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HomeMy WebLinkAbout09/10/2013 Study Session Minutes� r STUDY SESSION MINUTES 11555 W. Civic Center Drive, Marana, Arizona 85653 2nd Floor Conference Room, September 10, 2013, at or after 6:00 PM Ed Honea, Mayor Jon Post, Vice Mayor David Bowen, Council Member Patti Comerford, Council Member Herb Kai, Council Member Carol McGorray, Council Member Roxanne Ziegler, Council Member STUDY SESSION CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL. The meeting was called to order by Mayor Honea at 6:00 p.m. Town Clerk Bronson called roll. All Council Members were present. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE/INVOCATION/MOMENT OF SILENCE. Led by Mayor Honea. APPROVAL OF AGENDA. Motion to approve by Council Member Bowen, second by Council Member McGorray. Passed unanimously. CALL TO THE PUBLIC. No speaker cards were presented. DISCUSSION/DIRECTION/POSSIBLE ACTION 1: Presentation: Relating to Strategic Planning; discussion, consideration and possible action regarding the 2014 update of the Town of Marana's Strategic Plan; discussion and consideration of topics for the strategic planning retreat; authorizing the Town Manager to execute and plan the logistics of the strategic planning retreat to be held September 19, 2013, at the Marana Municipal Complex. Presented by Gilbert Davidson. The details are still being finalized for the September 19 meeting. Some of the items regularly scheduled for September 17 will be taken up at the meeting on September 19 prior to the start of the retreat. Breakfast and lunch will be provided, No formal presentations will be made; all discussion will be generated by Council and staff will be Draft minutes - September 10, 2013 1 available to answer questions. Some of the items that Council was talking a few weeks ago are being presented tonight. 2: Presentation: Relating to Utilities; discussion, consideration and possible action regarding the concept of a Marana Utilities Development Readiness Program, with detailed options regarding Saguaxo Bloom wastewater recovery. Presented by John Kmiec and Thom Martinez of Westland Resources. John Kmiec began with an overview of the new impact fee rules, growth projections, wastewater options to serve Saguaro Bloom, and infrastructure recommendations for potable water. Impact fees are now to be calculated for each benefit area. Different areas may have different impact fees. The plans need to be consistent with the Town's land use assumptions and conform to the General Plan. Impact fees collected after July 31, 2014 shall be used within 10 years except for water and wastewater which shall be used within 15 years of the date collected. There is flexibility within the program. He then talked about where we are with the current fees. He is estimating over 12,000 connections within in the next 10 years. Wastewater connections are currently around 2,100. Without Saguaro Bloom, we should be at 5,870; with Saguaro Bloom around 7,300. Saguaro Bloom is currently in the Pima County DMA. So those impact fees go to Pima County. When the town owns the conveyance system, we can take the impact fees. The first question is when do we want or do we want to acquire Saguaro Bloom into the Marana DMA process. The first option is to maintain service in the Marana DMA and not consider Saguaro Bloom. That cost would be $9M for North Marana. Option 2 is the Saguaro Bloom Narrows WRF. This would be building a new facility at $10.7M in addition to the $9M in North Marana. This gives a short conveyance system. He also discussed pros and cons. Option 3 is building the Airport wastewater treatment facility south of BKW Farms west of the airport. Its cost is estimated at $12.8M. He discussed the pros and cons. Option 4 is the North Marana "Luckett" plant at $7.4M and is a conveyance system only, but would increase the Marana WRF to $12M for a total of $19.4M. This also opens up the Gladden Farms basin at Tangerine/I-10. This is the most economical option to get services to Saguaro Bloom initiated. It also allows phasing and use of the existing Luckett WRF capacity and relieves the Rillito Vista WRF to allow for potential closure. Council Member Bowen raised the concern of pumping sewage across that distance. John Kmiec indicated that one of the things they want to do with a feasibility study is understand how much gravity flow there is and how much force flow we would have to have. Westland Resources is starting to do some of the preliminary work on that. Thom Martinez stated that the majority of the sewer being proposed will be a gravity sewer. Right now Saguaro Bloom is being served by a lift station. What we're proposing is to pump the flow in a different direction using the same pump station that we have rights to under the terms of the settlement. We'll just pump those about a mile up to Rillito Vista and dump into a gravity system. That gravity system is open for a lot of development to hook into new sewer services. One of the problems with the Saguaro Bloom lift station is both pumps are very big. We don't anticipate pumping 650 gallons of water a minute into that facility for probably 15-20 years. One of the things we could do is put a smaller force main system in so that some of the earlier flows can be put into a smaller diameter force main so that the operations and maintenance problems aren't so much of an issue, and you could reduce the capital costs initially. One of the things we're Draft minutes - September 10, 2013 looking for is Council direction to look at some of the options. Council Member Kai asked if on the North MaranalLuckett option, once you get it behind Rillito Vista, is that 15 inch gravity main large enough to flow to the northwest or should we be oversizing from that point on. Thom Martinez replied that there are several options integral to the Saguaro Bloom option, and taking Saguaro Bloom flows permanently to North Marana may not happen. At some point, you may take them to the airport so that you don't have to upsize some of those downstream flows. Right now we're showing pipe bursting in the existing 12 inch line. Council Member Kai noted that any time you upsize for people coming on later, that's where the cost really rises. Thom Martinez agreed and stated that the benefit we do have is that downstream there are a lot of parallel ways we can get through town. The 208 process right now has several of these satellite facilities that we can choose to be permitted. Probably the long-term strategy is to take these flows up north and build those gravity lines so you can start developing, and when you run into sewer capacity issues, you can build another treatment plant further south and then prepare for those state land parcel further west of Saguaro Bloom and White Stallion Ranch, etc. Vice Mayor Post asked about the cost of going west on Avra Valley to Sanders and tying in to the Luckett treatment plant. Thom Martinez responded that a preliminary analysis was done running a pressure sewer all the way to Moore. It didn't accept as many flows as the option just discussed. There are a lot of things that we'll have to be acquired along Avra Valley Road that we're concerned about as far as timing in trying to grab those Saguaro Bloom flows quickly. He also asked if there were offsets for offsite infrastructure on impact fees for developers. Thom Martinez replied that that is the heart of what staff and the consultants are looking at. The sewer that we're showing is going to need to be built — if by the developer for which they would also pay an impact fee. If the town decides to serve Saguaro Bloom, there's a significant capital investment. The thought is with the new benefit area that are defined in the new impact fee rules, the town can go in and build that pipeline sewer and put that into that benefit area and charge the developer the appropriate impact fee for that sewer that would have had to be built anyway. So the town would actually get reimbursed for that investment. And then the town would also get the benefit of getting sewer service to Saguaro Bloom in the interim. Discussion among Council continued as to the cost and payback time depending on whether the developer or the town put in the lines. Council Member Comerford asked if staff could research the two routes — Avra Valley west and Tangerine/I-10 to find out how much is actually State Land that we would have to acquire permits for. Gilbert Davidson replied that would be entirely appropriate. He noted that staff didn't want to spend too much money on this preliminary analysis. We'll need to take some time and meet with State Land and feel out how willing they are to work with us to expedite things. We have a pretty good understanding of the Tangerine routes for the ownership rights that we already have, but we could definitely research more along Avra Valley Road. There is a clock ticking, and homes are being sold. There are already 60 homes at Saguaro Bloom. Vice Mayor Post asked if under Option 4 staff could find out how much capacity there is from the Avra Valley area down that route. Thom Martinez stated that what's difficult about what we're doing now is the 10-year period, especially coming out of the economic downturn, it's much more difficult to predict where you're going to get the most bang for your buck. Draft minutes - September 10, 2013 3 Mayor Honea clarified that staff and Mr. Martinez would look into time to build, cost and comparison of the two options discussed in a timely manner. Mr. Kmiec continued with the water utilities service area portion of his presentation. He is going to propose looking at two areas of water systems that staff believes are going to have to have capital investments over the next 10 years. One is the North Marana area and the other is the Twin Peaks area. The estimated total cost for the North Marana area is $10.6M. The cost for the Twin Peaks area is $3.2M. He reiterated that he was looking for direction from Council on looking more closely at the options for wastewater as well as moving forward with the consultant on rate studies to make sure they are in place by July 2014. He also pointed out three boards set up to show the current projects going on at the park wastewater facility. The boards will be placed in the MMC lobby for the public to view while construction occurs. Motion by Vice Mayor Post, second by Council Member Ziegler to have staff do further research on the Avra Valley and Tangerine/Rillito wastewater options. Passed unanimously. 3: Presentation: Relating to Parks and Recreation; update and discussion regarding development of the Marana Heritage River Park. Tom Ellis presented an update on the current status and where we are going with this project. He emphasized that for over a year there has been a multi-disciplinary task force of town staff from the Manager's office, engineering, planning, community development, economic development, engineering CIP, Parks & Recreation have worked very hard to bring the Council's vision forward. In March 2013 staff enlisted the help of UA's Drachman Institute to put together the master concept site plan that was very innovative and progressive in its direction for a 160- acre park — the largest in the town. The park will not be built in the traditional delivery method where the town builds it, operates it, and takes care of it. The concept was to come up with a project that makes room for private and nonprofits to come on board to bring this to fruition. With Council's approval of the Drachman master plan, management gave the task force a direct set of orders: get moving. As part of the budget planning for this fiscal year in the CIP process, $1.9M was allocated for that purpose. The task force used resources through its on-call consulting engineer contracts solicited the help of Schlesinger Consulting Engineering, McGann & Associates, and GLHN Architects and Engineers whom we had used in the past for a design concept report and a mass grading plan which delivers a detailed site survey, a master drainage plan and a master utility plan and architectural themes and guidelines, etc. Staff has been meeting with the consultants weekly and bi-weekly. The Managers have been meeting with developers and builders at the same time. He then presented the schedule with the Phase II Heritage Ranch Design due in December. Site grading starts in January. It's a very tight schedule, but everything is on schedule. Draft minutes - September 10, 2013 4 Coming back to the master plan, Drachman basically gave staff the bones of the project. Moving forward, the DCR expands the concept. Special attention will be paid to the Marana ranch area per earlier Council direction as the first phase of the construction. In January, the consultants will bring on the team firms who are experts in equestrian center design. Under current development is the Heritage Farm which is the easiest thing to do. This gives us an immediate opportunity to get community members and people out there to bring interest to the park. A separate crew of 10 inmates from the Marana Correctional Facility with their own supervisor are working at the property right now. With the help of the task force and Steve Vasquez from the Planning Department, one of the first things built will be the display and demonstration garden on three-quarters of an acre directly behind the Heritage House. He then walked Council through the site. There will be water harvesting opportunities, opportunities to use solar power and how to grow food in your own backyard. By the spring of 2014 and after 10 years we should be ready for a grand opening. Along with that, we should see some significant activity behind the display garden. Crews have built 40 8x30 feet community garden space bound by cross ties. They've been tilled and have irrigation. There are protocols developed for people to use when working in these gardens. Twelve slots will be opened in October for fall and winter gardens. The rest will be open in the spring, and people are standing in line to do community farming. The challenge before us is to continue to hit the mark as we have, to continue to keep the community involved and informed and excited. T. VanHook and Community Development will help run that so that not only the shareholders, but developers and residents close by, all the equestrian and commercial people can stay involved and know what's going on at all times. Tom gave credit for getting this project going to Del Post, Deputy Town Manager. 4: Presentation: ReTating to Economic Development; discussion, consideration and possible action regarding design concepts for the entrance to the Town of Marana's Downtown District. Presented by Curt Woody. He began by discussing commerce attraction. He went back to the Strategic Plan and said that we on the right track. A couple of months ago, Council adopted a program — the Marana reinvestment fund — which includes landscaping projects along Sandario and Marana Roads. The Marana Citizens' Forum was also looking at issues involving the North Marana area, and one of them was this. They were concerned with first impressions. The recommendations were with landscaping, drainage channels and a monument. Mr. Woody then showed current conditions, and posed the question: Is this what we want to portray to professionals and business to this area — to create the Marana Main Street experience? Several monument entrances were photographed as a benchmark to compare against. Steven Vasquez put some concepts together that were presented to the Forum delegates a couple of weeks ago. Mr. Woody presented the three concept drawings shown to the Forum delegates and then described the finishes that were used for the design. He noted that there is flexibility in using different materials than those presented. The third concept design incorporated all the elements Draft minutes - September 10, 2013 5 in the town's logo/seal — planter areas, verticality, cut steel lettering, concrete panels and a water feature made of iridescent or lighted tiles to depict water. Other elements could be added to the walls. Vice Mayor Post asked what would happen to the existing entrance element. There was some discussion about moving it to the Heritage River Park. Mr. Woody continued with the plan for extended landscaping along Sandario and Marana Roads in the public right of way to further highlight the monument area. Plans for drainage and irrigation lines for the extensions will be included in the overall design. Vice Mayor Post asked if this was a design change for before or after realignment of the downtown area. Mr. Woody responded that this is a"before." Staff would like to see this happen right away because the idea is to get this done to attract more commerce to the area. Council Member McGorray asked if it could be accomplished within the year. Mr. Woody responded affirmatively. Council Member Comerford asked if it could correlate to the future expansion of the road. Vice Mayor Post said that even if the life of the monument was five years, as long as the concept is there for the entrance to wherever that business district is, you might be able to move it or refresh it. Mr. Woody said that this could be done rather quickly because we have a lot of in-house capability to do the work. Mayor Honea asked for the estimated cost and where the money is coming from. Mr. Woody responded that the broad cost of the monument and down Sandario and Marana Roads would be in the neighborhood of $160K and $200K. Because of the reinvestment program, some of those funds could be allocated to this. About half of the program funds is being used for the infrastructure master plan being done by the consultant. Depending on what the consultant comes in with, there could be about $40-SOK left to be put toward this monument. The remainder would have to come from the contingency or discretionary fund. Mr. Davidson said we would need a motion to authorize using town reserve or contingency funds. It was also noted that the island in front of the Chevron station is in the town's right of way. Mr. Woody stated that we could throw some DG and a few plants in that area to spruce it up as well. Council Member Bowen asked for staff's recommendations for using reserve funds for something like this. Mr. Davidson responded that the town has been very judicious over the years in saving toward reserves. Over the years, Council has discussed making an investment in the future of the town. If you want people talking about what's going on, getting that area cleaned up and getting some nice landscaping in will help do that. Council Member Bowen asked for clarification on the difference between contingency and reserve. Mr. Davidson said that they are one in the same. We basically have a savings account, and we allocate a certain amount in the annual budget for contingency or emergency funding for spending at Council discretion. Mr. Woody said that if the directive is to spend no more than $200K, he thinks that's very do-able. Mac Murray said that the only lighting that could be included in that figure would be for the monument., not for street lighting. Council Member Kai asked if it would be possible to get some of the business owners in the area to come up with some money to repave their area to improve the general appearance. Mr. Woody said he thought if staff took this plan to them, it might encourage them to go along with us and clean up their parking lot areas. Draft minutes - September 10, 2013 Vice Mayor Post asked if it would be possible for the property owner of the vacant land next to the Marana Market to clean it up or for the town to get a license agreement with the property owner to clean it up. Deputy Manager Post said that it was his understanding Circle K was in discussions with the property owner for expansion. Jane Fairall said a license agreement could be done administratively without a formal motion. Motion by Council Member Ziegler to authorize the use of contingency funds not to exceed $200,000 for the purpose of constructing a new entrance monument at Sandario and Marana Roads, including vegetation, irrigation and uplighting Expenditures for this purpose over $200,000 would require additional Council approval. Second by Council Member McGorray. Council Member Comerford asked if the Citizens' Forum selected a design. Mr. Woody stated that they selected Design Concept #3. Upon agreement from both Council Members Ziegler and McGorray, the motion was amended to add Design Concept #3 as the preferred choice. Passed unanimously. Council thanked staff for all of their good work on all the projects presented. Executive Session pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.03 (A)(3), Council may ask for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the Town Attorney concerning any matter listed on this agenda. 1: Executive Session pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.03 (A)(3), Council may ask for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the Town Attorney concerning any matter listed on this agenda. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS Notwithstanding the mayor's discretion regarding the items to be placed on the agenda, if three or more Council members request that an item be placed on the agenda, it must be placed on the agenda for the second regular Town Council meeting after the date of the request, pursuant to Marana Town Code Section 2-4-2(B) ADJOURNMENT. Motion to adjourn at 7:55 p.m. by Vice Mayor Post, second by Council Member Bowen. Passed unanimously. CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing are the true and correct minutes of the Marana Town Council meeting held on September 10, 2013. I further certify that a quorum was present. � � , Jocelyn C. Bronson, Town Clerk Draft minutes - September 10, 2013 7