Early 2026
A committee of RIO partners worked together over the course of 5 months (August – December 2025) to determine: 

• What purpose(s) does this plan need to serve? 

• How should it relate to/support pre-existing plans? 

• What are the most important plan ingredients and to what level of detail? 

• How should community engagement be structured and led? 

• How do we engage Indigenous communities and/or incorporate Indigenous knowledge into the planning process? 

• How do we ensure transparency? How do we ensure reciprocity? 

• How should this type of plan be adopted/implemented? 

The committee and consultant team are finalizing the results of this process, which will then be shared with the elected leadership of the RIO communities for direction. Once direction has been provided, the findings will be released, and next steps will be outlined. 

Representatives from the public agencies that signed the 2018 Statement of Intent to initiate Rio Reimagined are participating in the Scoping Committee as shown below. A representative from the Gila River Indian Community also attends the Scoping Committee meetings.  

In addition to these “RIO signatories,” the Scoping Committee includes three Community Leaders and one representative from the Maricopa Association of Governments and Greater Phoenix Leadership (on behalf of the new social impact organization for Rio Reimagined), and the 2023-2025 RIO Ambassador to Urban Waters.  

Over a 5-month period in late 2025, the Scoping Committee was facilitated by a consultant team (ABLE Studio, PAM, and Sixth World Solutions) and staffed by the ASU University City Exchange, which has been the facilitator/convener for the Rio Reimagined initiative since its inception in 2018. The Community Engagement Subcommittee, also facilitated by the consultant team, is composed of three Community Leaders and the Maricopa Association of Governments representative, as well as two representatives from the ASU University City Exchange: Maggie Soffel and Cecilia Riviere.   

All Scoping and Community Engagement Committee members are listed below.  

RIO signatory communities identified one staff person to represent their organization on the Scoping Committee that has a general understanding of urban planning and can speak to their organization’s existing plans and projects that relate to the Rio Reimagined study area.  

The Maricopa Association of Governments representative will serve as a link to regional planning on the Scoping Committee and the Greater Phoenix Leadership staff person will serve to connect the future non-profit for Rio Reimagined to the scoping process.  The consultant served from 2023-2025 as the Rio Reimagined Ambassador to the Urban Waters Federal Partnership served on the Scoping Committee until the end of October 2025 and provided input on long-term funding strategies for the vision plan.  

To fill three Community Leader positions on the Scoping Committee, input from the public on the important qualities, skillsets, and experience (i.e ‘criteria’) for the Community Leaders was gathered through a survey and an interactive discussion at the June 2025 Rio Reimagined partnership meeting. A total of 140 responses were received, and the feedback was used to develop a position description and selection criteria for these roles. Click here for more information about this community feedback.  Call for Community Leaders was released on June 26, 2025 and closed on July 14, 2025. A total of 16 responses were reviewed by the RIO Core Operations Team using community-informed selection criteria, and three Community Leaders were selected to serve.  

Representatives from the ASU University City Exchange also serve on the Community Engagement Subcommittee to integrate prior work on community engagement for RIO into the scoping process.