April 30, 2013 Meeting

April 30, 2013 Council Meeting

Item 4. I voted YES
Consent order with AZ Dept of Environmental Quality (ADEQ)
ADEQ sent the City a notice that they were not in compliance with our water that has been discharging from the Wildcat Treatment Plant. Our permit says Class A+, which is the highest quality water we can discharge, but the City has been consistently putting out Class A water. Still a very high quality of reclaimed water but not what our permit stated. There is also a selenium issue that’s being looked into.

We also discussed the issue we have coming up this summer because Wildcat will not be able to provide water to over 70 customers which will most likely result in shortages of the reclaimed water during peak times. One suggestion staff made was to supplement the reclaimed system with potable water. Our direction to staff was to come up with better options in a week or so that do not include putting potable water into the reclaimed system.

Some water stats:

Available production in million gallons per day (MGD)
2 Inner Basin
4.5 Lake Mary Water Treatment Plant
3 Lake Mary Wells
4.5 Woody Mountain Well Fields
4.7 Local Wells
18.7 MGD Capacity

Our peak day occurred in 2008 and was 13.5 MGD

April 30, 2013 Work session

Item 4. Discussion on temporary signs for events and non profits
The issue here is all those banners for events on fences around town. The argument for regulating this is that the signs are unsightly. The argument for it, they are very effective, that’s why people use them. I have argued for a sign code that’s more leinent. Council gave direction to staff to possibly come up with several locations around town in high traffic areas to have community areas where you can post a banner for special events. Council will see if we can come up with a solution that allows these signs in certain areas of town.

Item 5. Ban on texting while driving. Mayor Nabours, myself and councilor’s Overton & Brewster were in the majority giving direction not to go forward with a ban on texting. As we all said many times, don’t text while driving. This ordinance was broad and nearly impossible to enforce. I’ll write more about the specifics soon.

Item 6. City Council and administration will be made aware of forthcoming issues facing ADOT and projects scheduled for the region. Council and administration will have the opportunity to ask questions and provide input to ADOT, especially on the draft 5-Year Construction Program.

The Little Things…
While the presenter was talking about Arizona in a larger view and talking about a multi billion dollar statewide plan, I could not pass up the opportunity to try and get a couple things fixed for Flagstaff. The first thing is the ADOT stop light at the intersection of 4th Street and Rt 66, driving from 4th across Rt66 towards the overpass. The left turn arrow has not worked correctly since the day they put it in. It appears to be about 20% of the brightness it should be so people have a real hard time seeing it to turn left.

The other issue is I-17 coming up from the Verde Valley North to Flagstaff. Coming up the rim the road has gotten so bad there are actually tire grooves in the road that force your car into a rut. I drive this often and it’s getting real bad. We need this road fixed!

*As always, a note to the grammar police, I write these quick notes on the fly so calm down if I made a grammatical error.