"Thomas Jefferson said a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry. I don't care whether it sounds corny or not. It's the truth." -Jim Lehrer
Carefree Truth
Issue #1003, March 28, 2022
Issue #1003, March 28, 2022
Gary Neiss explained that Capital Improvement Plans (CIP) are a working blueprint for buildings and for sustaining a community's publicly funded infrastructure. In the past, Carefree's included a 10 year Streets Preventative Maintenance plan to extend the life of its most precious resource, the streets, something people use every day. This helps to minimize damage to the streets and costly repairs in the future. This has been updated and will be presented in the near term.
As our community ages, amenities withing the Gardens, drainage features such as culverts, traffic signs, and fire department assets all have a "life cycle". Over time they need to be replaced. They are assessed and budgeted for incrementally in the CIP. New assets and programs are also budgeted for in the CIP.
In the fall of 2020, the Town worked on this plan with incoming and outgoing Council members. This plan was approved via a Resolution and incorporated into the annual budget. During these public meetings, the Town developed 4 areas of focus, known as "pillars". One of those was infrastructure management. The 1st item was the update of the street maintenance plan. The 2nd was identifying the new 5 year capital improvement plan. This is the result of what was vetted in the fall of 2020. As the infrastructure ages, the Town is starting to incorporate different elements as the assets start to deteriorate.
As is typical of most public organizations, the Engineering Department manages the development of this plan, meeting with other departments to discuss the future capital needs and to create the 5 year window forecast of the future needs of the community. This is then presented to the Council to discuss and consider. The draft plan presented that night was for discussion only, with no action taken. After input from the public, it will be brought back before the Council for adoption by Resolution. This is a working document and there will be some refinements over the next couple of months.
These capital projects are then programmed into the annual budget. One of the projects in the last budget was the resurfacing along Cave Creek Road that will be occurring this spring. There will be a list of projects that will be incorporated into the budget for the next fiscal year. The Town Engineer, Mark Milstone, explained that this presentation will be used to decide what Carefree's priorities are, within the budget of the $5 million dollars that is available annually for these projects.
Mr. Neiss added that the Town would be seeking some of the available grants to help offset the costs, but there are significant investments that must be made in the aging infrastructure, and this is a representation of why there are capital reserves and how they can be used. Carefree's policy is to save and then spend. In the early 2000s, the Town saved and then built the fire house. But the company that made the fire truck is no longer in service.
The goal is to join automatic aid in a timely manner, which will require some capital upfront costs. A projection of that respective cost is about $1.5 million. That is not the ongoing cost to join with an automatic aid partner. That is an additional list of requirements, and how to fund that is something that needs to be discussed with the community, a discussion that happened on February 15th. The capital requirements of the fire program will be one of the assets invested in over the course of the next year.
Councilman Vince D'Aliesio asked how much the increased cost of skilled labor was taken into account in these estimates. Mr. Milstone confirmed that those numbers were taken into account, with a built-in 2% inflation rate if the street project is not done until the following year. These numbers have been built-in to all the projects in the CIP.
Mayor Peterson stressed that the fire protection automatic aid would be a big expense, both to join and for the ongoing costs. But safety is the primary concern.
Councilman Mike Johnson brought up the "rainy day fund", which Mr. Neiss confirmed contained $2-1/2 million. He added that there are other restricted funds such as the Highway User Revenue Funds (HURF) that can only be used for street improvements. Another example is the Court Funds that can only be used in the operation of the Court. They are a part of the reserve fund but are restricted. There is about $1 million there. The other $3-1/2 million is dedicated to infrastructure improvements.
In the past, Carefree has saved by creating an economy of scale with larger street projects. The sales tax was increased 1%, which helped build the fire station and buy the equipment to equip the fire house and the fire truck.
Councilman Stephen Hatcher asked if he was correct in understanding that the street projects are done incrementally by mileage about every 4 years. Mr. Neiss replied that it depends on the degree of distress. There are 14 indicators of distress, and the maintenance plan goes into the process of evaluating them. Mr. Neiss walked every street to evaluate them to put together the last plan approximately 10 years ago. It was an extensive project that took about 3-1/2 months to complete. There are now robotics to help the Town do that much more quickly. They do a complete evaluation and marry the distress to the type of treatment.
Mr. Milstone said that the consultant, Rick Engineering, has already completed the robotics phase. A Smartphone is mounted on a vehicle and it videotapes every street in town and takes a picture every 10', so it's all cataloged data in the Cloud. Robotics is a software firm that uses AI to look at and rank each picture, so it is totally objective.
Audience member Peter Sample asked if the plan was to switch to a different fire department. Mr. Neiss explained that yes, a change was required to be on the path to automatic aid. The issue was the most cost effective way to join automatic aid, an issue the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) struggled to reconcile. They looked at many creative approaches, including maintaining the relationship with Rural/Metro (R/M), but the automatic aid group said they would not do business with R/M. All of that was to be discussed on February 15th at a joint session.
Mr. Sample said he felt that the streets were being prioritized over the fire safety. Mr. Neiss responded that he was not there to debate that. Both are an important part of the Town's plan. Some citizens come into Town Hall demanding that their street be repaved and felt that the fire issue was less important. He was just reporting what he has heard from citizens. But fire safety is also a vital priority, which is why a fire house was built 15 years ago and supplied with state of the art equipment. Scottsdale came up and did an audit. They said it was better than some of their fire stations. "We have a great system here, and we invested in that to give us the flexibility today to then pick and chose who our partner will be tomorrow."
The Town is now investigating who would be the most appropriate partner when joining automatic aid. There are options out there that are being explored. One frustration has been that the automatic aid partners have not been willing to go through a bid proposal process. "We want to know what we are going to get for our money." R/M provided a comprehensive master contract, with Fire Marshall services included. That was never included with Scottsdale or Daisy Mountain. Mr. Neiss' fiduciary duty is to understand those costs and to ask those questions.
Mayor Peterson said safety comes first when prioritizing the expenses. It's a balancing act between that and infrastructure, but safety is where the Town's lead foot will be.
Mr. D'Aliesio said the fires on our doorstep a couple of years ago was a wake-up call, and suggested arranging meetings with the city managers as well as with the high ranking fire officials.
Mr. Neiss responded that we are transitioning from mutual aid to automatic aid. He had in front of him the State of Arizona, Arizona Fire Chiefs Association Fire Service Mutual Aid Plan. "The 2nd page reads, 'Neighbors helping neighbors because it's the right thing to do.' This was done by the Fire Chiefs. If a fire like this happens, and the Super Bowl is being played, they're going to want to play in the Super Bowl. They came, in the case of Cave Creek, not once, not twice, but three times in a month, in May of 2020. They're there to help us. That's what they do. 1st responders are just that. They're 1st responders. They're not no responders. They're 1st responders. They will be here."
"Automatic aid is a better level of service. There's no debating that. But mutual aid is ingrained in the fire prevention service. That's what it's about. Helping one another in a time of need. And so, these types of partnerships are found in every state. And there might be legal idiosyncrasies with each one, but at the end of the day, it's neighbor helping neighbor. It's 1st responder helping 1st responder, and that's what these programs are set up to be. It's a statewide program, so the recent cancellation in Scottsdale was between R/M and the City of Scottsdale, not between the Town of Carefree and Scottsdale. But those agreements are in place for compensation. They're not going to respond if there's no agreement there."
Those responses were done under mutual aid, and that will still be here. A lot of those fires that were fought due to the drying desert and the warming around us are done by aerial attacks. They are done by the state, and Carefree has an agreement with the state that comes in with the aircraft. We have the Carefree Fire Department and an agreement with the state for those aircraft, so that layer of protection is there.
Mayor Peterson said, to Mr. D'Aliesio's comments, a meeting was scheduled with some of the Scottsdale Council members for the following week. The transition to automatic aid gets into where the fire stations and the ambulances are located. What are the times and can we meet the 4 minute times? They will meet with Phoenix as well. Carefree will leave no stone unturned. Once Carefree gets in and gets the capital expenditures needed, they will come from where ever the closest equipment is. Carefree needs to do what is most efficient for the town and is controlable. If not done now, 10, 15, 20 years down the road it could become an enormous expense that the Town can't control, because some of these are fire districts and they set the costs. Carefree has very little influence over them. "There's going to be some real soul searching on this, but comes safety first. We couldn't sleep at night. We couldn't live with ourselves if we thought we'd cut back in that area." He invited the public to come in and talk to Mr. Neiss, Mr. Milstone, or to him to ask questions and give input.
https://vimeo.com/674564761
Lyn Hitchon
Prepared by Carefree Truth
Copyrighted
Visit our website at www.carefreetruth2.com If you know anyone who would like to be added to the Carefree Truth email list, please have them contact me. Feel free to share Carefree Truth with others on your list.
Visit www.carefreeazbusinesses.com to see more info about businesses in Carefree. Please support our merchants.
As our community ages, amenities withing the Gardens, drainage features such as culverts, traffic signs, and fire department assets all have a "life cycle". Over time they need to be replaced. They are assessed and budgeted for incrementally in the CIP. New assets and programs are also budgeted for in the CIP.
In the fall of 2020, the Town worked on this plan with incoming and outgoing Council members. This plan was approved via a Resolution and incorporated into the annual budget. During these public meetings, the Town developed 4 areas of focus, known as "pillars". One of those was infrastructure management. The 1st item was the update of the street maintenance plan. The 2nd was identifying the new 5 year capital improvement plan. This is the result of what was vetted in the fall of 2020. As the infrastructure ages, the Town is starting to incorporate different elements as the assets start to deteriorate.
As is typical of most public organizations, the Engineering Department manages the development of this plan, meeting with other departments to discuss the future capital needs and to create the 5 year window forecast of the future needs of the community. This is then presented to the Council to discuss and consider. The draft plan presented that night was for discussion only, with no action taken. After input from the public, it will be brought back before the Council for adoption by Resolution. This is a working document and there will be some refinements over the next couple of months.
These capital projects are then programmed into the annual budget. One of the projects in the last budget was the resurfacing along Cave Creek Road that will be occurring this spring. There will be a list of projects that will be incorporated into the budget for the next fiscal year. The Town Engineer, Mark Milstone, explained that this presentation will be used to decide what Carefree's priorities are, within the budget of the $5 million dollars that is available annually for these projects.
Mr. Neiss added that the Town would be seeking some of the available grants to help offset the costs, but there are significant investments that must be made in the aging infrastructure, and this is a representation of why there are capital reserves and how they can be used. Carefree's policy is to save and then spend. In the early 2000s, the Town saved and then built the fire house. But the company that made the fire truck is no longer in service.
The goal is to join automatic aid in a timely manner, which will require some capital upfront costs. A projection of that respective cost is about $1.5 million. That is not the ongoing cost to join with an automatic aid partner. That is an additional list of requirements, and how to fund that is something that needs to be discussed with the community, a discussion that happened on February 15th. The capital requirements of the fire program will be one of the assets invested in over the course of the next year.
Councilman Vince D'Aliesio asked how much the increased cost of skilled labor was taken into account in these estimates. Mr. Milstone confirmed that those numbers were taken into account, with a built-in 2% inflation rate if the street project is not done until the following year. These numbers have been built-in to all the projects in the CIP.
Mayor Peterson stressed that the fire protection automatic aid would be a big expense, both to join and for the ongoing costs. But safety is the primary concern.
Councilman Mike Johnson brought up the "rainy day fund", which Mr. Neiss confirmed contained $2-1/2 million. He added that there are other restricted funds such as the Highway User Revenue Funds (HURF) that can only be used for street improvements. Another example is the Court Funds that can only be used in the operation of the Court. They are a part of the reserve fund but are restricted. There is about $1 million there. The other $3-1/2 million is dedicated to infrastructure improvements.
In the past, Carefree has saved by creating an economy of scale with larger street projects. The sales tax was increased 1%, which helped build the fire station and buy the equipment to equip the fire house and the fire truck.
Councilman Stephen Hatcher asked if he was correct in understanding that the street projects are done incrementally by mileage about every 4 years. Mr. Neiss replied that it depends on the degree of distress. There are 14 indicators of distress, and the maintenance plan goes into the process of evaluating them. Mr. Neiss walked every street to evaluate them to put together the last plan approximately 10 years ago. It was an extensive project that took about 3-1/2 months to complete. There are now robotics to help the Town do that much more quickly. They do a complete evaluation and marry the distress to the type of treatment.
Mr. Milstone said that the consultant, Rick Engineering, has already completed the robotics phase. A Smartphone is mounted on a vehicle and it videotapes every street in town and takes a picture every 10', so it's all cataloged data in the Cloud. Robotics is a software firm that uses AI to look at and rank each picture, so it is totally objective.
Audience member Peter Sample asked if the plan was to switch to a different fire department. Mr. Neiss explained that yes, a change was required to be on the path to automatic aid. The issue was the most cost effective way to join automatic aid, an issue the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) struggled to reconcile. They looked at many creative approaches, including maintaining the relationship with Rural/Metro (R/M), but the automatic aid group said they would not do business with R/M. All of that was to be discussed on February 15th at a joint session.
Mr. Sample said he felt that the streets were being prioritized over the fire safety. Mr. Neiss responded that he was not there to debate that. Both are an important part of the Town's plan. Some citizens come into Town Hall demanding that their street be repaved and felt that the fire issue was less important. He was just reporting what he has heard from citizens. But fire safety is also a vital priority, which is why a fire house was built 15 years ago and supplied with state of the art equipment. Scottsdale came up and did an audit. They said it was better than some of their fire stations. "We have a great system here, and we invested in that to give us the flexibility today to then pick and chose who our partner will be tomorrow."
The Town is now investigating who would be the most appropriate partner when joining automatic aid. There are options out there that are being explored. One frustration has been that the automatic aid partners have not been willing to go through a bid proposal process. "We want to know what we are going to get for our money." R/M provided a comprehensive master contract, with Fire Marshall services included. That was never included with Scottsdale or Daisy Mountain. Mr. Neiss' fiduciary duty is to understand those costs and to ask those questions.
Mayor Peterson said safety comes first when prioritizing the expenses. It's a balancing act between that and infrastructure, but safety is where the Town's lead foot will be.
Mr. D'Aliesio said the fires on our doorstep a couple of years ago was a wake-up call, and suggested arranging meetings with the city managers as well as with the high ranking fire officials.
Mr. Neiss responded that we are transitioning from mutual aid to automatic aid. He had in front of him the State of Arizona, Arizona Fire Chiefs Association Fire Service Mutual Aid Plan. "The 2nd page reads, 'Neighbors helping neighbors because it's the right thing to do.' This was done by the Fire Chiefs. If a fire like this happens, and the Super Bowl is being played, they're going to want to play in the Super Bowl. They came, in the case of Cave Creek, not once, not twice, but three times in a month, in May of 2020. They're there to help us. That's what they do. 1st responders are just that. They're 1st responders. They're not no responders. They're 1st responders. They will be here."
"Automatic aid is a better level of service. There's no debating that. But mutual aid is ingrained in the fire prevention service. That's what it's about. Helping one another in a time of need. And so, these types of partnerships are found in every state. And there might be legal idiosyncrasies with each one, but at the end of the day, it's neighbor helping neighbor. It's 1st responder helping 1st responder, and that's what these programs are set up to be. It's a statewide program, so the recent cancellation in Scottsdale was between R/M and the City of Scottsdale, not between the Town of Carefree and Scottsdale. But those agreements are in place for compensation. They're not going to respond if there's no agreement there."
Those responses were done under mutual aid, and that will still be here. A lot of those fires that were fought due to the drying desert and the warming around us are done by aerial attacks. They are done by the state, and Carefree has an agreement with the state that comes in with the aircraft. We have the Carefree Fire Department and an agreement with the state for those aircraft, so that layer of protection is there.
Mayor Peterson said, to Mr. D'Aliesio's comments, a meeting was scheduled with some of the Scottsdale Council members for the following week. The transition to automatic aid gets into where the fire stations and the ambulances are located. What are the times and can we meet the 4 minute times? They will meet with Phoenix as well. Carefree will leave no stone unturned. Once Carefree gets in and gets the capital expenditures needed, they will come from where ever the closest equipment is. Carefree needs to do what is most efficient for the town and is controlable. If not done now, 10, 15, 20 years down the road it could become an enormous expense that the Town can't control, because some of these are fire districts and they set the costs. Carefree has very little influence over them. "There's going to be some real soul searching on this, but comes safety first. We couldn't sleep at night. We couldn't live with ourselves if we thought we'd cut back in that area." He invited the public to come in and talk to Mr. Neiss, Mr. Milstone, or to him to ask questions and give input.
https://vimeo.com/674564761
Lyn Hitchon
Prepared by Carefree Truth
Copyrighted
Visit our website at www.carefreetruth2.com If you know anyone who would like to be added to the Carefree Truth email list, please have them contact me. Feel free to share Carefree Truth with others on your list.
Visit www.carefreeazbusinesses.com to see more info about businesses in Carefree. Please support our merchants.