SignalsAZ.com Prescott News Podcast - Fains Discuss Prescott Valley Propositions 492 and 404

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

Send us a text and chime in!Brad Fain and Ron Fain continue the conversation about Prescott Valley’s future in a new podcast episode focused on community building, public process, and long-term planning. The discussion touches on Propositions 492 and 404, while looking at how local decisions may shape open space, neighborhoods, and future growth. Residents are also invited to bring questions, concerns, or subject matter expertise to future podcast conversations by emailing [e-mail]. Check out the CAST11.com Website at: https://CAST11.com Follow the CAST11 Podcast Network on Facebook at: https://Facebook.com/CAST11AZFollow Cast11 Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/cast11_podcast_network

Hey, Ron. Hey, Brad. I was tuning into social media this week. And I just want to set the record straight. Some people are commenting on this podcast. And some people have said it's a really bad podcast. I got to clarify, it's not a bad podcast. Tony does a great job with the podcast.

Ron and Brad may not be so good. So if you don't like the show, it's a Ron and Brad issue, not a podcast issue. Because Tony does an amazing job. We've got a great team that puts these podcasts. together. I mean, you can only imagine the editing job they have to go through to get any sound bite out of you at all. To get anything that's good. And we're just here, honestly, we're just here to provide the other side of a narrative that you're not hearing out there. Just have a conversation. Yeah. A little bit of the good, a little bit of the bad, a little bit of the ugly.

That's right. I like your shirt again. Thanks. I'm glad you called me and decided to wear the same shirt today. So that was nice of you. This reminds me. We're like twins. We tell people we're twins. We're 18 months apart in age. And our mother, you know, I'm older. I was going to say leave it a mystery. I know. Then, you know, you might have been disappointed with that. But, no, I'm older.

18 months apart in age and mom used to dress us not like twins, but, you know, similar, very similar. Because we're both little boys and she had a hard time keeping us together. But, you know, there was, you know, when we were young, she took very good care of us. dressed us and she's probably watching the day thinking, okay, good. They're looking all right. They took a shower. Shows were good for her, not for us. Let's go back to last week. We talked a little bit about signature series, and I want to like connect the dots a little more. We started to last week, but I thought your panel did a great job of making some points that are connected to Prop 492 that's going to be on the ballot in November. So I thought we just spent-

Prescott-Vrescott. Prescott, only Prescott Valley voters, but 492 were, it's an annexation matter. Just to be clear, 492, what was referred to the general public to vote on if you're a Prescott Valley voter is whether you want the property annexed into the town of Prescott Valley or leave it in the county. That's all that's being annex. Pretty simple. Pretty simple decision. So one of the topics that always come up is like growth, managed growth, wild growth, uncontrolled growth, water, and wildlife. And I thought your panel did a great job of connecting some of those points to 492, which lead to a support of 492. Yeah.

First thing that comes to mind is density and how it relates to wildlife corridors and wildlife in general. Yeah. I think it was, you know, the panel spoke up on that. We had land conservation there. And I think they really supported the idea, the concept of if you take density and you transfer the amount of houses, you have on a piece of property and you cluster them together in different pods and you provide the opportunity for more open space, more natural open terrain as opposed to allowing every house to sit on two acres or three acres or five acres. Then it is more of a grid and it

walls off wildlife and doesn't provide the natural beauty. Doesn't preserve the natural beauty in the same way. Less dense, but not the same, doesn't have the same kind of good effect that the panel was saying on density. Exactly. And so she said to that that sprawl that occurs on the two acre lot splits is that typically people when they buy their two acres or four acres or 10 acres, they fence it. And then they put no climb fences because they want the little critters to not get into their gardens and their flowers. And she said, even though the pronghorn can jump over the fence, They generally don't. They like to go under the fence.

And so when you see those big planned communities with two acre and larger lots, it's actually more detrimental to the wildlife migration, especially the pronghorn, because she said they'll walk the fence for a mile or more looking for an opening so they can go under or around. And if it's not there, so it is more detrimental where density you can plan for where the migration is and leave it open. And people love open space.

They love open space. They're coming from California. They're coming from the Midwest. They're coming from a dense place already. And they come into this area. They want to retire or raise their family here. And I mean, why wouldn't they want their own five acre, 25 acre, 36 acre? They love it if they can afford it.

A lot of people like that kind of lifestyle. So 492, yes, on annexation, puts it in the town, creates more density, clusters, creates more wildlife corridors and therefore more open space, which supports our wildlife. It does. And for everybody else that says, well, what's in it for me? You know, if you're interested in growth, and most people are, and it's a public process, it's how we grow, it's not if we grow, right? Having it in town provides more control over how that growth looks. So you get more control, and that was another topic. County, less control. Yeah. town more control. And there's been a lot of controls put on the lakeshore development.

It's in that document. But if the annexation goes through, then there's more control by local Prescott Valley residents on what transpires out there. By design. Yep. Another thing with density that came out, which might seem counterintuitive a lot of people, density saves water. I know. Doesn't sound right, does it? No, it doesn't.

But when you break it down and the experts have and they like where does your water go when you build a home? Obviously water goes in the home. You live off it. You eat and cook with it. You wash your hands, shower, restroom, all that. All that water gets recycled if it's in the town because they have a municipal system. It goes to the treatment plant. It gets cleaned and then it gets re-injected back into.

Recharged into the aquifer. Into the aquifer or in some cases, some of it goes up and waters a golf course. Yeah. And so it gets reused against. So that water gets to be used over and over again, which is better for the aquifer. The water outside, the landscaping doesn't get recharged. It waters your plants. And they say about 30% of the water a homeowner uses is for landscaping.

So when you have more density, you actually start shrinking the yards down and there's less landscaping. And so therefore you can start to have an impact on that 30% that doesn't get recharged. Right. So that's kind of how it connects. And you also have the landscape. You've got drought-tolerant plants that are mandatory with inside the municipality. That goes back to your control. You can't just plant anything. That's right. You've got to plant drought-tolerant plants.

That's right. In the town, you have to go off their plant list, which is more drought-tolerant for our area focused on saving water. So, again, more density saves water. So that kind of supports 492. Annex it in so it stays in and you don't have your two acre, 36 acre, 40 acre lot splits. Where people just go drill a well. They use a septic tank, so nothing's getting recycled. And the well cost actually is just power. And you can get power from APS or you can do solar.

And so really, the more you pump, your cheaper your water gets if you're on a well system. Yeah. And if you're in the town and you pump, the more water you pump, the more water you pump, off the municipal system, the more you get charged, it's not by volume, but also by rate. The more water you use, they start to increase the rate. The purpose of that is so that you won't use more water. They're trying to encourage you to be water wise. Sounds like me, Brad, that 492 annexing that a yes on 492 annex that property in town

of Prescott Valley sounds like to me that is good, managed, planned, controlled growth. I would agree. And I think one of the panelists said, and she's been doing this for decades, it's not about if we're going to grow. It's how we're going to grow. And so we're going to grow. So if you stop all the master plan communities, where do the people go? into the county. And that's where they're going today. County is the number one issuer of single family residential permits today. It used to be Prescott Valley about five years ago, and Prescott Valley was always at the top, and then there was Prescott and Chino, and then the county was last. And that's what you really want.

You want less of your housing to go in the county because the county doesn't charge. There's less control. They don't do the impact fees. They don't have the system built like a municipality does to collect the taxes to help grow wise, which is giving money to the police, giving money to the parks, the libraries, the roads, the water and sewer. If you're in a municipality and you're in a master plan community, you pay all those impact fees. Yep.

So it sounds like your panel did a great job, kind of supporting why annexation would be good. And I don't think that was the intention of the panel, but they built a good case for that. Well, and that's it. We had a panel of subject matter experts, and they're all looking at the land we share and how it gets developed. and what is in the best interest from their point of view for open space conservation, for wildlife, for roads and infrastructure, how do we get ourselves in around and through community and into conservation? And all of those things from, if you put them all together in the land we share, all point to the highest and best use to trying to cluster development together,

conserve water, increase open space, allow for wildlife, coexist at the same time in the draws. It all makes sense. And it's kind of disappointing. And that's part of the point of the signature series is to bring subject matter experts to the table to have a conversation about why developing a particular way is more beneficial or more effective than another way. I mean, people are still going to go out and do their 36-acre lots. But the whole point to have that conversation was that there's a lot of planning and a lot of thought that goes through this. It's just not about, hey, this is what we want. This is about, hey, growth is coming. How do we do this in the most efficient manner? We want the same thing most everybody else wants in town. We want

it controlled and we want it managed and we want it to be effective for everybody. Kind of remind me of the process because we go through, it is a well-thought-out, well-planned, master-planned communities. And part of the process is the public comment period. And what I wish would happen is when we have our neighborhood meetings and we go through this process, people come and engage with us and say, have you considered this? Or would you consider that? Or what if we did this and kind of help design it by what they would like to see? But what dominates those neighborhood meetings are the activists screaming that we can't do it, we shouldn't do it, greedy developer, you don't have the right to do, whatever their argument is. And they take away the voice of the

people that could come to the room and say, well, would you consider this? How about a grocery store? And that's where the real magic would be is if we get those neighborhood means back to community input and community involvement in building something that the community would be proud of. Yeah. Anymore, it's been weaponized, I think. The public process and the community process has been weaponized so much so that if they're not even knocking on the town's door, the staff there, great people, great people at the town of Public Valley staff. but they're so busy filling out FOIA's, Freedom of Information Acts, because now you can't go and just ask for information. All these groups now are foying the town of Prescott Valley for everything.

Every bit of information on something because they believe something nefarious is afoot. In fact, the town has had to hire full-time staff just to manage the foias because of the process that they have to do on a FOIA. So again, costing taxpayers a lot of money. But, Brad, it's a right they have. Absolutely, it's a right they have. Let's keep this moving. Growth was the other thing that kind of comes up.

And you had asked the question, what's in it for me? I already have my house. I live here. Why should I support the annexation of this project and have more houses come here? I don't need anymore. I've got mine. So what's the, what do you say to that? Listen, you live here.

I'm sure you want good access to services, medical services, right? and the growth allows for experts, subject matter experts and health to locate here. If we're not providing housing to support all the staff that supports the experts and doctors that are going to be here, we're not going to have those technicians available. It's all going to be a trip down the road to Phoenix. And that's one of the biggest complaints a lot of residents have here, especially our retired population, is we don't have enough health care here. We don't have the services I need or the specialist.

And I think the hospital is more than willing to bring him here because there's a market. And they are bringing them here. They're number one issue. Well, they can't because they want to hire a doctor and the doctor needs seven to nine people to support them. And there's no houses for those people. So they can't bring the service. And so I think that's like that repeats itself for the medical industry, our public safety industry, our workforce service industry. they all have the same underlying issue is, I could hire somebody, but they can't find a place to live.

That's true. Or at some place that's affordable that's within, call it 15, 20 minutes of the place that they work. I like to say, they're driving 40 minutes. I want to live and work in the community, in the same community. And I don't want to be, like you see so many of these really high density areas in other states where people have to live in another community and commute to, you know, hours to have one to work in. And we don't want that here. We don't want that for our population.

That doesn't build a rich and robust community. Those communities are where everybody can live and work in the community, the same community. So I just thought we touched on that. I thought the panel did a wonderful job bringing up a lot of different perspectives and issues and just looking at it from different lenses, from a resource to wildlife to just conservation and water and just development. And all of them said the more control you put on it, all of those. those outcomes come out better if there's more control, which seems to support a yes on 492. Yeah. And I think you talked about it the last time we were here is the standards that, I mean,

you get the zoning input in place, but then with it comes a set of standards. You know, how wide do you want the sidewalks? Do you want sidewalks? Is that, or do you want walking trails? All these kind of influences now come into the type of control and how the community is going to look, feel on a day-to-day basis. All of that comes through. the public process, all that comes through staff and planning and hours and hours of multiple people sitting around table working through this is going to be in the best interest of this community. Let's design it this way. Perfect. Yeah. So Ron, another proposition, Prescott Valley voters are going to be busy this fall in November. There's another props in Prop 404 is going to be

on the ballot. You want to tell everybody what 404 is all about? Prop 404 is basically the approval of zoning for a 40-acre hard rock harvest site for sand and gravel, asphalt, and concrete. So, and where is that 40 acres? If I don't have a map, how can I, like, where is that? It's due south of the Old Black Canyon Highway. It's south of the corner of the country club about a mile, and it's south from the southeast corner of Stone Ridge, about a mile. The closest community would be the Dewey Blue Hills area. Okay. So it's, it's first. away from Prescott Valley residents. Yes.

It's about a mile plus from Country Club, which isn't Prescott Valley, but they're a big voice at the table and they've been at the table. So I want to acknowledge them. And then Stone Ridge, it's a little, almost a mile and a half or so. It's over a mile from Stone Ridge as well. So how close is the current sand and gravel operation that's been in operation for over 40 years? Current operation is right in the bottom of Links Creek.

It's right, you know, if you know where M&I windows is. It's right below Ammoni windows. It's right as you drive into Stone Ridge Drive. It's right next to Fain Park. It's not Fain Park, but it's right next to Fain Park. So it's being on the east side of Fain Park as you cross the Stonard. It's right below the north development of Stone Ridge by about 800 feet. Okay, so the current operation, and just for clarification,

for those people who maybe have moved in here in the last few years, Stone Ridge grew up to the operation. The operation was there before Stone Ridge came in. That's correct. And so that's a community that the operation was going strong. And the community grew, grew, grew, grew, and got within 800 feet of that. And everybody seems to be fine living next to it. Yep.

So what is on the ballot in November regarding this 40 acres that's a couple miles south of Black Canyon Highway? The citizens and voters of Prescott get a choice. If they approve Prop 404, that will take the current hard rock source that is located west of Fane Park, and it would relocate it to a mile away from these communities at a place we call government tank. So the current operation, its next phase of expansion that was planned 40, 50 years ago, would be on both sides of Stone Ridge Road, west of Fain Park, but it would be on the east and west side of Stone Ridge Road. That's where it can by right expand today. That's right. And so through this whole process, the town council voted in favor of removing it from that site and finding a new site, which is the site a couple miles south, the 40 acres. and then a group of citizens took that out and said, we'd like the community to decide if that's a good decision or not.

And so it's not about whether, I want people to be clear, it's not about whether sand and gravel goes away. It's about where they get the material for sand and gravel, whether it's off of Stone Ridge Road or 40 acres south. Yep. 40 acres to the south of everybody. Is that said right? Yep.

The operations exist. They're not going to go away. And it's just a source of the hard rock. So when you're thinking of your ballot in November, on 404, a yes vote would put it further away from Prescott Valley residents, and it would allow the park to expand across Stone Ridge Road, which would forever preserve that area to always be a park and never to be a sandy gravel operation. Well, that's a good point you brought up, Brad, because part of the reason council approved

the 40-acre site, which is government tank, was in exchange for they wanted the balance of the property that is the current hard rock site. to not be touched and be added to Fain Park, added to Fain Park. So if you vote yes for 404, you're expanding and saving Fain Park, getting it bigger, and you're moving the Sand and Gravel Harvest Site to an area that is much more remote and removed from the majority of the people. More out of sight. Great. Thanks.

Yep. So, Ron, I just want to remind everybody one more time that, like you and I last time, it invited people to come on. We called a couple people out, but to come join us and say, hey, bring your facts. But generally, everybody, if you have a topic you want to talk about, you know, get in contact with us. We'd love to have you on the show. We'd love to just talk about it.

We just want to talk about the facts and what's happening. We'll be friendly. It'll be totally professional. We'll have a nice conversation. We don't have to agree, but the whole point of doing this is to have a good, healthy conversation. Absolutely. So if you have a topic, you want to come on, get in touch with us, and we're happy to have you on our show. And if you're subject matter expert, we also want to hear from you as well.