amount we would need to bond for and save money that way so but i just wanted to give you the amount of money that that because it was spread across solid waste landfill and water services that's the amount still owed to water services thank you oh and then in addition to that gosh this is really loud now for me um uh in addition to that there were a lot of questions not a lot but some of the people had specific questions about their bills their water bill and we repeatedly deferred them to ask them to speak directly with our customer service people so we had paul lopez from our customer service manager there he was able to meet with those people after the meeting talk with them about it and resolve all of all of their issues and so people did come up and talk about their personal water accounts and again we answered those after the meeting we didn't want to get into too much personal discussion during the open meeting but he's handled all of those now mayor council we also got a chance to educate people they had some questions on how did they if they find a leak in the yard what did they do how's that work we basically shared with them on on how to inspect your own meter and who to call and and we'll come right out and we'll help them with if they've got a high usage on their meter and they can't and it's unexplainable then we'll help them find the answer to that and then we had one question that came up uh on elderly and disabled or people on fixed income and vicki shared with them our programs as you all know you approved fifty thousand dollars out of water services to go to the cap office and then there's the cap offices off it has got a lot of other opportunities for people who are on fixed income and being able to help them so just as a reminder to council this is what the current rate proposed rate plan looks like on the left-hand side it shows you what the rates would be on a combined basis and a percentage basis for both water and sewer and then on the i'm sorry on the left-hand side and then on the right-hand side it equates that to a dollar amount per month for a customer using about 9000 gallons of water we did answer a few questions at the meeting about people who used more or less water than that again if you use less water your increase on a monthly basis will be less and if you're using significantly more water your increase on a monthly basis would be more because we bill based on consumption and so that's information that was also presented this is the same information that was presented to counsel before so this is the plan that we'd be moving forward with at this point the next step in the process would be you do have an item on agenda tonight to consider filing what is called or or approving what is called a notice of intention to increase water rates that doesn't mean you're increasing the water rates it means you're informing the public that you're considering it and setting the date for the public hearing so that they have plenty of notice it also lets them know that they can look at a the rate study that the city has done and the justification for those rates it will be on file in the clerk's office and it's also available on the city it will also be available on the city's website and set the date for the public hearing and then if we move forward with that the date for that public hearing would be october 26th and at that point again the public can come forward we're leaving the website up and so the public can still comment through the website or ask questions and we've been answering those questions as they come in and then the formal vote would also or could also take place on october 26th and if we move forward with that timeline the rates would be effective for january 1 of 2022. you have anything good thank you mayor um i do want to say that i wasn't able to watch the entire public meeting but i watched the second half of the public meeting and you guys did an excellent job i want to say kudos to you guys i mean some of the some of those um questions were you know um they kept i just think you guys did a really good job i don't want to get into the personal about the people that came there but thank you because you were extremely patient and i mean it's it's a com how we bill for water is a complicated issue and a lot of our users don't understand how we build so it gets really confusing and you guys showed an extreme amount of patience so thank you for that i did want to ask um if i a lot of our customers pay their water bill online and so is there a way that we could work with it or something to have some sort of pop-up or something when they log in to pay their water bill um because i know i think there's something going on in the connection but a lot of people just get an email that you know they don't they they just pay their bill online they log in and pay their bill and i think we're getting lowering the amount of paper that we're sending out too so i just don't know if there's a way to do that but i and i don't even know what the percentage is of people who pay online but i think it's quite a few i've had a lot of people contact me recently with the new system trying to get in um so is there is there a way to notify because they're not going to probably they're probably just going to go where they go to pay their water bill and not see anything else mayor members of the council i can certainly check with it on that it has been sitting on the city's main page for a while as a notification to go to that dedicated website i'm not sure when we'd be taking that down but i can make sure that it's a headline as well we're also required to let the public know at least 60 days before a rate increase or that we're contemplating a rate increase or that you are and so there's an area on the city's website there as well and we can make sure that those are prominent so people can continue to see them the people that are going to pay their bills see the the header on the website as well so i'll make sure that those are available and i'll see if we can do a pop-up i'm not sure about that okay but because your browser remembers where you went so you may not take you to the home page either if you don't log into the city website frequently it'll probably just take you to where whatever you typed in last wherever you ended up last time so and i maybe i'm mistaken i thought that you could opt out of paper billing um may or members of council yes you can opt out of paper billing um and in fact if you pay your bill online now um you have to opt in or opt out of paper billing so but i'll check into it i don't i don't know all right we did recently upgrade that system and i'm not sure if it has that capabilities okay thank you good uh yes thank you mayor i i just wanted to clarify the question that was asked or that this council member thomachoff clarified the use of the federal monies to go towards paying off the debt that it's owed to the water services there's been some concerns by some residents that that we should be using that money to pay that off and therefore we might not be able that may not need as big of a an increase so could you address that a little bit more in detail as to why we can or cannot do that so mayor members of the council we cannot use the federal money the way i understand it to pay off the loan so to speak or that inter-fund loan what we can do however is pay for some portion of water infrastructure if if that were the desire to do that so we could use it to pay for water infrastructure that's one of the allowed uses but we cannot use it directly to pay off the loan what you would have to do is pay for the infrastructure and then just stop paying for the loan if that makes sense so we could use the monies to uh to have as councilmember thomas off suggested have a lower bond because many of the infrastructure we're going to be bond bonding for we would have a lower amount of bond if we were to allocate money from the federal government into that which would reduce overall property tax but would not affect the rates is that correct mayor members of the council in my opinion again and i've i've spoken to council member tom chaff about this the the wisest financial move to make would indeed be if you pay for a piece of infrastructure that the utility was going to bond fund for you would reduce the amount that you bond fund those are not paid by property taxes these particular bonds they're paid by the water user fees and so there is a scenario under which you could bond fund for less when we looked at that and i'd be happy to share it i've passed that along to council member thomas because she asked for it it has not a large impact on these rates and the reason is that for the water utility 13 million dollars seems like a lot of money and i would never say it's not a lot of money but it's a very small portion of their overall debt portfolio and also would be a very small portion of their uh revenue and so it it it has some impact but it doesn't have a very large impact on the um rate scenarios that we have shared with council okay thank you actually she was in action thank you mayor at this point i'm still inclined to vote no on the on raising the rates for water and sewer i will be requesting a future meeting with staff to discuss this further tonight i will vote to support the authorization of further consideration of the issue so i don't want my yes vote tonight to be considered as a wholehearted approval of the water rate increase there there are a couple of things that that still bother me about the water rate increase or the rate increases that are proposed one is the issue of compounding yeah maybe an average person with a 9 000 gallon water bill will see an increase of a dollar 77 but that is added to the bill so that when the next 3.7 is uh imposed the following year it's with that additional money that that resident is already paying i'm not sure there's no other way for me to to describe it at this point is but is seeming to be quite unfair so i i would like to see if at all possible that we figure out a way to adjust the rate to to allow for compounding on an annual basis that occurs with customers i also know a lot of people whose bill is much larger than 9 000 gallons a month and we heavily publicize that 9 000 gallons a month as an average user but i think it's in terms of our best interest in full disclosure to also as thoroughly disclose and as widely disclose what happens to a user who uses a lot more than 9 000 gallons a month because i think the the dollar amount is significantly different on a monthly basis so um i've thought about this long and hard i've not come to a fast decision yet but as i said at this point i'm inclined not to support the increases and also when i do talk to staff about this another item that i want from them is how much of the rate increase goes toward needed infrastructure upgrade and how much of the water rate increase will be applied to perhaps more ethereal things such as creating redundancy or things that are not absolutely critically necessary to a and mr johnson i think you you know what i mean so um those are those are questions that i will have for staff when we have an opportunity to discuss this in the future thank you thank you mayor now it's on okay um i just want to circle back because i do have the information in fact we just spoke about it this morning about if we were to apply the 13 million 458 750 to infrastructure water infrastructure that we would not have to bond for over the the life of the debt which is i think 17 years left on it it would save about 3.9 million in interest paid in the enterprise fund for water it would also save the general fund 1.3 million dollars because the general fund is paying interest on paying the money back so the total of that is 5.2 million dollars over time and we refinance bonds all the time to save money so i mean it's well it really won't have any effect on there's no way for it to have an effect on the water rates that doesn't really the math doesn't work for that it's so insignificant um but it would have a definite effect on long-term paying interest on on paying that basically we bonded ourselves to pay it back so when we talk about arpa money there'll be more information but since i have the information in front of me i wanted to make sure that i shared it thank you anyone else okay so do we have a consensus to move forward for tonight yes yes okay and then uh the following uh october 26 meeting yes all right all right thank you that's all that we needed thank you very much miss bauer would you move item seven please presentation regarding city code chapter 25 desert landscaping conditions mayor members of city council here to provide the final staff report this afternoon rick st john deputy city manager here goes good afternoon mayor members of the council this is a conversation that was had in the code review committee before the summer break bringing this discussion to you today this is the recommended language from the code review committee on minor adjustment landscape maintenance there is a key component to the to the new language that talks about natural desert landscape and i think that's where most of our conversation is going to be today if i can advance the slides there we go so we are seeking council approval today for the proposed language from the code review committee and i'll go through that language in in detail the current language talks about grass or weeds in excess of six inches a lot of times with desert landscaping there becomes a blight issue but the grass or weeds do not exceed six inches and so becomes difficult to enforce code review committee would like to change the language so that we can address those yards that have an abundance of grass within their rock making it difficult at times to determine whether our intent is to either have a gravel front yard or a desert landscape or if in fact they are trying to grow grass and i have a couple of demonstrations some pictures that demonstrate some of these things by apologies i clicked on a wrong button so here is an example of a lot of grass that's growing in the desert landscape however it does not exceed six inches and so it is difficult for code to enforce another couple of examples and again another few examples that we see and these are fairly common within our community so again the new language from the code review committee would say that a person shall not allow their own grass weeds to grow in a manner that such conditions create a blighting issue or condition or may harbor infest infestations are likely to become a hazard of the public health or safety also added to the language desert landscape property is property that is primarily composed of crushed stone aggregate stone pavers and native desert plants and again these are some examples of native desert plants that can be purchased at your local plant shops nurseries if you will including home depot lows and other places that sell these types of things and so the language as proposed by by the code review committee would allow those native desert plants to grow within the aggregate rock area and i know that at times that has caused some concerns for members of our community but if this council were to get consensus for the language as it stands in this presentation then a lot of those natural desert plants would be allowed and with that i'm happy to answer any questions again we are seeking consensus good thank you mayor um i just would like to lend my support to this proposed new ordinance and its languages written as a member of the council subcommittee that dealt with this i know it was raised there as an issue and i can see it as an issue throughout my district certainly in a grass lawn grass or weeds at the six inch level is probably where we should be enforcing but if you have desert landscaping then that's what it should be and not not be dealing with the encroachment of bermuda grass or other things like that it creates a blighted condition thank you thank you mayor um and i i'm in support of this the only thing that i'm i might be concerned about is the term native desert plants because people have lantana and they have other things that are hardy desert plants but they may not be native desert plants so i don't know whether you know we should just say desert landscape or something because you know people do i don't think bougainvilleas and a lot of stuff that you find in a in a desert landscape that are easy to grow that require little or no maintenance um aren't are not native necessarily native landscape but i think it's uh it's a good thing and i did have a question actually on slide um do we slide six the one on the right it appears well some of the other landscape is dead too but it appears that the person probably sprayed roundup or something and then just left it is that a code violation uh mayor council member tom wilshoff that would not be a code violation but we would ask them to remove the dead landscape to include the weeds that have dried up so mayor if i could continue so does our code say you must remove dead landscape there are mayor uh council member tom chaff there are provisions of the code that talk about removing dead and uh i'll just say dead landscape okay items all right i think because it kind of cracks me up he's like well i sprayed the weeds now i'm done so all right thank you anyone else your consensus to move forward go ahead jamie yeah thank you mayor um so with regard to the um the desert the native desert plants that is a really tough issue there so there's desert plants that you can plant and then by seedlings will fall and regerminate that's probably okay mayor councilmember aldama would be under this language and then there's those native plants that just come in by either bird dropping or by just the wind and grow on their own and they're desirable by the homeowner but maybe not by the neighbors or those allowed and how do we determine them mayor councilmember aldamer those would also be allowed and the determination is difficult uh what we try to do is research the type of plant and or flower that it is and then we research whether or not it is native to arizona desert landscaping we look at nurseries such as home depot lows and the nurseries that exist we bring pictures we talk to the people that work in those trees to get a determination from them at the end we really just try to figure out is this a weed that we should be enforcing against or is this a natural desert plant that we would have a very difficult time getting through our court system thank you uh mr saint john i think we need to identify what is an actual weed not necessarily what is a plan i think that's an easier route just my opinion i recently had i sent you an email on a a couple on a neighbor dispute on a weed it in fact was a weed not a native plant looked like one had a nice flower on it but it was an actual weed so you know it's one of those tough things but i'd like to see us identify what is a weed and then when we report out that's a weed within the city so thank you yeah the discussion up here is they i think they just legalized weeds it's all legal put it in your yard yeah so you know obviously obviously uh the definition of a weed is if you want it or you don't want it if you're growing grass and and your grass grows well that's what you want if you're growing or not growing if you have desert landscaping granite and grass grows then that becomes a weed so correct yeah difficult too i think the definition of a weed if it's changed is a plant out of place i think that is the day there is a definition of weed in the code i'm not i can't recall it offhand but there is a definition there we can certainly look at it and make sure that it's sufficient yeah yeah i i do think councilmember thomas chop's uh question on uh native i think that could be problematic so i'll figure out a different way to to identify that quit thank you mayor if the proposed language will take care of the situations that are shown to us in the uh slides in today's presentation these photographs mayor councilmember turner they would if they will do that that's 99 of the problems in my district so i'll be happy to have that accomplished and we can haggle over weeds versus native plants at some other date case by case and chances thank you city manager report mayor members of council i have two uh quick items to brief you on uh first the the american association of airport executives which represents over 7 000 professional executives both uh domestically and internationally each year select a distinguished uh service award uh as part of the what they do and uh very uh proud to say that uh our own carl newman who is our glendale airport administrator was named the 2022 recipient for the american association of airport executives distinguished service award and so i hope if you get a chance reach out in to congratulate him we're very proud of the work that he's doing and he's uh he's been accomplishing a lot at the airport um in his short time and so again i encourage you to reach out and to congratulate him the second item um i wanted to talk to you real quickly recently i had an opportunity to meet with some officials from asm as you know asm manages our gila river arena but they manage arenas and stadiums all around the world we had some time ago it asked them to kind of begin the thought process of what would it take to perhaps make improvements to the gila river arena that would keep it competitive and com and compelling uh going into the future and uh so uh you know a good example being uh recently the uh now called the footprint footprint arena which is where the phoenix suns play went through an enhancement to their facility which kind of made it feel almost like a brand new facility so they have been working for three or four months they invited a number of world recognized architectural firms that specialize in arena and stadium design to come visit the arena and to maybe propose ideas and concepts that uh that if if the city were to go forward uh that would show how we could make improvements to the um to the arena so uh several weeks ago i was it was a challenge to get everything kind of scheduled i was able to view uh five uh firms uh just kind of concepts there nothing is binding on this it was just their ideas of what we could do with our arena the encouraging news is that it appeared there was a high level of excitement that the gila river arena has a has i know we use this term a lot but really has really good bones at which to work with sometimes when you go to renovate a stadium or an arena they're just everything is is wrong and you it becomes very very expensive to really to to really improve it but there seem to be a high level of interest that they think that when the time comes and if the time comes the city wants to invest back into the arena that we should be able to get some really exciting uh concepts and be able to do it in a way that still has a return on investment back to the city so uh at some time this fall they may begin a more formal procurement process to see if they can identify a single firm obviously we would come back and talk to the council with those ideas and concepts but it would just be kind of a next step in terms of doing that but again very exciting i think just to know that these firms the and these are firms that have designed some of the most um uh you know well-known recognized arenas and stadiums in the world really felt like that even though we're you know 18 years old in the gila river arena that we have a lot to work from in the event that the council would like to move forward and with that that does conclude my report all right thank you city attorney's report no report thank you all right our next item is agenda council items a special interest each council member has the opportunity to indicate topics they'd like to have discussed by this council at a future workshop and i'm going to start off tonight or this afternoon uh last week i had an opportunity to meet with uh family promise uh with one of the owners of ralph's salon and then also with ted taylor which operates family promise and then the legacy foundation gerald wisnick to talk about opportunity for the city to start addressing homelessness within families so i have an address of 6242 north 59th avenue which is the first christian church they are willing and wanting to work with uh family promise and the legacy foundation to work on this so my request is that staff research that and uh uh at the very very first early opportunity get back with us in and let us know if there's any questions that the staff may have i can go into more detail but that's pretty much what my ask is so we'll go ahead and go to councilmember odama thank you mayor excuse me mayor uh brought to me this this item because it lies in my district i just want to lean support on that item of interest in preventing homelessness in the city of glendale yes i'd like to ask our city staff to look into creating an ordinance that would be titled a slum lord ordinance that would prevent property owners from creating an environment that's substandard we have a couple locations but i i'm sure if we dig in deep they're probably all over the place but they're not allowed in glendale and i'd like to see an ordinance created on that thank you that's remember clerk nothing at this time mayor thank you councilmember melner uh nothing today mayor thank you councilmember yes mayor i have a couple things one thing i have is kind of tagged on to what you were speaking about i'd like to have a conversation a whole workshop to know more and understand more about our loyalty loitering ordinance overnight camping ordinance and and and erecting an enclosed structure in a in a public right-of-way what is does our ordinance that we have address that are we able to by what are the ninth circuit court ruling but i'd like to have a discussion about are we doing everything we can at least um and we're moving and trying to offer more services we've got we're moving in that direction but um we've been probably all of us to cities where quickly the tent communities get out of control so i'd like to have that number one and then the other thing i have is um we received the first installment of the arpa funds on may 24th and it was 29 million 758 305 dollars and 50 cents uh we're gonna get another i believe it comes by wire i think probably um next may may of 2022. i believe that departments have been asked to send to the city manager's office their what they what their vision is for for this arpa money but we have not been asked so i would like to get that on a workshop so the council can offer some input and have a conversation on our vision and where we think that the money um should be uh focused on and with this at least initial arpa distribution thank you councilmember turner uh thank you mayor and i would certainly concur with councilmember tom schoff's uh last uh cia cosi request um and then in addition for myself as a request um several years ago for quite some time the city had a commission on neighborhoods or neighborhoods commission and they had the opportunities to provide grants and do i think activities in our neighborhoods i think it was around 2015 or 16 after the recession when there was no money to be spent on that that the the commission was disbanded i would like to have a briefing paper at the minimum of what that commission did and and the kinds of things they accomplished um where the funds came from and so that the council might consider re-establishing that now that we are no longer in the financial straits we were at that time thank you pleasure um i'd just like to join with your requests mayor okay thank you okay so can i get a motion going to the executive session second a motion and a second to an executive session any discussion hearing and all in favor but i all right any opposed voting appears the ice habit do have council meetings recess we'll meet right back here in our normal exec room you