Staff Report

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING
OF THE FOUNTAIN HILLS COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION
OCTOBER 27, 2025

A Regular Meeting of the Fountain Hills Community Services Advisory Commission was
convened at 16705 E. Avenue of the Fountains in open and public session at 5:00 p.m.

Members Present: Chairperson Carey Reddick II; Commissioner Stephen
Barnes; Commissioner Craig Rudolphy; Commissioner Ron Ruppert

Members Absent: Vice Chairperson Rory Wilson; Youth Commissioner
Shreyaan Nath; Commissioner Natalie Varela

Staff Present: Community Services Director Kevin Snipes and Executive
Assistant Paula Woodward.

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

Post-Production File

Town of Fountain Hills
Community Services Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes

October 27, 2025

Transcription Provided By:

eScribers, LLC

* oe KOK *

Transcription is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not

be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

* KK OK

Page 1 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Request.

COMMISSIONER RUPPERT: | do.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Ron.

COMMISSIONER RUPPERT: Well, welcome back everybody and everybody who's not
here. But | hope everybody had a good summer. And you know, time to get back to
business a little bit. But a couple things | just wanted to talk about that went on at the
end of our session last year or this year. And now is everybody doing the park
inventories, and | know | found them to be enlightening, as my partner Craig did. And |
definitely think that's something that we should revisit maybe every couple of years or
so.

My overall assessment was really good. You know, when you start looking, you
know, underneath the -- the chairs for bubble gum, and -- and things like that, and you
realize that, yeah, maybe a couple things don't match or a couple of things need
painted. But you know, the two parks that we did were, you know, outstanding. So you
know, kudos to the staff and kudos to the town for that.

| also want to reiterate that | think that tours this -- over this session should be
reinstituted and -- and keep going with some, you know, new ideas and new places to
go. And the last thing | wanted to talk about was -- mostly, because | want to get this on
the record, Kevin, is the retention area at Golden Eagle Park, and how it fared three
weeks or a month ago from the storms. | was out of town during this, but of course, |
got calls from the town and the HOA, you know, immediately and had pictures, so it was
hard to react. But when | did come back, looking at the property that | live on -- and I'm
speaking solely for Golden Eagle Park -- lot of money was put into that retention.

There's three different washes that feed that. But what the -- the astounding thing
to me was that with closely the same amount of rain, and the same amount of time
frame, two washes to me were normal, and one was ten times the velocity that it should
have been in years past. And that one is the one that comes down on the south end

there that would go past the basketball courts and whatnot. And I'm -- we're just, you

Page 2 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

know, analyzing this on our -- our end. And it's -- it's not the -- the volume of the rain,
it's the velocity. Because all the rain was the same on the other washes.

But it's something that we -- you know, we're visiting on our side of the road. And
| think that the town should really pay attention to that particular wash, because now
it's -- you know, the -- the development that's way upstream has changed the velocity
on it. And | just wanted to get that on the record. But you know, I've been staring at
those washes for thirty-five years now, and | was absolutely flabbergasted at the
difference. So the other -- the other side seemed to have worked well. But what I'm
trying to say there is, you know, the town may want to look at it, because of you know,
maintenance costs in the future for clearing out that -- just that one site compared to
the others, and why is this happening.

So | got my two cents on -- out on that. Also, we were always looking for speakers
you know, over the year. And | still want to get, you know, Rachel in here.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Is your mic on? Your mic's on, right?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Yeah. It's just down low.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: Oh, it's down low.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: Okay. Excuse me. Okay. Thank you.

COMMISSIONER RUPPERT: So if you could, you know, remind Rachel that we'd love to
get her on the agenda. She -- she -- | think she owes this Commission a visit, and we'd
love to see her. That's all.

BOB BURNS: Thank you, Ron, for the report. | will share our brainstorming session that
Rory and | did while we were on recess -- break. It's a long list, so I'll kind of go through
this very quickly. In regards to grants, Rory and | decided we want to get and give more
time for research and apply to purchase town for an ambulance. That's something that
she's been wanting to address. Another point was higher engagement within our parks
that you've just touched on as well.

Something that we touched on, commission cleanup, commissioner pop-up

booths, events to promote our commissioners. So having the commissioners attend

Page 3 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

other events just to spread more awareness of what we do here. Community center
programs. We thought it would be great for us to get more involved evaluating the
current programs at the community center, identifying potential gaps where we're
underserved within certain groups, identifying potential ways to improve, more time
with the senior youth. We definitely thought that we could attend more local clubs,
organizations, share more about CSAC, ask questions about what they need and how we
can support. And that kind of transitions into group clubs, participate in line dancing,
senior citizens, mayor youth counsel and join the NYC CSAC meeting, which is good for
NYC to see and participate in Commission meetings.

Also, other advisory board commissions. Team building within CSAC, we thought
would be great for us to do certain team building events quarterly or biannually. Good
to get to know each other better by doing these type of events as well. For the holidays,
we thought it would be great to do the engagement with more families and folks who
are experiencing financial hardship, how we can support them here at this Committee.
An active approach in donations, which is a great connection with what I've said earlier,
how we can donate to families who are in need. Especially with the holidays
approaching. Create a committee to help folks who need financial access and support.
We also said research more grant opportunities, which | touched on with the ambulance
earlier. And also, 411 locally for the town of Fountain Hills. And those were all of our
brainstorming sessions that we and | did.

Any other commissioners would like to bring up anything else? All right. Well,
we'll move right along. We'll consent to the agenda. All the items are here, so we'll
move right along. Kevin, would you like to discuss -- review and discuss the update of
park assets evaluations? I'm so sorry about that. And can | get an approval for our
minutes?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: Move to approve the meeting of June 23rd.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Can I get a second?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Second.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Okay. All those in favor?

Page 4 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Aye.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: Aye.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: Aye.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Okay. We have an approval to move the minutes, which
approve the minutes from June 23rd, 2025. And then, Kevin, we'll transition on to you
to review and discuss the park evaluations.
MR. SNIPES: Certainly. So first of all, I'd just like to -- to say thank you to everybody's
time and attention to detail, and going through the parks and -- and doing this project.
It's the first time that we've done it, and it means a lot getting a new set of eyes on -- on
the parks, and the things that we see on an everyday basis. You guys see totally
different than what our staff does or even that | do. And so that's why we wanted to
start doing this. | think it's a good way for you guys to -- to also get a feel of what's in
the park, what all it really means to say that we have fifty benches at the park, or fifty
trash cans at a park or -- you know, and -- and seeing that there's -- there's a lot of
money in that in -- in our assets.

And we want to make sure that we're taking care of them the best that we can.
And doing these asset reviews and evaluations goes a long way to planning what we
should be looking at doing next, or what that we've done well in the past. That's
changed from being a poor score to being -- to -- to increasing to being a better score.
Our next steps in this process will be to take your information and put it with our
information, kind of blend the two together so that we can get an overall where we're
at today. And -- and then like Ron said, in -- in another year or two, we'll be looking at
going back and doing that again, so that it's just this ongoing thing of -- of looking at the
parks in a different light and -- and getting that information, so that we can make sure
that we're constantly improving, and not letting something slip through the cracks, so to
speak, to in -- in the future.

Just because it's new today doesn't mean that it -- it's new forever. It's going to
fail on us somewhere along the way, and the only way to kind of keep track of that is to

see something slipping through a score process, and -- and knowing what we need to

Page 5 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

come back to ask for different capital improvement projects, or if it's just as simple as
one time supplement fees or the maintenance needs to be increased to -- to make sure
that we're getting better quality out of our stuff. So | know that it takes a long time to
do them, because I've done them enough to know. And I'm sure going out for your first
time -- there was -- | know | talked to Craig a little bit about how the -- the -- and there
we missed something somewhere, we got to go back and look again, and then we
missed something somewhere else. We got to go over here and look again.

And so | -- | understand that feeling. | had that exact same feeling as | was going
through, and | know where most of my stuff is. So -- so | know that it's -- it's very
challenging, and it takes time. And | truly appreciate all of your time in -- in going
through that. And it -- it, it will be used for multiple different things that we're -- that
we're -- as we get asked why we need things, and when we need things. It's great to be
able to go, actually, we've been trending this over the last five years. And that's how we
got to where we are today, is that we know that it's something that used to be a really
high end of the scale, and now it's just not up to our standards anymore, and we need
to get those replaced.

So having multiple different people involved in that goes a long way versus me
going, | want something new. And they go, you always want something new. And | say,
you're right, | always do want something new. But I also want to maintain all the new
things that we have, and make sure that they're being taken care of to the best of our
ability. And what you guys did means a lot. So thank you so much.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Thanks, Kevin. We'll move on to the next item, 7B; update
on the Panorama Park and Pleasantville Park.

MR. SNIPES: So Panorama Park, we are now completed with. It went in, we had some
issues with -- | think the last time we met, we were still having some issues with the
pathway, and having to have that redone, because the contractor used a nonapproved
product for the pathway. We went back and had them -- they tried to come in and redo
it with the same materials that we used up at Adero Trailhead for the stay lock

materials. They were not qualified to do that install either. It became abundantly clear.

Page 6 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

So what they ended up doing was then having the same company that we had do it,
which we recommended at the start, come out and they did it. And third time's a
charm. So | think it looks really good. The plants are doing really well over there. We're
starting to see a lot of new growth out of everything that's there.

And | keep hearing -- it's -- it's interesting that with it being such a small park and
in kind of an odd location, how many people have approached me and said that they've
walked through and they like going there and sitting, and all the plants are still really
small. You know, when this turns into what it's going to be, and once we get a few years
under its belt, we actually get some trees that have some height and some plants that
fill the -- fill the voids. It's just going to be a -- such a beautiful site compared to what it
was. So we're really excited about that one. And it's -- it's come a long way. And | think
that -- that the contrasting colors over there are really cool. And even on the drive by, it
kind of catches your eye already. As we start getting those colors to pop, it's really
going to make a difference. Any questions on Panorama at all?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 8: Don't have any updates. Okay. It says the time, but it's nota
red light.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: No. Try the other button and then switch over.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: There we go.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: Can you give us your take on Golden Eagle Park on how it
weathered through the storms?

MR. SNIPES: Yeah, not on this topic, but | think -- is there anything on today's? If not,

| -- we can do an update at the end when we're talking. | was going to piggyback off of
his comments, but | don't want to jump in in the middle of this. Let me -- I'll add that at
the end.

The Pleasantville Park project, we're at about forty, fifty percent plans now in
getting that one through. We're working a lot with our Dark Sky people trying to figure
out our lighting arrangement and how we're going to pull that off. It's probably the
most difficult part with Golden Eagle having a hillside where cars drive down the hill,

point directly at the park and then make a turn right before they get to Bainbridge to go

Page 7 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

on down the hill. So all those headlights are coming directly at us. So -- and | don't want
it to all be hardscape. So we're working really hard with our plantings, and what we put
and what location to be a light block, as well as trying to make sure that our center area
is as dark as possible to -- to have our -- Dark Sky Abilities, their biggest concern are
flashes of light where it's a quick flash, and then next thing you know, your eyes take a
long time to readjust.

So we're trying to prevent those cars driving down the hill and or pulling in the
parking lot or on the Bainbridge off of Golden Eagle from being a light concern. And we
think we have some really good solutions. We -- we've -- we've been working with
Lighting Unlimited for quite a while now on a lot of our different lighting issues. We
have a specialist that's come in through them that came up with, if you go over to right
by the Veterans Memorial, we now have a bollard up there that you'll see is a noticeably
more amber colored, and it's right where it goes -- we have a bunch of silver bollards,
and then it's -- it'll switch to the yellow one, and then it switches to the black ones that
are just in the Veterans Memorial area.

And you'll definitely see the difference between them. But I'm really excited about
this company's ability to retrofit both those bollards out there, as well as all of our other
lights as we've had issues. We've started talking with them about ways that we can get
those done. They're now a part of the Pleasantville project as well. And it's -- what I've
always said is we're only as good as the vendors that support us. And it takes a long
time to draft a really good group of vendors. And we've done that over the years. And
this is another one that | think is coming to fruition. They also did all the lighting for the
community center that just came in today. Actually, we'll be putting that up here soon.
So -- so we're really excited about our lighting technology folks and -- and -- and what
we're able to pull off.

But Pleasantville, I'm getting more and more excited about as we -- as we work
our way through the plans, and coming up with different designs and getting the right
people on board there. So that one's coming along very nicely as well. And we'll

probably be -- probably somewhere in the February time frame before we'll start

Page 8 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

putting this out and starting getting this project moving forward.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 8: Kevin, a question on actually both parks, and why do you
have to have lights at all?
MR. SNIPES: Mostly because it's going to be open after hours, and so we have to have a
certain amount of safety in there. And if we want to -- | don't want to limit it to being
only for dark sky viewing. If we want to do yoga or tai chi under the -- under the stars
over there, we can easily go in there. It's going to have a push button light shut off in
the main center ring. So you could literally walk in, have conversation, get everything all
set, and then hit -- hit the button, and the lights will stay out for an hour within that
room. And then all the lights around the edges are for pathway lighting and things like
that. So we're using like low level bollard lighting in those areas to accommodate that.
There also is going to be displays of different plants in their natural state, because
we want to try and push that with our residents. Getting them to stop using a hedge
trimmer every thirty days, whether it needs it or not. We would prefer that you let a
plant be a plant, and do what it needs to do to survive. So we want to show off how
that can happen and -- and what the difference is in the plant that you have at your
house that you touch every month, compared to one that's growing naturally. And how
much more of a show piece those plants can be.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Thank you, Kevin. And as | mentioned earlier, your team is
doing an amazing job just within the parks and everything. So kudos to your team.
MR. SNIPES: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: We'll move on to 7C, which is an update for the Arizona
State Puzzle Donor program, Centennial Pavilion, please.
MR. SNIPES: So we just put up our last our latest round of ten. I'm drawing a blank off
the top of my head of where we're at. | think it's about probably close to fifty pieces
that are on there by now. It's really starting to take shape. | had two more orders right
after we put those up towards our next round. One of the puzzle pieces that we did
during this round was in honor of Ken Valverde, who -- who worked with the town for as

long as anyone can remember. One of my favorite human beings of all time. And we

Page 9 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

lost him here recently. And so the staff raised funds to pay for a piece. And yes, we
paid for the entire piece in his honor.

And because we wanted him to be remembered, and it was just coincidence, it
was the the last piece that was touching the fountain piece that's on the puzzle. And |
felt like that was fitting that even with all the ones that had been on there for some
reason, that piece was open, and | thought that was cool, that it was left open for us to
get a piece out there for him. And it's just something that meant a lot to us as staff.
And it was a -- it was a fun piece to raise funds for. And our staff, really, it -- it took
nothing to get the funds to -- to put it up. Staff jumped all over it. So -- so it was -- it --
this was a -- this was a more personal round of -- of puzzle pieces that went up for me,
and for all of our staff that -- that pitched in towards it.

And so we're excited to have that up, and seeing that more pieces are being
bought just says that we're still doing the right thing. And this -- and this setup is a
unique setup, for sure. And an art piece that will -- that will hang around with -- with
the shade structure that it's helping to fund.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: So how is it holding up in the weather? Is there any --

MR. SNIPES: It could care less. No -- no issues at all. No. And if any of them | thought
would -- would be tested hard, it's the new one that we put on the avenue, and it held
up really well as well. Just because of the length, the cables being 110, 120 feet long,
that's a lot of cable length for the 3,540 mile an hour winds that we were hitting during
the storms. But they did great.

COMMISSIONER RUPPERT: It's amazing how that's getting utilized, you know? Wink,
wink.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Yeah.

MR. SNIPES: Yeah, it's -- yeah, we're -- we're getting a lot more traction for sure.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: And just to add to that, the puzzle piece, | mean, we have
people coming from California to come look at these pieces. And | know firsthand
because my father-in-law is on there. So | think it's just a great representation of our

community, but a great way to remember others as well. So it's awesome.

Page 10 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

MR. SNIPES: Yeah | agree. It's that space is -- and we're going to be going to counsel
and asking for more for that area. And I'll be talking to you guys more about that as we
get closer to our budget season. We just started looking at it, and we really want to
activate the space closer to the community center back there as well. It's kind of
designed in a less opportune way at this time, and we would like to make it more
opportunistic as we move forward. And so we want to level up some of the turf areas
over there. We're looking at potentially doing like a fitness area for balance and more
for our seniors.

Just outside the back door over there, we talked about building in that area at one
point, and it was a gargantuan number. And with the quality of fitness stuff that's
outside that we've already proven functions well and gets used well over at Desert
Vista. This will be a more strengthening balancing. We've been doing a lot of, like, chair
yoga classes and -- and things to help people get more strength and balance. As we're
seeing that, that's something that's been called out for, we think that this area in the
back will -- will be a great way to do that outdoors, where you can come anytime you
want and -- and work on that sort of thing versus having to come into a class that -- and
our classes are filling up fast. So sometimes there's not room. So we'd like to have it
where it could be a usable space instead of a space that just sits outside and doesn't get
used.

So that's kind of what we're looking into in that area. And the shade structure is
one hundred percent what's starting activating this space, and the events that have
gone on over there have proven that it functions really well. | know our Oktoberfest
was over there, and they were super excited about how well it functioned, and very
thankful for having that spot versus what it takes to put it on at the park is tenfold
versus having it there. And | think as we're getting ready to do our fall concerts over
there, and | can't wait for that to kick off, our economic development is helping fund
that. So we're going to have concerts there, concerts on the Avenue. You know,
we're -- it's really a vibe change for the downtown area in general.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: All right. Thank you for that, Kevin. We'll move on to our

Page 11 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

next action agenda item, 7E future agenda item for chair and vice chair appointees.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: I think probably if we could is maybe table this until the next
meeting, and where we have more of a representation to make that decision. Is that
possible, Kevin?

MR. SNIPES: Yeah, we can absolutely do that.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: Can | ask if any of the existing counsel members are
interested in either of the positions?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: Rory has expressed wanting to stay in her current role. | did
mention to Ron as well that I'm open to staying in the current role as well.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: We'll move on to our next agenda item, seven F an update.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: Let's do D.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: I'm so sorry. | don't know how we missed that. Upcoming
events and volunteer opportunities. | was just so excited to go to E.

MR. SNIPES: Well let's see. | don't have my list on this one. So | know you know, our
upcoming events that we're always looking for -- for help at are our Turkey Trot, which
we're planning on hitting numbers that we've never hit before, and actually having to
cap it based on how we're trending so far. We're over 1,000 runners, walkers, rollers,
strollers, whatever it takes, at this time. And so we're always looking for some help for
that. With all of our holiday outings that are coming up, there's plenty of opportunities
at any one of those, if you're interested. You know, with -- with increasing our size of
our events, we're not increasing the size of our staff. So having volunteers to help us is
the only way that we can keep allowing those to grow in the way that they're growing.
We're kind of the victim of our own success sometimes.

So anytime that we can get more volunteers, and having especially people on our
commissions and stuff that -- that know more about what's going on, and are able to
interact better with our residents, | think it -- it -- it goes better. And | appreciate -- you
know, | know that a lot of people do volunteer in those positions and help us out. So it's

just a matter of finding a spot to that you're interested in being involved in and -- and

Page 12 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

jumping in. We're always happy to -- to take on extra people to help out, so.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: All right. Now I will move on to E. Oh, no. I'mso sorry. F.
We'll update for CSAC youth commissioner, and | don't think we're here, so we just
move past that.

MR. SNIPES: Yeah, we can move past that for now. It's -- they've just done the -- | know
they just got through the interview part and getting approvals done for multiple of our
commissions. We're in need of some people to -- to fill spaces. So we'll be getting all
that done and squared away and back to us hopefully by our next meeting.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: All right. 7G let's get an update for fall over seeding and
holiday lights installation.

MR. SNIPES: All righty. Over -- over seeding. We certainly had a challenge with the
amount of rain that we had at the timing that we had. Some of the grass thought it was
fantastic. Others thought it was a white-water rafting trip and floated away. So we are
doing some new -- some touch up spots for sure around Fountain Park. But overall it --
it went pretty smoothly. No major issues other than the rain coming when it did. We
had several days ahead of it that we had our -- our seed down for the most part. So at
least some of it was attached. And as it starts to -- to push, we're seeing some spots
where -- especially where we had no turf or no weeds in Fountain Park, it was easy to
move that seed off of those dirt spots. So those are a lot of the spots that we're going
back to retouch up.

We're doing our first mowing this week on Thursday of Fountain Park. We have an
event there -- a nonevent on Saturday, the 7th, | think is that date, if | remember right.
There's going to be a concert out there on the Great Lawn, so it was a lot of pressure to
get it done and up and ready for a new client to come in and host an event that they're
not even sure how big it's going to be. Makes it extremely difficult to know what to be
prepared for. So we're doing our best to -- to help them have a successful event as well
as have our -- have our park look as good as it can, and survive through it so that it looks
good all winter long. So that'll be our challenge for that. The lights, if you haven't

noticed, all the fountains on the avenue are empty. That was so we could get our

Page 13 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

colored LED lighting put in.

That project is now complete, and they, in theory, started filling them today. |
haven't been out there to see, but they were filling them today and tomorrow. So we'll
have all of those up and running with the white lights on until we do the official kickoff
of the lighting up for the avenue. | think it's just going to add a really cool atmosphere.
It's every single light is adjustable on its own independently, or we can group them all
together, and do all of them ina single color. Or we can group just individual fountains.
So it's going to take -- | would say, us a while, but it's Kyle -- Kyle is going to take some
time to learn and figure out how to do this. He's been pounding through it. He's like,
you wouldn't think it, you know -- he's like, once you start looking at it, you go, man, it's
a lot to get it going. Once it's set up, then it's easy, you just push a single button.

But it's fifty-two different buttons to get it set up the first time for every single
thing that we wanted to do. So -- and it's something where, again, | don't want it to be a
normal operating thing where we're changing the colors all the time, just like the
fountain. | want it to run white ninety-nine percent of the time so that it's special when
it does turn colors, everybody notices. And | think the way that -- that we're setting it
up as -- as we Start messing with it a little bit, we'll see how easy we can make different
things to do. But highlighting our holidays and stuff like that, | think will be fun and -- or
the major things that we've done for the fountain, | think it can be incorporated into the
avenue to just kind of give it that uniform look and give a downtown feel versus a
fountain feel.

Only we can help draw people to see more than just the fountain when we're
doing the color changing. So I'm -- I'm really excited about seeing what it does, because
| have no idea what it's going to look like once those lights are underwater and -- and --
and pushing. But they're all -- it's all wireless controlled from our phones, so that makes
it super easy on staff as well. It's just the next phase of things that we're upgrading to
be at the standards that we want them to be at, where we can actually do a lot of our
work on our phone, where we can set it up, make sure everything's working, and have it

tell us when things are wrong instead of us having to find it. It will help us know that it's

Page 14 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

got a problem, so it should be really cool.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: How about hanging of any other Christmas lights and using
decorations?

MR. SNIPES: We -- as far as that, we have done right now?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yeah.

MR. SNIPES: Yeah. So all the trees have been wrapped up. They're in the process. Let's
see. It'll be next week. They'll be coming back, because they gain access again to the
park. We shut them down for a month while we're overseeding, and then they'll be
back hanging like the cluster lights. And they've done a lot from the sides of the road
while we've been overseeding. So you'll see that there's a lot of the -- the -- the band
lights that hang and stream up and down in the trees. Those have been hung. They've
done the -- the lights in the Centennial Circle again. We're also, for the first time, going
to have banners around Centennial Circle. So we're excited about that. | just got the --
the banner hangers today. We've been working with Economic Development to help
with our funding on stuff like that as well.

And so we'll have banners that we'll put up for the holidays, and then we'll have
the one in Centennial Circle will probably -- we haven't figured out exactly what we're
going to put up for the year round over there, but we'll be changing out from the
holidays to that. It's one of the things that we wanted to get done last year, and kind of
like the lights for the fountains. We wanted to do those last year, too. And one of usin
this room was way too busy to do that, and he failed. So | have others now that are
working on that. So that's kind of where we're at right now.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So Kevin, going back to the overseeding just the other day, the
restroom at the fountain. It seems as though there's flooding from one of the sprinkler
systems. I'm not sure if you've noticed that as well. Oh, well, you know, you're the guy
around here, so I'm not sure if your team has addressed that, but it was pretty rough
yesterday. It's by the restroom at the fountain, the sprinkler was.

MR. SNIPES: Which restroom?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So if you're heading to the fountain, it's the restroom right by

Page 15 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

the entrance.
MR. SNIPES: At the east part, like, near the playground or near the east parking lot?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Opposite side of that.
MR. SNIPES: That east parking lot.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yeah, it was pretty bad.
MR. SNIPES: Okay.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And then there's very similar situation at Golden Eagle. It's
right by the dumpster. I've noticed this was just yesterday when | was just going around
the parks. | mentioned it to Natalie. | don't have your number, Ron, or | would have
texted you, but I'm not sure if your team has addressed that with you.
COMMISSIONER RUPPERT: Shoot -- shoot it to me, if you see stuff like that.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay. I'll get your number.
MR. SNIPES: I'll make sure he gets taken care of. Yeah, you can just email it to me or
text it to me. Either way is fine.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay. Cool. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: All right we'll move on to 7H, which is the consideration and
possible action for Fountain Park ADA playground grant.
MR. SNIPES: And this one, actually, we found out that our coverage -- our matching
grant -- federal grant kind of died off on us. And so our funding source wasn't going to
be able to match our -- like, what we did for the restrooms. We had two different
grants that funded each other. We didn't have that ability. And so at this time, this
one's going to die for a little bit. And they're constantly doing these, and so we'll be
looking back into them later. But for right now we will not be moving forward with this
grant, because of lack of funds to match. Still definitely one high on my priority list. So
| -- | think if we can get a -- a really nice ADA playground at Fountain Park, it'll go a long
way towards what we've seen for our activities over there.

And the amount of people that come to use that sort of a environment makes it an
all-inclusive group, and it's already set up to -- to be that way to a certain degree. We

just want to take it to another level. And we have multiple vans that come in from

Page 16 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

around from our local homes and stuff that -- that come and use it, that we think this
would be a really cool idea. So I'm not giving up, I'm just pausing for a little bit, which
I've had to do on lots of projects that we've done, but we'll get there.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Is there anything that we can do as commissioners on this
committee to help support with that grant?

MR. SNIPES: Next time that we're -- we're putting -- every time that we put in for
grants, we look for letters of support from our commissions, and we do votes on it

and -- and -- and show that support as well. But yeah, that -- that's our biggest way of
getting support from you guys is letters of support, so that we can add those to our --
our list of qualifications and recommendations from others to -- to get the grants that
we're getting.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Thank you for that, Kevin. We'll move on to 7, update for
Community Center holiday decorations policy.

MR. SNIPES: So for those that have lived in this town for more than a year, you'll
remember that last year there was some interesting displays that ended up showing up
in the Community Center which took away from what our goal was. Because of that,
there was many conversations up to and including terminating our holiday displays in
the Community Center. For those of you that don't know my staff, they love the
holidays, and doing stuff at the Community Center is one of their highlights. And last
year it was destroyed by hate for lack of a better term. There was way too many people
that were doing way too many things, causing -- and yelling at our staff like, it's our fault
that things were going on, which | won't let happen.

And so what we did this year was we came up with a policy, and we're making all
the -- all of the people that are participating have to describe what their display is going
to be, get it approved prior to them putting it in. And on our list, it lists through a ton of
things that you can and cannot do as part of the -- the holiday display. We had to have
our attorney involved and make sure that everything was legal for our building, and we
came up with one that we all got behind and got comfortable with. Took us all summer

long to -- to work on it just because every time we think we got somewhere, we find a

Page 17 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

hole in it and go, okay, so how do we fill that hole up? And it's very difficult to do when
you know you're in a public setting. And -- but basically, we -- we've made them all sign
off on saying that they'll play nicely, and do it for the betterment of the entire town.
We've gotten in -- several of our tree display groups have already sent in their
plans for this year, and they're all look good. And again, it was just a couple of bad
examples that caused everything to go sideways. So it doesn't take much. But this is
something that we've done and grown into something that's -- it's my -- it's one of my
favorite things. | think having thirty trees in a single location, something that I've never
seen anywhere, and getting to see it in our own backyard, where we get to go over all
the time means a lot. And you know, having all the quilt displays and the -- and the
wreath displays, it's -- it's an impactful spot. And we have people that come from all
over now to see it, because they've heard about it, you know, and -- and last year when
it went sideways, we had a lot of people coming to see it that weren't here for the joy.
They were here for a totally different reason. And so we wanted to make sure that
that doesn't repeat itself or we will stop doing this project. And that's the last thing that
| want to do, but I'm not going through that another season. It was not fun for any of
us. So we want the -- the -- the spotlight to be shined on us for all the right reasons,
and not for the reasons that it was last year that we were all on the news. And it's just
not okay. So we think we've -- we've come up with a way to make sure that that never
happens again. And are hopeful that this year goes smoothly. We've had some long
talks with several different key people in the town about how it went last year, and how
we would like for it to run this year. And | think we're in a good spot for moving
forward. So it wasn't easy, but | think we got to where we needed to be, so.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Well, thank you for that, Kevin. And with there being no
further business, may | have a motion to adjourn?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Did you want -- Kevin.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes. Tell us about how Golden Eagle Park wound up with the
storm.

MR. SNIPES: Certainly. So just in -- in -- in touching on Ron's earlier discussion, we -- we

Page 18 of 20

TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS
OCTOBER 27, 2025 COMMUNITY SERVICES ADVISORY COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES

also -- we definitely noticed that we had a higher amount of flow down in that lower
end. We -- it was the only breach that we had. And we didn't have a big -- a large
breach there. But we did come up onto the tennis courts around that corner. So we
made some modifications there immediately after the storm. But outside of that, | -- |
couldn't be more pleased with how Golden Eagle handled the rain, considering the
amount that we had. Like | said, it was the only breach that we had was -- was coming
right under Golden Eagle. It immediately was able to go north towards the tennis courts
and cut off the corner of the tennis court, and then flooded out onto the fields and
across the fields.

And we ended up with some of your golf balls if you need them out on the -- out
on the ball fields. But other than that, we didn't overtop anywhere. We were very
close, and a lot of locations, we had some cleanup on the warning tracks on three and
four mostly from just the amount of water that comes through all the fields and ends up
out there. But considering how much work that we spent on making sure that we
covered all our bases, that we were actually protecting the park, that part was one
hundred percent successful. We had some erosion in a couple of spots that down at the
right field line on field 1 for Ashbrook. The speed of the water making the turn there cut
into and undercut significantly into that hill a little bit. So we are going to be armoring
that turn, which isn't a big thing. But something that definitely -- with a storm of that
quality definitely showed that we needed to armor that side so it wouldn't change the
width of our wash down through there.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: | was out of town also during that. | heard two inches of rain.
Is that about right?

MR. SNIPES: It depends on where you were at in town. We had three inches, three and
a quarter in some areas. We -- and it's interesting, when you look at our parks, like
Desert Vista typically gets about a half inch less. When we hit that run, and it was about
three quarters of an inch less, it was just like two and a quarter at Desert Vista. For
peeks, was it like, two and three quarters. Golden Eagle was more at just over three. So

-- but it's -- and it's very consistent like each one of our -- it's -- it's how the mountains

Page 19 of 20