HomeMy WebLinkAboutState of the Town 2017 2017 State of the Town Address April 15, 2017 The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain
Mayor Ed Honea:
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today at Marana's State of the Town. I am
honored to serve as the mayor of Marana. I love everything about this great community.
This town has been a huge part of my life. I am so passionate about Marana and love talking
about what is going on here.
Marana was founded in the late 1890s and incorporated in 1977.This year we celebrate 40
years since incorporation. It seems, like just yesterday,when a group of community members walked
through the neighborhoods, in North Marana, to obtain signatures for incorporation. To get these
signatures, we walked from house to house ... talking to residents about providing services and
protecting our own community. I am happy to report, 40 years later, we have never stopped talking
about providing services and protecting this community.
When I think about the State of the Town, I think about the incredible progress we have made. I
think about the residents who have chosen to live and work in this great community. We would not be
where we are today without great commerce,great non-profits, great teachers, great students and ...
great people, committed to our cause. Growing from a small town of just a few square miles and a few
hundred residents, to a prosperous community with hundreds of businesses, a world-class resort,
excellent schools, and more than 43,000 residents has not been an accident.These achievements are
the results of hard work and thoughtful planning.
Our commitment to service, partnerships, and responsibility have shaped Marana.These
commitments have in turn established incredibly strong community connections. These connections are
real, like the network of trails that crisscross Marana.They are also abstract, like the strong relationships
that exist across community, business, and government.Together, these relationships create a culture
and a sense of place. That culture has positioned us to achieve incredible things.
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2017 State of the Town Address April 15, 2017 The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain
So, how exactly did we get here, and how will we continue to chart where we are going?
Marana's story is really a long series of stories that spans our 40-year history.To highlight our 40 years,
we have 4 individuals who work every day to serve our residents and business community. Human
Resources Director Curry Hale,Town Magistrate Laine Sklar, Police Chief Terry Rozema, and Parks and
Recreation Director Cynthia Nemeth will share with you some highlights happening here in Marana.
Welcome, Curry.
Curry Hale:
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My name is Curry Hale, and I'm Marana's Director of Human Resources. I
joined the Town in September of 2015, and I came to this community because I was inspired by the
culture of excellence I saw in Marana. When I first started looking deeply at Marana, you might be
surprised at what I saw. I saw......a cube. In the center of each of your tables is this same cube. It
represents Marana's values and we use this cube as a physical reminder of the importance of our values.
But what are those values, and what do they really mean?
A few years ago, we started asking employees of Marana several basic questions. Why do you
work in local government? What inspires you to get up every morning and come to work?We asked
police officers. We asked building inspectors. We asked street maintenance crews, and we asked park
attendants. As we waded through the volume of responses, we began to notice a few recurring themes:
Dedicated service, respect, teamwork, and engaged innovation.
Providing outstanding service is our core mission here at the Town. Everything we do must
directly serve our larger community. Our vision ensures that even though we may not always agree,
everyone always pushes in the same direction. In Marana, we believe you don't have to be disagreeable
to disagree.
A little over a year ago, staff members in our Community Development and Neighborhood
Services department identified a gap in service. This department includes our code enforcement
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2017 State of the Town Address April 15, 2017 The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain
officers, and those officers wanted to find a way to help residents have their properties comply with
Town code, and so, we invested in a low-cost, high-yield solution.The Town created the Marana
Community Clean-Up Program. This effort provides a free trailer to community groups who want to
clean up their neighborhood. They receive all the tools they'll need to do this work, as well as a trailer
where they can dispose of large and bulky debris. By offering this service, the Town is helping residents
take pride in their own neighborhoods, put in a little sweat equity, and in the end, enjoy the product of a
collaborative effort. This kind of creative idea is just one example of how our staff try to find solutions
that will satisfy everyone.To us,that is the epitome of dedicated service.
Our core value of dedicated service depends on a shared sense of respect both for each other
and for the public. We know that part of demonstrating that respect demands the highest standards of
honesty and integrity. Currently, each department is hard at work preparing the budget for next year.
Every year, we all present ambitious budgets that aim to provide outstanding service for the community.
However, every year, our Finance Department challenges us to meticulously evaluate each proposal.
They ask hard questions about how efficiently we're using resources.They challenge us to conserve
resources wisely. Sometimes, we disagree, but it's our profound respect for each other that allows us, at
the end of the day,to produce a budget that's built to work for all Marana residents. Year after year, our
budget document receives the highest rating from The Government Finance Officers Association. Our
value of respect has made that achievement possible.
When Town staff respect each other and the public, it allows us all to work together as a high-
functioning team.That's why teamwork emerged as a third key value at the Town. Every Fourth of July,
Marana hosts the hugely popular Star Spangled Spectacular. From the police officers directing traffic to
the parks and rec staff cleaning up at the end of the night, this event and the 15,000 people who attend
it demand all hands on deck. It's no easy task, but by working together, we've made this event a huge
success,year after year.
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2017 State of the Town Address April 15, 2017 The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain
When you mix respect with teamwork, you get our fourth core value: Engaged Innovation. As
we've all experienced, the construction of a new overpass at Ina Road has disrupted business along the
Ina Corridor. We know that construction can be challenging for these business owners. In order to
support them, we wanted to really think outside the box.The Project Ina app, which you can download
right now on your smartphone, is the result of that innovative thinking. With almost 1000 active users
every month, we're providing timely construction updates, as well as offering a forum for businesses to
connect directly with their customers. The Project Ina app, born from a deep respect of business owners
impacted by construction, is making a real difference in our community.
To share how we're translating these ideas into action, I'd like to ask Town Magistrate Laine
Sklar to talk about how Marana's values foster strong community connections.
Laine Sklar:
Thank you, Curry. My name is Laine Sklar, and I serve as the judge for the Town of Marana. I
joined the Town in 2006 as an attorney, and I'm inspired to come to work every day because of our
organizational commitment to fair and equal treatment for all Marana residents.
Working together, our values of dedicated service, respect,teamwork, and engaged innovation
help create community connections that hold Marana together.
In a very real sense, those connections take shape as physical links between neighborhoods
across the Town. Anyone who has spent any time in Marana knows that our natural environment is a
real asset for this community. That's why we've prioritized creating and maintaining some of the best
trails in the region. Go for a hike on the Wild Burro Trail just outside these walls and you can see for
yourself the meticulous care Marana's trail crew has put into maintaining these pathways.That hard
work has distinguished this trail as a National Recreation Trail. Additionally,the Town is currently in the
process of opening a trail along the Central Arizona Project and across the alluvial fan of the Tortolitas.
For a slightly less ambitious pathway, we can look a little farther south to the Shared-Use Path that
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2017 State of the Town Address April 15, 2017 The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain
winds its way through Continental Ranch. This paved, car-free path allows cyclists,joggers, walkers, and
really anyone to enjoy a safe avenue to get outdoors. Currently, we're even extending this path all the
way up to Avra Valley Road. The shared-use path establishes a crucial sense of interconnectivity in
Marana, and so ties us together as a community.
Community connections, however, aren't always the physical trails, paths, and roads that cut
across the Town. They are also the relationships that we build up across all sectors, whether we're
thinking about residential housing, commercial retail, or government services. One challenge that we
face in Marana is simply the nature of our geography. We have three major population centers:
Continental Ranch, north Marana, and Dove Mountain. Only through strong relationship-building across
these communities can we create a coherent sense of unity.
One way that we are working to build those connections is through the Marana Citizens' Forum.
This group was born when we moved away from traditional, and often ineffective, citizen commissions
that worked on isolated issues without finding broad solutions. Instead, we wanted to convene a
collaborative group of citizens who would represent all interests in our community. There are citizens
from every profession and all walks of life represented in this group. Twice a year, we convene them for
several months to dig deep into a major question facing our Town.
Last year the Citizens' Forum closely analyzed Marana's Development Services Center. How can
we provide efficient and effective customer service, they asked. What is working and what can we be
doing better? In trying to answer these questions, members of the Forum took apart complex processes
and identified steps that could be eliminated. That streamlining has made the process of getting a
permit faster for the public without sacrificing quality of service. Based on the Forum's
recommendations, we now also offer more online services so that members of the public can interact
with the Town at any time, day or night. Because of this effort, not only did we improve our
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2017 State of the Town Address April 15, 2017 The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain
Development Services Center, but we did so through authentic, meaningful public input from all corners
of Marana. That's the kind of inclusive culture that promotes strong community connections.
Marana's strong community connections help us chart the course of our future. Our values of
dedicated service, respect, teamwork, and engaged innovation provide the bedrock for guiding how we
function as a government. It is because of these values that Marana has earned a reputation as an
outstanding place to live, to work, to raise a family,to make a life.That reputation makes manifest the
community connections that we seek to foster, and there's no better person than Marana Police Chief
Terry Rozema to share with us his perspective on how those connections have created an outstanding
quality of life here.
Terry Rozema:
Thank you, Laine. I joined the Town of Marana as Police Chief in 2011. For the past six years, I've
watched our Town grow and flourish, and I'm proud to be a part of this community.
To me, one of the things that makes Marana so special is the attitude and spirit of the people
who live here, and I'd like to share a quick example that illustrates why I say that.
Prior to my time here at the Town, the approach to keeping our streets safe for driving was to
enforce traffic laws via citations, and since officers are very good at following orders, they did just that.
In fact, the year prior to my arrival we wrote more than 12,000 tickets. However, as we began to create
our philosophical approach to policing our community, one of the things we placed strong emphasis on
is the reality that the primary purpose of policing is to help people. Now, if you make that simple, yet
fundamental, philosophical adjustment and apply it to traffic enforcement...sometimes writing a ticket
helps, but in many cases it may not. And as our philosophy of policing began to take root in the hearts
and minds of our officers, a fascinating thing happened. Armed with the mission and freedom to go
forth and simply help people, officers began to go out and make more traffic stops than ever before,
however, ...at the same time they began to write fewer and fewer citations. In fact, the following year
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