[0:01] hello and thank you for joining me for
this second Community Workshop as part
[0:06] of the town of Carefree General Plan
update I'm Matt klysico with Michael
[0:10] Baker International we are a planning
and design firm that was hired by
[0:14] Carefree to assist in facilitating this
town-wide planning effort as the slide
[0:19] shows we conducted our second in-person
Community workshop for this project on
[0:24] April 26th consequently this virtual
presentation is provided to offer
[0:30] Carefree community members who are
unable to join us for for this meeting
[0:34] an alternative way to stay involved and
share your feedback
[0:42] now the purpose of this particular
meeting is twofold first it's primarily
[0:48] to share Community feedback particularly
in regard to the community survey that
[0:53] was put out as part of this General Plan
update but it's also to gain some final
[0:59] input from residents so that we can
establish a foundation for the
[1:04] preparation the actual drafting of the
general plan elements or chapters so
[1:10] this is a very important Workshop in
terms of getting that input from
[1:15] community members to give us a firm
foundation to start putting pen to paper
[1:23] now if you joined us for our first
Community Workshop this graphic is going
[1:28] to be very familiar to you if you
haven't joined us for any previous
[1:34] General Plan update workshops
um you can see that this particular
[1:39] graphic provides an overview of our
general plan process I'm not going to go
[1:45] over it in great detail but for those
that have not viewed this we basically
[1:51] break out the general plan process into
uh four distinct phases we have our
[1:57] recognize enrich and Achieve phases and
then engagement is intertwined
[2:03] throughout the general plan process you
can see the various steps that are
[2:08] associated with each phase on the slide
and the yellow triangle identifies that
[2:15] we're now getting into the early stages
of our enriched phase which is where we
[2:20] would start drafting the general plan as
I mentioned on the previous slide so
[2:25] some of the key takeaways from our
recognized phase which we just completed
[2:30] is our our community Workshop one that
was
[2:35] facilitated back in February so we had
good turnout for that and gained some
[2:42] um helpful and very informative uh
responses from community members at that
[2:47] particular meeting we also conducted
some pop-up workshops where we set up a
[2:52] booth outside the post office and spoke
with uh residents as they collected
[2:58] their mail we had two of those one at
the end of March and the next the other
[3:05] at the beginning of April
um and all of that information
[3:11] um was
added to our our information that we
[3:17] gained uh through our
in-person events whether it be
[3:24] um our Workshop or our online efforts in
terms of our community survey so all of
[3:31] it is being collected and you being
utilized to inform our writing efforts
[3:38] um the last point that I'll make on this
particular slide is uh please keep in
[3:43] mind that this General plan process
doesn't just end at the achieve phase
[3:48] while we do take the plan to the
Planning Commission for recommendation
[3:52] and then to Planning Commission for or
to counsel I should say for approval
[3:59] ultimately the plan is not finalized
until it's placed on what we're
[4:05] currently working towards is the
November 2024 ballot for final voter
[4:10] ratification so unlike any other
planning or community-led effort within
[4:16] the town this General plan is actually
finalized by a vote of uh Town residents
[4:24] and so it's very important for us to
hear your input and for you to stay
[4:29] engaged with this process because at the
end we're going to ask you to hopefully
[4:34] validate the plan at The Ballot Box and
we want to make sure that the plan
[4:40] incorporates the components of the
community that are our most important
[4:46] um to to residents
so here's
[4:54] here's some of the events and efforts
that we've conducted it's by no means
[4:58] comprehensive we have several other
social media postings and articles and
[5:06] emails and HOA announcements and flyers
that have all gone out but these are
[5:11] just some images of our community
Workshop number one our pop-up booth at
[5:17] the post office and our project webpage
all making sure that we provide those
[5:24] different touch points within the
community so that residents can join in
[5:29] the process
um based off their uh busy calendars and
[5:35] in a way that is most convenient for
them whether that be in person
[5:39] online or by other means
[5:44] now the format of this particular
Workshop was broken out over three
[5:49] stations and so
um after I go through these stations
[5:53] you're more than welcome to jump right
into the virtual workshop and and view
[5:58] those boards and then answer the
questions Associated uh with that
[6:02] particular uh station
or you're more than welcome to stay with
[6:08] me and I will be after this particular
slide walking through some of the
[6:12] results of the survey
um but overall the stations uh focus on
[6:18] one the survey results so station one
there's not too much feedback it's
[6:22] giving the highlights and detail of the
survey responses station two is then the
[6:29] Vision Revision so as part of community
Workshop number one we pulled up the
[6:35] vision statement from the uh current
General plan and asked residents to
[6:42] comment on that vision statement what
would they like to change what would
[6:45] they like to preserve and based on those
comments we then drafted a couple
[6:50] different vision statement options and
we're asking you the residents to look
[6:57] at those two options and identify what
you like or dislike of those options so
[7:03] that we then land on a preferred
approach moving forward that vision
[7:08] statement is very important to the
overall foundation of the plan because
[7:13] all the goals and policies are going to
be prepared to roll up to achieve that
[7:18] vision and so it really does set the
tone and foundation for the plan and
[7:24] therefore we hope that you take some
time to look that over and give your
[7:28] input the last station three is goal
validation and goal validation is really
[7:35] we pulled out the goals in the existing
General plan and we're asking you to
[7:41] review those goals and simply let us
know whether whether they should be kept
[7:46] removed or revised
by you by gaining your feedback we will
[7:52] start to get a better sense for areas of
the plan that we should preserve that
[7:56] are doing their job that are supporting
the community in the way that they were
[8:02] intended to and so we don't want to
change those items that don't need to be
[8:06] changed but if we see feedback from the
community that a particular goal might
[8:13] need some more refinement in order to
clarify its exact intent or achieve its
[8:20] desired outcome well then your feedback
will help us zero in on those areas that
[8:25] need maybe further attention
so those are the three primary stations
[8:30] or areas of input that we're looking to
have your feedback so again at this
[8:37] point in the presentation you're more
than welcome to skip over to the
[8:42] feedback boards themselves or stay with
me and the next few slides I'm just
[8:49] going to give a broad overview of the
survey results
[8:54] well if you stayed with me thanks for uh
joining uh the survey results discussion
[9:02] um overall you can see on the slide that
the survey was open for March 17th to
[9:06] April 17th uh we received a total of 362
responses that's a great turnout we
[9:14] always would love to have more responses
but for a community the size of Carefree
[9:19] 362 responses are are uh great and
they're great in the sense that that
[9:25] number is actually a statistically
significant sample size meaning that we
[9:31] have a higher confidence level that even
uh if we were to go out and collect more
[9:37] responses from the community that the
results would generally be consistent
[9:42] with what we're seeing
um uh within the the current outcomes
[9:48] that the survey showed
[9:53] so getting into the questions themselves
question one we just asked
[9:58] um are you a full-time part-time uh
resident of Carefree do you own property
[10:04] or a business and you can see that the
results actually kind of align with the
[10:10] somewhat composition of the community
today that yes 75 of responses or
[10:16] full-time residents but we do have a
part of the community that are part-time
[10:20] residents and so some of the survey
results showed that 11 of those are
[10:27] part-time residents and then we have uh
others that are property owners and then
[10:33] a smaller portion that are our business
owners now I should mention up front
[10:38] that these are just the broad results of
the survey on on particular questions
[10:45] where it does say other or
um share more input uh all of those
[10:51] individual responses are in the formal
survey report that you can go to the
[10:58] project website and review in more
detail so I would encourage you to uh
[11:04] still open that report because while
some of the overall responses uh are
[11:09] detailed in there any individual
comments which there were many
[11:14] um for any particular question
um are all listed so there were uh there
[11:21] was no
um
[11:24] abbreviation of the responses uh we
wanted to
[11:29] share all of the comments that any of
your friends or neighbors provided so
[11:34] that if there were other observations
that residents had we wanted to hear
[11:40] those and not just be limited by the
options that the particular questions
[11:45] presented
now for question two how long have you
[11:49] lived or owned property or a business
and carefree we had a good distribution
[11:53] of responses uh which again gives us
some higher confidence in terms of
[12:00] hearing
um from those residents who may have
[12:04] lived here for a shorter period five
years or less so you can see in the
[12:08] green and yellow
um compared to those that have lived
[12:12] here maybe six to twenty years kind of
in the orange to Brown area and then
[12:17] those that are 20 years or more so in
the in the gray 26 percentile uh area so
[12:25] um as we're drafting the plan where we
uh see a benefit in hearing from those
[12:33] residents that are here a shorter period
that may have different observations
[12:36] from those residents that have been here
for longer periods
[12:41] um and they all bring different thoughts
and ideas to the table
[12:46] now what is your age range yes we all
know that Carefree uh does have a higher
[12:52] median age than other communities will
see in Maricopa County or Arizona
[12:57] overall and so this slide confirms that
as you can see almost 60 percent of our
[13:03] uh those who responded are age 65 or
older and even with that
[13:09] um majority of those who responded were
45 years or older so
[13:16] um not too uh not too surprising that
that here at least the results are
[13:22] generally consistent with census data
information
[13:26] now uh when we looked at gender we see
almost an exact balance of 48 to 50
[13:33] percent so don't know that we can even
get much tighter than that and it's good
[13:38] to see that we're
um getting representation from all
[13:42] aspects of the community
now in addition to some of those other
[13:47] conditions we also wanted to
geographically look at where are we
[13:51] hearing from residents so we broke up
the town into four different areas
[13:57] um and you can see based on the results
that we had good distribution within
[14:01] those areas particularly when we keep in
mind uh the density or or number if you
[14:09] will of residents in those particular
areas so
[14:12] um areas two three and four we had a
good balance of responses and then area
[14:18] one which has a a lower density in terms
of the number of residents
[14:24] um uh that was reflected in the number
of responses that we uh received from
[14:29] that particular area so good
distribution across the town I'm happy
[14:34] to see that we're not heavily skewed in
one area of the town over the other
[14:40] um which helps us make sure that when
we're crafting goals and policies that
[14:45] so we're not focusing on one particular
portion of the community over another
[14:51] so in question six why do you choose to
live in Carefree well you can see in
[14:57] those top even four responses uh a lot
of them are all predicated on that
[15:03] notion of the natural environment open
space semi-rural character
[15:09] um a recreation and Trail opportunities
all related to that quality of life in
[15:15] Carefree
um of being kind of in the natural
[15:19] environment and
um having a little bit more open space
[15:25] um so uh all of those results uh were
consistent with uh generally the tone of
[15:32] the general plan today and so that helps
us understand that
[15:37] um that some of the key elements that
residents hold or cherish are consistent
[15:45] today as they were 10 years ago when the
plan was last comprehensively updated
[15:53] seven was a very uh involved question in
terms of it gave many different trends
[16:00] that are uh existing in or around
Carefree today
[16:06] and and so we wanted to report on all of
the results for this particular uh
[16:12] response rather than some title type of
weighted average so uh you can go into
[16:19] the survey report that I mentioned
before and uh look at these responses in
[16:27] a little more detail
um because I know on this particular
[16:30] slide it's a smaller font
um but we we did highlight that maybe
[16:37] four key areas that if you're looking
specifically at those
[16:42] um responses where residents identified
that it was essential or very important
[16:48] Trend that we should be considering uh
those top four focused on traffic
[16:53] congestion semi-rural character Town
fiscal sustainability and natural open
[16:59] space and and resource preservation so
um those areas give us Direction in
[17:07] terms of possibly seeking more feedback
from community members and so you'll see
[17:13] in the
um input boards as part of this virtual
[17:18] Workshop you have the opportunity to
even share a little bit more input of
[17:26] um
of responses or further feedback that
[17:31] are uh uh critical to or associated with
those top four options so
[17:39] um this particular slide
um in this Workshop we're asking for
[17:44] more feedback to help us zero in now on
those areas that residents identified as
[17:51] being very uh important or essential to
the community over the next 10 or 20
[17:58] years
[18:01] now question eight how would you rate
the overall quality of life in the town
[18:05] here it was very encouraging to see that
a majority of responses identified uh
[18:13] carefree as quality of life as being
good to excellent and so
[18:19] um we uh certainly want to preserve
those feelings as we uh draft this
[18:27] General Plan update and actually maybe
we can as a result of some of the
[18:33] outcomes of this General plan
seek to to even get those responses uh
[18:38] higher in terms of
um quality of life so Carefree is doing
[18:44] a good job and and it's going to be this
General plan updates uh responsibility
[18:49] to preserve that and and then build on
it
[18:55] now as part of question 9 to proactively
assist carefree and planning for the
[19:00] future what are some of the main issues
the town should focus on in the next 10
[19:04] or 20 years you can see that the top
three responses actually were open space
[19:09] preservation water conservation and
water treatment
[19:14] followed by Town fiscal Health Town
communication and Public Safety so all
[19:20] topics that are very important ones that
are top of mind I think across the
[19:25] community right now so no surprise to us
in terms of where residents focus
[19:34] is but those are areas that we're going
to be looking at in more detail in this
[19:41] update effort not to say that we're not
going to look at all those other areas
[19:45] but
um this helps tell us again uh like we
[19:51] discussed in previous responses where we
should focus our attention compared to
[19:57] where we might want to preserve or make
minimal changes so
[20:03] um so this helps guide us in terms of
where we might want to be more specific
[20:08] in our our editing and updating efforts
now that gives the overview of the
[20:17] survey responses again I encourage you
if you have the time to look at the
[20:22] survey report it provides more detail in
terms of the individual responses that
[20:30] may have been shared by residents uh on
any particular question and it also
[20:35] gives you a chance to look at some of
the responses and and formulate some of
[20:40] your own observations that you might
bring to Future meetings
[20:45] um as far as sharing your input or
comments relative to the process as it
[20:51] moves along now these boards are going
to look a little different as you
[20:56] provide your feedback online but I at
least will discuss them for the purposes
[21:02] of again station two is looking at
Vision Revision so on at this particular
[21:09] station you see we have two Vision
options of option A and option b we're
[21:16] asking residents to identify
um what version they prefer either the
[21:23] long option A or the more condensed
option b and then any provide any
[21:29] comments of final edits that you would
like to see to either option that you
[21:35] prefer
Station 3 goal validation as I mentioned
[21:40] before this has all of the goals from
the current General plan organized by
[21:46] chapter and we're just asking you to
help identify what you think should be
[21:50] kept removed or revised your feedback on
that just like the survey uh will guide
[21:57] us to
um focus on those particular goals that
[22:01] may need more attention compared to ones
that are doing their job and providing
[22:06] the outcomes that they're in were
crafted to accomplish compared to maybe
[22:12] some goals that need further refinement
to either address present issues or
[22:18] um refine outcomes that aren't
consistent with where the community
[22:22] wants to go in the next 10 or 20 years
[22:28] now as part of next steps uh action
items we're we're working towards uh
[22:34] publishing the existing conditions
analysis to the project website so you
[22:38] can uh in addition to looking at the
community survey you can go through uh
[22:43] that document and see some of the
background information that was prepared
[22:46] for the community we're having a council
work session briefing on May 2nd uh that
[22:54] will be followed by a Planning and
Zoning commission work session uh in
[22:58] June and then our next Community
Workshop will be a June 19th and so we
[23:04] know that some residents might be
traveling over the summer months if you
[23:08] can't join that in-person meeting we
will again have a virtual option for you
[23:13] to participate in speaking of
participating if you want to remind or
[23:20] share with your neighbors about how to
stay involved continue to visit the
[23:26] town's website and go to the Link at the
top of the page it will bring you to the
[23:30] project website
or sign up for updates through the
[23:35] Carefree connection app
um those are all great ways to make sure
[23:40] that you're hearing about upcoming
meetings or any new project material
[23:46] with that uh thank you for listening to
this virtual presentation
[23:51] um if you have any follow-up needs
whether it be to ask additional
[23:56] questions or seek specific information
uh Stacy bridge denzak is the key
[24:02] contact for the town
um her contact information there is on
[24:08] the slide and with that uh thank you and
have a wonderful day and please make
[24:15] sure you go through the community
Workshop number two feedback
[24:20] materials so that we can document
everyone's
[24:24] um comments and use that information to
guide our efforts and in actually
[24:31] drafting
um text for this General Plan update
[24:35] thank you and have a wonderful day