City/Government Reporting
Headline: Chief Durre: New stations essential to improve response times, firefighter health and safety
Published July 13, 2026, in The Daily Courier
Word Count: 1,205
Prescott is moving forward with plans to build two new fire stations and fully rebuild a third as the city works to close emergency response gaps driven by years of growth, rising call volumes, and aging public safety infrastructure.
At 3 p.m. Tuesday, July 14, the City Council will vote to approve or deny three city contracts for Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) pre-construction services with CORE Construction, Inc. for the new stations.
Ahead of the council voting meeting, Prescott Fire Department (PFD) Fire Chief Holger Durre outlined project progress and why capital investment is a necessary component of a larger strategy.
“We are using something called Construction Management at Risk, which is one way you can build,” Durre said. “The reason why it was attractive to us is because of this significant increase in capital costs. CMR is basically, I bring a contractor on, I give them a 30% design of what I’m trying to do and they say, ‘OK, I can build that for this or less.’”
If the cost is more, Durre said, the construction company “eats the cost” as long as there are not significant changes after the contract.
“That is something that’s extraordinarily attractive for a project like this, because a fire station is not a simple building,” he said.
The new fire stations are a component of the city’s public safety improvements paid for by Proposition 478, or the Public Safety Tax Initiative, approved by voters in November 2024. Funding for the contracts is $352,743, and is budgeted and available through Prop 478, according to a memo to council.
Durre said the Fire Department’s last capital investment was in 1995 for Station 75 on Lee Boulevard. “Since that time, at the time that tax was proposed, there have been no capital investments into public safety since that station opened,” he said.
Since 1995, Durre said, PFD’s call volume has increased about 200% and Prescott’s population has increased by 60%. The new stations are strategically placed to address an increase in call volume as well as gaps in service.
Station 76 is a new station to be built at Prescott Lakes Parkway and Sundog Ranch Road to address service gaps in that area. Durre said it is “basically in the bullseye” of that coverage area. Predictive modeling so far is indicating a significant impact, he added.
Station 72 off 6th Street is getting fully rebuilt. Durre said Station 72 will be rebuilt as a two-story station to accommodate for drive-through bay capability.
“The location is good, but the station was built in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s as a fleet shop for what was, at that time, Central Yavapai Fire Protection District,” Durre said. “So, there’s asbestos, you have to move the gas line to get to the electrical panel.”
Station 73, located at Prescott Regional Airport, will be relocated and built near Constellation Trailhead off the west side of Highway 89. The relocation will address service gaps near highways 89 and 89A.
“When it was built, it was that community around Antelope Hills Golf Course; well, since then, there’s been a lot more growth including Granite Dells,” Durre said.
Durre said a fire department must balance two responsibilities: Protect static assets, such as homes, and protect the mobile population.
“As an example, the population of Prescott is 50,000,” he said. “The daily, transient, shopping, and working count is 100,000. So, our dynamic daytime population surges by basically 100%.”
With the growth of Prescott, Durre said PFD has begun to see a degradation in response times. The national standard for response times in urban built-up areas is eight minutes, he said.
“We’re a little bit beyond that right now in terms of our actual goal, but what we were starting to see was almost a stair step of increase in response time annually,” he said. “Right now, we are right around the 13-minute total response time mark at the 90th percentile, so we’re far above that average.”
Cardiac arrest survival significantly decreases at that point, he said.
New, strategically placed stations are part of PFD’s larger strategy to improve its response times. Durre said it is important to note that PFD is not solely trying to solve the response time problem with more capital.
“A lot of fire departments will try to solve their problem with more fire stations, more firefighters,” Durre said. “We knew we needed that, but we also knew, number one, that’s not fiscally responsible and number two, the gap was so big there’s no way we could catch up in a reasonable amount of time.”
In the past year, PFD has upgraded its station alerting system to the Phoenix G2 alerting system, allowing simultaneous alerting across all stations. Durre said the upgrade was one project anticipated to reduce response time significantly — potentially between 30 to 45 seconds.
Durre said they also began using LiveMUM, a live move-up module that is an algorithm-based prepositioning system. The system utilizes call data from the past three years to decide the best areas for units to move.
In addition to addressing response times, the new stations will also improve firefighter health and safety.
“All fire stations in the City of Prescott have or had a significant structural deficit in terms of health and safety, accommodating mixed genders, making sure that we were providing adequate space for the programs that we had,” Durre said.
After 9/11, Durre said all fire departments became all-hazard departments, even though the buildings themselves were not designed for it.
Older stations do not account for contamination. Newer stations, he said, are built like hazmat scenes. New stations separate the apparatus bay, reducing contamination from diesel exhaust and medical emergencies.
Durre said in the past, fire protective gear would hang in gear lockers in the apparatus bay, exposing it to diesel exhaust. Now, gear will be stored in a separate space next to the bay with positive pressure ventilation to ensure there is no cross-contamination.
New stations will be outfitted with gender neutral bathrooms and fitness rooms, so firefighters do not have to leave the station to work out.
In the future, PFD will evaluate Station 71, Station 74, and Station 75, all of which are not getting major remodels, Durre said. Also in the future, PFD will also explore building another new station, Station 77.
“How do you fix a 35-year problem in three or five years? We’re literally exploring that as we speak,” Durre said. “It’s organizational change, it’s human dynamics, it’s capital investment.”
Durre said staff met on Thursday, July 9, to review designs, and all three stations now have initial conceptual plans.
According to a memo to council, the city expects to complete design work for Station 76 in March 2027, Station 73 in April 2027, and Station 72 in May 2027. Design progress meetings have been underway since early January 2026.
PFD’s new fire training tower is complete, and Durre said the department expects full access around mid-July. Construction on the new stations is expected to begin in summer 2027 and finish by the end of 2028.
Headline: From drop box to tabulator: A look inside Yavapai County’s election process
Published July 2, 2026, in The Daily Courier
Word Count: 1,637
From ballot drop boxes and mail trays to signature review, tabulation and audits, Yavapai County recorder and election officials say each stage of the ballot process follows a series of checks and safeguards.
County Recorder Michelle Burchill outlined how the county tracks ballots, verifies signatures, and separates responsibilities between the Recorder’s Office and Elections Department, describing a process built around bipartisan teams, physical security, and repeated checks for accuracy.
Yavapai County is the fourth largest voting jurisdiction in Arizona with the highest voter turnout per capita of registered voters than anywhere else in the state for the past 20 years, Burchill said.
That volume of ballots warrants multiple safeguards throughout the voting process.
“Ballot, voter, and tabulator all have to match,” Burchill said. “So, we are auditing three times to make sure there’s not any discrepancies.”
Burchill said the process is split between the Recorder’s Office and the Elections Department.
“The recorder side is responsible for voter registration, mail-in ballots, drop boxes, and signature verification,” Burchill said.
The elections side is responsible for counting and making and creating the ballots, she said. For the upcoming primary election, Burchill said Yavapai County has over 700 different ballot styles.
Early voting for the July primary began Wednesday, June 24, in Yavapai County and will end Friday, July 17. Burchill said that 80% of voters vote early.
“We’re here at about 7 a.m. and probably here till about 8 p.m. right now,” Burchill said. “So we’re [working] long hours, but this is what we do, and this is what we signed up for.”
Burchill urged Yavapai County voters who received an early ballot to vote early, as opposed to waiting to submit an early ballot until Election Day, July 21, or the day before.
Whether ballots arrive by mail, drop box, or via in-person voting, each one moves through a multi-step process that starts with secure collection and continues through processing and tabulation.
Ballot transportation
All ballot drop boxes are secured with two different locks, internal fire suppression, proper lighting, and a camera.
Yavapai County has 19 drop boxes, the most in the state. When it is time for ballots to be transported, bipartisan teams are given a specific route and are tracked through the whole process. Geofences will also alert staff when the boxes are taken out of a specific area.
Processing
After a ballot comes into the facility, it goes into the processing room. Every single ballot goes through the processing room, Burchill said.
“We have an incoming sorter that actually takes an image of the front and back of every ballot, whether it’s by mail, drop box, or in person,” she said.
The first pass through the machine marks the ballots as received and scans the envelope for signature verification, performed by people. Ballots may be questioned if the signature does not match.
Burchill said on any given day they have six or seven signature verifiers.
“A human set of eyes looks at every single signature,” she said. “In 2024, we had 133,000 early ballots. A human eye looked at every single one.”
Ballots with approved signatures run through the machine a second time and are sorted into batches.
Ballots that are not approved enter the ballot curing process. Ballot curing notifies the voter that there was an issue with their ballot and gives them an opportunity to correct the issue.
When it is time for tabulation, ballots leave the possession of the Recorder’s Office to be tabulated by elections staff.
Tabulation
Before the tabulation process, tabulation machines are checked by the Secretary of State. Burchill said the Office of the Secretary of State brings pre-printed, pre-voted ballots for the election. Burchill said the ballots are used for a test, which only the Secretary of State knows the results.
“We run them through the tabulation system. From there, the Secretary of State’s Office is going to say, ‘Yes, you’re 100% right,’ or ‘Houston, we have a problem,” Burchill said. “It’s always come out correct.”
After the equipment is tested and ready to go and live ballots enter the room, no one person is allowed to enter the room alone.
“Once live ballots get transferred from my department to theirs, it always has to be two people of opposite party at any given time in this room,” she said.
Burchill said the tabulators look like standard laptops but are more than they appear.
“There’s no Word, there’s no email, there’s no anything,” she said. “It’s specifically what’s called an Election Management System that is downloaded.”
Burchill said due to the public’s concerns of hacking, they opted a few years ago to pull the wires out of the walls and put them on display. Each tabulator has a colored wire that runs across the walls and ceiling to a secure server locked in a box. The wires are locked to a port in the tabulators and are unable to be removed.
“Even if there were ever a circumstance where a bad actor could get in the room and try to tamper with anything, it is gonna be impossible for them to pull [the wires] out and it’s gonna be impossible for them to put something in,” she said.
As for the locked server, Burchill said it is locked in such a way that it is only accessible by Yavapai County staff, and the key is kept in a “separate place.”
Ballots are run through a tabulator in batches of 100. As the ballots are tabulated, staff are checking to make sure everything is working and they are counted correctly, Burchill said.
If a voter makes a mistake on a ballot, such as overvoting, the ballot appears on a large screen called the adjudication screen. Sometimes voter intent is clear, such as crossing out a vote or a write-in vote.
“We’ll look for the voter intent, if the voter is trying to communicate with us,” Burchill said.
Two people from opposites parties participate in the adjudication process together.
If there is not an obvious selection, or if there is an overvote, then that race does not count but the rest of the ballot is still valid, Burchill said.
“We see tens of thousands of these, you would be shocked,” she said.
Every ballot is different, even from other counties and especially from other states, she said.
Chain of custody
Throughout the entire process, chains of custody are meticulously logged.
Burchill said the chain-of-custody rules allow them to know who touched ballots, who ran them through the machine, who signature verified them, who double checked the signature, who transported to the tabulation room, who separated the ballot from the envelope, and who tabulated it.
“We have a door that is a key entry door. Everything that we do has badges,” Burchill said. “The doors actually keep track of who was in any room at any given time.”
Every single person involved in the process is thoroughly background checked, going back several years, she said.
“We want to make sure it’s truly a bipartisan team that is touching these ballots at any given time,” Burchill said. “They also take an Oath of Office at the time that we start them in the process.”
The public is encouraged to take part in accountability as well.
“We want our public to be able to audit us. We are required within 48 hours to put what’s called a system log that actually shows all the data from the election management system,” Burchill said. “It will show the precise time when that button clicks to aggregate those results actually happens.”
The public is welcome to visit the Yavapai County Administrative Service Building at 1015 Fair Street, Prescott, to see the process in person.
“A lot of people don’t realize that you can actually come here and watch the process. You can come here and ask questions,” Burchill said. “You can watch the process online, when [ballots] are actually being counted.”
Election Day
On Election Day, staff wake up at 5 a.m. and may not leave until 5 a.m. the following morning, or even later.
Staff cannot see the results any earlier than anyone else during the tabulation process.
“There’s actually a timer in our election management system and the database programmer for the Elections Department cannot click to aggregate those results until after 7 p.m. on election night. That’s when the polls close,” Burchill said.
Around 8:05 or 8:10 p.m., staff pull the information from the election management system.
“There’s no internet connected to it,” Burchill said. “They have to actually download it to a one-time, non-rewritable disk, and they have to walk it out here to go to a secure gateway computer that is not used for anything except for election night and the day-after results.”
Burchill said every time they get a batch of new ballots throughout the night, staff will need to create a new disk and physically update the information for social media, Yavapai County’s election website, and the Secretary of State’s website.
Tabulation is livestreamed from a camera in the tabulation room on yavapaivotes.gov.
Post-election
After each election, the chairs of the Republican and Democratic parties assign members of the public within their respective parties to come in on the Saturday after election day.
Burchill said they do hand counts on one percent of all early ballots, typically a couple thousand, and two full vote centers picked at random to count certain races as well.
Additional information
For more information on drop box locations, voting centers, early voting, important election dates, to watch the tabulation livestream, and to view election results, visit yavapaivotes.gov.
Headline: Preserving the pieces: How Prescott turned grief into a lasting memorial for the Granite Mountain Hotshots
Published June 30, 2026, in The Daily Courier
Word Count: 1,103
On June 30, 2013, the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew (GMIHC) walked into the Yarnell Hill Fire. Nineteen firefighters never returned.
In the days after the tragedy, the loss was felt across the city of Prescott and beyond. Along the fence outside Prescott Fire Department (PFD) Station 7, a memorial formed.
The fence became a place where people left their grief and their gratitude through handwritten notes, American flags, flowers, stuffed animals, T-shirts, and photos from strangers, family, friends, and community members who wanted to honor the firefighters who had died protecting their communities.
As summer turned into fall in 2013, another question emerged: What would happen to all of it?
For Jan Monroe and Dottie Morris, the memorial was more than a collection of objects. It was an expression of a community trying to process an unimaginable loss.
From that loss, the Tribute Fence Preservation Project (TFPP) was born.
“There’s such a thing as mourning and just sitting there feeling that sense of mourning at the loss,” Morris said. “And there’s also a feeling, ‘What could I do to help? What could I do to ease the pain?’”
The idea for the project began at a community picnic after a conversation with a PFD firefighter in late August 2013.
“I was speaking to him and I said, ‘What is going to happen,’” Morris said.
Following a wet monsoon, many of the items were molding along the fence.
The PFD firefighter said they were hopeful of saving the T-shirts but everything else was at risk of being thrown away.
“I called Jan over, and I said, ‘Jan, what do you think about if we tried to save this,’” Morris said.
Monroe said they wrote a letter saying they wanted to see everything preserved and that they could make it happen.
Volunteers tackled each section of the fence. Morris said only family members of the fallen hotshots and firefighters were allowed to take items off.
The memorial accumulated items for 72 days. On September 10, 2013, the memorial was taken down within about an hour and a half. Before items were removed, every single section of the fence was photographed.
When it came time to store, preserve, and catalog items, the operation took place in a “near condemned building” donated to the fire department.
“Honestly, we thought we’d be working out of our garage with Tupperware bins,” Monroe said. “We had no idea it was going to take off like this.”
Over 200 people volunteered their time throughout the duration of the project.
“It just grew because so many people wanted to be a part of it,” Monroe said. “They had somewhere to go, somewhere to feel good about what they were doing.”
Monroe said volunteers often rotated duties depending on what tasks were needed each day.
“Everyone adapted and learned from each other, watched the video of how to do something and you know, there was no one who was better than anyone else,” Monroe said. “We were all in the same situation, learning and helping.”
Every single card, flag, teddy bear, and toy firetruck left along the fence was photographed and given a catalog number.
“We had six different cameras going and they had to make sure they knew the image number to catalog and match it along with the item number and keep those records available,” Morris said.
After the items were photographed, plush and cloth items were placed in muslin bags.
“We found out that we couldn’t put the T-shirts in just anything because they had to be in unbleached muslin fabric,” Morris said. “Otherwise, the writing would be destroyed and the dyes within the shirts.”
Morris said they quickly depleted JoAnn Fabrics every time they had a new shipment come in. Volunteers even sourced muslin fabric in Phoenix and other cities.
Volunteers wearing gloves and masks then placed them into one of three freezers. None of the T-shirts or cards were washed, only dried, and preserved in the condition they were found in. “Firemen really like a dirty shirt,” Morris said. “It’s a status symbol.”
Every single fire department that had a T-shirt on the fence and got a thank you note, a decal, and a photo of their T-shirt on the fence, Monroe said.
It was a challenge because the fire department did not keep the return addresses for the T-shirts sent in, meaning volunteers had to research where departments were located across the world.
The several-month-long process was also an opportunity for the community to get involved, Monroe said. In October 2013, there was a Big Brothers Big Sisters night. Big Brothers Big Sisters is a nonprofit organization that matches adult volunteers with children facing adverse circumstances.
Monroe said Big Brothers Big Sisters came in and recorded information for 19 American flags.
“We had young people learning how to be a part of the community and how to volunteer and how to do something worthwhile,” Monroe said. “Kids don’t get that kind of opportunity, and they were thanked and appreciated.”
The project also fostered friendships and cosmic moments for volunteers. One volunteer Morris recalled had lost her brother and cousin in the tragedy. After moving away, she revisited Prescott and helped with the preservation project.
While sorting through items, Morris said they came across a rolled-up poster with her last name on it.
“We opened it up and unrolled it, and it was a picture of her brother and her parents together at her brother’s wedding,” Morris said. “She was there for that unveiling, and we didn’t know what was in it. ... She said, ‘I was supposed to be here today.’”
The cataloging and preserving took about 15 months to complete.
In the end, there were over 10,000 photos, which were uploaded to the Arizona Memory Project as a digital collection. Volunteers began uploading the digital museum to the Arizona Memory Project in April 2014 and finished in October 2014.
The effort was a collaboration between the TFPP, Prescott Public Library, and the Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records.
The TFPP became a way for Prescott to hold onto the memories of the 19 firefighters while transforming grief into action.
What began as a fence covered with messages of sorrow became a permanent record of love, sacrifice and community. The project serves as a reminder that after tragedy, people often search for something they can do and find community in the process.
In Prescott, they found it by preserving the pieces left behind.
To view the TFPP virtual museum online, visit azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/281.
Headline: Barlow-Massicks House restoration OK'd by PV council; remediation follows May 2 fire
Published June 20, 2026 in The Daily Courier
Word Count: 831
Prescott Valley Town Council members voted to move forward with efforts to restore the fire-damaged Barlow-Massicks House, though the project still requires further assessment, design work and funding decisions.
The Town Council discussed remediation efforts and the future of the home in a special meeting Thursday, June 18. The house fire occurred on May 2, 2026.
Prescott Valley Parks and Recreation Director Bobby Kieren said the pioneering home is a “gem and a jewel” within the community.
“This is a testament to what a pioneering community we are here in Prescott Valley,” Kieren said. “Its architecture and just what it really represents within this area is something we could speak volumes on.”
Kieren said the site has been fenced off and secured and building officials have conducted inspections to ensure the home is structurally sound to conduct remediation efforts.
“We’ve done stakeholder meetings with the historical society, the state historic preservation office, and others working with the previous tenant’s family to return those personal items that may have survived the fire.”
After the damage, remediation, investigation, assessment phase, the town will gather citizen, stakeholder and historical society input. Following that, the project will move into the engineering, design, budget, funding strategies, final project, and budget approval through council, Kieren said.
The final step will be project implementation and reconstruction.
Kay Klock, president of Prescott Valley Historical Society, said she was thankful to hear the town was considering reconstruction.
Klock said the town has already lost historic sites, including the the former mining community of Massicks, which once stood near the Barlow-Massicks House. The town also lost the Prescott Valley Motel, where prospective buyers stayed while looking at building lots in the 1960s, she said. Neither site exists today.
Following the passing of the current tenant, the historical society was going to turn the home into a museum. Klock said the historical society had been waiting for decades.
“Over the years, they have found 57,000 artifacts and bones that have been sent to the Sharlot Hall Museum or the Museum of Indigenous People because we have no place to put anything here,” she said.
Right now, Klock said the Prescott Valley Historical Society does not have a permanent public space for exhibits or events. Klock said the society has been storing items in a 10-by-10 storage unit.
“You can’t have any events in a storage unit,” Klock said. “If the castle is restored, this would give us an opportunity in the future to hold historical events in that location.”
Council Member Ken Freund had additional ideas to reimagine the area. He said the reconstruction of the home could be the beginning of a great opportunity.
Freund suggested keeping the building’s exterior original in appearance while designing the inside of the home for the museum and historical society.
He also suggested creating an adjacent group of early frontier-style buildings, themed to the historical context of Prescott Valley as a mining, ranching and agricultural area.
“The possibilities are only limited by our imagination,” Freund said.
Vice Mayor Matt Zurcher said he agreed with Freund and that the Barlow-Massicks House is a treasure that needs to be rebuilt.
“I think there’s definitely other possibilities that can be incorporated to really celebrate our heritage and history here in Prescott Valley,” Zurcher said.
To help pay for the rebuild, the town must choose how to handle insurance coverage.
“So currently, the coverage we have is only $83,000 for this property,” said Amy Ness, town risk/safety coordinator. “When it was originally put on our policy it wasn’t correctly valued or identified.”
Ness said the town only became aware of this issue in March during an overall town-wide appraisal. Not too long after, the fire happened.
“Since we’re part of an insurance pool, they will allow us to buy more coverage, to kind of buy back coverage,” she said. “That would be going back to 2017, so we would have to pay these premiums back to 2017.”
The town has two additional options for coverage, Ness explained, which include standard coverage or full historic coverage.
For standard coverage, the town would pay about $50,103 in back premiums. After that, the town will receive $1,062,100 to cover the rebuild. Ness said the final assessment is not yet complete, but that is what is expected. Going forward, the town would need to pay an annual premium of $5,567.
For full historic coverage, the town would need to pay $272,664 in premiums for insurance to payout $2,634,100 to rebuild. From then on, the annual premium would be $30,296.
Between the two options, Town Manager Gilbert Davidson said staff recommended standard coverage.
The council unanimously approved (5-0) the motion to authorize staff to take necessary actions to restore the Barlow-Massicks house, with Mayor Kell Palguta and Janell Kiehl absent.
The vote allows staff to continue restoration planning, including insurance decisions, assessments, and future design discussions.
Headline: PPD covers arrests, citations and innovations in annual department overview
Published April 14, 2026, in The Daily Courier
Word Count: 1,002
Prescott Police Chief Amy Bonney’s pride in her department was on display Tuesday during her annual report to the city council during its study session.
The chief, in that report and department overview, reported 48,731 calls for service, 82 officers employed, 8,054 citations issued and 2,444 arrests.
The presentation covered department accomplishments, budget, calls for service and what is to come.
More than 30 people were in attendance, many of whom were police officers and firefighters.
“They are out there every single day, doing some really challenging work in some challenging conditions and doing it very, very well,” Bonney said of her officers. “I am extremely proud of them.”
Bonney covered the department’s various units and the types of calls they responded to last year. Of the calls to service, 26,011 were officer and self-initiated calls.
“I think it’s important to know that our police officers don’t just wait for things to happen, they are out there making contacts,” Bonney said.
Those contacts include contacts at businesses, schools, traffic stops and talking to people who “look like they need police attention,” Bonney said.
Patrol responded to 44,896 calls for service and arrested 2,054 people. Bonney said patrol responds to the bulk of calls of service within the department.
PPD reported that its average response time to priority calls was five minutes and 54 seconds, 30 seconds down from last year, Bonney said.
The traffic safety section investigated over 1,000 collisions, issued 3,599 parking citations, issued 744 parking warnings, 4,455 citations, 7,158 warnings, 8,990 traffic stops and 268 DUI arrests. In the past year, PPD added a commercial vehicle inspector to its team.
“We heard from our community about concerns with large, heavy vehicle that are tearing up our roadways, that are driving unsafe with uncovered loads, those kinds of thing,” Bonney said. “He can enforce those commercial vehicle violations that are not only safety hazards, but also do damage to our roadways and cause other infrastructure damage along the way.”
She also said the commercial vehicle inspector can address use of a compression release engine brake, also known as a “Jake brake.”
The investigation section conducted 48 search warrants and 46 arrests. The detectives in the investigation section have detectives that work exclusively on fraud and forgery, arson, vehicle theft, aggravated assaults, child abuse, robbery, homicides and sex crimes.
“One of the things that we’ve been discussing recently, is this past year, we did have an uptick in sexual assault reports,” Bonney said.
She said the department is going to be researching the issue to see if there is anything that can be done to address the issue.
Overall, the most prevalent crime detectives investigated was fraud and forgery. One hundred and eleven cases were reported to PPD last year, which marked yet another increase.
Animal control responded to a total of 3,835 calls, majority of which were for barking dogs. The unit responded to 165 calls for dogs barking, 114 calls for animal bites and 79 calls for animal cruelty. Bonney said there are two people in the animal control bureau, which she said they will look to expand in the future, but not soon.
Bonney highlighted the department’s K-9 unit, which includes K-9 Officer Kyle Alltop with K-9 Cooper and K-9 Officer Luke Million with K-9 Bob and K-9 Benny, who retired in August 2025.
In 2025, Alltop and Cooper were deployed 39 times and Million, Bob and Benny were respectively deployed 41 times.
K-9 Cooper is trained in narcotics detection, K-9 Bob is trained in narcotics and patrol apprehension, and K-9 Benny retired from narcotics detection.
“We’re seeing an increased need and increased demand for the deployment of patrol dogs,” Bonney said. “We’re looking to grow and improve that program in the coming years so that we have broader coverage for drug detection and enforcement throughout our community.”
Besides K-9s, PPD also utilizes bike patrols, education events, presentations, and school resource officers (SROs) to extend into the community as well.
All of the incidents and evidence collected last year are handled by the records, property and evidence section. Records received 3,668 public records requests last year and 71 requests for body camera footage. Property and evidence held 20,421 items, 1,232 of which were destroyed. The department also destroyed 622.5 pounds of drugs. The property and evidence department is due to get a new facility in the coming years.
The department’s operating budget was $33,309,201, which Bonney said is up almost $12 million from last year. The reason why is due to the city’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), which includes a new multi-functional police facility, including a new property and evidence facility and patrol substation.
Bonney said as the department moves forward with the new building, it is working with the finance department to accrue those funds for the “best chance of success” when the funding is to be used and shovels go into the ground. Bonney said the planning process for the new building is 15% complete. According to the city’s website, the design is expected to be completed in January 2027.
The Prescott Regional Communications Center (PRCC) also falls under PPD. Bonney said it is an important part of the police department.
PRCC dispatches for PPD, Prescott Valley Police Department, Yavapai-Prescott Tribal Police, Yavapai College Police, Prescott Fire Department, Central Arizona Fire and Medical Authority, Groom Creek Fire District, Walker Fire Protection Association, Skull Valley Fire District, the Yavapai County Fire Consortium and Copperstate Ambulance.
PRCC handled 195,311 calls in and outbound. Of those calls, 36,849 were for police, 28,610 for fire and 18,840 for EMS.
To learn more about the Prescott Police Department, visit prescottpolice.org.
Check back in for Thursday’s edition of the Courier for a story on the Prescott Fire Department’s 2025 department overview and updates to its strategic plan.
Headline: City plans to revise Rodeo Grounds lease to address gift clause concerns
Published Feb. 1, 2026 in The Daily Courier
Word Count: 1,153
The City of Prescott is preparing to revise its lease with Prescott Frontier Days after residents warned the agreement may violate the Arizona Constitution’s Gift Clause, raising fresh legal concerns over how the city plans to spend $15.3 million in state funds on improvements to the Rodeo Grounds.
The current lease agreement, City Contract No. 2017-020, is between the City of Prescott and Prescott Frontier Days, signed July 2016.
While the city owns the property, Prescott Frontier days operates the “World’s Oldest Rodeo” and other events on the grounds.
In 2023, a lawsuit was filed by The Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest on behalf of Prescott residents Howard Mechanic and Ralph Hess against the State of Arizona and State Treasurer Kimberly Yee.
The lawsuit alleged that the state’s allocation of $15.3 million to Prescott Frontier Days violated the Arizona Constitution’s Gift Clause.
In May 2025, the court ruled that the appropriation did indeed violate the gift clause because no public purpose was clear.
In an attempt to resolve the issue, state Sen. Mark Finchem introduced a bill to allocate the $15.3 million to the City of Prescott, which then began to allocate the money to Prescott Frontier Days to conduct renovations to the grounds.
The petitioners of the original lawsuit, Mechanic and Hess, spoke before council alleging the city’s current lease is not in compliance with the gift clause.
Mechanic and Hess spoke following a presentation and discussion regarding the Prescott Rodeo/Fairgrounds projects and the state’s $15.3 million distribution. The item was discussed during a study session Oct. 14, 2025, and no formal action was taken at that time.
“The city’s lease agreement with Prescott Frontier Days, in which Prescott Frontier Days effectively pays no rent, violates the state constitution’s gift clause prohibition,” Hess said. “And your staff’s presentation, proposes you compound this violation with additional gifts to Prescott Frontier Days.”
Hess listed several proposed improvements as being gifts, including a new announcer stand and suite seating structure, a new HVAC system for the Freeman and Pardee buildings, installation of a new sound system, replacement of seating components and railings in the grandstand, and new restroom buildings.
Hess listed two sections of the lease agreement and said staff proposals are gifts in terms of the city’s lease agreement.
The first was paragraph 8A, which reads:
“The parties acknowledge that PFD has inspected the premises prior to execution of this agreement, accepts the premises in their present ‘as is’ condition, and understands that the city has no present or future duty or responsibility for repair or maintenance of the premises, except as otherwise expressly provided in this agreement or written amendments hereto.”
He also listed paragraph 10 about alterations and improvements, which reads in part:
“It is understood and agreed that the city has no present or future duty or responsibility to make alterations or improvements to the premises. PFD shall at its sole expense make all alterations and improvements as it may deem necessary or desirable except as otherwise expressly provided in the agreement or written amendments hereto.”
“At a minimum, the city must renegotiate a new lease with Prescott Frontier Days in accordance with Resolution No. 2023-1861, processed before expending any public funds to make any alterations or improvements to the rodeo fairgrounds for the sole benefit of Prescott Frontier Days,” Hess said.
Resolution No. 2023-1861 is regarding the city’s lease with PFD.
Hess and Mechanic told council members the city needs a new lease before spending money on the project. Mechanic said it cannot wait until afterward to see if someone the expenditures are constitutional.
Mechanic’s comments to council followed Hess’, in which he said there is an oncoming train headed into a “legal trainwreck.”
“Twenty years remain on PFD’s lease. The issue isn’t whether the city will get some residual value from these expenditures after those 20 years,” Mechanic said. “That’s not the issue, the issue is whether PFD is getting a gift during those 20 years.”
Mechanic said in the past two years he had initiated two successful lawsuits that enforced the state’s gift clause, one of which regarded PFD’s appropriation and resulted in a summary judgment.
“I don’t want to be one of the few people in the state who needs to continue to enforce the gift clause,” Hess said. “But if I need to be, I will be.”
Prescott City Attorney Joseph Young said the first meeting regarding changes to the lease will be at a council meeting in February. He said the city is not concerned with a potential lawsuit, but is more concerned with following the law. He said they want to create an arrangement the city can support.
“The rodeo and the city are working together to make sure the lease is in compliance with the law,” Young said.
Young said the biggest issue was regarding indirect benefits versus direct benefits. He said the city must show a direct benefit when utilizing city funds or assets. Indirect benefits and economic benefits are relevant but not sufficient with the gift clause, Young said.
“Basically, they announced for gift clauses that the city can’t give money or anything of value without some sort of return that is for a public purpose,” Young said. “The public purpose cannot be clearly disproportionate to the public asset or money being spent.”
Young said there is a lot more involved analysis when it comes to measuring the return for the Rodeo Grounds. If the city were to give a vendor $1,000 to set up a tent at an event, it is an easy analysis, Young said as an example.
With the rodeo, there are a lot of “indirect benefits” such as increased tourism and events that are important to the community, Young said.
“The existence of the rodeo is good for the city, but we need some direct benefit, which would be cash in terms of a lease,” Young said. “But they also provide management of the site and upkeep and things that are also of real value and a direct benefit. But quantifying all of those things is kind of in the eyes of the beholder a lot of the time.”
When asked if the city plans to halt construction, Danielle Trotter, the city’s public engagement manager, gave the following response:
“At this time, planned updates to the Prescott Rodeo Grounds are continuing to move forward. The city is currently focused on public engagement and planning efforts related to the site.”
The city has invited the public to attend a community meeting to discuss the Rodeo/Fairgrounds Master Plan Project. The meeting is from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2, at The Center, 1280 E. Rosser St. This is anticipated to be the first of multiple community meetings.
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