>> common council, the,
september 20
call for
the
invocation. Pastor carlson roski.
doesn't match
my script. Give us the invocation
if you would, please.
>> let
us pray. Dear lord, thank you for
this meeting
and all who are
gathered here. We thank you for the
opportunity to serve
the people of our community. We humbly
seek your guidance and wisdom. May
our hearts
be opened and our minds clear. We
pray that
our discussions are respectful and
kind and
that
we value one another's contributions.
unite us as
one body, working together to
make our community a better place
for all. Remind us that
we are stewards of your
authority and we pray
that your blessings, grace, and peace
be upon us in
your name, amen.
>> amen.
>> I pledge allegiance to the flag of
the united states of america,
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
under god,
indivisible, with liberty and justice
for all.
>>
megan, will you give us the roll call
please?
>> let the record reflect
that
all councilmembers are present. [
inaudible ]
>>
okay.
thank you. Item a, call to
the public. I'm not going to read the
whole epistle. I'm sure everyone
is familiar. Call to the public will
be matters that pertain to the business
of
payson. We cannot respond to questions.
we
cannot answer questions. You'll have
three minutes to
speak
and if you have not submitted a
speaker request form, at the end I'll
ask you to raise your hand if
you have comments and we will dispense
with any further
commotion and start
with call to the public. At the
end, zoom meeting, anyone on
zoom will also be asked
to respond to the call
to the public if they care to do so.
so first one
on the list is
linda england.
>> I'd like
to go first and [ inaudible ] second.
>> okay. >> [
inaudible ]
>>
we
have an extra?
>> I do, actually. >> nevermind, thank
you. You have an extra,
somebody? Okay.
>> sorry. >> please. >> good evening
mayor, city
council members, city manager and
fellow residents. It is is pointing
that we must come
before
you again. On december 23rd --this
is a reminder --2024,
the owner built a six-foot post on
his seven foot
high fence, looked directly at
us and said
merry christmas. I'm going to take
away the rest
of your view. On
april 16th code enforcement notice
ce 24 0146 required removal of
both the welded extensions of the
master shape plot which hangs
nearly 6 feet wide,
14 feet high and 60 feet long
hanging vertically. While the extension
removed remains , later without
our knowledge or inputs, after the
neighbor brought in his attorney,
the town attorney
reclassified this violation
as ambiguous mere dispute. That one-sided
decision is
only empowered the neighbor to escalate
further. He has now hung
a second metal from tree to tree,
sprayed paint sprayed with spray paint
private property
in 18 inch letters on these tarps
and raised the signs and the signs
that were there, raised them 15 feet
high per dose five more signs were
added to the front of our yard in
a 10 foot span so now we've got seven
in a 10 foot span. This
is
not a shade [ inaudible ] it's harassment.
we raised our fence to the legal
height and blocked the worst of it
but the damage is clear. He
retaliated. He painted on the tarps,
raised the
signs up above our fence.
we were on vacation. We returned home
that night, we found all
of these
--we found all these
--you see the pictures that I sent
you. There's two emails plus one from
a real estate person. We were on vacation.
we returned home. We found all
this
stuff done . We walked
out on our back porch to see the new
fence and extensions we had
put in, $3800 later.
we installed --the neighbor look at
us, started laughing and turned up
his music.
photos we provided show that
our property and the entire neighborhood
were being devalued.
we asked that this matter be revisited
and treated as
a clear code violation. Without enforcement
our property remains
worthless. Will our view is destroyed
and the
neighbors free to continue --the neighbor
is free
to escalating. So we come to you with
help on this.
once again, thank
you.
>>
>> linda
england?
>> good
evening, mayor,
city manager,
city councilmembers, and community
members. My name is linda england.
I'm a fairly new
resident of payson. My husband and
I purchased our home in
may 2024 and for more than a year
we've been
escalating intolerable situation with
neighboring property owner, despite
repeated efforts
to
seek help from city offices, police
and his council, the problem remains unsolved
.
we are asking the city to enforce
the codes
and protect us as residents
and taxpayers . The neighbor, you've already
heard, has installed shade with numerous
signs and you
already here it's six foot by 60 feet
long and 14
feet high. It is a disgrace. It looks
like a
trashbin in our yard. And they have
stickers at the top
that says do not
california, arizona
all around our property line. It's become
a wall of hostility.
this is not a normal use of a shade
cloth or any signage. This is the
problem
here for us. It gets worse. A local
realtor, respected local realtor has
inspected
our
property and provided a letter which
we
did email your board and the mayor,
stating that due to this situation,
she would not be able to even show our
home. This means our entire retirement
investment
we put all our money in it, is worthless,
so it
gets worse. This matter cannot be
dismissed as a neighbor dispute,
which the attorney now has said it's
just a neighbor dispute. We've experienced
harassment, surveillance,
and even a rock this size thrown at
us at the back porch.
sorry, these are threatening and unsafe
act. We filed
police reports
intended for council
meetings and contacted code compliance
office multiple times. Instead of
investigating or viewing the
property firsthand from our side,
the city reclassified this matter
as a simple
neighbor dispute, asking us to negotiate
with someone that's
repeatedly harassed us is unreasonable
and quite dangerous. We respectfully
request that the
city, one, reclassify this matter
as a code violation, rather than a
neighbor dispute , two,
enforce the city's existing ordinances.
there is something I wrote about,
131.03, disruptive property, and
131.09, an enforcement action,
dispatch a code compliance officer,
number three, to directly inspect
the property
and document the violations. Number four,
coordinate with law enforcement
regarding the ongoing harassment and
safety concerns . We are law-abiding
senior citizens who contribute to
this community. We should
not be left without protection while
our property,
safety, peace of mind
are destroyed. If the city fails to
act,
we have no choice but to seek remedies
beyond this jurisdiction. Thank you so
much
for your time and attention. We are
prepared to provide you
more photographs or the realtor's
letter and any other documentation
that
require. Thank you so much.
>>
thank you.
walk
that property and it is ridiculous what's
going on
there. I think it's beyond a neighborly
dispute, something we need to look
into.
>> room number we
can't respond, council, if you want
us to look into it --
>> I'm
telling you [ inaudible ] I want this
looked into seriously.
>> just
to remind you, so we have been working
and I will provide you with an
up date shortly.
>> thank
you.
>> [ inaudible
] comments?
>> my name is paul from all. I've
been in payson for almost
12 years now. Mr. Mayor, town manager
and counselors,
I want to thank you for doing something
right
this time . Allowing the citizens
of payson an opportunity to vote yes
or
no on the upcoming bond in november,
to increase our property
taxes for the aquatic center. This year
you
did it right. Last year
they tried to shove a
$70 million bond down our throats
with the emergency
declarations. I personally believe
that refurbishing gator pool
is a other option than anything I've
seen
so far, that
they projected for malibu. I believe
their cost estimates are
very low . I think
they're probably low on both of them
but I believe taylor poole is the
best choice. It's closer to the schools,
kids can walk from the schools after
school
to practice
, their swimming, it's just a better
fit for the town. If
you have to do something with the
property that was purchased last year
for another project that is now
defunct, me
maybe
so it. Use it for some of the housing
that we are all looking for. At
least this $60 million bond has given
us a choice to vote where
last year the $70 million bond we
did not have a choice so that, I want
to thank you all for doing it the
correct way and
not like last year.
thank you.
>>
eric walberg.
>> afternoon.
I'm here to
speak about and give you some rhetorical
questions on this structure hardening
code. I'm an ex-contractor
that moved here to payson from california,
so you know that I know a
lot about fires, fire wising and the
lack thereof. This whole thing
kind of smacks of things that happened
in cities and
municipalities in california, where
I
came from. Typically
northern
california. --[ inaudible ]
>> can
you raise your mike just a
little?
>> person being tall, is that
what
it is? I guess the only thing that
I have an issue with on
this thing that interests me, and believe
me, I believe that fire safety
is an enormous thing. Charlie, you
know that.
you've spoken to my wife numerous
times
about it, don't run from her whenever you
see her at the gym,
but I guess my thing is, from what
I understand, I only heard about this
yesterday and I'm kind of
wondering why this wasn't put out
more sternly to the public to let
us have some sort of
a time period to study what is
happening
here. This could be an exceptionally
expensive thing for people in
this town who want to remodel
their homes, who are looking to build
a new home. I mean, when
we built our house here, six years
ago, we got hit with
somebody big
pretty big surprises that no one knew
were coming. One of
them was a 3% increase in sales tax.
that cost us $12,000 and people just
shrugged their
shoulders. Well, it's too bad. It
was too
bad because you know there wasn't
$12,000 in
the budget so
it hurt. It hurt a lot and is still
hurting
because our mortgage is $12,000 higher
than it should be. Which is a lot
of money
per month for somebody that's on a
fixed income, which by the
way, we are. So what I'm asking is
your indulgence to hold off
on any kind of a vote on this.
I'm not saying it's right or it's
wrong. I'm saying give us some time
to
look at this thing and digest it before
there's any kind of an
absolute vote on this
process. Because for myself and
my wife, the thought isn't working.
so for myself and
my wife, we -- when we moved here
we were given an awful lot of pie
in the sky dreams
that, from a city manager,
that none of it came true. So we
are here
virtually under erroneous circumstances.
so
I sure would like to have a little
bit of time
to read this whole thing and see where
it's
coming from, and how much it's going
to hurt our contractors in town, and
how
much it's going to hurt the general
public and raise the price of housing
in this town?
>> thank you, you're
out of time.
>> thanks. >>
jonathan jackson?
>> I'm jonathan jackson. I've lived
here for
8 years , worked in the construction
business the whole time.
I'm actually following eric's up on
the same bill, the
hardening
code requirements. In the 10 years
that
I've been in framing and building
homes,
we have significantly improved the
fire
safety in
that so as he had mentioned, we had
only
just gotten this
so I haven't been able to look over the
whole thing, but it does
seem like it's going to drastically
change and increase
the cost
for remodels and for
new homes. So that
was my short three minutes.
>>
thank you.
>> thank
you.
>> dena
will caught.
>> is he
on zoom?
if not
, because supposedly there's
a request with my name on it, but it
was on behalf of gino,
if he wasn't on zoom. So if he's not
on zoom I can read those
comments.
>> okay. >> all
right.
>> reading for gino? >> yeah,
these
are gino's words, not mine. He just
asked if I would share this
information. On your marks, get
set, go to I'm okay to
speak from here? I don't have to go
down
here? Yeah, there we go. All right.
I'm writing --
so this is gino will conley, he's
a contractor in town for gun rights
and as a long-term resident and a
professional in the building industry
for over
30 years.
I care deeply about the
safety and future of our community.
I believe this code would cause more
harm than good.
here are my concerns. Added costs.
the new requirements will drive up
the price of construction
and remodeling, making housing less
affordable for families in our town.
no insurance relief.
these measures won't fix the insurance
crisis. Homeowners will still face
the same problem finding
and keeping coverage. Department funding
versus community benefit. Many of
us worried this push is more
about improving fire department ratings
to capture extra state and federal
dollars than actually
helping residents. Existing fire wise
rules are enough. If payson enforced
the fire wise policies already
in place, we could reduce risk across
the board
without adding costs -- costly
new codes. Enforcement of fire
wise and being sure that no
one has combustibles within the prescribed
distances of their home
would help everyone in the community,
not
just the homes that will
apply for permits going forward. Equity
concerns. The fire department
is taking equity from new
homes by
trying to implement the structure
hardening code.
this code shifts the burden onto new
homeowners, stripping equity from
homeowners while only benefiting
the fire department. It will discourage
improvements and make it harder for
families
to upgrade their homes, since many
cannot afford the
added cost the new checklist would
require.
uneven protection. This only applies
to new builds and remodels
going forward , not existing structures.
it could take 50 to 100 years
before the community as a whole sees
any real benefit,
while the vast majority of the existing
homes will never meet the new code
criteria or be able to be brought
up
to code, to the new code criteria.
lack
of
local input. Based on the fact
that this proposal is being pushed
onto the community without widespread
awareness, I
feel compelled to speak up. Nearly
every homeowner I've spoken with has
no idea that
this new code is coming to
a vote, nor that their homes could
soon be subject
to these
new rules and the potential problems
they bring. What's especially concerning
is that
there has been no balanced discussion
and open dialogue about
both the benefits and the drawbacks.
from
where I stand,
the only clear beneficiary appears
to be the fire department,
not the community as a whole. The
lack of local input
stems from a lack of
understanding resident's simply do
not realize the full ramifications this
code could have on them as
homeowners. I'll
and there.
>> don't applaud
me. Applauded gino.
>> listen to mike.
>>
stacy frederick?
>> I want to make sure I'm able to
be heard. Thank you for
reading that letter from gino. He
is also my boss and he is
the only reason that I'm even aware
that this code hardening has been
going on. Every
other homeowner that
I've talked to
is not aware of this. This is something
that I think needs to be brought
to the attention of the public and
the whole, like eric said, put some
time, take some time, not vote on
this today so that we can take the
time
to make sure everyone is aware of
what is going on. I'd also like
to read the end of gino's letter.
in short, this ordinance is
the wrong approach. We should strengthen
and
enforce the policies we
already have so that all
homes old and new are better protected.
that would give us the real results
now,
not generations
from now. I earnestly urge you to
oppose this ordinance and instead
focus
on solutions that are fair,
effective, and rooted in what makes
payson strong --common sense, community,
and looking out for one another. Thank
you this
time. Again, that's the end of gino's
letter but as a homeowner,
when I
look at, if I was to improve my home
and do a lot of
remodeling, that this could cost hundreds
of thousands of dollars more, based
on the
information that gino is providing
me with the roof and
the siding and all these extra fire
wising things and it would only affect
the specific homes
that are being permitted now. Picture
just little dots all over the
place within our community, that it's
helping. If we push with the fire
wise, the codes that we
already have, and making sure that
every property is fire wise in the
way it should be would help our entire
community across the board, not just
these
little pockets of homes. Thank you.
>>
thank
you.
>>
lori parmenter.
>> good evening, mr.
mayor, council members and town staff,
my
name is lori parmenter. I've been
a proud resident of payson
for two years, so not very long. I
also want to thank you for
the opportunity to vote on the bond
for the
pool bond. It was the right choice
to let the people
choose, and tonight I want to urge
everyone in our
community to vote yes on it because
the bond is not just about building
a pool at the malibu site. It's
about making a smart, future
ready investment in our town's health,
recreation, and
infrastructure. A yes vote
means we move forward with the funded,
shovel
ready plan. A no vote halts construction
and leaves payson without a
public pool. Some residents are advocating
for a renovation
of taylor
pool instead but let's be clear, a no
vote does not
guarantee taylor pool will be rebuilt.
in fact it
makes the outcome far less likely.
here's why. Funding. Taylor's renovation would
rely
on the general fund, not
a bond
. While some claim it would cost $5
million, the council's own commission
study estimated $11 million for an
uncovered pool, well beyond what the general
fund can
support. Code compliance. A separate
$20,000 evaluation revealed
additional
costs to bring taylor up to
2025 standards. These would be substantial
and unavoidable. The
cover cost. If a cover is
added
later, taylor's would cost $200,000
more than malibu's. A
covered taylor pool would
be a total of about $14.2 million
and still require a bond.
the timeline. Malibu is ready
to go
. If the bond fails, taylor's process
must start from scratch, likely triggering
another bond election and years of
delays. Future
growth. Malibu offers space for
future athletic center, basketball
courts, multi-sports
facilities and attic parking. Taylor
does not.
in fact, taylor's parking
limitations may require satellite lots just
to
meet code
. In short, taylor is not a viable
alternative. It's a costly, complicated
path with no clear funding and no
guarantee of success. Voting no doesn't
bring back
taylor pool.
voting no means payson has no pool.
I hope that
we choose progress. Let's choose a
facility that serves our families,
our seniors, our athletes, and our
future. Thank you.
>>
thank you.
>> michael
r fox.
>> mr.
mayor and council members, thank you
for letting me talk. I feel almost
embarrassed to bring my
issues up after this
first two
people that came up here. Oh my gosh.
my heart just bleeds for them. I'm
a citizen
of payson. I pay property taxes and
I'm a proponent
of a new pool. First
of all it will make the town of
payson a much better place to live.
it will raise our
property values
. Big, beautiful pool like chino valley,
when I lived there, they had
a new pool. Wow, it makes the whole
town go to chino
valley and again it will put us on
the map. For $75
a year for the next 20 years, for
something like that I
don't think is much
to pay.
the only other thing I had
is I parked
my chair most nights down at green valley
park and we are still waiting all
summer and
all fall for the
police department
to get their act
together, to send some patrolmen down
there to patrol it. I'm not asking
they arrest
everybody there. Just come down and
drive-through once in a while. That's
all I'm
asking.
thank you.
>> mr.
town manager, can we
had some extra patrols? I know that we've
done that. Can
we ask to look into it?
>> yeah. >>
thank you. Sorry. My bad
choice of words.
>>
tom benning.
>> hi, I'm tom
dunning. I'm a 21 year resident of
payson and a couple of weeks
ago I took a shower and
got dressed
nicely, and came over here for a
town council meeting. And the kind folks
in the office told me there's no
town council meeting. Well two weeks
before that I did the same and
came over, and the kind
folks at the office told
me there's
no town council meeting. I noticed
that
there is an item on the agenda today
that is
all about whether the town council
should or should
not
meet with --if there's no items on
the agenda. Well all I can do is tell
you that
it's important to me
to come here and see
the officials of our town doing
their jobs and acting on measures
that need to
be discussed and evaluated, and
voted on, and if you want my opinion
about all
of
this, and I imagine a lot of other
people in payson,
it is that town
council should be meeting on a regular
basis
to serve
the people of payson. If there's
not an item on the agenda, well
then ask us what we
would like to talk about. We are here
and we'll tell you. So
I urge you to consider that if
you don't have an agenda item, you
should still
be here for the public to let
you know what they are
interested in
having happen in payson. Thank you.
>>
thank you.
>>
calvin
h smedley.
>> good afternoon.
I'm cal smedley, five year
resident
of payson. Mr. Mayor, mr. Council,
this is
regarding
the pool and the bond
that they wish to
refurbish. 1954, during the army mccarthy
hearings,
a lawyer named joseph welsh stood
up to senator joseph mccarthy, who
had spent
years destroying
lives with smears and fear. I remember
well on tv.
welsh asked him, have you
no sense of decency, sir? At long
last, have you left no sense
of decency? At that moment broke the
spell
of mccarthyism. The american people
finally
saw the damage done by
reckless attacks, by leaders more
concerned with pandering to
their base than serving the common
good in decency. The simple recognition
of
truth and fairness and community
responsibility became the
turning point. Now here in our town
we are
not facing
a national witchhunt that
we are facing a similar, meaner version
of the same spirit. Three of our councilmembers
are trying to defeat for a community
swimming pool, not because it's bad
for
the town, not because it's
fiscally reckless, because they want
to appease a narrow
slice of ideological extremism, the
local
tea party. This pool is
not a luxury. It's a community
investment, an investment in our children
who need a safe place
to learn to swim and our seniors
who need a place for low-impact exercise,
and in our families who deserve the
shared
space that promotes health, safety,
and
togetherness. It is a project that
strengthens the very fabric of our
community. So I
ask those councilmembers directly,
have you
no decency, have you no respect for
the broader community you were elected
to serve, to sacrifice well-being
of thousands
so you can score points with
a faction that is the very opposite
of leadership. It is a political
theater at the expense of public good.
we must
not let history repeat itself, even
in small ways. Decency
demands courage. Decency demands that
we put aside fear mongering and
do what is right for the people we
represent. Decency demands that
we invest in our future, for the sake
of our
children, for the health of our community,
and for true
public service, I urge every citizen
here
to remember
welsh's words, to stand up and insist
that our council finds its decency
by supporting the pool bond. Thank
you.
>> my name is jack eder. I've been
a
resident of payson since 1989. My
dad was here in
the early
'80s. He had a place here. He has
the same name as me. Started
coming up here in the mid '50 so I've
been
here longer than most of you guys
know, okay? At least
60-plus years. I've seen this town
go
to lately. It's getting so much
influx from the phoenix, from california,
from
other places, and they want to try
to come in here and change the
town.
I know
we had to change and move and everything. We have
to make this
place better.
if you've been here long enough you
probably realize that we like
it the way that it is, at least
I do. I've just been seeing too many
people come up
and we're expanding to 60, keep people
from dying
over there by the preacher canyon
in that area. I don't
understand it. We are dealing with
the influx
of california and phoenix.
the park on mud springs is not even
finished yet, is it? So why are we looking
at
a new? How are
we going to get water to all the people
that are coming in here? You
know we have this cc cragin deal but
still that
ain't going to be enough. We've been
in the drought for I don't know
how long, 10 years or so, so I say
let's fix what
we have, you
know, and then go on from there. But
a lot of the people
that haven't
been here, some of them have been
here two or three years or whatever,
they
don't know what goes on in this town
like I do and like some
of the people. I don't know if there's
anybody here that's been here longer
than me.
I may kiss gino off because I don't
care too much for the
extra construction but that's
his job, you know? I had a restaurant
here for 10 years and I didn't see
that much business, and it was locally
from
the locals and
so we had to suffer through that for
about 10 years,
and finally we just kind of gave up
because we
couldn't get the support from the
town. You know I say we stay with
what
we got and
work on other stuff later. Let's rebuild
a little bit and try
and slow
down the traffic that's coming into
town. Already we've had a
shooting at denny's, right? It's going
to be like phoenix before you know
it.
thanks.
>>
thank you.
>>
>> by rantanen house, owner of the
noble
building and building houses and remodels
appear for 20-plus years. Wanted to
address the
hardening
code. I feel like I want to reiterate
everything that everybody already
said but also add to that. I feel
like we are missing
a step. While I understand that hardening
a
home can be beneficial, it's not the
one step and what
we should do is we
should enforce our defensible space
around
the homes, and I would implore you to
make it so that every time a
building permit is pulled, that
that house is subject to being inspected
and have to be brought up
to code for fire wising. And I think
that that
would make 100 times more difference
to our community than trying to harden,
like
you said before, speckled
amount of homes around the community.
I think we are putting the cart before
the horse so if
we could put our energy into fire
wising and defensible space, and educate
people in that, and then
make hardening a home a secondary
thing once
we get number one
step done . That's all I
wanted to add to what everybody else
has already put out there. Thank you.
>>
thank you.
>>
mike white.
>> my name is mike white's.
I've been in the phoenix --well
payson, star valley area for about
15 years now, after being involved
at
the airport. I'd like to talk
about two issues regarding hangers,
one I guess we are very disappointed.
we
were told that the whole hangar rate
issue would be on tonight's agenda.
I was told that by public works several
months
ago. The problem still exists, first
up, we've
made numerous presentations and formal
requests, both in writing and verbally,
to address this issue. The
first part, we have
problem with the lease itself and
also
the rate. Our hangers are 11% smaller
than the newer hangers but we charge
the same rate and the newer hangers
are by
definition
newer and nicer but we are still
being charged the same rate. Now throw
on top of that, when the airport commissioner
made his presentation may 14th,
in his council decision request attachment a,
he
did all the math and economic
justification showing the town of
pain electricity instead
of pho occupants paying
for it so that would be my
triple dip here, so the rate for a
should be
$300, not
371 plus 15 for electricity. I have
all the data to back that
up for you. Another problem with
treating
us unequally, inequitably, is that
you are in violation of some
faa grant
, they specifically prohibit that
and there are two mechanisms for reporting
the problem so it's
just a matter of time until somebody
raises that issue and the town is
at risk for getting more and keeping
grant money. We brought that up before,
too. Second problem or issue is the
leases themselves are very coercive.
we
were given less than a week's notice
to
sign the leases as is or the
evicted and they're terrible and I
presented
the retails details of why that is
so,
numerous times. Very coarse. One thing,
we are told there would be
a yearly lease and they are just month
to month. There is a late penalty
of 20% in their and that
violates ars ordinances. In
fact it's ars title 33-1414,
paragraph a, sets a
maximum of five dollars a day fee
if you
are late. Hours far exceeds that.
another problem, the hanger use restrictions
are
extremely restrictive in time here
and I will give
you numerous reasons why that is so, just
completely and
reasonably so.
it doesn't allow an llc or partners
to own an airplane. It's crazy. Almost
all
airplanes around by an llc or partnership. So
if I die my partner loses
the hanger. You
know that's crazy, or the aero club
will lose its hanger as soon as we
elect a new president. It's crazy.
in fact, when I brought up several
months ago
the town attorney
gave me
a [ inaudible ] that he was going
to fix
that. Still waiting. And lastly they're
calling us a commercial enterprise
and that is
not the case.
>> thank you. >>
excuse me, christina, mr.
town manager, can we just get an update
on this at some
point, where we are with this? Because I know we've
had a lot
of changes on all areas that touch
that
subject, if you'd just get
an up
date in the future it would
be great.
>> if we could do that sooner
than later, because I know it
was requested in a previous council
meeting.
>> not your call. >> no.
I
think it's done.
>> greg
triple horn?
>>
tripped in?
oh, trey flint? Is it triple in?
>>
trip on.
>> oh,
trip on .
>> yes, hello. We are just
asking to change the name of nugget
street
to gordon's way. Nugget is a small
street that cuts through
the sawmill crossing. We are asking
to do that in
memory of mr. Gordon white, who passed
away earlier
this year. That's it. Thank you.
>>
thank you.
>> again, mr.
town manager.
>> it's on your agenda.
>> you're the best.
>>
tom west.
>> which subject
matter
is this
? --
>> subject matter on this one
because I put in two different subjects.
>> you can choose whichever you like.
>> I'll do
hanger rent. First off, I appreciate
the fact that you'll take a
real beating on this call to
the public. That takes thick skin.
that's tough so I do appreciate that.
regarding that, I'll talk about the
hanger rent
that mike just spoke about. I'm representing
the payson aero club
because we rent a hanger for that
and also two rentals so indirectly
I rent
three hangers at what we
call pho, payson hanger one. As you
remember originally there were condos.
there were 10
members and they had a lease. Originally
went to eight members because
two members died and they gave their
membership to the association, and
the ground
lease was 14 dest 20 and five, you
divide that by eight, there
is $178 per person but then of course
there was insurance, electricity,
things like that. Ended up being about
an assessment of $230
for each person to be in those hangers
and then the additional revenue of
two rentals
because the owners
had died
. In july as
you know, the town took over and of
course doing a horrible
job, this was recommended, we have
not been charged correctly for the rent
yet. We got charged
today $2100 for one month of rent.
we had to sleep with dennis. They
can't even
charge us the rent correctly. It's
really irritating. And of course dennis
is the airport
coordinator, just arbitrarily made
the rent 371 plus 15, 386
a month. Our hanger is 118 square
feet
less, our cherokee has to go a little
sideways to get around the wing, to
get to the cockpit. Not so on the
t hangers that are by the
fuel pit that you charge the same
amount for. Our hangers are nothing
like the hangers at the fuel pit and
as he mentioned, I think
that violates the fa grant
insurance. Its unequal treatment of
us. Your charting is way more per
square foot
for a hanger that's not nearly as
nice and it's unfair, unequal treatment
of
us in those hangers. The other thing
I want to mention is you know
the airport
has no maintenance plan. Eventually
the eight exterior light bulbs burned out,
regular light
bulbs on the north side of the hanger.
I mentioned it to dennis because now
they
take over. He said the absence of
a licensed, bonded, insured person
to change those
lightbulbs, I took a letter, I changed
one lightbulb, I got caught, busted.
he goes,
you can do that, I do dennis, I hold
the ladder, you go up and
change the lightbulb, it's a screw-in
bulb, no we don't change light bulbs.
there
is no maintenance program for payson
airport for anything except for getting
grants. It's insane.
you have to look into getting a maintenance
program for general maintenance at
the airport,
like changing light bulbs. That's
all I have to say. Thank you.
>> speaker request?
speaker to
speak twice or do
we get one bite at the apple?
>> typically
if you're called to the public
then
you're just speaking on
your call to the public agenda item.
you're not necessarily supposed to
be speaking more
than once at a council meeting.
>>
[ inaudible ] traffic circle
[ inaudible ]
putting up.
>> how much time do you have left?
spin didn't he
have 30
seconds?
>> if he can speak in that
30 seconds point
>> you can
finish the rest of the
three minutes.
>> it's not that adversarial.
>>
yeah right .
>> now
I'm representing ea. I'm the president
of ea. We are trying to put the
aircraft display on the traffic
circle. We started three years ago.
identical to the public, voted on
the
agenda, you approved it. It got stalled
for about a year because the town
attorney dennis
dupre, christine smith and
rob buchanan
, you hired as a consultant, all
realized there was a liability risk. I
tried to say that there's no liability
risk,
it's a.'s traffic circle, adot issues
traffic permit, took about a year,
finally got it
insult. The town agreed it was not
a liability issue. We went ahead and
filed the encroachment permit with
a.and it was denied because rob buchanan,
your consultant, got
into it and he
said that you didn't want to be in the
same situation,
he really didn't want it and you didn't want
the liability of. Again, that liability
--
>>
we are over the three minutes now.
>> thank you. >> I would like
to continue.
>> you can talk.
>> look out
tonight again.
>> are there any
more speakers? One on zoom.
let's
take zoom.
>> we see him
back there.
>> can you hear me?
thank you for this opportunity to
speak,
town manager, town
council, westermeier. I would also
like to speak about
the unfair
rental amounts
for the -- we'll call them the pho
hangers even though they are not anymore. The
town
has always used a per square footage
for the
charges and for some reason we
are being overcharged. Our base
rate is $371. That's the same exact
rate for the t
hangers that are by the fuel pit.
the fuel pit, as
you've already heard, the fuel pit
t
hangers are newer, nicer, and bigger.
and we don't
feel that 371 base rate
for our hangars is
fair based on
those facts , and we are being charged
an additional $15
for electricity. So we are actually
being
charged $386. The rate should be closer
to
$300, which I don't believe would
be fair. Want to switch
gears and talk
about the malibu
pool project, and I would just like
to say I would like
to ask that the town not spend another
dollar on the proposed
malibu pool project until after
the bond election. I just feel like
it's irresponsible to
spend additional money when we
don't know how the town is going
to grow, one way or the other. So
that's all I had to say. Thank
you very much.
>> thank you.
>>
mike quinn.
>> my name is mike quinn. I'd
just like to speak about the pool
situation for a minute.
I was doing some calculations. I think
there's $75 a year is not
much. I tried to
figure out,
my house has been appreciating every
year. It's way more than
$75. This business of squabbling over
a small sum of money
like that is ridiculous. $75 a year,
that comes out to like six or seven
bucks
a month. That's a beer, that's a hamburger.
not only that, if you
do build this --if this is
defeated and you
go back to the old site, people are
still going to have
to pay two or three bucks a month
so squabbling over this small sum
of money is ridiculous and making
an issue out of
it to appease one group of people
in town and ignore the
other property owners, I guess the
thing I'd like to say
is I guarantee you, if we go with
the malibu site
and we build a nice recreation facility,
my house
appreciation will more than cover
it. That's
only $750 in 10 years. I'm
not sure I'm going to live 10 years
but it's well worth it
to me and this squabbling over
nickel and
dimes is ridiculous. The other thing
is the property values, letter a,
are going
to go up and down. That's going to
help cover it. And secondly,
more people are coming to town so
you're going to get more revenue and let's
not
forget when we make america great
again we are all going to be
rich.
thank you.
>> and about? I see
a hand.
>> mayor, town council, I just
want to formally introduce myself.
my name is
jimmy lee and I recently accepted
the position of the chamber of
commerce based here in
payson. We represent all the small
businesses both here in payson and
around gila
county and I just want to say we look
forward to working
with you and look forward to our partnership
together, so thank you
very much.
>> thank
you.
>> inga?
>> good afternoon mayor,
council,
and staff. I'm totally unprepared.
I was not going to
speak today but I've made some
observations that bother me.
the group for
malibu pool is really well represented
and
they have some very
good arguments, however, I've been
attending quite a few of the
refurbished taylor pool
meetings and I have found a lot of
sensible things
come out of that. First of all, to
me,
the town in the past
few years has not been fiscally responsible.
there are three councilmembers that
ran on
transparency and fiscal responsibility,
which means, check the figures.
now esther quinn just brought up some
figures about $75 a year. If you all
go to united
payson's facebook page, there is a
chart there that you can
calculate what your property tax and
your
home will increase. So I also work
with
the roundup and they run a
poll so the
town in
the past promised many pie in the
sky projects which
have not come through. So I really
appreciate
those councilmembers that have worked
hard at investigating all these facts.
so
the poll that the roundup
ran showed
no pool, 29.1%,
renovate taylor
pool, 59.1%.
no pool, 11.8%. Now these figures
come from people
who
have lived here many years. I've
only been here 13 but I feel like
I've been here 30 years. I'm
really involved with the town and
I like to listen to all the facts
and figures.
and these are my observations so again,
you know,
we need to really basically put this
on hold and get down to the bottom.
also
the one thing that I
heard some during these meetings,
that malibu would really basically
just serve the college and we are not going
to get
people from mesa out here because
they've got their own thing. We
are looking for the kids.
the taylor pool will
add two lanes. That will give us competition,
which means a better economy. People
will come up here for the competition
meets that will increase revenue that
not only
the hotels but also the restaurant.
so I got
a lot more
to share but I only have 25 minutes
and I don't want to go
off on a tangent, so please do think
about some of the points that I
brought up. I appreciate all of you
and all the hard work that you
put into this, and your passion about
this town, which matches my passion
for this town. Thank you so much and
thank you, mr. Manager, for again
taking up the sword and working
with us , and with
your common sense decisions.
>> thank
you, inga.
>> thank
you.
>>
anymore speakers? With that
we'll move to item b,
consent
agenda.
all items listed under the consent agenda will
be voted on
with one motion. The consent agenda
includes
items that are routine, procedural,
informational, self-explanatory
and noncontroversial. If discussion
is desired regarding any consent agenda
item, that
item will be removed from the
consent agenda, proceed to vote, and
remaining consent agenda items will
then return to discuss
and vote on removed items
separately. So ask for a motion on
the
consent agenda.
>> I moved to approve the consent
agenda.
>> second? >> second with
charlie bell.
call for
the vote.
>> [ inaudible ] >> my
thing --[ inaudible ]
>> motion
passes 7-0.
>> current events,
presentation by town manager, mayor,
and/or councilmembers,
c 1. Darren?
>> you guys have anything
first?
>> I don't. >>
no, nothing from council? Okay. Just
a couple
of things that
we are working on
and I think that most people in the
audience will approve this. It won't
take that long but soon you'll
be able to go to the city of payson
website and town of payson
website,
and there will be a new tab there,
and it
says ask city hall so if you heard
a rumor in
town or you saw something on
facebook, and you want to get what
the true facts
are from the city, you can click on
that building or
that button within a day or so, depending
on
whose department
it is, we'll respond directly to you
what the stance of
the city's is. When that becomes available,
I'll let
you
know. I don't want to talk about
that. Today counselor hollands and
I were
talking about how
do we make the town of payson a better
place and how do
we get past some
of the heartaches that the city is
faced in the last couple
of years. So I did some calling around
and did some talking to some
people. I spoke to the gardening club
and I meet with them next week, and
I also spoke
with jesse perry, and I meet with
him next week.
one thing I think we should
think of, maybe in the spring, is
doing payson beautification
day. We'll do it on
a saturday. The city of payson can pay
for our hot
dogs and
chili and people who participate,
t-shirts, we'll have rakes ready for
them, we'll have
flowers, we'll
have everything. We'll spend one day.
the city crew can go out and pick
up
garbage, if it's something too big
that you can't get we'll go and get
it for them and we'll see if we can't
make
payson prettier. Just something
that I'm thinking about as I meet
with those people. I'll let
you know.
we'll shoot for something in the spring like
that, that we can
get the whole community behind something.
I
want you all to
know, too that the
845,603 $33
for the public safety retirement has
been paid this year. No penalties
for this
year so we also meet with a crew that
is
called pars. Dana and I will meet
with them in october and it's an
investment firm that basically is
for strictly
for
emergency services, retirement. Dana
and I will also meet with an investment
firm
that does
the purchasing of
public bonds, public cds. You have
all your
money currently in basically one account. We
are going to diversify that account
so that we
don't get ourselves tied up in a
bad
spot. Now
I will give you a little update on
the pool. This is going
to be pretty short and sweet because
our contractor has been sick and he
also has
been in africa fishing for
bass so
he gave us some numbers. I want to stress
to everybody that these numbers are
off of a 40% plan
so they're not your final numbers.
they're a 40%
plan that
we feel is reasonable to come up with
the numbers
but currently at
a 40%
cost estimate,
rob feels that the
pool can be done for $12.4 million
excluding the cover. The pool
can be
done for $16 million with a cover.
now
I want to stress,
you know, and everybody knows I just
want to reiterate that
that's 40% plans and I
know that contractors feel pretty
good about that but
I just want to make sure that
that's clear. But those are the numbers.
he did
cut some things out of it that
you guys may have asked for so we
are down to the nuts
and bolts, you might say.
I know I can't remember which one of you, what
do you that asked for operating? Was
it you
that asked for operating,
scott? And this is an estimate of
communities
around us, and then an estimate that
rod
put together, an estimate
for
expenses, $482,240. An estimate
of revenues, $170,200. On
the
revenues, that all depends on what
you guys want to do. If you want 12
and under free, that's going to
change that. If you want your senior
citizens
for free. And so, depending
on the estimated expenses, you really
can't forecast any project until it's
been
a year, until you know what
your water costs are, what your chlorine
costs are, what your power
bill is, what
your --but everybody around here says
anywhere
from
350 to 600,000 depending on what you
got so you're looking at around
$309,000 lost. That is a
36% return. Most people said
that you can expect any place from
25% to
40%
return so I
want everybody to know, especially
in the audience, that on september
30th the information pamphlet
will come out that will have all
the figures, also the city website
that we put together
will become available on that same
day. Those are all
just past figures that the council
has
been presented.
nothing new.
I guess
that's it.
>> I guess I'm disappointed that this
information is being presented today.
we are six
weeks --
>> mayor and council, I'm
so sorry, we're not really supposed
to have any discussion
on how manager updates?
>> we can't
have discussion on it that we can
have
these numbers presented in favor,
which could be in favor of
the pool.
>> mayor and council, as
I have previously reminded as
well as I am now, so they current
events
summary under open meeting laws is
a one-way.
it's only the town manager being able
to provide an update on multiple topics
and because
it's multiple topics, the law basically
states that it has to be
one way, because there back and forth
discussion. So you don't want to violate
the open
meeting law.
>> then could
I ask for maybe this to be put on
the agenda
next week, then, and I could make
a presentation regarding
the pool
and the numbers?
>> I think I share
your concern about advocacy.
obviously I gave a presentation right
after we did the referral. For the
bond. And certainly I would
not
recommend that the town be in a position where we
are going to have
more presentations about the pool until
after the outcome of the election.
>>
then yeah, then I would think that
we shouldn't be talking about
any numbers in a council meeting regarding
the bond.
>> staff, you're out of
order, either remove
your self --remove yourself or
be quiet . You're out of order. You're
out of order.
>> you're out
of order.
>> mayor and council,
I would just again, because open
meeting law issues, I would just --
if we
could maybe stop this discussion and
just
move on.
>> that's all I have.
>> okay. >> no other great news?
>> no. >> on a brighter note, I want
to thank our town manager
for sending some of our leased vehicles
that we didn't need back to
their homes and saving the town of
payson money.
>> thank
you.
>>
darren,
what vehicle were you given to drive
when you came here?
>> I wasn't
given one.
>> I thought you had a
2019 car to drive.
>> oh, you
didn't offer that. But I
think there's one new and that, that
I'd rather like.
>> okay. >> you told me you
had a 2019 vehicle and it had less
than 10,000 miles on it.
>> yes
there is one out there and there's
actually one with --I
don't know, dana is rocking it on
this. She's going through and we
discussed it again today but there's
one out there that has less than
6000 miles on it, yeah.
>> I think
we're just going
to keep because it's cheaper just
to buy it than to
send it back with that few of miles
on it.
>> thank you
for taking the bull by the horns and
getting some of those
vehicles home
because we didn't need the recurring
expense and thank you to him.
>> yes,
thank you. Those are good things.
>> those are good things. I forgot
that we
had anything under
ceremonial announcements?
cnn
healing mom, hearings and appeals
are not, that brings us to
item f1 under resolutions
and ordinances, discussion, possible
action
regarding
resolution 3462, approving and authorizing infrastructure
development
agreement between town of payson,
arizona, and payson
golf club, llc, related to the infrastructure
development of certain property located
in town.
>> thank you, mayor and council.
tonight for your consideration is
the resolution 3462, which approves
infrastructure
development agreement
24-001 between the town of payson
and the payson golf club
llc. The application for this agreement
was submitted
by the developer and has gone through
multiple rounds of
review. It's gone departments of legal
council
and the applicant's team including
their attorney and engineer . In
addition this proposal has
been discussed in
multiple council work sessions, which
is giving council members the opportunity
to provide direction
to staff and clarify any of those
expectations before bringing it back
before you tonight. Just briefly,
I will kind
of go over what it is. It
is a development agreement. It relates
to a proposed
development for 125 residential condominium
units on the payson
golf club property. There's
some key infrastructure commitments
in the project so the
developer is going to fund and construct
laid way roadway improvements. That
includes roadway improvements, doll
baby
ranch road. We've got reconstruction
of vista road, reconstruction on
country club
drive, full reconstruction, safety
upgrades, three-way intersection of
those three raids. Developer
will be required
to upgrade drainage to town standards
for this project, to reconstruct
golf
club driveways, residential driveways,
dedicate right-of-way to the town for
vista and
country club, and there is a portion
of the doll baby ranch road that is
that forest service piece so if
approvals are delayed during that
the developers have
a
cash payment equivalent for construction which is
in the agreement. There
are private streets proposed within
the development which
would remain private and not maintained
by the town of payson. So this agreement
does not replace any of our standard
processes. We
still have a
standard subdivision plat and process
approval they will still have to go
through. This ultimately
memorializes those variances at their
request to move forward
and
design. The town also required all
of the town codes still apply for
the development
and the agreement does expire in three
years if the platting conditions are
not met. This agreement has been carefully
reviewed
and discussed in
alliance with the general plan and
assures needed infrastructure is delivered
at no cost
to the town. I can provide any more
breakdown of those specific variances
that they are requesting or any other
questions
you have and the applicant is also
here if you
have questions for them
as well.
>> I have a question regarding
the doll baby ranch road portion west
of vista because as
I look at the property
lines, it's a sawtooth affair with
forest service land and then
golf course land and then service
land so what you're
telling us is
there's going
to be [ inaudible ] up until the sawtooth
and then there will be nothing where
it's forest service and they have
to start
again.
>> you are correct it is a
very
sawtooth section of her there. Part
of the agreement requires them to
start the
process of getting that cleaned up,
essentially. We will be a partner
in cleaning that
up so the town will support whatever
we can in those efforts. If they're
unable to, they provide the cash to
us and we are able to do those
improvements if we need to.
>> vista up towards the cemetery,
there
is some forks in the
property lines. Do we know who --
>> it all gets cleaned up with this
so you have proper right-of-way designation
with this so then what's currently
roadway now
is actually private property, so all
of that actually gets dedicated for
the town to continue
to maintain.
>> and payson golf course
owns vista?
>> correct. >>
forest service owns much of doll baby
ranch road?
>> just a
couple of those pieces you saw in
that sawtooth so there's some breakups
here.
>> how
much of the total business is that?
>> how much of the forest service
is owned?
>> how
much of --I saw in
the presentation, how many feet, linear
feet is going
to take there, and
I just wondered how much is forest
service as a
percentage or any
--
>> I don't have the breakdown unless
the engineer -- do you have
any breakdown?
>> okay, yeah, just
the doll
baby side. The doll baby ranch road,
the
whole distance is 1575 feet so not
all
of
that.
>> and they
put curb and gutter just on the golf
course side, is that correct?
>>
of course side,
which --
>> the development side for
the condos. They're not doing sides
of the road.
>> both sides. >> both
sides, okay.
>> that's my question.
>> I think I know the answers to
these but I got some questions on
facebook
about this specific project
and I'm curious how long ago did the
property zoning
change
for this because apparently nobody
knows when the zoning changes were
made, how or
when, so I'm just
curious.
>> the zoning has not changed
and it did not need to change. This
is
by right use for this parcel.
it is zoned r 3 so
they can do the condos without this
development agreement, essentially
pull
a
permit tomorrow for condos. The development
agreement is to ask for those variances
in
the
roadway standards for the three raids we
mentioned.
>> it was owned appropriately
when the
current owner purchased the golf course.
okay. Is
the current developer or
owner receiving special considerations
regarding street size or set backs?
>> no. >> and
has there been any traffic
study consideration regarding the
traffic that will be
increased at green
valley park?
>> green
valley park, I think the traffic study
was designed for this specific site,
for the golf course area, so that
traffic
study was done to determine if a left
turn lane was
essentially warranted on vista, which
it
was found not to be.
>> nothing specifically
to
the increase of traffic that will
be going by the park with
the additional
[ inaudible ] at the golf
course?
>> it didn't go that, no --
>> in this situation the zoning that's
already set up for that.
>> typically
your traffic study is going to review
the
impact of the traffic for that specific
setting.
>> awesome.
appreciate
it.
>> just john hit
some of it but a
little more clarification for some
of
these threads.
this is a public you municipal golf
course or a public/private golf course?
I know
the answer.
>> public/private. Is
not a municipal golf course.
>> this
is not the town
selling off half of its golf course
and things of
that nature.
>> private property.
>> this is somebody
who privately owns the property and
they're using their property within
the
zoning codes.
>> yes, correct.
>> okay. >> okay. >> show me
that the answer will be yes on this
but is the
property owner happy with the result
of what's going on here?
>>
we'll have to ask him and
probably ask specifically why
you are asking if he's happy about
that.
>> are you happy with all of
this?
is this going the way you want it
to go?
>> and you come and speak at
the mike if you're --
thank you
>> can't see specifically
if
I'm happy or not but I can
say that recently the
town has been
responsive in terms of getting this on
the
agenda and we
have approved the
infrastructure agreement and
are pleased that we are moving forward.
so yes, I
am pleased.
>> we'll change the word
happy to pleased.
>> okay. Any
other questions?
>> thank you.
>> welcome.
>>
so am I --is there anyone else?
so if mr. Jackson is well
within his zoning rights, he and
his company, sorry,
doni, he
and his company,
they own -- they
have ownership of the property and so
I know that there are some who are
definitely not
in favor and some, this is always
the case, not everybody is ever happy.
there are some that are
absolute it and we need the housing,
and it
will improve the golf course by
some individuals case that
they've made, but what this does come
down to in my opinion
is his personal or his privately owned
ownership rights, so as long as he's
done and
will complete everything in the development
agreement, and do you
see any
--foresee, and
I'm not asking you to have a crystal
ball, but I guess I kind of
did, do you
feel comfortable with this development
agreement moving
forward?
>> staff can support the
development agreement.
>> all right.
thank you.
>> any other
comments from council? As for a motion
?
>>
thanks,
doni.
>>
I guess
I have
--
>> you're on mission. >> you've got
to state it.
>>
approval of resolution 3462, the infrastructure
development
agreement for the payson golf
club llc. The second?
>> I second. >>
call for a vote?
>> my [ inaudible ] >>
I had to close out and
go back in so swipe up, go out of
it, close
it and go back in, or both, whatever
you want.
>> for some reason it
was in connection.
>> is not happy
with us today.
>> motion
passes 7-0.
item #
f 2, regarding ordinance 970 amending
the town of payson code of ordinances by
adopting
title 15,
chapter 150, section
150.31, wildfire structure
hardening code pertaining to building
standards to mitigate the spread
of fire,
including severability, revealing
conflicting ordinances, setting forth
penalty and establishing
effective
date. Okay. Already
been two
public hearings regarding this ordinance
on
may 14th, 2025. Council tabled this
ordinance and directed staff
to engage in additional outreach with
the development
and construction communities to refine
the
ordinance without making
it too weak to carry weight, and then
bring it back before the council.
vice
mayor tubbs requested the staff report,
how many builders participated in the
discussion, and kevin, you don't look
like
chief staab. If you're going to present,
please present.
>>
just real quick in your very first
statement,
this is not the first time we've heard
of this.
>> not the first time.
>> it's been mentioned a bunch that
this was sprung on us and it's not
new.
>> may 14th, to
be exact, yes.
>> mr. Mayor, yes I'm
the one on
the agenda but
the reality is chief mcculley has
been carrying this week all the way
through
and so it is honor to send it to the
council
>> would you like to make
an announcement about chief mcculley?
>> the other
part of this is battalion chief mcculley,
as of monday, is now assistant chief
mcculley and will be
running operations [ inaudible ]
>> congratulations. >> that's
outstanding
news, congratulations.
>> enjoyed
working with him and the fire
department went as we figure out how
to lead a public safety initiative.
it
will be a lot
of fun
, along with commander d's.
>> well-deserved,
congratulations.
>> well-deserved. Thank
you
very much. It's my honor. Mr. Mayor,
embers of the town council,
mr. Manager, thank you for having
me here to talk to you about this.
I believe I did have a powerpoint
so this kind of
throws me off a little bit but ultimately
my job here is to give you
as much facts and information necessary to
make a good
decision on this item,
this ordinance. Between
chief staab and myself we have probably
over 78 years of
experience five we are members of
a national group of firefighters that
at this
problem throughout the united states.
we are also involved in
efforts to look at the insurance problem
across the
united states, especially in the west, so
we
don't
present this information out of a
vacuum. This is our job for you and
the town to come up with this information
and these recommendations.
so in
the powerpoint I broke it up into
kind of three different
sections. The
first section was
a report, synopsis of what we had
with the meeting, with the
holders.
we asked
community development to publicize
this meeting to the best of their
abilities,
including emails, advertising
it on
the paper. To my knowledge, they
did that, they went forward and advertised it
to the best that they could.
we had seven contractors
show up for the meeting and in
that meeting the principal issues
in
that meeting --
and this is going off the top of my
head, so we were talking
about
the eaves, protection of the eaves being
expensive, protection of
the docs so in the ordinance, what
it requires is if you have open
eaves you have
ignition
resistant plywood for the part
of the event overhangs the wall, if
that makes sense, so
right now what happens is that particular
plywood has to be a special exterior
grade plywood anyway, so
that's why, when you look at homes
that are
being built, that there is like a
little
strip around the eaves, if they are
open eaves. That's a special type
of plywood
called cd
x. So we researched
the cost. You can readily get
the
fire resistant plywood that meets
that same
standard and if we
consider a house that's probably 2600
square feet , the difference off the
top of my head, it was somewhere around
$560 difference in
the
past, the fire rated plywood and the
normal cd x that you would normally
have
to use. That's considering that it
takes 25 four by eight sheets of
that plywood to
do that, that eve
protection. So the second part of
that
was the decks. So in
this ordinance we require that the
structure of
the deck the initial resistant
or noncombustible and that the
deck surface can still be wood but
with quarter inch gaps between the
wood. That's based
on some ib hs
studies that they tested
different deck structures and they
found that if
you had ignition resistant
structure underneath, that it was
less likely to catch
fire from the embers so looking
at that, there's 2 by 12,
I believe, 16 foot structural supports for
the
deck and those would have to be treated
in this
code, and that was about $700 difference
between the
normal nontreated wood and the
treated wood. That's considering
the 25 two by 12 by
16 foot in the
council package there was the quote
that we got from the
building supply indicating
those costs.
this items were probably the top
two concerns of
the
contractors. First contractors --
one other concern that
there probably shared
concern was the siding on a structure.
so
the normal ignition resistant siding
is actually less
expensive than regular siding or other
types
of siding. If you want to go with
the wood
kind of look. If you
get
real wood siding, which a couple of
our developments require, that
is about 37% more expensive for the
treated wood. That wood has to be
special
ordered and is treated at the factory.
it's not something you
can just treat in the
field but
from my research it's about 37%
more expensive. I wish I had my powerpoint.
it was a little bit better organized.
so
from those top three concerns, some
of the contractors voiced concerns
that
the rule
wasn't necessary. We didn't need another
room to
comply with and I think one of the
contractors told me outside of the
meeting that they
basically didn't want more rules to
have to worry about
building when they're building a house.
I understand there's a lot of rules
that they have to comply with. I think
that's pretty much the
nutshell of the main
contractor concerns.
>> can I
ask a question?
>>
yes sir.
>> do we have any minutes
or anything to see what the
discussions were and how they responded to
all
of this? Because I didn't see anything
published
anywhere and I've been reading the
roundup for the past
10 years, and there might be
a few roundups I didn't see but
I
didn't see any advertisement anywhere
on this. Maybe
someone can correct me on this,
when the advertisements happen.
>>
it's on the
town facebook.
>> on the town facebook
so it
was just the
town facebook.
>> some people do
not --someone sent me a screenshot
asking me about this and I sent
it to different contractors that I
knew, that by the time I'd seen it
and it was sent to me, they had like
48 hour --they would've
had 48 hour notice. So I think that
the timing of this
meeting and the notification, like
putting it
out on the town website probably wasn't
the best way to do it. It would've
been
really help if we had that information,
too, since
we are the ones that kind of have
received the
phone calls and the nasty grams it
would've
been really helpful to have
that because if I would've had a little
bit more time,
maybe one of us would've been there.
>> I was going
to ask, was any councilmember invited to
any of these meetings or to
that effect or anything
at
all?
>> so mr. Mayor, councilmember
bell,
I believe tracy, if I'm not mistaken,
it was advertised in
the
roundup adjust
paper advertisement we
ran, so it was advertisement around
it. It was put on social media. It
was put
on the website. As far as the council
being invited, the short answer
is no because
we weren't trying to make it a council
meeting. We were trying
to have a staff meeting with the contractors.
we understand the direction from council
to
meet was you wanted us to go back
and meet with the contractors
and that's what we did was we met
with the contractors but we did try
--the other part
of that is I believe community development
put out word to
several of the contractor so we tried
a number of different ways to get contractors
and
we had six, seven days, so the
other part that I will also remind council is
this code recommendation has been
through the council's building
advisory board, which has contractors
on it, before we even brought
it to council the first time . So
it has had
a number of public will chappy product.
it's not been trying to
detect product
in any way but there's only so many
ways
we have to communicate out to the
public and different people, as you
mentioned,
have different ways of reading and
we tried to do as many as we could.
>> I'm not accusing. I'm just -->> covering
our end and your end.
>>
just asking. I haven't seen anything.
>> it's just
me,
I'm sure. I'm not a real social
media guru.
>> mr. Farris, go ahead.
>>
this call --this code, what it
adds, we already have a
code.
you're talking about the 2600 square foot
home, which is a pretty
good-sized home that
you believe that the contractors may
have discussed would
be added onto that 2600 square foot
home today with this
new code? Doing
the plus
and minuses?
>> if you
were to have the home that you're
just looking at the deck, the fire
resistant nests of the deck and the
eaves I believe is
about
$1200 roughly.
I
had the powerpoint but it's hard to
go off the top of my head. It's
right around $1200.
>> in that $1200
represents what, maybe 75% of the
added cost that
the new ordinance
puts into, creates?
>> probably, so
the ordinance
is designed so that you can
build your house pretty much any way
you want. There is no limitations
on how
you build
it so you
have houses that look identical to
what they do today. It's just that
if
you decide to have open eaves
or you decide, excuse me,
to have a deck, then
there are procedures that you need
to follow to
protect those.
>> that siding
would be a huge figure if they decide
to have
wood and it has to be treated. I mean
that's
got to add I
think --
>> about
37%.
>> what that
37% represents [ inaudible
] dollars .
>> that's part of the reason I did
it that way, because it's hard to
quantify that exactly, how much wood
do you put on the house and how
big is the house. So the best way
to
quantify that would've
been the percentage.
>> would it be
fair to say on an average home,
your cost
is substantially less than $5000 more
with this
new code than
the existing?
>>
it's hard to quantify that, honestly,
because there's so many different
ways to build a house.
>> I was just thinking, you build
a house this way and this one
is built a little
different we, generally, you would
think
that generally there would be a number
that you
can say, on average it's going
to add $3500 to
the structure.
>> mr.
mayor, maybe I can help council understand the
direction the fire
department went in
drafting the code, based on the direction
from the building advisory board,
was they wanted a very
open code that
didn't make
cookie-cutter houses, didn't make everything
cement, a lot of options.'s that was the
direction we went based
upon the science, so it's a little difficult
to kind of put your point in because we
all must
have to take a building package for
the house today and then try to get
a
building package, is it $5000? Some
houses might be $5000. Some may
be more. Not very many less but we
also have a
number of builders already that are
building with the
materials to code
already so that's part of the challenge
with this is we made it
very open on the building advisory
board so it's not
--it's performance, not prescriptive.
>> [
inaudible ], correct?
>> that's correct.
>>
so that's ecstatic please and but
you
can go to a roofing store and get
synthetic looking roofing
that looks --
>> you can get tile
roof that is like a shake
shingle roof, correct.
>> and its
way cheaper than
the shake roofs are, the natural shake
roofs and it
meets code. I
was recently looking for siding because
somebody in their
infinite wisdom sided my house with
plastic
and I'm not
thrilled but some of the composites
that are
out there with amazing fire
ratings are cheaper than natural wood
by
far so
given the trade-offs and
the improvements in the synthetic
materials
each year, there may
be an increase now for
things like decks but I think going
forward the cost
of a hardened code is going to get
less every year or
the increase is going to be less as
other
materials raised in price.
the synthetic siding was very, very
reasonable and
had a very good fire
rating.
>> I believe you're correct,
mr. Mayor. We
actually had 1800 square
foot house plan bid out normally
and with fire resistant siding it
actually came out less expensive than
typical and
the reason for that was the siding
was so much less
expensive so I'm seeing that
because I'm trying to make you understand
that there's a wide variety
of that and really we want it that
way so the
contractor has that
ability and the homeowner, the builder,
they have that ability to build
it the way they want so
we're trying to leave that open but
we are still trying
to make the
necessary protections that
will count. So I vhs is a company
that is studies
on how houses burn
in conflagrations and
wildland fires. They have come up
with standards that
depict what the insurance companies
listen to as
far as rating their
risk and I'm not a specialist
in insurance but I understand insurance
has a
wide matrix of different things that
go
in to determining that risk so it's
not just
here in arizona that we are
having this issue. Obviously california
is having that,
colorado, a lot of different states
are having this
insurance issue and ultimately the
insurance companies, they want to
make
money so they make money by
ensuring houses but they have to limit
their risks so one
of the recognized ways to limit that
risk is following the I vhs
standard. So with
that, what we came up with is in
that meeting the
contractors ask to take out the eve
protection in
the deck protection and really we
found out that if we
do that it waters down
the code so much that it would be
an
effective code and obviously the insurance
companies wouldn't see that as reducing
the risk so there's a couple different
items that
are here that are
obviously ultimately, if we hardening the
structures it's an
important part of the [ inaudible
] code and the vegetation code that
we already have but to harden the
structures, what that does
is reduce the chance of
conflagrations so you look at
these fires, like the marshall
fire in colorado, that was only a
6000 acre fire and they
lost over 1000 structures. I think
it was in the billions of dollars
that it cost but that was a structure
to structure
ignition and I vhs
has found that if you harden the structures
they are resistant
to that. It might not complete the
stop that from happening but the
way it kind of works is once structure
starts and it's
kind of like a plan
to gain, it will go from structure to
structure so if you can keep
that first structure from starting
or
reduce the second structure, the chances
the second structure starts, that
reduces
your risks all
the structures
get damaged.
>> I used my computer. >>
go ahead.
>> so kevin, I appreciate all
the work that you've done on
this and I am an extremist when it
comes to fire wise. My
big issue is
a cost for the consumer. No
matter what, it's going to continue
to increase in cost 40 consumer.
we had 60% increase
since david for building materials
and then we are adding this, and it's
not about
what the contract --
contractor wants, it's about what's
really best for the consumer
here and so we've had as far as
a town, and
this is some very key
things that kind of
made sense is that we have increased
our
sales
tax, which costs more to build here.
you want to live
here and play here, you've got
to pay to live here and play
here, but in all reality, I do have
a question
and I'm not really
trying to be picky against you,
I just need to know these things for
myself and my own
education. The cost estimate that
was
done, was this done and
created by a
rim country contractor who did the
cost estimates
package, and where those --and if
not, where
at least those estimates, where they
from a
local
business here like the r and k or
what used
to be the r
and k? Because I know that our prices
here are a lot
different than other cities,
towns, states. We
already pay a little bit of premium
so
I will tell you
that yes,
the insurance, in talking to some
insurance agents, this is not going
to be
our fix all
for our homeowners insurance. Our
biggest issue that we have
is our brush and being
actually our defensible
space as,
was it gino pointed out in his letter,
that is a
true fact
so again, you know
we have to --I feel like we have to
be
wise about this and if this
is the to know what I
don't
see maybe and maybe I'm wrong, I'm not
a builder. I don't
do that but the labor in the
eaves have to be in additional cost
to this, if I'm not mistaken.
okay. So did we factor that in?
those are other things that I think
are key things to think
about. I just am not --I'm not
comfortable with this because
I feel like the consumer
is continually
chased and bid at for every dollar,
and
when you are in the process of
redoing
your home, renovating, things like
that,
that is --maybe that's the issue.
maybe that's where we look
into it but I mean if we
look at the number of homes that we
have under construction, we
are landlocked here. We only
have so many
to go. Wet is the benefits going to
outweigh? We
don't want to give any reason to chase
off
taxpayers because we priced
ourselves we put ourselves into a
position, I
should say, to price them out our market.
we are already --we
have that issue with our low income,
our people on
fixed incomes, so I just sensitive
to
that, that I --it's --
I'm sorry, the builders, they
are going to pass it on. They're
not
going to make anything on it. They're
going to pass it on and ultimately
it's
going to be the consumer's pocket, so
I just --unless
I absolutely we saw those numbers,
I would also
have been a little
bit more -- maybe it's just being a
control freak but I
would've liked to have
some more information about that meeting
that
they had as
well but at this time I can't
support this. I can't vote on
this.
>> you bring up some excellent
points and
some that I would appreciate the chance to address,
if you don't
mind.
>> absolutely, please, please,
because I had surgery the day before
and was not --I appreciate that so
thank you.
>> so we did use
arizona building supply here in town
to get these prices.
we did talk to their wholesale folks
in phoenix about the
availability of that material specifically,
the treated 2 by 12 by 16 and
the plywood, and as far
as more costly to use a
different type
of plywood, it's just
the same --it's
the same procedure. Still that eave
has
to have the different type
of plywood
on it for the extra rating. All this
is
adding the plywood would be fire
resistant so the cost in
manual labor to do that,
I question that. I think you
talk about, so the
manufactured homes, I spoke to clayton
holmes and they're actually
in goodyear, I believe. They said
their package
is $1800. That adds to the cost
of a manufactured home.
the national manufactured home
association said that's not a
problem to build homes, manufactured
home like that. They build homes
in oberdick and
withstand hurricanes, and so it's
not unusual to have different requirements in
different areas of the
country. I would also --two more
things that I would submit for you
to consider
is that if
homeowners insurance somehow
isn't controlled
or mitigated, and I have seen
this personally
within payson already, people losing
their homeowners insurance or having
their insurance
go up astronomically, so
if you consider a homeowners
insurance going from $1500 a
year to 6000 dollars a year,
you know that's almost another $500
a month in your mortgage payment
to make that
insurance
payment. So I'm not guaranteeing
that this -- I can't guarantee
all the insurance companies would
look at this as being something that
mitigated
their risk because I can't speak for
them and they all have their
own matrix and ways that they figured
out that risk but
I bhs is who they listen to and they
have
recommended this is a way to reduce
their risks so
I would think that. Another thing
that I had in my slideshow that I
think is --
>> where was your
slideshow? Kevin?
>> I know, flying
by the seat of my pants here so in
the hawaii,
the lahaina fire, it wasn't a
large fire, similar to
the marshall fire in colorado,
but it did billions of dollars worth
of damage to
those homes, and is to be homes, if
you've ever been to maui, they
all
had shake shingle roofs. They really
weren't built for fires. Interesting
part of that
whole thing
, insurance companies wanted to go
individually against the state
and the county and
electric companies, and what do they
call it when they go after
their insurance --subrogate.
they were trying to individually subrogate
against the county,
the state, the power
companies on each person's behalf
and they
took it to I think the hawaii
supreme court, and they
said no, that's unreasonable. But
out
of that, there was a settlement, I
think a $4
million settlement against the state
of hawaii, the
county of maui, and
the electrical companies. So you
look at the palisades fire
in
l.a., they're going to have lawsuits
similar to that and
that fire as
well, against the county and the state,
which is, as far as
I know, fairly unique and kind of
a
new term in the fire
damage and recovery of
that
cost. So
how much does that reduce our income
to
the town ? How much?
I'm not a lawyer, either. How much
liability could that cause for
the town if we had
a fire? Part of my presentation also
was that these fires were not
huge fires that people think
of as
swelling up [ inaudible ]
point they're smaller fires and we get those all
the time in payson, that are the same
magnitude as these fires. The argument
that this will never
happen here is not a
good argument
. You get fires if you've been up
and down
87. You see fires on the roadside.
there's multiple, multiple starts
in our area. Fortunately
we have very good
response to those starts and they're
able to put them
out early
. But the conditions just like they
were in lahaina or at the
marshall fire, conditions are right, we
could be in trouble.
hopefully
I can --those, to me, are important
facts in deciding
this.
>>
where you failed at our vegetation
removal requirement for
what we have, do you have enough teeth
for that to make
an impact?
>> the teeth
are there.
the teeth are there.
it
takes -- honestly I'm just --he takes
people
to enforce
that and time, staff time to enforce
that.
I think the ordinance that we have
as far as vegetation
management is very good and the teeth
are there
for that.
>>
thank
you.
>>
from what I understand, this is the
first reading of the ordinance.
>> no,
this is the third time we brought
it up in council.
>> because of the space
of time, one thing that I think the
contractor
said about fire wise is what a huge
impact that could be and I think
that's where we need to
really focus. I'm not saying this
shouldn't
be approved. I probably will prove
it. One
reason, too ,
is we're going to probably get some
developments that we could have a
whole bunch of manufactured homes
come in and they're all in one area,
and I think it
would be done if all
those homes where according to the
hardening code.
that's all
I got.
>>
susie covered what I kind of want
to
talk about. Are you seeing any improvement
in the
town for
fire wising and is
there anything the town can do
to promote more fire wising
or doing --do we need a code officer
going out, looking more
frequently into
fire wise,
what needs to be done in the town?
it seems like if we are
going to pass this that the town has
to be
fire wising everything itself in order
to be effective because you're
talking about from the beginning,
a small population of
the new homes versus all the old homes
that
are here in town, and if the older
homes have
fire wising problems, what's the benefit?
that's
rhetorical. But I'm interested in
knowing
what the community is doing for fire
wising and
what the town code
officer is doing
to --
>> I think council
lubell, I appreciate all the back
and
forth and everything but you have to
start somewhere. If you never create
an ordinance it's going to just
continue you. So to go
back and forth and argue
about fire-wise, which we can appreciate
and we can
review that, but you know if you don't
start somewhere, it's
never going
to improve.
>> if I can, mr. Mayor,
if I'm jumping
on the
manager's comment, I'd like to remind
his council because I don't know if
anyone
on the council was here when we started
this process.
this process and the building, councilmember
ferris was, when he was on the
council previously. We brought forward
a
code that the council didn't want
and we were
asked to break it up and bring two
products. We brought active
fuels product which the council has
adopted and directed reinforcing.
we are going through our first work
asexually
right now with someone who was noncompliant
for the
for the most part we
get compliance
with [ inaudible ]. Most people want
to. The second part
of that was the building hardening
code and that has gone through several
iterations
because the building advisory board
took two years to finally decide we
had a code they were okay
with. I don't know if
anybody remembered mr. Senesi, he
was
on that panel, he was a builder here
in town and he took it upon himself
to make
sure that the code was with the town
needed tell you that, and he beat
us up pretty hard on that, and then
you can do
the counseling you asked us to go
back. Let me
back up. The decision was trying
to figure out we just make it as part
of the 2024 code adoption if you have
that
going on
your own, the two meetings we went
back to this meeting. This
has
been probably 10 using the making
to get us
to this point of coming to the council.
it really is one of
those things like the town manager
said where you're at
so the right. This doesn't flip a
switch tomorrow and every house is
hardened. That's not the point of
it. The point
is houses are built and is houses
are rebuilt is houses are hardened
and eventually because we
are a landlocked community,
infill will happen. Properties will
be purchased,
leveled, and
houses built. That's what happens
in every
community that goes through that and
eventually the community will be hardened.
it will take us
a number of years, like the town manager
said, we don't start somewhere, where
do we start? The fuels issue we could
do continuously but that's a continuous
effort
also as people are finding out who
got the grants, is
that requires separately and we are
focused on
the effort. This is just the next
step and really the question is from
a policy decision. Vice
mehmet oz brought it up, there's a
cost that doesn't please cost some of
the
main we can scene it will increase
costume houses what
does the community want
to bear. This in no way benefits the
fire department other than I have
safer buildings to stop fire. It doesn't do
anything for us.
this is for the community. What do
the policymakers
want the community to
look like?
>> one thing it looks to
me, we just had
a presentation on 100 some hothouses
at the
golf course. We've got timber ridge
going
in. It's going to be manufactured.
rather than have the
dots that have been discussed tonight,
we have opportunities
to put in hardened segments and
this is an opportunity that once those
developments
are built, we are not going to have
again for another 50 years so it seems
to me that we need
to adopt now because we have a huge
concentration
coming of new bills
and if the house and going about the
golf
course, I don't anticipate those houses
having 1000 square foot decks.
they're going to be modest homes and
the cost to build those homes are
going to be more in line with
what you said you got from the manufactured
home
builders so I think we have an opportunity,
and like the
town manager said, we've got to start
somewhere and I'm ready to
start today.
>> appreciate it. First
I want to echo what susie
said. You've put a little work in
this. There has been
several
years, the entire fire department
going into this, I don't think anybody
questions the need as a
community to be conscious of wildfire
risk,
be conscious of things that we are
doing to fight against wildfire risk
but
as it pertains specifically to
this code, I have a hard time getting
behind the
idea that this is going
to drastically or even really at all
really lower
payson's wildfire risk. I
think we have so many bigger
problems that if this town is going
to go up in flames, I personally do
not think that these fire hardening
measures are going to stop that from
happening. We got so much fuel around
us. We have so many houses that are
not fire -wise properly. The trees
next to the house are what's going
to go up in flames and it's not
going to matter what wood you have
on the eave.
the house is going to go up so that's
my personal opinion.
insurance, I'm not in this seat an
insurance professional but I
do know a little bit about insurance.
so I have never had
insurance declined
based on the materials I used on
the house. I have had them declined
on how close the trees are to the
house.
I've had them declined on what the
next-door neighbor's property looks
like. I've had
them declined on the tree limbs overhanging
the house. People may pay more for
insurance
if they choose to use material a versus
material b but that's something I
believe
the contractors should be proactively
talking to them about as they are
the
ones that are looking out for the
client when they're building those.
so it's the slope
of the property, the surrounding areas,
that's what the insurance companies
are looking at. Personally
I don't even think insurance companies
are really worried about the wildfire
risk. There's so
many other ways they get hit from
the insurance perspective
on roofs, on water, floods, things
like that. My
personal opinion, it's
to say we don't want to do business
appear when you have rain and
you have snow and you have hail, you
have a lot of roof planes and
insurance companies use a ton of money
on roof claims so I don't think
this is going to fix the problem.
I stand behind what I said at
the first meeting. If you get the
contractors on board
you will get me on board. I don't believe we've
done that to this
point. $5000, $10,000, that's a lot
of money to a
lot of people and it may not break
the bank for some people but
that could completely stop somebody
from adding on a bedroom, adding whatever
that threshold
is, I forget the specific.
>> [ inaudible
]
>> are you doing
the deck? It can move the needle there
to not allow
that project to be done and it's expensive
to build . I think everybody is aware
of, I'm adding onto my house, if I
had more money I would have a
contractor out there doing it and
be done six months ago.
>>
no permit?
>> no permit. It's expensive
and I --
>>
I'm sorry.
>> $1200 for a difference
I believe
would be dramatically more than that
so
I am not in favor of this. I do appreciate
the hard work you
put into this. I echo what
the rest of the council has said.
there's a lot of other places that
we
need to put a lot more energy and
community to make it
safer.
>> my request button is not
working.
sorry. I want to thank you two for
the work.
my hope, when the
last time we
discussed this, sending it back and
having a discussion with contractors,
that there would be some kind of compromise.
I don't agree with the assertions
that this has been just
thrown on us all of the sudden. This
has been a bear from
may 14th. People knew
about it. It got seven contractors
to come. I wouldn't have
expected that many, so I appreciated
that, that you had that many, and
talk about hopefully what
can we tweak. So that brings
me to
my questions. Was anything changed
from that ordinance
that we talked about on may 14th
until now? And this ordinance, did
you take anything?
you tweak anything?
>> no sir. >>
okay. Than my other
question was eaves
and decks. What percentage of the
whole code do eaves
and decks
represent? Because it sounds like
that is a major concern
for contractors, that maybe if we
took those out, does that leave a
meaningful code?
>> I
believe that was where the contractors
would've liked to have seen that
taken out and in my opinion,
and chief, help me with this also.
I'm not a lone ranger
in this. In looking at other people
that are looking at the same thing,
adopting these codes, that, taking
that out would've watered it down
to where it
wouldn't have been a useful
code and part of
the reason, when we go to the
building advisory board, that code
had morphed quite a bit from
the point that we
first went to the building advisory
board, to the point where we
brought it to you. So a lot of
the contractors, you know, had this
debate in
those meetings. The contractors that
were
on that spoke about this
and how we can
modify
this and part of the presentation,
it shows you the
difference between put in our checklist
for this
code and the
differences between
the code which is part of the building
code,
the fire code, and the I.d. Hs
code so there
was two different iterations
of that, those, so
we are already --the point of that
was to show you that are already amount
of type this code to a point where
it
was still workable and it still
would meet
the requirements, and address the
concerns that ibhs brings forward,
but it
would work better with the contractors
here in payson as well so
what you're looking
at wasn't --we are not bringing you
the
code or the ibhs standard so we
had already
mitigated some of those concerns and
changed that code, if that takes sense.
>> the eaves
and decks are the majority of what
makes the same meaning
will code? There's nothing else --
not enough --that's what
I'm
struggling is it seems like --and
the ordinance does have
some meaning and usefulness
without that
component. I'm hearing you
say no.
>> if
I can, maybe I'll take a stab at this
for you, councilmember nossek. The
code has
some effect without eaves and
the decks. However, here
is the way we look at it, and
quite frankly, the way your building
advisory board looked at
it was without those two components, the
increased cost wasn't
worth the benefit because eaves and
decks are
primary gait
is for fire to get into houses. So
if we don't mitigate that
risk, if everything else we do is
money that's essentially, councilmember
haws point, doesn't do any good so
our view and frankly this
was the view of other experts we engaged
to find out their views
on this is we don't get the decks
and eaves, everything else is just
a waste of money because
the house is going to burn anyway,
because the deck allows
fire to get in the house, or eaves
allow it. Does that kind of answer
your question? Everything else
works --
>> [ inaudible ] it sounds
like you
>> it's a
system but decks and eaves, if you
don't treat
those and of mitigate that risk, along
with other fuels, that's not this
part of the code,
really is for not then because the
house has a high probability of burning
anyway,
even though it increased the cost
of building the house. So if you do
everything else [
inaudible ] I'm sorry.
>> with other
mitigating building materials.
>> right.
those building materials alone will
not mitigate the risk that the decks
and eaves caused to the house.
>>
it's all about the decks and
eaves.
>> not all about the decks
and eaves, no. Everything works together
but if
you don't
take the decks and eaves then really
all we're doing is asking our customers
to
pay money that doesn't do them any
good. So I guess our professional
opinion is
if you don't want to do x and eaves,
and quite frankly, please don't adopt
the code because all you
are doing is causing people to pay
money that doesn't cause
any benefit
. In the whole system that allows
hardening and
allows the building to hopefully withstand
a fire with everything. If we just,
back
to your point, another way to look
at it councilmember nelson is decks
and eaves, that
would worth the diagram. It's the
whole system. We take in as much out
of it as
we can to make it as cost-effective
for the customer as we can. If
that cost is still too much, as I
said before, it's a policy decision for
you
all to tell us and then we walk away
from this dissection and it doesn't
come back to us until somebody asked
us to bring it back. But if
you're thinking about we'll take out
decks and eaves
to appease the contractors, then I
would really submit to
the council, I would rather you not
at
any cost to the consumer because their
house is likely going to burn
anyway and all we did was add cost
to it. Does
that help kind of understand it? It's
not all
about decks and eaves because they'll do
everything else [ inaudible ]. It's
a
system. It's just a major part of
the system.
>>
thank you.
>> we want emotion? >> I would like
a motion to accept ordinance 970.
do
I hear
a motion?
>> I'll make a motion to accept
ordinance 970 while the fire structure
and code.
>> in
the second?
>>
[ inaudible
]
>> pardon. >> it's still showing
scott. I
closed out. I killed it
and came
back. Will
I don't know. It's been really naughty
all night.
>>
[ inaudible ]
>> he wanted
to speak during this part?
>>
that's what I signed up.
>> I didn't
see it.
>> you guys got me up [ inaudible
]
>> he didn't
speak, okay.
>> we got to get a second.
>> it's going to die because
of a lack of a second
anyway.
>> melvin speak, or no? >>
you
already spoke during call to the public,
though, correct?
>> you guys
called me up. [ inaudible
]
now and I only need one of my three
minutes.
>>
and he use them --can we give him
another minute? May
as well.
>> mayor and council, just
as a reminder, right, time, place
and manner restrictions are because
we want
to make sure everyone is treated the
same, so that we are not giving
favoritism to one person over another.
everyone has their three minutes to
speak on whatever
they're going to
talk about, but within the jurisdiction
of payson,
but that's their three minutes. So
if someone has spoken for their
three minutes --
>> but he did not
speak for 3 minutes.
>> if he hasn't
done call to the public.
>> he did
call to the public but it was one
minute.
>> okay. Well typically, the,
we are not parsing this
out, right? So if you want to give
him
--if that's your decision, but we
really
need to be really clear in the future that
when people come
up, we're not going to sit
here and
parse out your time. If you're here,
call to the public, you've
spoken and then you sit down, so everybody
gets their time, their opportunity.
if they
walk away early then they walked away
early so we just need to kind of keep
that in mind in the future.
>> okay.
>> one minute. >> you have
a motion on the floor.
>> let's deal
with the motion.
>> you should probably
deal with the motion. Right now if
there's
no second, it's going to die and we
move on to f 3 so
I would like three or four seconds.
it's not a second, the item dies,
we move on.
>> and can I second
2 as mayor?
>> yeah. >>
I second. I call for
a vote.
>> motion passes 5-2. >> kevin, good
job. We know it's
not an easy --
>> that's my job. >>
I know,
and you do it with a smile.
really good.
>> okay.
item f 3.
>> you guys again? >> what's that?
>> this should be less controversial
although it's going to pick up more
people
than the last
one, frankly, we don't have a lot
of options. How is that? How about
I preface that for you, mr. Mayor?
>> bring it on, f
3, first hearing regarding ordinance
972, amending the town of payson code
of ordinances,
title 13, chapter 130, section 130.20,
noyce pertaining to summertime
hours of construction including severability,
repealing
conflicting ordinances and establishing
an
effective date .
open to public hearing.
>> mr. Mayor,
members of the council, members of
the public, this comes before you
because our noise ordinance currently
has a start and
stop time
the changes for summer and winter and
our current summertime is between
june and september,
and our start time is 6:00 a.m.
for all activities. The last
legislative session, the legislature
decided that there is a risk
to contractors in
working during the heat of the day,
and therefore they created a
state law that said all ordinances
must
do this. So this is what we've built
into the ordinance that we
are asking the council to approve.
the timeframe is no longer june through
september.
it's made 1 through
october 15th. The start
time during that period of time --
and it does say on permitted
buildings but obviously if
it's not permitted
we're going to stop work because it's
not permitted, it has nothing to do
with the time,
is between 5:00 a.m. And 10:00 p.m.
it allows pouring the concrete to
start one hour
earlier. So essentially work and start
as long as it's concrete at 4:00 a.m.
in
the morning between may 1 and
october 15th. That is
the proposal that we are bringing
before you, because that is compliant
with
state law.
>> state law supersedes
us anyway, is that correct?
>> really all
that council has a choice to do is
--the attorney can help me
out here. We can make the summer
hours longer. We can allow them to
start earlier.
but this --but what we had before
is not compliant. This
is compliant.
>> we are just conforming
the code to the current state law
is
the emergency
clause was adopted for that legislation
so it's already in effect.
>> the
council
does have some prerogative but the
prerogative says within these hours,
this is the minimum
.
>> you can go year-round if you wanted
to.
>> correct. >> and
so we need to ask if
there's public comments. This is a
public
hearing, correct?
>> all the people
that wanted to public comment
all left.
>> this is
in
their favor. This is in their favor.
>> so hearing none, is there any
on zoom? Hearing none, public
hearing
is closed.
other than the fact
that you don't look like nicole and nicole
is in my
notes here. It said nicole is going
to present.
>> you look
just fine. You're okay.
>> arnel set
I was presenting. I would happily
let
present.
>> so I was looking at that and
I was confused. Like this
isn't the one. I don't have a.
>>
we have
council discussion but this is
first public hearing so there's no
vote.
>> we wait 30 days. You'll see
it again.
>> see you in 30 days. >>
unfinished business. There is no item
in this section.
new business. Letter
h 1.
>> mr. Mayor, I
would ask that we postpone that one
since we've
already discussed that.
>> I would
agree
with that.
>>
letter h 2.
>> as I said earlier,
I no
longer going to give the reports for
departments. I'll
get it for myself, for what's going
on, and then at meeting you are going
to have a director that
speaks about what's going on in their
department. So the first
guinea pig is going to be lynn. She
actually raised her hand
to do it, kind of. She was the
first one --
>> she was
volland
told. Welcome to the podium.
>> hi
mayor, council. Do we not have [
inaudible ]? Do they have a copy of
it? Okay. Okay. I don't have the powerpoint
to
put up but it sounds like you have
a copy
of it. I'm
short. Thank you. I'm actually very excited
to be here presenting this
to you
tonight. What we are working on right
now in hr, which
I think the common thought is that
hr is not that fun, but I think it
is and this is an employee wellness
program so I'm
very excited to bring it to you. It's
been a long time coming. So based
on feedback that we received from
the employee engagement
committee, indicating a strong interest
in an employee
wellness
program that had some features that
the program that we get with our benefits
doesn't have. Some of the features
that
employees were looking for were
incentivized, incentivized rams,
some gifts for participating
in activities. Some team-based or
individual
fitness challenges to kind of
get a little competition going, friendly
competition going, to get some more
engagement. And then some recognition
for participating in the wellness
program
and. And
healthy choices for themed employee
events, just kind of creating a culture
of wellness for our employees, and
having workshops or online resources
to cover
health topics. So the benefits
in general of a wellness program when
we
did some research
on it, and there's a lot of articles
on it, the benefits for employees
and organizations that have those
employees working for
them, improved physical and mental
health among
employees and potential for reduced
health care
cost, increased productivity, fostering
a more
positive workplace culture,
decreasing absenteeism, it helps for
retention
and recruitment. It fosters teamwork
among employees. The
hr department, myself and
our benefits specialist,
we reviewed 17 different
programs initially. We narrowed that
down to four that
he got
demos on and pieced them out. We ended
up with
two quotes and the one that we ended
up deciding on that was more
cost-effective and delivered what
we were looking for, for
our employees, was well able. They
have a holistic approach
to wellness, which is that a lot of
times when you think about wellness,
you're
thinking about like physical wellness,
but this looks at it from a holistic
approach where
it is physical but it's emotional,
it's financial wellness, it's social
wellness, spiritual wellness, intellectual,
it's
a lot of different aspects of wellness.
and with the well able program
that we
did select, it does include wellness
challenges
that aren't just fiscal. They could
be about
mental wellness. I took a note that
one of them was
on time management, organization,
and productivity, so this
contributes to the work that they're
doing for the town as
well. It is incentivized.
the program --so if you do --the first
thing that we're going to launch
is a personal wellness assessment
and then that will give them
tailored wellness
resources and then they might
get a five dollar gift card for that
or credit
towards that so it's
an incentivized program. It's called
a rewards wallet and they have
access to over 800 different red cards
that they can
participate in wellness programs,
redeem for those credit cards. This
app and
device integrations. A lot of people
have like fitness apps on their phone
or they have a fit it
for
steps. There's a lot of devices that people
are already using. That will integrate
with
the system and they can get their
points that way for their steps or
whatever it is they are doing. There
is a community chat feature and
this is really fun, because it allows
employees --so we don't have these
silos and departments.
you can engage with somebody in the
streets department that you don't
actually ever
see what now you built this working relationship
with them in this fun way through
this
wellness program and now maybe
you have something, town issue that
you have to
discuss with them where you already
kind of built a rapport so it has
that benefit as well. There is health
content through
the website
in the way of webinars. There's on-demand
classes.
there's meditation. There's recipes.
there's all sorts of different things
that it's not
like one-size-fits-all. There's
clinical event verification, so when
we have our flu clinic, which
is coming up in october, this would
integrate with --we can verify
you went and got your flu shot if
that was a recommendation
for you and you
can get some points in the wellness
program for that purpose of really
incentivizing that preventative
care to keep our
employees healthier, benefits navigation.
we have a
lot of things that our benefit package
offers to our employees. The problem
is it
comes in 10 different flyers and everybody
doesn't have all in one spot. They
will host all of our benefits on the platform
for this. Employees will be directed
to this because they want to get those
incentivized activities done
and they'll have links
to all of our benefits on that page
as
well. And for us, so
we can kind of see what's going
on and gauge participation and how
we have to change it,
there's program
analytics, and that is the recap of the wellness
program. We are actively in
the implementation stage right now
and
we're expecting employees on november
1st.
>>
thank you.
>>
any questions. We are very excited
about it.
>> yeah,
very excited.
>> thank you. >> you actually
brought it
to me and I was like, absolutely,
this is great, great job.
>>
thank you.
>> so we've
got one more.
>> one more, letter
h 3, discussion and possible action
regarding council
meeting protocols. Meeting when there's no
agenda items.
>> that was brought
to me from
counselor bell. Currently the
city clerk has the
opportunity to cancel a meeting if
there is nothing on the agenda. Your
code
says that so you
know my
attitude, for somebody who has meetings all
day long, to have just another meeting
because,
and staff is having all these people
here when you guys have nothing
at all on your agenda, seems
to be,
you know, a waste of our
time. Now I appreciate some of the
comments that were made
today about giving the people an opportunity
to
speak but it is a city
council
meeting. And I'm not trying to make
anybody mad or anything there's a
lot
of communities,
especially in arizona, who have discontinued
the public hearing because
of some of the animosity that comes
from
the podium,
and so
thinking you could just get rid of
it, I'm not recommending that at all what
I'm just saying is city
council doesn't have to have a meeting
just
because. So the reason I brought that
up
for
myself is
I
consider it
public, part of the agenda, is that
not part of
the agenda or is that just off-the-cuff
or
something to that effect? Is it an
agenda item
or not an agenda item?
>>
it is.
>> and then the other, I think
the citizens have
a
right to express their viewpoints,
and if we are not going
to have
a meeting, I think we're
distancing's will ourselves from the citizens,
in my personal opinion. And also based upon
the town manager,
he's saying that he's
turning over to the department
heads
to give their presentation on what's
happened from the
last agenda to this agenda.
>> vers
is
on what's going on in their department.
>> what's going on in their department,
so
that's part of the agenda also, correct?
>> well that's under new business.
that
doesn't have to be on there, no. You
currently
have the --public speaking has a public
standing item on your agenda.
>> under
open eating law it's not required
for meetings.
>> I
heard that. I
understand. I just wanted to have
a discussion because people were upset
about that. We were
gone for a time so
I just wanted
to get an opinion on what
people thought. If they think it's
relevant for
the town to come and
express themselves.
>> a couple questions.
one of the
meetings was canceled because there
was leaving
cities, right.
>> a lot of
stuff was gone.
>> or another
training event.
>> elections conference
and it
was a end of school year and lots
of staff had been --we didn't
have anything come up.
>> and I
get that. There was a lot of other
things
going on and there wasn't a lot for
us
to discuss to discuss so I understand
why it
was done. The last
one might be
an exception.
prof my mind as well that even if
they are not an agenda item, we do
have a lot of things to
discuss.
>> or to beard about, I guess.
may be for people like mr.
dunning,
who gets a shower and gets dressed,
and comes
here, I mean, people look forward
to it.
>> we've got to make sure that he's
on the
email list, as there's no sense.
>>
sorry
about that, mr. Dunning...
>> I just
think that some people, and
they think this is kind of their public
foreign. They can blast us to some
extent, and
we all have emails
that are on the town website,
if they want to throw something at
us
they can
do that. I'm not
saying to eliminate its
but I don't think we
need to have a regular town meeting
to allow
that to
happen. There were some meaningful
presentations that could bring us
up
to date, to prepare us for some other things
that were going to
be coming on the agenda, then I think
that would --
>> is not going
to happen very
often, tracy. How often does it
happen, once in five years, twice
in five years?
>> that was
my comment, in my five years --
>>
this is
a first time for me.
>> a perfect
storm that there was --
people were gone and we had had league
and elections training and
just, yeah, she came in and said we
don't have anything on the
agenda.
>> I just got comments. >>
it's totally up
to --
>> staff will bring
it
up.
>> read their emails and listen
to what they say. I just thought it
was appropriate.
>> I think we continue to leave it
up to
our staff's discretion.
>>
I think
just keep heading in the same direction.
>> without the county
commissioners or the elected officials,
this is the
first time
it's everything, council, in my all-time.
it's not going to happen that
often , but like I said,
if there is nothing, there's no reason
to have a meeting.
>> the
town needs to
show someone . We got people in place
at
the right time.
>> not on fridays.
the town is going ahead on friday.
>> yes.
don't call.
>>
don't call pd
or
fire.
>> get a permit. >> get
a permit.
>> got it. >>
that's it.
>>
my suggested motion is let's go home.
we are adjourned.
>> seconded.