CAREFREE – With all members present, council held Tuesday’s meeting at its new temporary venue at the Holland Community Center on 60th Street just south of Carefree Highway.
Carefree will be conducting its council and planning and zoning commission meetings at the new location until further notice.
Mayor Les Peterson announced the town finished its fiscal year with $6,640,000 in the bank and said Carefree’s finances are doing fine.
He thanked council and all the people and businesses that donated and contributed to the recent town improvements.
Councilman Mike Farrar, who has served for the past two years as Carefree’s representative on the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) regional council, provided an update.
MAG is the federally mandated regional planning and policy-making agency for the metropolitan Phoenix area, all of Maricopa County and portions of Pinal County to develop policies for regional air quality and transportation planning.
It has since expanded its scope of work to include more than a dozen advisory committees to look at things such as water quality, technology, building codes, solid waste, public safety and more.
One of the projects MAG was involved with was the Cave Creek/Carefree bike lane project, which cost a total of $3,754,109.
Because the project received a federal grant of $3,538,480, the local cost to the two towns totaled $215,629, which was split based on the number of miles of bike lanes in each town.
Farrar also noted Carefree now has zero unpaved public roads to mitigate dust issues.
He said MAG was working with government representatives toward allowing Mexican nationals with border crossing cards to travel statewide, rather than the present limit of 75 miles from the border.
Farrar noted MAG is able to provide data and analytics that the town would not be able to afford to conduct on its own.
Peterson said the annual dues costs the town approximately $1,700, which he stated is minimal considering the benefits.
Although he just presented just a few highlights from the presentation, Farrar said the complete PowerPoint presentation can be found online in the Aug. 2 council packet.
Following up on her request from last month, Councilwoman Melissa Price projected a photo of Carefree Jewelers’ “Going Out of Business Sale” window sign, and asked that a committee be formed to look into how it can regulate certain types of signs in the town center.
She said the businesses in town don’t want to be known as a discount town and they don’t join things such as couponing groups for that reason.
According to Price, other towns have ordinances that limit signs such as “Going Out of Business” to 30 days and require a permit.
She wanted to have a committee look into developing an ordinance “so we don’t have a going out of business town.”
Town Administrator Gary Neiss said due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on First Amendment rights, the town may have to change some of its sign ordinances and stated, “So, this is a good time to look at this.”
Neiss said it was something they should try to do in a cooperative spirit.
Price said the new council may want to start getting to know the business owners in the town core to learn about their concerns.
Peterson said the primary election is on August 30 and anyone receiving 50 percent plus one of the vote will be considered elected, which gives them a three-month head start, knowing they’ll be seated, to get to know the business owners in town.
Councilman Glenn Miller updated council on the gateways and estimated they should be completed by the end of the month.
Neiss told council Ed Lewis had completed his public report and is finalizing his financing so he didn’t have a date as to when the luxury condominium project would break ground.
Because of citizen complaints about the new road striping near the gateway roundabouts, Peterson said the traffic engineers had taken the comments into consideration and the town is currently working on it.
Neiss said there are three separate contractors involved and it is just a matter of coordinating their schedules.
