welcome again to the Mesa city council meeting for the evening of December 2nd 2024 I'll note for the record that all of our Council are present in Chambers we will begin our meeting with a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance so please stand for the moment of silence and remain standing for the pledge [Music] please join me in the pledge I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you the next item on our agenda is approval of the consent agenda Mr Kevin Christopher would you please come forward and read the consent agenda good evening mayor and council members these are the items on the consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk will be considered as a group by the city council and will be enacted with one motion there will be no separate discussion unless the council member or citizen request in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered as a separate item item two approval of minutes of previous meetings is written item 3A act on Lial license application for Bia Don Jose 6339 East Main Street item 3B act on Lial license application for everybody's all day 104 West Main Street item 3 C act on liquor license application for Vapes Sky 6920 East Baseline Road item 4A approving contract for Baseline sewer assessment and rehabilitation pre-construction services and construction manager at risk item 4B approving 3-year term contract with two-year renewal options for batteries and remote battery monitoring systems for intelligent transportation devices or the transportation department item 4 C approving use of a three-year term Cooperative contract with 2-year renewal options for maintenance repair and operation supplies Parts equipment materials and related services for Citywide use as requested by the business services department item 4D approving four-year term contract with six-year renewal options for water and wastewater sampling and Monitoring Solutions and subscriptions item 5A approving our solution to execute an intergovernmental agreement between the city of Mesa and Mesa public schools to provide solid waste and res recycling collection Services item 5B approving a resolution to enter into a grant Award with HUD to accept Grant funds for the downtown small business revitalization and rehabilitation program acceptance of this grant includes a city council general fund match City general fund match item 5 C approving resolution to enter into up to 3 six-month contract extensions with American Traffic Solutions for equipment and services related to the city's photo safety enforcement program item 5D approving resolution to extinguish a temporary drainage easement located at 34 24 South Ellsworth Road to allow for development of the property item 6A introduction of ordinance for proposed amendments to chapters 6 7 8 81 and 87 of Title 11 the Masa city code pertaining to Adaptive reuse item 6B introduction of ordinance or proposed amendments to Chapters 67 and 87 of Title 11 of the Masa city code pertaining to residential zoning application review time frames item 6C introduction of ordinance for zoning case 23859 for property generally located south of Southern Avenue and and west of alas School Road a reone to allow for the fiesta defined mixed use development item 6D introduction of ordinance for zoning case 24767 for property located at the southeast corner of South Dobson Road and West Southern Avenue rezone with the billboard overlays to allow for two Billboards item 6E introduction of ordinance for zoning case 24474 for property located south of Picos Road and West of krisman road rezone with a plan area development overlay and site plan review to allow for an industrial development item 7A approving resolution declaring Mesa code title 8 Health sanitation and environment chapter 1 backflow prevention and cross connection control to be a public record item 7B introduction of ordinance repealing mesa city code title 8 chapter 1 in its entirety and adopting a new replacement of Mesa city code title 8 chapter 1 titled backflow prevention and cross connection control item 8A approving ordinance amending title 6 chapter 10 of the mesa city code intitled public park regulations including proposed changes to Camping restrictions item 8 B approving ordinance amending title 6 chapter 1 of the mesa city code to add a new section 23 entitled urban camping related to camping on certain city property item 8 C approving ordinance for zoning case 23771 for property generally located west of Recker Road and North of Main Street this is a rezone of the plan area development overlay and site plan review to allow for multiple residence development item 8D approving ordinance for zoning case 23- 994 for property generally located north of Southern Avenue and east of Greenfield Road reson with plan area development overlay a council use permit and major site plan modification to allow for expansion of a mini storage facility item 8e approving ordinance for zoning case 24602 for property located west of Country Club Drive on the north side of Main Street rezone with plan area development overlay a council use permit and site plan review to allow for a multiple residence development and item 8f approving ordinance of zoning case 24- 649 the property located south of Elliot Road on the east side of Power Road rezone with a bonus intensity Zone overlay and major site plan modification to allow modification to a group commercial center mayor council members these are the items on the consent agenda thank you Mr Christopher M Mosley do we have a request to speak on any item that's on the consent agenda no request mayor thank you I see we have a motion made by council member Freeman seconded by council member sumers for approval of the consent agenda please vote thank you the consent agenda passes unanimously uh the first item off of our consent agenda are items 9A through 9g this involves the terms rates fees and charges for the electric natural gas water waste water and solid waste Utility Services before we begin uh obviously we have a lot of people that are here that are going to be speaking on this I just want to recognize that fact and we want to uh just let me acquaint you with with how we're going to proceed from this point on uh some of you may be new to participating at council meeting so allow me to share some Basics on decorum and procceed uh if you have filled out a blue card one of these um and indicating that you would like to speak then I will call your name you will come up to the podium you'll have three minutes to speak a timer will be running on the the video screen uh so you can keep track of your time please bear in mind that the three minutes is meant for you to provide information uh or comment to the Council on the agendized topic not on some other topic uh everyone should be respectful of course when people are speaking uh do not cheer or Boo or clap or create any other disruption uh during the the speakers comments or afterwards uh if you would like to express enthusiasm or support for them please feel free to use Jaz hands to indicate support uh after all of the blue cards have been called the public comment period is then over the council will then begin its own discussion we do not during that period we do not take questions from the audience and the a audience is not permitted to participate in the council discussion so it would be inappropriate to yell at the council or speak during the council's deliberation uh these rules uh have been followed for decades in these Chambers and uh even during uh contentious times uh they they work well so that we can be respectful and provide a good atmosphere for people to engage in free speech uh failure to follow these rules and uh any attempt to disrupt the meeting uh will uh not be uh tolerated so uh please uh give respect to everyone in in this chamber okay let's begin I declare the public hearing open um Miss Mosley you have given me I think 25 blue cards do you have any additional cards no mayor just 25 y ladies and gentlemen if you wish to speak and I don't have a blue card there still is time so please get that to the city clerk uh before we uh conclude the public hearing uh the first card that have is from Brian Eckley welcome Brian okay all right mayor Giles City Council Members my name is Brian Eckley my cross streets are power McDow uh I am here to ask you to vote no on the utility rate increase for the majority of Mesa residents this will be an added burden and put many any further into the whole financially inflation is not retreated to pre-pandemic levels and the proof is in the cost of food gas rent and other necessities this burden is still very real for the citizens of Mesa I find it interesting and perplexing that all I hear from the city council and the city manager is that you need more money because costs have gone up you say you have a shortfall yet my understanding is that in fiscal year 2023 you had a $12 million surplus in the general fund and $127 million surplus in the business utilities activities and you expect another Surplus in fiscal year 2024 the one thing that I have not heard from you is how you intend to cut costs it is all about the need for more money and more spending what about us as residents of Mesa who will have to cut our costs in our spending if the utilities go up that's a given how will we absorb that in our budgets we will have to reduce our spending because of the rate increases I want to close with this Boeing is cutting 177,000 jobs Across the Nation they're cutting several hundred jobs here in Mesa as you probably know and I have two friends who work for Boeing who are waiting to see if they're going to lose their jobs so if they lose their jobs then this rate increase is going to be a problem for them also very real now now Boeing has cut is cutting because they want to be more profitable they want to be leaner and the City of Mesa can do the same thing I don't think the city of Mace is working under Optimum Financial conditions and finally a personal story one of my daughters lives here in Mesa and she comes home every once in a while you know to visit but also to eat she is blessed to have a roommate and and getting a great deal on rent which rent is very high here but she's still having to make decisions about putting gas in the car to get to work or buying extra groceries to put in the refrigerator that is where the majority of residents in this city live of course a rate increase for you folks on the council is not a big deal but you don't have to make those kinds of decisions that my daughter has to make thank you thank you Brian folks um clapping inap thank you uh Alex Van I'm sorry I I apologize Alex Alex vanich am I in the ballpark it's a mouthful thank you mayor council members hope you had a nice Thanksgiving mayor Giles uh I think this is your final city council that you'll presiding over um we have a trust issue we have a trust issue this side versus that side and when we look at the same numbers that the city puts out we come to different conclusions do I get that time back we have different conclusions and we're trying to help you to make and keep Mesa great we love Mesa but the trust issue has been going on for quite some time now and there's some confusion why all of a sudden people are up and at it well it's kind of build up to a head I'll give you a good example May Giles this is supposed to be a non-partisan uh seat that you have and everybody else but you used your political influence as a member of a certain party to discredit the party that you say you belong to you did it very very publicly my time let do this you did it very publicly and you did it out in the open and so why should we believe you or what the city is presenting here if you're willing to do that with a dagger to some group that you say you belong to so that's offensive now uh 1% was proposed if you can make 1% uh in Cuts you're about 27 million I think you can do that I think all of us personally we can cut 1% in our budgets your goal is to raise about 30 million we had this discussion two weeks ago I'm a little perplexed by Mr Brady here who's been now going on 20 years managing the city and the finances seem to be going in one direction we're not improving there is no business out there that succeeds as it grow where it goes further into debt with that I ask you to vote no on this at least put the breaks on take it up again in the next year take it up in April when the budget discussion is up again and let's have a fair and open discussion because the people back here who've looked at the numbers we have all sorts of ways you guys can make additional Cuts now we're expecting you to vote Yes on this because you haven't listened to us before and we've never showed up before because we've been programmed by you that you will not listen to us thank you thank you Alex Sunny Allison my name is sunny Allison I live at 6545 East Adobe Road the community that I live in are mainly 55 plus people their age group they cannot afford this increase I am amazed having watched this council meeting several times on my TV of the arrogance that this Council portrays you are representing people in your District I would bet the farm that none of you have gone into your district and asked the people you're supposed to represent if they are comfortable with this increase I know you haven't and shame on you you're supposed to be representing people not your personal thoughts I don't give a crap what each one of you think but I guarantee you that the people that you supposedly represent are in agreement with me that this increase is not necessary thank you thank you Sunny John DAV thank you mayor councel um government overspending indeed a spending problem not a revenue problem citizen distrust runs high regarding how their ta tax dollars are spent is there true transparency I'll take one example and we can assume that there are many many others I've done research on electric vehicles I have just a few questions out of many who did the vetting and research regarding the purchase of an electric fire Tru or also known as an apparatus from whom did the city obtain funding to purchase the apparatus was it a Federal Grant if so why was the purchase made anyway America is $36 trillion in debt how much did the apparatus really cost how much did the charging station really cost from whom does the city of Mesa purchase electricity to feed the charging station is it the city of Mesa or another source how much does the same and simple diesel apparatus cost how many diesel apparatuses could have been purchased for the price of one electric apparatus charging station etc etc everything which is needed for such an apparatus who paid for the initial training of technicians or maintaining the apparatus charging station Etc at what cost how many special technicians were hired needed at what cost who pays for the ongoing technical uh training certification Etc at what cost what sort of maintenance is required for such an apparatus the charging station etc etc etc etc is maintenance on a diesel less how much less since it's delivery which I'm guessing would be approximately 12 to 18 months ago has the electric apparatus been used sparingly why is it reliable is it difficult to obtain Parts where do the parts come from has a city needed to obtain purchase rent or or or a second diesel apparatus to compensate for the Electrical apparatus's uh much downtime with its batteries water diesel generator diesel fuel etc etc how much does the apparatus weigh indeed this all electric apparatus comes equipped with a diesel generator and and and and and fuel tank why is this an electric all electric apparatus or not thank you John your time is up thank you Lawrence [Music] [Applause] Moody hi my name is Lawrence Moody um I live at 701 South dson Road on the corner Broadway and doson and I live in h West Mesa as we all know and that's a poor District of the city of Mesa and a lot of the people that I live with um only got a 2.5% raise under Social Security um I know that we get our electric from SRP but we get the rest of our utilities from the city here and that's really going to hurt all the people that we have living or I live in that entire area too because a lot of those people just about have just entry level jobs and things so um I think we need to look out for the people thank you thank you uh Kevin medima thank you bring this up here good evening mayor and council members Mr Brady yeah I'm going to put these up here again it's okay with you um let me finish this so I can get to that you want to do that one I don't need to repeat everything that uh everyone said oh by the way Kevin MMA I live at 1150 North Yale um I don't need to repeat the sentiment thank you Alex um so what I'm going to uh read here is more about going forward from here what regardless of what happens tonight so um and this just to keep me on track uh obviously during the the last city council meeting uh you heard from the citizens who had expressed their opposition to the proposed raid hike uh in fact there are over 2,000 signatures on our from our online petition and currently an unknown paper signatures that haven't come in yet um uh I will leave these with the city clerk tonight so uh you'll have those um as our leadership of our city you need to recognize the efforts the desires the circumstances that your citizens are expressing to you uh every district is represented here and in who the people that are here uh they are a finite not Infinite Source of revenue for the city there have uh there have been several articles in the newspapers about the previous council meeting uh and I'm encouraged to hear that many that many uh perspectives of all the stakeholders however it is important to note that these periodicals uh thought it was worth letting everyone else know I realize this is uh this is new to the council to see the amount of attendance from the last meeting and tonight uh I haven't seen many citizens in Prior Council meetings uh speaking for or against uh uh propositions but the issue has awaken and Galvan this issue has has awakened and galvanized this their position someone stated in the council meeting uh asking why now referring to it might be too late that was in the previous one I I remind you that after the September session or study session when the proposed increase was introduced that many of the people had emailed and called their council members uh stating their opposition so it wasn't too late I challenged the Mesa leadership both Council and management to consider and find ways to be better fiduciaries of the revenues generated and Grant some concessions to your citizens this evening I don't know what that looks like but we are willing to take an active role in working with you uh I think this should be uh an unpre this is an unprecedented unprecedented event for our city uh it is the beginning or of a new involvement from your city thank you Kevin your time is up wow that went fast thank you I'll remove these Mary May Beno good evening my name is Mary mayeno um live off of Recker road and Brown Road in March 2020 the city council approved an ordinance that from that time on they were to take 30% of the utility funds and transfer to the general fund since the city had no primary property tax however even if we did have a primary property tax it would generate about 45 million which would be onethird less compared to this year's transfer of 126 million why can't you decrease other expenditures in the general fund not related to Public Safety for example in December 2023 the city council introduced another ordinance that would boost pay for the city's elected officials and it dissolved it got rid of an independent commission that shared the responsibility for setting compensation for Council Members many municipalities across the country employ independent commissions because it lessens the impression of council members voting for future pay raises for themselves seems like these newer ordinances are giving you free reign to increase spending either for yourselves or for other projects so effective in 2025 Mesa Council members will get a 7% increase in their salaries members will be paid um members will be paid more than $40,000 a year and the mayor over $74,000 a year and by the way the Mesa mayor is the second highest paid mayor in the state now this is for a part-time job which the only requirements are to show up at meetings twice a month no clocking in or punching in is required you might say our office hours are Monday through Thursday 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. but surprisingly nobody's available for drop in visits from their residents now here are some suggestions maybe Mesa Electric which from what I understand is responsible for five square miles in Mesa maybe that should just be trans transferred or turned over to SRP be a way to decrease employees employed by that on the chart that you guys had shown last week showing Ami which is Advanced meter infrastructure of 101 million one of the benefits that it said was it's a reduction in staff to read meters but are you terminating these staff or just reassigning them to other positions within the city of Mesa I'd sure like to know that answer why build a new city council chambers when the other one this one is just fine thank you Mary your time is up okay thank you thank you Kathy Carlson my name is Kathy Carlson I live at around Power and Brown area as many people have said we are feeling the effects of the incredible inflation thanks to to those in the white house that you and Mrs spillsbury have publicly supported um and they obviously have a spending problem so I hope you can see that in them if the rate hikes are so desperately needed how about cutting other spending that doesn't affect the pocketbooks of the citizens of Mesa you were elected to look out for our welfare where is your compassion for the thousands of citizens and seniors on fixed incomes that are struggling and just don't have the extra money I remember you guys buying the Grand Hotel because of so much compassion you had for the homeless where is your compassion now we just we would like you to vote no on this rate increase and mayor Giles you don't want people to clap but if they don't you won't understand how many people are against this utility hike rate rate there are hundreds of people that have expressed that they do not want this and they forced to be reckoned with there are numerous Precinct commitmen out here and constituents alike and we just want you to know that we are on notice of you thank you Kathy Scott figgins good evening guess all Justice good evening mayor Giles mayor elect Freeman counsel uh apparently I'm going to be against the popular opinion behind me my name is Scott figgins I'm a captain paramedic with M fire medical about 20 years on the job I'm also the president of United Mesa firefighters local 2260 and so I speak on behalf of the 546 Public Safety professionals that represent Mesa fire medical and I want to start off by saying thank you I want to say thank you to this Council I want to say thank you to Mr Brady to our staff in Mesa that we continue to work CL closely with I want to say thank you to our businesses I want to say thank you to our amazing residents thank you for your continued support of Public Safety and for consistently making Public Safety a top priority our citizens support continues to be EV evident in every way shape and form including when it counts most during the last two local elections we've had ballot measures question two both were tied directly to public safety both focused on public safety and advancing Public Safety both of those passed 71% and 69% respectively in fact this year's election question 2 had 150,000 votes I know we heard about this 2000 petition we had 150,000 voters overwhelmingly support Public Safety this unwavering commitment is to ensure that Mesa remains safe and a thriving City for everyone so as we continue to prioritize Public Safety we do also have to recognize the importance of keeping Mesa affordable however affordability must go hand inand with protecting the safety and Welfare of our citizens businesses and visitors the utility rate plays a critical role in achieving this balance since Mesa does not have or rely on this property tax or a grocery tax for that matter the utility rate becomes even more vital to sustaining our City's operations it's important to note that Utility Fund transfers as was already heard they are capped at a 30% with 25 of that 30% going directly to Public Safety the other 5% does go to the general fund but this ensures transparency and accountability while keeping Public Safety at the Forefront of our financial priorities over the past few years we have felt the impact of inflation all of us Mesa is no exception and the pro proposed utility rate increase is a necessary step for us to continue providing the exceptional Public Safety Services our community demands so on behalf of the United M of firefighters I want to express our full support for your recommendation of this increase thank you thank you Scott Jesse hollik good evening mayor Giles a member of of council uh public speaking is not my jam so this is going to be tough here but uh Mr Mayor I would like to take a moment to thank you for your service and Leadership over the past decade I would also like to congratulate the future mayor of Mesa Mark Freeman on his recent Victory I know that Mr Freeman's 31 years of service in the Mesa fire and medical department and his time as a councilman of District 1 will serve the residents of the city well and I look forward to your leadership sir my name is Jesse holler I am a proud Mesa resident of District 1 where I'm raising my two wonderful Sons with my beautiful wife Kathleen I'm also a paramedic engineer with the Mesa fire and medical Department with over 10 years of service I like many people in this chamber today did not want to see a utility rate increase that being said I'm also a realist I understand that it takes tax revenues to provide the level of service that our citizens have come to expect that is why I'm here to express my support for the modest utility rate increase you'll be voting on today unlike our surrounding cities in the valley we do not have a primary property tax in Mesa our city services are funded through sales tax and utilities primarily starting this January the rental tax repeal that was passed at the state legislature will reduce annual City revenues by over $20 million the flat tax enacted by the state has already reduced State shared revenues that Supply the city the same that has affected everyone in this room has also affected the city's ability to deliver its services with millions of dollars in Lost Revenue that I just mentioned I know that the city will be forced to cut its current service model we cannot afford to let that happen our police and fire departments stand as examples for the rest of the country for me personally when I'm away from My Wife and Kids for 24 hours straight serving our residents at the fire station I am comforted knowing that we have some of the best in the business watching over my family until we return when our citizens are experiencing the worst day of their life and they dial 911 they know they're getting the best without these revenues I fear that we will not be able to recruit hire and retain the best in public safety personnel I am genuinely concerned that we could lose the top tier recruits to neighboring agencies my family and my neighbors deserve the best therefore I support your recommendation and thank you for your time thank you Jesse Carl [Music] Mickelson good evening members of council mayor Giles my name is Carl Michaelson and I'm here tonight to express my support for the utility rate increase that will be voted on this evening I am currently a captain in paramedic with the Mesa fire and medical Department with a little over 9 years of experience throughout my time with this organization I've been fortunate to experience the steady and supportive leadership of you all our council members this support has been one of the many constants that we're able to rely on as members working in the field serving the citizens and the visitors of the city of Mesa your support has provided us with new fire apparatus exceptional equipment and training all while maintaining fair and competitive wages and benefits as you know this support has come without the funding of a primary property tax tax unlike our surrounding municipalities and agencies relying on the city sales and utility tax to provide our essential Services while I'm sure there may be some individuals who say our Public Safety organizations receive more funding than many of our surrounding agencies I would like to highlight a few things that are often overlooked when it comes to funding our police and fire departments some of which provide a level of Co cost recovery aiding in our fiscal responsibility first and foremost our departments participate in benchmarking with a number of our surrounding agencies to Ure that Personnel salaries remain fair and competitive to Aid in Recruitment and Retention this benchmarking process allows for responsible and educated decision- making with our citizens tax dollars as it relates to employee wages additionally we are responsible for ensuring our Mesa Regional Dispatch Center is staffed and maintained with the appropriate personnel and Technology to allocate resources in a time of emergency for not only the city of Mesa but Gilbert Superstition Queen Creek Rio Verde Fort mcdal and Fountain Hills the financial benefits and cost recovery associated with maintaining good Regional relationships and providing services are often overlooked these relationships allow for our police dep counterparts to provide assistance as well through a state-of-the-art real-time crime Center which helps ensure the ongoing safety of the citizens of Mesa and our regional Partners additionally over the past few years your commitment and support to our fire and medical Department providing exceptional customer service has allowed us to add a transport division staffed with nearly 90 Personnel on a ambulances the largest in the East Valley this transport division continues to expand with the needs of our city and still provides a 97% cost recovery these mentioned services and divisions are just a few that provide not only a higher level of care to our citizens but a cost recovery as well through Regional relationships it is services such as these that allow us your Public Safety members to provide such a high level of care and customer service day in and day out by supporting the very modest utility rate increase our police and fire departments will be able to continue to maintain and provide services such as these to help keep our community healthy and safe thank you thank you Carl David [Music] winstanley good evening Mr Mayor esteemed council members and City staff I'm David winstanley I live in southeast Mesa near East Mark and councilman Summers district and yes I'm the engineer at a meeting two weeks ago councilwoman go forth challenged us to go look at all the material that was available that justified the increases being proposed so I did that I reviewed all the available information that's posted on the city's website on this subject including last year's increases I found that this is not really a one-year increase this is an update to a rolling fiveyear plan there is a $ 32.4 million or 7.6 increase in revenues for this year but there's a similar 6.5 to 7.2 planned increase in each of the next 5 years when you compound that that's a total of 55% increase over the plan that's concerning even if this year's amount is not concerning the cause of this year's increase appears to be inflation although it's not totally clear from the material available that that's true I don't have time here to show you why I say that but future increases are primarily due to Debt Service transfers that increase of over $68 million over the plan period are we getting increased service for these increased debt payments I also found that 30% of all the increases are the result of a 30% search charge on utilities for the TR for the transfer to the general fund the search charge does not vary it's exactly 30% for all past and future years isn't this supposed to be a maximum to be discussed by the council not a fixed increase available for expenses in the general fund most concerning to me is that the 5-year plan specifically spends $20 million per year more in expenses than it takes in an income for the next five years over $100 million more in spending than in income reducing the reserve fund from 144 million to 44 million and that Reserve fund uh balance from 25% down to 6.4% in fiscal year 282 9 this is fiscally irresponsible any count any accountant will tell you this is a problem and in fact your city manager Mr Brady twice in the meeting two weeks ago said that that this will cost you more money because the Credit Agencies will see that and charge you more it's a circle that's going to be a problem one solution that might be considered would be to lower the 30% surcharge to 28% thereby keeping the Reserve balance in the 15% range and not reducing any money that will go to Public Safety 30% to 28% I would respectfully ask you to vote no tonight and ask your staff to reconsider these items before proposing a new plan to you thank you for your time thank you [Applause] David folks uh please Don't Clap thank you Martin devold Mr mayor council thank you for taking time to listen the Law's most effective use and highest purpose is to punish wrongdoing anything beyond that is socialistic in nature because it infringes on the rights of one one or more parties to uh benefit one or more parties uh Frederick batist wrote an excellent book on the subject in 1850 entitled the law and it provides ample examples of how governments have repeatedly used their lawmaking powers to impoverish its subject its subjects whom we call Citizens today we also use these words other words to describe the law like regulations compliance code and tax ation because not abiding by these is breaking the law and punishable by the government while no one here is intent on impoverishing mesa's citizens it's important to understand that any law that exceeds its highest and best use is socialistic taking earnings or wealth from one party and giving it to another taxation is one of the more Insidious laws because it generally starts out small and manageable before increasing sufficiently to bleed students to imp or citizens to impoverishment and eventual death history is filled with examples of this practice yet our governments continue to exceed the rightful purpose of the law perhaps the intentions are even honorable yet the outcomes are inevitable as a city council employee and employees of the city of Mesa I urge you to ponder your highest and best use is it to build the greatest City the world has ever known or is it to Steward the least amount of taxes possible to provide a safe environment in which citizens can Thrive two weeks ago one of the members confirmed the 30% utility rates uh were being swept into the general fund Essen attacks the same meeting confirmed this methodology is codified in the city's Constitution because the city council in the 1940s deemed that the city could function well without a uh property tax primary property tax as a citizen of Mesa I view this practice as a deceptive bait and switch that would be punishable by law if not condoned by the very govern government benefiting from this practice a utility rate increase is a disguised tax increase and the city financials and budget projections confirm that this is exactly how it is seen internally thank you Martin your time is up Amanda [Applause] Nelson hello I'm Amanda Nelson I live in Frasier Fields um and I was here at the last meeting and um I was really grateful to learn about how I didn't know about how the Misa utilities are set up as a business and I am very Pro entrepreneurial like anti- tax generally and so I loved that the city has a business where they can make money that funds our Public Safety so I loved that I felt duped when I had been told that erroneously that you guys were just willy-nilly putting stuff into the our utility um stuff into the general fund and I felt like I had been lied to and so I was glad to get that sorted out I still had questions after the last meeting and so we emailed our councilwoman uh councilwoman Duff and she responded so wonderfully and clearly and I was so grateful for that um and one of the things that was said in the meeting was when everyone was going nuts they said they said you guys we're talking about five and so I went back and I looked through the PowerPoint um that had that I hadn't known about before the meeting and so I was really glad that I am like learning my education about how Civic things work is just um I'm so grateful that I'm getting to learn about all this anyway I went back and I crunched the numbers um and we live in a 75-year-old house we've done lots of renovations to try to make it more energy efficient um and our family will actually be looking at about $40 more a month in the summer um and so that's what we're looking at um if we had bought a house a home across the street and had SRP for our electric we would be saving about $96 a month according to that PowerPoint um that's after srp's increases so I just uh I think that we're doing a good job in just trying the best I can and I just want it known and appreciated that for us it's not just $5 a month and I just want it known and appreciated the monetary sacrifice that our little family is making in the name of Public Safety thank you thank you Amanda Blaine Waters good evening mayor Giles and Council my name is Blaine Waters I both live in and work for the city of Mesa I lived in Mesa for the last 15 years and I've served the Mesa Police Department as an officer and a sergeant for the past 20 years I'm here this evening to express my support for the modest utility rate increase you will be voting on we are known we all know that your predecessors on the Mesa council did not enact a primary property tax because of this decision a significant part of the city's budget is funded with revenue from City Utilities knowing this people may think our utility prices would be significantly higher than other cities in the valley especially considering that these cities also have primary property tax to help fund them well this is not the case even without a primary property tax City of Mesa Utilities Fall in the middle of the pack around the valley some would say say and have said that this modest increase is not necessary well I say to those folks we cannot have our cake and eat it too city of Mesa residents have time and time again voted to support um a public safety transfer from the utility revenue to help police and fire departments the transfer is even more important in the upcoming Years starting January 1st the city will no longer be able to collect a rental tax as the Arizona legislature voted to eliminate that income what does this mean as spoken before $20 million will no longer be available for the city of Mesa to use in its budget this along with reductions in state shared revenue for cities will greatly decrease funding for critical operations faced with the loss of these millions of dollars the city has proposed a modest utility rate increase to help stabilize our budget and our services a modest utility rate increase will help keep up with Rising costs ensure that we can continue providing essential services like police fire emergency medical support and preserve the quality of life we all enjoy this increase will help fill the Gap ensuring we are not forced to cut back on crucial services that our residents rely on as part of the police department I know that the model of our department it that our department is a model Department for all around the country to look at and if we continue and if we want to continue to recruit hire and retain the right people as our residents have come to expect the modest rate increase would be the way to support these efforts again I cannot stress enough how important this is and how vital it will be moving forward for the city and the public safety as a ASA resident and as a member of your Police Department I urge you to vote Yes on this rate increase thank you thank you Blain Jeremiah Seaman thank you mayor Giles and uh the city council members my name is Jeremiah SM man excuse me and I'm a Precinct committee man from ld6 and I can tell you that the majority of the people in my precinct as well as the folks behind me are not in favor of this so we've heard a lot tonight about about electric firet trucks we've heard a lot tonight about uh hotels for the homeless we've heard the talking points from the talking heads that are they on are they actually um being paid right now or not we don't know but what we do know is that it's very clear that they were given clear talking points to make sure that they all hit with their modest increase we all know that this isn't a modest increase we're all against this we oppose it and something I want to tell you excuse me mayor lame duck here doesn't have to worry about his seat but let me tell you something the rest of you on the council you're you're waking up you're opening you're waking a sleeping giant and there's a whole lot of people here that will knock on every single door and tell every member and every citizen of this City what you're doing to us all we're all opposed to it you need to vote no on this and you need to reconsider what you're doing and mayor chares goodbye thank you Jeremy thank you folks please obey the rules and Don't Clap uh I just want to say everyone is going to get an opportunity to speak tonight okay everyone will get an opportunity to speak tonight that wants to speak so but the PE the people who speak are going to be at the microphone not in the audience okay so let's let's let's be respectful uh Francesca France Francy bowerie I'm sorry Frankie good evening uh mayor JS and council members thank you my name is Frankie Bower I'm in district 6 mberry Community um and thank you for the time to speak so I just wanted to make a few points um in our last session someone from the council um made the comment it's only a few dollars although I see this week the terminology has changed to modest increase um so I just wanted to remind everybody the the true point the underlying issue that everybody is facing and that is that auto insurance for Arizona residents uh Mesa specifically in the last few years auto insurance premiums have increased 22% homeowners insurance premiums increased 62% Arizona was actually the highest in the nation for increases that were experienced groceries increase 26% gas is over a dollar increase per gallon on average rent increase by an average about 10% although I will say Mesa was among the lowest and that so thank you for any influence you had there um Medicare B for our seniors that's the primary Insurance 22% increase another increase about to happen in January for them Medicare D for prescriptions another 14% increase about to go up again in January uh health insurance increased 28% overall cost of living increase for our people our citizens is between 27 and 30% % the average wage increase was 18% uh and Social Security increase was about 20% so we're short by about 10% keeping up with what's going on around us uh in dollars that's about $800 to $1,200 per month while we know most of our citizens are living paycheck to paycheck so really what we're talking about here is death by a th000 paper cuts and so while this feels like it's just this couple of dollars to US it's not just a few dollars it's a lot it's impactful and it is hurting our families every day and so what we're asking for is you know we just had our election so we're trying to change things on a more Grand scale but here we have bigger quicker impact that we can actually make to help our citizens and that's why we've elected you that's why we're asking you for help so if we the people if you the council can help alleviate the burden in our people in anyway even in this small amount we should do it and the second point I wanted to make is also in our last session there was another comment and it was this is how we've always done it there's always been an increase year-over-year and that's true we we heard other speakers tonight say the same um but I want to remind everybody and I want to respectfully uh disagree with some of the folks that were in the affirmative or support of this in no way shape or form I would venture to Guess that there isn't anybody here who is suggesting that we remove or eliminate priority or crucial funding to things that we need every day we're all we're saying is if you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results you're you're stopping progress and we're not take if to stand there and say that everything is perfect and there's no room to save any money to help our citizens while they are struggling daily is is not okay and we need to look in the mirror we need to look at our budget and we need to see where we can make these cuts um and quite often in doing so thank you Frankie your time is up I apologize and thank you I I just want to make one last point and that is and that is if we do believe that we can help uh our citizens and if we do want to answer the call and take advantage of this amazing opportunity where the people are engaged and they want to help and strive for something positive we should take it and work together to do so thank you Frankie Joanne Robbins good evening and I first of all I just want to thank you all for your public service um I I know it's a large responsibility that you have in upkeep with our community and I appreciate that and I come here to remind you that your obligation is to serve the interest and well-being of our communities because that is why each and every one of you are here tonight miss bbery you are my representative I live on uh 42 to East Broadway that's a green uh Green Field and you serve my community but from the last meeting held on November 18th I came away seeing that you councilmen were not interested in hearing how your plans to govern our city will impact our family and our communities that's why we elected you you this budget is not run by your money this budget is run by our money so we came here to tell you our Representatives you miss spillsbury that this increase in all utilities is too much of a burden for us I appreciate you First Responders I really do but the thing is this increase in all utilities it's it's a burden so please stop and listen at the last meeting you told us that we were misinformed on what these R hikes will do to our family oh $5 you say $5 well let me tell you that you're the ones misinformed if you think that telling a family who can't buy food and gas to get to work at the same time that coughing up an additional $5 is not going to break their backs that's hogwash you're mising us that you are looking out for our best interests so now is not the time for this budget increase please try put it off we can look at at this next year or maybe the year after so we're coming here tonight to reason with you that we are in a lot of financial hurt right now you tell us this increas is for Public Safety and in the same breath you tell us that Mesa has the best public safety record even over Gilbert and Chandler well if our Public Safety is doing so well how come it can't ride another year and give us a break so you're demanding you're demanding that we make tough Cuts in our family budgets while increasing your budget and when we tell you our Representatives that your increases are greatly burden us your response is oh you're misinform you're misinformed well mayor Giles and respected councilman listen to reason don't send us home tonight saying let them eat cake because if you do be prepared that the next election cycle you're fired you're going to hear from us you're fired from alans and honestly I'm thinking of running so be on guard thank you folks uh let me remind you again clapping is inappropriate uh Carrie Davis good evening mayor city council my name is Carrie Davis according to the city's 2023 annual comprehensive financial report the city reported governmental activity surplus of nearly 12 million and business type utility Surplus of1 127 million and transferred from the utility funds was 120 million to the general fund why did the city transfer 120 million from the Utility Fund to the general fund during the November 18 council meeting the city indicated most of the transfer from the utility funds is to support Public Safety I cannot locate in the for where the 120 million transferred from the utility funds was directly allocated to Public Safety however in addition to the general fund the city has two sales tax special Revenue funds that support Public Safety according to the 2023 act for these two funds contributed 64 million to Public Safety and had a combined ending balance of 97 million in these two funds clearly public safety did not need the majority of the 120 million transfers from the utility funds according to page 22 of the 2023 annual comprehensive Finance report $72 million of the $10 million was transferred out of the general fund to other non- major governmental funds not Public Safety the remaining 48 million increased the general fund ending balance council member Duff indicated one of the reasons Mesa has so many more employees than our two neighbors Gilbert and Chandler is because we have two airports however according to the 2023 annual comprehensive financial report Mesa only reported 14 employees for Falcon Field Airport mayor Giles indicated we were relying on inaccurate information supporting our objection to the utility rate increases but provided no explanation of what information he was referring to when he made the comment I would like to ask mayor Giles where does the Acer reflect a allocation of the utility fund transfer to Public Safety could it be the council is relying on incomplete information to justify their support and defense of Management's proposed utility rate increases instead of representing the interest of Voters it appears to me management governs Mesa and the city council takes its direction for management instead of the council providing dire ction to management when it comes to utility rates we support Public Safety and we're not suggesting reducing Public Safety funding I agree with mayor Giles we are not comparing Apples to Apples we are comparing the less efficient Mesa government operations to the more efficient government operations of our neighbors we are requesting you identify areas where city government can operate more efficiently and reduce your over Reliance on Utility Fund transfers to the general fund again I ask you to vote no on the utility rate rate increases and step up to the plate and serve the right residents who elected you not unelected bureaucrats thank you Carrie Karina CAD good evening mayor Giles this is my first opportunity to present my no a big no for the utility crease here in mes Arizona congratulations Mr Freeman we welcome you from the bottom of our hearts that you make the right decisions in regards to the people and and being a citizen should I say um this is my first opportunity on this side of the tracks um before what I mean by that is that being um on the opposite side and I mean that in the most negative way which it was and coming over to a positive side somewhere where I can say we the people I am glad to be a citizen of the United States of America I'm glad to live in Arizona I am fourth generation native to the State of Arizona my grandparents great-grandparents all were born and raised here I do know that the city of Mesa has made many changes and in within those changes I do know that people when you have to go I am also a Precinct Committee Member by the way now I've stepped up to the plate and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing what God has me to do and I know that I go and I talk to those peop and those citizens that in my in my community and they struggle on a daily basis to get by they worry about what they're going to eat or what they're going to drink or how they're going to pay utilities and they have to make decisions and choices do you know that in October there were more evictions in in the state in the whole Century than there was in the city of Mesa than there was throughout the whole Century should I say and since then more people if you make this increase with the utilities more people become homeless then you'll have a bigger problem on your hands more people would be homeless then that problem keeps breeding more and more so we're asking you please do not increase the utilities find some other way I mean if you had to trade places with any one of these people and live like they live on a daily basis and worry about what they're going to eat and drink and and how they're going to get by you would think differently but you have an income that supports you for where you are and and there's nothing wrong with that but I'm just saying have compassion to these people and the increase and that's what I have to say thank you very much thank you Karina Bob ha good evening mayor and uh councel and congratulations to to my friend Mark Freeman our new mayor soon to be um I'm here tonight because I was inspired having watch watched uh last council meeting on Channel 11 I stayed up until 12:30 till I couldn't stay awake anymore watching it which is a might be a testimony of my sickness but um I I was truly inspired by the 15 or 16 citizens who came up and and um shared things that were important to them we had a great cross-section of of our community here we had a former experience mayor uh of San Bernardino we had a young man who I don't even think was 20 which was amazing and we had a young mother with a with a child um I'm here to urge you to vote no on this increase because uh I believe the vast majority of your citizens who elected you um want that they don't need this now you might think that it's Justified but like this other gentleman said it's not just a four or 5% now there's plans for more and more and more and where where does it end um maybe the city of Mesa could use a department of government efficiency we to you ought to think about that I'd like to also um Echo the comments of the second speaker tonight I I I don't really think this is just a utility problem Council I think this is a uh a trust problem um I'm going to direct the rest of my comments to Mayor childes and and my councilman's council person spillsbury um I'm in her District I'm a third generation Mesa resident um my family goes back to the founders the sirines and the krisans um I my roots are deep both my wife and I have been here for three generations we raised our kids here they were educated here um we want to stay here we want to be married here um I've Ur you urge you to vote no on this and I I I would just also like to tell you mayor that you you have a trust problem it's not a problem for you anymore cuz you're you're going to move on good luck with your future endeavors Miss spillsbury um the same can't be said for you I think you've you've got some serious hurdles and I know you're aware of them I spent so much time researching all of your interviews and your podcasts both of you and for the life of me I can't figure out how the the two of you could have such a hate for a presidential candidate to where you would betray your conservative vote Mr H really to betray your conservative voters and let me remind you need to limit your comments to the agenda item that I'm just telling you mayor the real this really isn't all about utilities it's about it it's you've you've lost the trust you lost the trust of your voters you're mostly conservative voters you have admitted publicly we have a conservative City and especially Mr Mr your time is up okay thank you appreciate it Earl Taylor [Applause] welcome Mr Taylor good evening good evening mayor Giles and city council My Name is Earl Taylor I live at Val viston University ld10 and uh District 2 Mesa just four weeks ago I voted with a majority of Mesa voters and voted for Mark Freeman for mayor because I believed he was more conservative than his opponent physically conservative I also voted with the majority of the nation and voted for Donald Trump because I definitely knew he was more conservative than his opponent it is evident that the Cry of family in our state and city and nation is to stop the burden of over Taxation and overspending and so I ask you the question as I paraphrase a line from a song in Lay Miz do you hear the people speak we are meeting I should say we are soon to meet in a new facility new uh Council facility I've also been in some of your nice city offices I'm not sure you feel the financial pinch that many families are now experiencing especially since you voted to give yourself a significant salary increase just a few months ago no ordinary family can simply raise their income with a simple vote as you did when our expenses for Essentials go up we have to cut non-essential expenses somewhere else and all of your fancy charts and explanations do not make it otherwise I understand in this inflationary time that the cost of providing essential city services goes up but the families of Mesa are asking you to do what we all have to do find places in this huge Mesa City budget where you can reduce non-essential spending and if you have a hard time finding those non-essential items perhaps you should ask some Outsiders for help like the federal government is doing I can assure you perhaps you should ask see I can assure you that there are several Elon Musk and Vic ramas swamis right here in this audience tonight who can help you find plenty of these non-essential areas to cut to make up for the increased utility costs in this very turbulent time let us pause for a while until we can catch our breath and get the economy moving again so that families can dig out of the hole many are in thank you Mr Taylor let us not put more pressure on families I ask again do you hear the people speak thank you thank you Mr Taylor Brad beton [Applause] Court good evening I'm Brad beton Court I was elected to the board directors of doson ranch earlier this year in Mr Aria's district and we just decided to raise assessment fees 5% and a significant reason was the increase here on utilities I live in Lake Park Village and that puts us in two HOAs I'm not on the board of directors there but they Rose at 99.8% again having to do with these utilities so our homeowners are getting hit twice by this utility rate hike and I would just say when you look at these commercial rates Rising the way they are close to or at double digits I would wonder what kind of Errors have been made in the past and what are you going to do in the future to avoid those kind of Errors because I see rates that high and I just think there got to be errors in the past and what are you going to do to fix that thank you thank you Mr baton Court Mark lavender I actually just wrote a quick comment but basically my whole premise is that we should have more efficiency in our government I mean we've all aware I mean that was premise of my campaign is that our city government is bloated and it's not this council's fault it's not it goes back Council after counsel after councel uh government growth is generally a natural occurrence over time especially when we have such a beautiful tax base and a bunch of citizens who who are doing really well it's it's same thing with our waist size we get fat if we don't watch what we eat except for the mayor he runs bikes and swims everywhere he goes but the rest of us you know it's it's the same thing and um with regards to this uh tax or with this utility rate hike one of the other things that I don't think anybody's mentioned is it's regressive in nature in other words it does not a regressive tax is a tax that impacts poor people more than it does the middle class and upper income people so not only is this a not only is this utility rate hike I think unnecessary but it's also impacting the people who are most vulnerable in our community and I've met people before who had dead grass in the front yard and a pool in the backyard and their own fixed in comes and they said well we had to choose between the pool and the grass and I have grandkids and they like the pool so these are the things that I think we should all take into account and I'd ask you guys give us some thought and put on your problem solving hats and see if we can find that money elsewhere and vote no on this thank you thank you Mark Barbara Parker [Applause] good evening mayor city councilman mayor elect um my name is Barbara Parker I lived on Ellsworth and melbs in um area five with council member go forth um I had to rush through the deck Park tunnel tonight to make it here in time um to be a part of this discussion um I am also representative Barbara Parker and I am the elected official for the majority of these constituents that you and I share in Mesa um as an elected official I have been asked to come and speak on their behalf as we share the same constituency they call me when they lose their homes they call the state when they can't afford their insurance and on behalf of this them I am telling you they are hurting and even $1 makes a huge difference um the citizens tonight I honestly could not say anything better than they have said I could not be prouder of every one of them they are articulate educated informed respectful and factual with solutions they had the receipts they have the numbers I am so impressed this is an informed electorate you should listen to them um again the staff is saying that the sky is falling it is not it never does the fact that we use the threat of fear and emotion that we are going to cut police and fire is so disingenuous and inappropriate and to all the gentlemen and the women in uniform tonight I am one of you and I have trained many of the firefighters and I want you to know we have your backs and we need to elect people that will fund you first and then find funding for everything else we are never going to cut funding to police and fire that is always a tactic it's disingenuous it is inappropriate it lacks accountability it is intellectually dishonest and they are not pawns and you deserve better don't let them use you as a pawn police and fire um it's appropriate to have a bond and then immediately after that election to suddenly have a tax increase or a uh rate payers increased um one of the things that I was able to communicate to the legislature as being a member of the Appropriations Committee is that every single dollar is sacred every single penny is sacred and when I've asked the citizens would they rather have one more penny in their pocket than have it go to waste or redundancies or excessive absolutely they say yes I hope you will have the courage to do the right thing tonight I can tell you on behalf of the state we were able to cut budget balance our budget give money back to the taxpayers and fund every single program and if the State of Arizona can do it Mesa can do better thank you um please Don't Clap dorine Taylor thank you so much for having us up here thank you John Giles thank you Mark um I won't take probably too much time to say this but my name is Dorian it's not Doran so I'll be quick I've already come up here once before and I just want to remind you again we are your constituency we elected you to do a specific job I'm asking you to vote no actually no I'm telling you vote no I'm not asking you to vote no I have helped employ you my taxes pay your paychecks along with all of your other constituency here and Mrs Parker and Miss Frankie thank you so much for coming up here and saying something Mrs Parker made a comment we had four questions for the city of Mesa they were approved we have two City bonds that together are going to equate to $260 million 90 million of those dollars is for Public Safety why do we need a utilities increase if 90 million milon was approved for Public Safety I am baffled by this 54 million will be for a 911 emergency center Center Improvement that that leaves a lot of other millions of dollars to pay for our firefighters our policemen our police women so I just don't understand how it's appropriate for you guys to tell us that we need to pay a menial fee in our utilities when you just approve or our citizens just approved two bonds to cover that much money also I think it's important to note that some of us have grass and we like our yards and we like our pools and we enjoy gardening and we enjoy living in communities that are green and we're not interested in Zer escaping every inch of our yards so it's not $5 for us it's $50 it's $60 a 5% increase can mean a lot depending on how much your property value is my property value might be more than some other people's so my my expense is going to be significantly higher and I don't appreciate that when I'm already paying a significant amount for my Mesa Utilities I don't want to have to get rid of a garbage can or recycling bin because I'm justifying how much more I'm paying for my water so additionally I would like to remind you that some of you are going to be up for reelection year-over-year and we are watching you like Hawks and we are speaking our opinions openly with you because it is our right to do so and I would encourage you to take that very seriously and I know Mr Freeman you are listening very carefully to your constituency so thank you so so much vote no not asking I'm telling you vote no thank you Miss Taylor thank you the final card I have is from Tom Rucker so if you wish to speak uh and I haven't I don't have a card from you it's important that you take care of that Mr Rucker welcome thank you long time resident sorry about my voice uh been a part of this Mesa I guess 41 years now grew up at staple and Broadway living the Fraser field uh District uh you know really proud of being a Mesa uh uh Citizen and uh I have a wife who's been trying to get me to move to Gilbert to chadler to better cities and I've been fighting her saying hey no this is special Mesa special Mesa this Mesa is that and try to show her what I grew up with and that's what we need to go back to and makes us always been safe we never had a safety problem here that's why we all vote the way we do because we support having that safety that security and and we are grateful for all the work that those men do and women but at the end of the day I run businesses and I got to be profitable I run you have 80 employees you know we run you know and so I can't make decisions that just pass the buck to to my customers I got to find ways to be more efficient find ways to take care of my employees better do all these things and if I had the opportunity just to quickly say oh I'm just going to up my prices and have no consequences of it then I couldn't run a business I'd be looking for a government job is what I'd be looking for and so that's what kind of makes me sick and upset about about this uh you know making a vote on something like this is is like hey it's it's simple you know there's other ways just like how I run my business I have to cut cost and places we have an efficiency problem basally doesn't look as good as the other cities they have it for the last 20 years I'd say it's changed a lot and we need to get back to way old mesa was and actually take some pride in the city and we rely on you guys to do that act at our name and so you know it kind of upsets me too I have to go away for my business my family and focus on that and start getting involved with my local politics because I just assumed it was being hand correctly and so now I just been woken up and that's what I will agree is like they said you woken up a beast of a lot of successful business people here tonight that could help out with your efficiency problem thank you thank you Tom uh M uh M mosy do we have any other blue cards any other request to speak no request to speak on this item mayor okay last call if anybody wants to speak all right I then declare the public hearing closed um we have uh this item item has been on our agenda multiple times in Council meetings and in study sessions and we've had a staff presentation I think by now most people here I know the council has seen that staff presentation multiple times hopefully the the folks in the audience have had access to that information as well so I won't try all of your patience by putting on that information again uh but Mr Brady you you've heard the comments of uh these citizens uh is there um I anything that you'd like to say in response perhaps to some of the questions that were raised tonight yes thank you mayor and so I think there's a lot of uh great comments and things that um obviously important for us to hear as a city and I think we have been listening and trying to understand how we can help find a path that gets all of us on the same page um I know it' be hard to believe um but the city employees live in Mesa are trying very hard to keep this a very efficient organization uh I don't laugh at your comments um this is we take this very seriously we have some of the best Professionals in local government finance and budgeting uh we have some of the awardwinning operations and our utilities we are unique uh the city of Mesa because we do operate uh water and waste water for the entire city we do provide a gas um utility that goes even outside the city of Mesa we are very unique and we provide for uh electric utility in a 5 square mile area uh we provide for solid waste and recycling uh green yard waste so it's a it's a large organization there's a lot going on but I think if you look at the standards where we have to look at and compare how are we doing you know the question is like well is a city being efficient is it um living within its means is it how does it compare with other utilities and we do that if you've been in the seeing any the discussions with the city council we do that we compare ourselves on the water side we compare ourselves on the electric side with SRP and APS by the way SRP just put out their notice for their new rate increases APS just put out did their uh a year ago or less than a year ago for 10 to 12 $15 more a month um SRP is going to be increasing theirs this is not uq2 utilities uh it's across uh the state is across the country so recognizing those pressures to keep and provide those services to you we try very hard to manage that and so how do we know if we're doing a good job or not so we look at a lot of you know Outsiders to come in and and evaluate Mesa uh that begins when we have to go into the market to uh sell our debt we are required to have outside uh Wall Street firms evaluate and assess mesa's credit and since I've been here it's improved and it states steady and it does very well it's a very strong credit rating and what does that mean to you it means that when we sell our debt we get a very competitive low interest rate that keeps our cost down and we also just talked about um earlier today that we have to have a financial audit right we don't all we can just we turn our books over till them they come in uh we have very clean books uh the books no findings no material findings and so they'll the council will hear from an auditor next week that the city has done a very good job and as a result we've actually seen our net position increase so from a balance sheet perspective Maes is in the POS best position has been ever historically so it's hard to hear the comment about City's financial position uh not standing up to standard when all of the outside evaluations that come to us suggest otherwise and we do take for heart that we did go out and ask and we didn't do it lightly we had to go ask our communities to support a permanent base adjustment you've heard of school districts trying to get overrides uh we got overwhelming support right almost 70% a landslide vote and then what we're asking for bonds they're going to cost people secondary property tax will go up because of Public Safety improvements and because of the arts and culture and let's remember let's not mix up those bonds I think the statement was just made well if you just got a bond why you need an increase well they're very different right the bonds are building new fire stations new communication centers buying more fire trucks things that we need for the future are replacing so it doesn't have anything effect a paying the the um for the Personnel in um Public Safety so again I would say that if you're going to do an evaluation unbiased uh evaluation of the city go look at our bond ratings go look at our audit and go look at what our community how they support um our initiatives there was a lot of questions about surpluses You' got way too much surpluses again going to our rating agencies they require us to have in the general fund at least 10 to 12% uh Reserve so that's where you get that big number we're required to have it in case there is a pandemic in case there is a major overturn so when we have those reserves they're sitting there they look like oh the city's overspending we're not we're obligated by those rating agencies to hold on and have those in a savings account on the on the utilities it's even higher and what you're seeing in the utilities is we had some very we built up our reserves on purpose because we were anticipating a recession now it's kind of been pushed off right a little bit but we are starting to see things flattening we are starting to see pressures on our utilities because we live in Arizona and the desert the water that we've bought and purchased and B bought rides to is getting cut back it's causing Rising rates in our water and what we cause but we're also investing in the future of Mesa there is a significant amount of capital programs going projects going on in Mesa right now and they are impacting our rates there's no doubt about it I'll you can look at it go look at our debt service see how much more we're paying in debt service and it's a lot and it's and it's getting more each year but what is that paying for it's paying for the future of Mesa Mesa is a unique opportunity to acquire a unique source of water that no other community has access to that we are building up pipeline so we can exchange water with the heila river in your community but in order to do that we have to build a pipeline that literally goes from one end of Mesa down to the other end yes it's very expensive and it shows up on our books that way but that water supply is the cheapest water we can buy in our entire portfolio it's guaranteed for over 100 years and it's the highest priority water meaning that when there are cutbacks it would be the very last to be cut back and about six to seven years we will recover the cost of that Capital so on the books today very expensive but in the future we have guaranteed and secured mesa's water portfolio well into the future with cheaper water and higher priority water another indicator that I hear about the efficiency and listen we're we are we strive hard for vision are we perfect no no organization is but it's top priority and we meet with the council all spring to talk about about it but what is the test how can we look at people in Mason and say we think we're doing our best to give you a good deal let me give you just a few indicators when you take our general fund budget and you compare it to 12 other cities in the area and you divide it by the population of the 12 cities we are at the bottom right our ratio of how much our general fund that pays for the public safety libraries uh Parks we are near the bottom of what we spend what it cost right per capita in this area so that's pretty remarkable that's one good indicator another one is sales tax per capita whether we like it or not in Arizona and especially M Arizona people don't want a property tax we've taken it to the ballot and they've turned it down so we rely heavily on sales tax as a result we're the second lowest and per capita sales tax mesa's got a problem we don't capture enough sales tax too many of us are shopping outside of Mesa and you do shop in Mesa and go buy food that doesn't help us at all so we have a dilemma we have to figure out we are playing at the bottom of revenues compared to other cities trying to make this efficient but for me this is and we've shown this over and over again you saw the newspapers pick up on it and I'm sorry if it doesn't help you but it is what we use and if there's a better way to measure our efficiency and what impact it has on you we are open to it but this is the metric that we use all the time and we've been using it for years because not every city operates the same way some have attacks on food some don't some have a property tax some don't some have higher water rates and you utility rates so they can help support Public Safety others do it but not everybody does it so how do we look at that so you can say well their water rates are your water rates are higher than somebody yeah but I don't have a property tax so it goes back and forth right so at the end of the day we just said let's put it all together we called the homeowners comparison and we talked about this last time that is our metric when you say m is too expensive well we're saying too expensive to compared to what um we're more not as expensive as Tempi or not as expensive of Gilbert Glendale and other cities so we try and we're right in the middle and when we're talking to council and they're talking about rates it's not just well how does our water rate compare that's important but how does that impact our homeowner after all that we're doing whether it's property tax or fees or whatever and so we put all that together and Mesa is literally right smack in the middle we're trying very hard to stay in the middle it sounds kind of mediocre but in this case we are we would love to be glower but there's pressure on so many things that I just talked about so when everybody talks about inefficiency and overspending I'm sure we could find some efficiencies I'm not going to suggest we can't but in the gross level of looking at our comparison with other cities we're right in the middle and we're going to try to stay in the middle and that includes the rate increases that are being proposed today and nobody likes to do rate increases but no said no but that's what we're trying to do I'm just trying to give you the sense of where we are just a few more things real quickly um someone mentioned about seniors being impacted by the rate increase we actually do have a senior discount available for our seniors who receive um who our utility um users so we'd be glad to talk and help people with that um I can't change history from 1945 that we don't have a property tax that's what happened and so they did the same thing we're doing today they said we'll pay for it through the utilities so that money when the council created the ordinance that says and listen before we had the ordinance that's how the city this that's how the city council balanced the budget as far as being able to meet the needs of Public Safety it just said well let's just take it out of the utilities we have that transfer increase the transfer there was no discipline to it it was just kind of like well let's just make up the difference and what this council did to says we need discipline we can't just use that and keep going to the utilities and just saying well we'll just take more out of the utilities so that ordinance that you all refer to is intended to give discipline and predictability and because we did that now when we go out and talk about our Utility Fund and we talk about the transfer we've never hidden it we talk about it in our budget process we talk about it with our rating agencies it's clearly clearly identified I'll challenge anybody it's clearly identified the amount of the transfer in our um audit and yet that's just who we are that's Mesa and the other alternative is a property tax and there's been some confusion about assuming the rate of secondary property tax at $45 applying that to primary property tax that's not how it works the formula for calculating secondary and primary completely different by the state but that is an option right if we want to do a primary property tax to support Public Safety we can go down that path and I think the Council if they saw that that was going to be a priority we could figure out a way to adjust the utilities um the council pay keeps coming up that's kind of an old issue right the council purposely said we need to make sure that we have competitive salaries to attract um uh council members be and what we've done is it's indexed like other cities right so it's on some kind of schedule based on an index so there's no trying to adjust it based on political reasons right the council allows that to just happen index wise and I will say to suggest that this council is part-time is not true at all they spend a lot of time maybe not between 7 amm all the time except me Mr Freeman because he's out there doing stuff but they're at nights on weekends probably the weekends are some of their busiest times so think about they put in lots of hours uh consider I would definitely consider them a full-time employee um let me see if I have anything else I know I didn't capture everything and I apologize I just Tred to write notes down um oh there was a question about commercial rates why are those going up in double digits well I think you'll appreciate this right as we look at who uses our water 10 15 years ago the majority of the water was being sold to residential accounts so the way we crafted our um rates was to kind of reflect that well if residentials using most of the water they should pay for most of the um the cost of that water well over the last five years that's shifted it's a little more commercial than it is residential so in order to catch up and make sure the commercial is paying their fair share we have had to increase a lot of their rates by more than 10 and 15 % so that they can pick up their fair if we didn't do that the burden we be shifted back to the residential we have separate rates for residents and Commercial the commercial is now seeing significant increases because they're using up more of the resource uh than the residential side and mayor I oh one more thing I don't know how we ever got into this comparison between Mesa and this new city called Gilbert Chandler but we've looked at it right cuz like okay well we've never that's not something we've ever EV evaluated in 2023 these are audited numbers um the city make sure I get my numbers right the city spent $430 million on Public Safety Chandler and Gilbert together spent 232 that's the biggest difference right when you're saying oh you're spending so much more than Chandler Gilbert combined you're absolutely right absolutely and what well how can you spend $200 million more just on Public Safety the city of Mesa has over 574 more Public Safety positions between police and fire than the combined Gilbert Chandler so when you hear us talking about the priority of Public Safety 80% of our budget goes to Public Safety and you just saw that voters approved more and are willing to pay more so when you compare us with Chandler and Gilbert I'll take that difference all the time 574 more police and firemen I can't tell you exactly how that split but that's why we get to your house faster we get there better trained and better equipment so that is a tradeoff right if we don't want to have and I don't no one likes to say we're going to cut Public Safety but that's where it's going just telling you today that's where it's going the other part of the city the other 20% you could not make up the amount that you're trying to save without taking out libraries taking out Parks because it's such a big number right relative to Public Safety versus everything else and let me just check there may be more mayor and I don't I didn't mean to spend so much time but I wanted to make sure I put those items out there thank you no thank you Mr Brady I think you covered the notes that I had made as well you mentioned the the senior discount uh there was a plea here for compassion for rate payers uh what if a we have low income folks who can't afford to pay their utility bills what what's what's the city response yeah we have we work with agencies to provide funding for them to help not only with utilities but with rental assistance and food assistance through Mesa can and New Leaf uh we had them here a couple weeks ago and we're committed to helping to support them city has a $200,000 fund for utility assistance for low-income residents correct correct okay thank you Council any council members wish to address the issues that are before us Mr Summers just a follow on question on that we we had folks in here that were discussing truly having issues with paying their bill and there was some concern about money actually making it into the account what what was the ultimate resolution of that that they didn't have enough funds at this point well I think part of it is yeah we there there are funds available right from the city's perspective but when they were talking about $66,000 behind that wasn't you just utilities that was rent and a lot of other things compounded and the agency Mesa can is has a policy they're not going to write a check for $66,000 and we encourage individuals who are struggling with making payments make some kind of payment and we'll work with you to help you get caught up but what was happening is I think in some most cases people actually sto paying anything during the hottest months and so it wouldn't be hard based on because they weren't paying their rent they weren't paying their utilities that number got pretty um difficult for them so but we're again we mayor mentioned the 200,000 we're New Leaf and they run out of money they call us and we talk about how can we help you get through the rest of the year so we're there to help them out that's not a absolute number it's just the number we budgeted at beginning of the year okay is that that's I mean there was a lot of concern within what's been expressed both here today and two weeks ago and a lot of it is really focused on well two things really one how this impacts the the lowest income of us the ones who struggle the most and two government efficiency which we'll talk about in a bit Yeah and and we have minimized the amount of increase for those at the lower end right that are using the fewest amount of uh fewest amount of water uh but we also have programs to assist with people who are eligible for those programs okay just as a reminder folks if you were here two weeks ago there's a little box and and I hope everybody takes a look at their bill there's a little box up there and somebody remind me what does this go to it's a the name of the program but if you check that box things like for those of us who can afford it rental assistance utility assistance it's us helping out the rest of us who who can't do it so other than that we get grants so that's that's the best way obviously you can go through your faith-based organizations whatever Church you belong to to get that help as well but I think it's important for all of us to think hold on uh that it is important to us because it was expressed here today so how we can express that but I think and we'll talk about this next making sure government spends wisely and what our rates are is also important part of this conversation but that was one of the questions I had posed two weeks ago what those uh what those changes were so I'll let somebody else speak all right thank you Council other comments Mr Freeman thank you you know for everyone here you know this is really a humbling experience to be a lightning rod up here on the dis so I appreciate your comment and I know we're listening to you we've always listened to you and and as I've been out in the community you know it's been very encouraging and I appreciate all the comments because doing the rate utility increase is something that is not our favorite thing to do but a part of our business plan one thing that I I I mentioned before is about four years ago we chose not to do a rate increase and so we voted zero our Reserve fund and all our businesses we doing very well so we took that moment to not do that and but it cost us the next year I think it was almost 8% increase the following year so we're talking about a 4% increase and whether council member votes yes or no please don't get angry or whatever but I I understand that but I just wanted to go through some of the metrics of it so if you're a tier zero or one user you're probably your rate's going to go up a124 and even for waste water it's $168 and for the solid waste it's $177 so combin that's $469 I know that's not the issue I think the issue what I'm hearing that you you think that we have a problem spending our money in the city and I get that because we're always trying to look for efficiencies and I'm thinking well $5 a month is that too much well I had a cup of hot chocolate at Black Rock with Mr Summers and it cost me $457 so I'm going to cut that out of my budget by the way um I I have a lot of you know concerns about how we've done business but one of the primary things I've always focused on is our public safety personnel it's more important as a former firefighter with Mesa that we have the PRI the correct response to our community and the utility fund transfer does that and several years ago we decided to do the 30% transfer and what we're doing today is not only the potential 4% increase but we are leveraging some of the funds El Reserve fund to smooth that rate so it's not a not very high and that takes the reserve fund down a little bit but one of our goals listening to you is that you wanted more police officers out in our community and these funds go directly to boots on the ground and currently we have threey per year on the police department trying to get up to our par of next year and hopefully by April of 2025 is what we're being told is we'll be up to par on our police officers and I'm hoping that goes that way because it's very hard to get candidates even today for all municipalities one of the things that we had is number of years ago the uh voters approved the 0.25% additional tax on our sales tax and that goes to Public Safety we have all these different revenue streams coming in to support our Public Safety and then more importantly we carry a lot more on our books our ledgers for all the businesses that we have and the other municip ities they pay us so that we do services for them and that's one of the things right now we're building four new fire stations we have a combined a police uh fire facility being built over in the Northeast part of Mesa and and I'm really thankful to the voters you know as we look at the data from the last election that we're able to approve the permit base adjustment because that was a very uh difficult time as we look at the budget but the voters trust the council to move forward with these certain metrics and if we didn't have to raise the utility rates every one of us would vote no I think that's that's a given but what we want to do is again 66% of you and I out there we're using 11% of the water that's being sold and brought into the city of Mesa and the others are the your commercial and resid Commercial and Industrial users my iPad just went out so I'm out of out of battery so it's a small thing that we have to ask for a utility rate to increase I've listened to you I'm going to do my best whether I vote yes or no will be determined why when I push the button but I'm thanking thankful for every one of you the next thing we're going to do is we have a strategic planning session coming up next year and we have the budget session coming up and I think we can come to some type of agreement as we work through the strategic planning it's a public forum you can all come and listen and provide input to your council member mayor and council member and then we have budget planning session too that starts when Mr Brady April April so in April all this is going to hit so I think that we can find some measures of agreement during that time but I'm really not that I'm conflicted but I don't know if this is the right time to just say no on on this utility rate increase because it affects our public safety personnel and I want you to know that and so with that I'm going to end there and I appreciate all the comments I'll listen to my colleagues thank you mayor thank you Julie um thank you everyone for participating tonight it really is um such an important part of this process we are a city of 520,000 people and each of our districts every single one of our districts represents almost 990,000 people some say that we have to do what you tell us to do and as elected officials we have to do what is best for the entire city not necessarily what a hundred of you or a thousand people say the loudest not out of 520,000 we have to make these hard decisions all the time and it is often not popular all of us up here take our roles very seriously we all spend way more than part-time hours on this job we study the issues in depth we meet with staff regularly and we try our hardest to understand the complexity of these issues especially when dealing with the budget and things like utility rates everything we do and every vote we make has an impact on those we serve and we do not make these decisions lightly we welcome participation in this process we need to hear from all sides and learn what different people experience I promise you over the last four years we have had so many meetings where we have discussed things that had a way bigger impact on your life and we had five people here and so I am so grateful that we have a room full of people and I even though you totally don't agree with us right now I would love it if you were all sitting in every single one of our meetings and so just as a reminder everything is available every agenda to every meeting is posted well in advance sometimes people accuse us of doing things behind closed doors and this is just not true everything's available online and as a reminder anyone can watch our weekly study sessions in person or online on Mesa Channel 11 YouTube and Facebook every single Thursday morning at 7:30 a.m. and then our Council meetings which are usually the first and third meeting Monday nights of every month I just want to quickly touch on a couple of the reasons I think are important considering this rate increase that have already been talked about at length but no one wants their rates increased no one I haven't met a single person that doesn't want their rate increased um but considering all of this all of the information is important and in my opinion it's well worth the average customer having a modest increase if we don't do it this year we'll have to do it even greater next year as has been said um and that has happened look at cities in towns close by and you'll see upwards of 30% rate increase and none of you want a 30% rate increase I love that Mesa does this smoothing out of the rates that we just do these small increases each year so that we don't have huge rate spikes that would be much harder on all of our budgets we are all feeling the effects of inflation every single one of us since we are obviously elected officials in the city of Mesa we live in Mesa we will also be affected by these rates we all have homes we all have families we all have budgets I have six kids in case you didn't know um even the city of Mesa is affected by inflation that's what we keep talking about there was a comment there was a a commenter up here that went through all of the ways were infected by affected by inflation um and so I think it's just super important to keep that in mind as well um I'm not going to talk about the primary property tax but just to um I don't think mentioning Public Safety is a scare tactic it's because it's true that Public Safety is the majority of our budget and so it would be impacted um I want to express in closing my gratitude to our incredible staff who I challenge with ideas and suggestions and I feel like I'm heard and listened to that doesn't mean that I'm going to get my way at the end being heard is not the same as someone agreeing with you sometimes that means that even after robust discussions we might still not agree but we've come to a better solution at the end and I want to make it as a public record that I have complete confidence in our staff and in our city manager this is why I am supporting the rate increase thank you Julie Council other discussion I have a few questions Mr Summers that came out so uh Mr Brady or staff anybody on your staff you want to answer this a few questions have come up over the last few weeks so first of all we've already established 30% of this uh Utility Fund is transferred in to use in the general fund we've also established 25% of that 30 25 of the 30 is used for Public Safety 5% for General Revenue so this year if we held it to zero what does that what does that look like for our budgets overall have the Police Department fire department already budgeted for this for the next fiscal year is it part yes of the capital program well no it goes into operations so that's all anticipated in our forecast for the budget so we would have to reduce by do you remember what amount 9 million 9 million 9 million 20 okay so it's already part of the fiscal into the budget that that's a little concerning that we would have the budget already established for that transfer without actually having the transfer done hold on hold on hold on hold on you're probably not going to like me at the end because there are just things you have to do that you don't like to do and I'll I'll explain my answer later but I make let me just ask a few things so what if so basically we I had asked before and I asked staff if we could uh Mr wi Stanley is out here and I know Mr wi Stanley he and I talk all the time so we've expressed there's been an expression of concern and you did downstairs as well that there is a decline in the utility Reserve fund and we could see that on some of these charts over the over the years right and there's also going to be a decline in in the general fund now it's not in and of itself a bad thing everybody anybody's been to a financial planner knows they tell you hey put in 6 months to a year of salary just in case you lose a job or something goes wrong wrong right so you can dip into that fund when things get better you can come back up so it's not entirely the worst thing but the concern is that over time long periods of time and looking what some of these numbers are that that number gets fairly low so how are we going to get out of that situation the way things are moving forward with the with the current economy uh and what would is if we did 0% this year as Council had done four years ago what does that look like moving forward for rates over the next four or five years okay let me take the first part so as of today as of the last couple years the reserve fund the savings account for the general fund and the Utility Fund are at a fairly healthy rate relative uh to what is expected by our rating agencies and what is sound financial policy uh but recognizing that we had a lot of pressures coming um on both the general fund and thanks to the legislature for reducing our revenues by $20 million and doing a flat tax it's impacted Us by another $8 million we've had to make up we have to figure out how to make that up at some point that's 115 between now and 2029 if yeah so and one of the things the city does right is we always do a five-year forecast we don't just budget for the next year and so why would we assume the the transfer would be in there because we do five-year forecasting we try to look out out into the five five years and try to anticipate any challenges that we're going to be faced with sometimes that's related to a large plant that may need to come on the large Capital project a new fire station we have to have new firefighters so the reserves are being drawn down it is a planned process now they're going down a little further than we would like especially in the Utility Fund but to suggest that we're out of control and expenditures and that's why it's drawing down well why would we show that we take that and show it to the ra agencies to explain that we have a plan to reduce down our reserves and that during that time we have a plan by consistently small rate increases and obviously we're going to have to look for more efficiencies where we have to delay projects capital projects but we hate to delay projects are going to bring more water to Mesa but those are some of the decisions we'll have to make in the future we did the calculation the council passes on doing a rate increase uh this year uh all things being equal we're at a 15% increase next year so zero right now okay and then what does that look like for the that's assuming that we can maintain at least some Reserve fund well it no it draws down the same draws down the reserves at the same rate it's being as it's being proposed today yes and so and I think Mr wind Stanley said it again probably a couple people this is not a one-time deal first of all this is this year's increase we're we're not talking about next year so what we're not doing is saying yes do an increase right now and then the forecasted increases will happen a lot of that's going to obviously depend on what the budget is um and what inflation does and who said it you rat should come down let's hope so what do that do if we just kept the 6% because right now it's just penel in as 6% over the next 5 years don't get too excited we haven't had those discussions do you know what it does to the what does if we skip this year do not increase to 15% next year oh then in two years do that in two years there's um well it can't happen right legally it can't happen but in two years there's no F I mean we've run out of money and so we run out if we did it if we didn't do it this year 6% next year in the next 5 years we run out of utility re uh Reserve fund well it's running out a negative which can't happen yeah that's right it's a hypothetical but it just shows the stress yeah I understand that and then there was a there was a cons uh there was a question posed about 1% 2% if we took 30% transfer down to 28 and kept that in the reserve fund what's wrong with doing that makes it difficult for budgeting I'm sure well again we just I think we said this right um we've built our budget on the Assumption as we have for the last 80 years that there'll be a contribution from the Utility Fund to the general fund and since 2023 or 2020 whenever we passed the uh ordinance uh We've assumed it goes into um supporting Public Safety and that's how it's built that's the the model we have is the transfer goes 90% of the transfer goes to support Public Safety and so if you go look at the public safety uh funds I think you'll see that it's been increasing significantly over the last five years all right but why was counc member Summers can I just interrupt and and yeah please I I I'd actually like to no if you're thinking about that I just wanted to remind you in subsequent Years starting 25 we're going to have the state shared Revenue decrease and Rental tax revenue decrease in our general fund we've never had that before that's probably around 40 or $50 million so we're on top of the cuts we've already done we'd have to even go further I mean we're going aggressively I I don't know how we keep up the services and what we provide in our city if we go deeper I I really don't know it's it's it's a completely valid question right it's because you this is what the budget is but that's also a discussion that we're having here about what the budget should be it I just think about back in two 2008 when the whole world fell apart I mean this is bad but 2008 was worse and folks were losing their jobs Revenue was going down nobody was loaning money it we had to make the balance work and we and we did make a lot of tough decisions we reduced Staffing we reduced the budget I think 20% it was a considerable decrease in those funds so the headwinds are also an opportunity to start to really look at and and now I'm going to start to pontificate so I apologize the bad news is that most of you left when I started doing this last time but it it's an opportunity to look at these headwinds and say now it's time to look at efficiency just take a damn vote Jesus take a vote all right that's one down I told you I cleared the room this this conversation we're having now is not the first one uh in the history of Mesa those who have been around a while have seen have seen this before it it comes in Cycles because we make decisions as a community you know and like one gentleman said government grows and then it there comes a point where it just breaks like okay that's enough and we did that the you know one of the big ones was uh we did a a financing the future back in 2004 2005 right that anybody remember that no so that was a citizen committee that reviewed some some material and they they came up with you know how how do we fund this city that doesn't have a property tax that transfers utilities a lot of the stuff we're talking about now the concern how much we transfer what it goes to what we spend it on it you read it out of this you can read out of this report it it's this it's the same conversation that we always need to have and the same suggestions too like here's one reinstate the sales on food tax increase the bed tax right after that by the way is don't reinstate the food tax because that's horrible talk about bad for folks who can hardly afford it sell all or part of the city's utility system so uh somebody had the idea here of why don't we just off get rid of uh uh the electric utility that idea was explored in 2025 you know what happened nobody wants to buy it right yeah it it turns out our utility rates for for that system SRP those of us who are in SRP we can celebrate a little bit it's a little bit cheaper uh turns out the rates for Mesa is more on on tune for APS but APS has gone up too they've gone repeatedly to the ACCC and gotten increases in their rates over the last few years and that's why all of us are like for crying out loud eggs are $3 a gallon gas is going up actually going down a little bit right now it's like my my gas price has gone up uh fairly considerably in Southwest Gas actually those of you who uh who live in superti Springs in my my district your gas rates are actually less than mine the uh I was reading some material David Jenkins was is president of the conservatives for responsible uh stewardship and he's been tracking some of the the rates on the private sector so Southwest Gas in 24 netted 24 million above their 225 million in highend expected range they're they keep raising their rates past two years ACC granted Southwest Gas APS and te fuel cost adjustments it'll cost you $100 a year so most of us except for the Southwest Gas don't have it Southwest rates 99.1% in 2021 $1.7 million windfall for the company largest in its history and then last year 7.6% more told you I'd clear the room so this is why we're all pinching I get it I'm feeling it too it it is absolutely just been out of control the last few years on how much stuff has gone up I read this the other day for somebody said that we havn't had any public meetings and all that and I got to admit you're kind of right I didn't have a public meeting on that I did go around and talk about bonds I did talk about this uh to several people if you had emailed me and you could still do this I'll send you some of the data on the pressures that the inflationary presss that we're feeling just in our Utility Fund so since fiscal year n 2019 to 2020 almost messed that up last time when we shut down over Co these have been the increases in cost to the Utility Fund 41.2 for Fleet Maintenance how much is your car cost you remember trying to buy car or truck 3 four years ago you couldn't same problem that we're having 63.2% for landfall and recycle uh recycling so every time you throw your trash out it's gone up 62% just to get rid of this stuff 75.6 for water here's a great one 10 16.4% for water treatment chemicals anybody own a pool have you tried to get acid or chlorine all the things that we have to get to to clean it right to to clean the water and that's just to maintain it's it's absolutely out of control and I'll get to your points too so the increase in the costs have gone up and they've also gone up over the year overy year I told you this this is going to be hard to hear but here's some other problems too while these costs are going up we still have to invest in the infrastructure right so the water pipe the sewer pipes those types of things and here's why in we're Arizona entered a tier 2 storage I think in 2023 that's 592 th000 acre feet of Colorado River water if memory serves and we're not even done yet that that's 34% of cap decline in the water a drop in water you want your rates to go up if we lose water off the Colorado or we can't replace it 21% of the the River Supply and you hear some of the comments that that's that's our Key Supply so for for folks in my district mostly East Mesa we're on the capap the rest of M is on Project they have water we don't so if we don't invest in some of the infrastructure and I know it's driving up cost and it's it's just making us pinch we could be in ass serious world if we see a significant drop in that in the water that we're seeing we have to invest in it now and that does have a cost to it it does so the question though is and I'm going to get back to my concern is the efficiency in in in the government and I think I wouldn't go through this again because as you can see kind of turned into a political document but looking at how Mesa what our spending is and focusing on the revenues and bringing down some of that spending needs to be a community conversation and it's not an easy one because everybody everybody has their ideas of what to cut right nobody wants to cut Public Safety we're on agreement right but not all of us are in agreement you've heard of defund the police right we're not doing that you know next year we're going to have fully staff Police Department I want that to happen next year so there's a cost to that but there are people that don't want to see that there there are other costs that some of us just don't approve of you know what about the library in in southeast Mesa do we close that we we just voted for for Parks Parks right we're going to build a pool in in southeast Mesa and and some others um that well that's a great question you know you're not going to use it right I'm probably not going to use it family ma'am I'm sorry we don't we don't the public hearing is over yeah but but you do make you make a point right you don't see the reason why I'm probably never going to use it either but a lot of people see a value in that and my point is that this is a community conversation we need to bring down the cost of government the best we can but we have to do it in a way that has that Community conversation that recognizes that all right I want to I don't want to cut this but I'm willing to sacrifice that because somebody else was willing to make a sacrifice on the other side so we we can't do that tonight we can't do that in the next few months this has to happen over the budget process over the the course of the next year when we have a a new mayor and and Council sitting here because I I do think there are some really good points about how far are we going to dip into that savings account of ours are we going to bring it back up what should we cut I I know what you don't like and and and others do and and I know that we all like our police officers and we want to preserve them so but we have to have that conversation because it is one big pool of of money but at the end of the day it it does come down to this gentleman's business uh I I really like your your comments sir that you you really have a choice right you you can either add Services you can cut your services you can increase your your cost or you can keep your your cost the same and then just shrink the size of the coke bottle that you buy out of the machine you know shrink flation but it's all about how are we going to balance this whole equation out so that we do stay in business and we do appreciate what we're spending there's a lot there's a lot of work to do I and I tell you it's it's not I know I'm not short on speeches somebody asked me if I was going to make a 12-minute speech and it's probably been 30 so I apologize for that but I here's the unfortunate reality and we've had a conversation with someone here earlier today we need to have this conversation but I also need to make sure that the Utility Fund who which is facing all these inflationary pressures that has to have all that uh investment in it maintains its fund because if we zero this out like they did four years ago we end up with double digit increases or we use up our savings account or we do what SRP and Seth whest gas and others are doing is they're coming back to the ACC and saying we need these increases even over the next few years just to make up for the time that we didn't so find Micha Scott and get a better man sir you're out of line be quiet so we we do have a lot of work to do but I I I can't do what's wrong for the system but I can promise you that moving forward we absolutely have to look at the spending part of the equation and you can hear there's there's sometimes differences on this Council as well but for this I'll I'll have to support thank you Council other discussion M go forth um I know we're all getting very tired and Scott used up everybody's time so I'll I'll try to keep it brief um I think you've heard all the justifications there's there's really no reason for me to reiterate all the reasons that prices are have gone up from inflation due to inflation and growth um I think what you're asking is uh why don't we just cut why don't we look for more cost cutting measures what are you doing to do that and I I think what I can say is as as uh we talked about this has been an ongoing process over the last couple months and this Council does challenge our staff we do ask the hard questions we did start with what are we doing as a city to um respond to the increase in prices because we can't just look to and as many of you pointed out you all don't get a Lifeline from anyone else um and and so we are very sensitive to that and we and we challenge staff and we make sure um that what they are proposing and recommending is is the absolute uh uh most conservative I am a low tax small government conservative those are my principles and that's where I come from when we have these discussions with staff um we can always look for better efficiencies I I agree absolutely can we do a better job of finding more probably and we've heard you loud and clear on that that we're going to that we need to do a better job of that and you've heard several of us up here set commit to doing that um again I don't want to go into we have these big projects we have infrastructure we have steat costs we all know that um Mesa continues to be an affordable place to live it continues to be affordable place to live and because of that uh and because of the consistency with the way and the financial philosophy with the way we do our utility right because they're conservative and because they're in line with the historical past increases um I I am going to support this rate increase thank you Council any other discussion all right uh Miss Duff was that yes um I I'll just be real short and I appreciate everybody coming here and expressing your concerns and everything and I invite anybody and everybody we will meet one on-one we will go through line by line on the the cafer we will go through that and work through that so we can see that we're so we're talking about the same figures for the same expenses and stuff and on because I think there's a little bit of a debate but we are open to having those conversations having a meeting digressing on you know all this information it is the the um budget online is 700 pages I mean it's it's it's a lot but let's take it apart if you have any questions we have staff as council members we will work line by line and and work through the questions and um we've been working with our utility departments and having these conversations and having these meetings and multiple study sessions since September so this isn't a very very sudden um i' also like to mention that Mesa is ranked again and again and in this past year again one of the best run cities in the United States wallet Hub does an annual rating looking at a lot of factors and how what our costs are what our efficiencies are what amenities we have and MSO is 25th this year we've been a little higher but we are the top city in Arizona so this is not a sloppy sloppy institution we're very efficient we work hard at trying to be better all the time and Innovative and sometimes those Innovations do take Investments so that we continue our service Services efficiently as we go forward especially when when it comes to the subjects of Water and Electric the demands out there are crazy ask anybody in an industrial or large complexes trying to get water there it's it's a challenge to get you know the the water commitments that they sometimes meet electric is the same thing and we run against those challenges too and what that does is escalate the costs um so there are challenges in water and electricity and we are doing our very best um there is online I'm almost done and online there is a rate for Wastewater and water and solid waste and City sales tax of all how we compare to other cities there is a chart and we are right in the middle in all our costs the chart is online and okay let get rid of the utility department let's just get rid of it then we are paying SRP APS Southwest Gas whatever um providers there are at the current rates that you have but then they're taking the sweep of the money right and we still have to fund our Public Safety and a general fund and where are we going to get that now it would be a more expensive place to live um I know you're tired I'm tired too and so I'll I'll just leave it at that and thank you all for coming and participating in this meeting thank you um I'll just say that uh Mesa is proud of the fact that our middle name is Affordable that has been our reputation my whole life and even before that and the reason the people come to mes Arizona is because we have that reputation for being affordable it's a fact that housing is more affordable here when you go to the grocery store ma'am I'll be done in in a second all right rud you can wait outside if you'd like uh being a being an affordable Community is important to you that's why you're here expressing your point of view I Mesa continues to be committed to being an affordable City now the there's been some accusations here that we have a spending problem that's just not borne out by the facts when you look at the the home we we very careful track the the Mesa costs in comparison to our other cities and has and has has been indicated there are a couple cities that are a few cents below us and the vast majority of the region is more expensive there's also we do comparisons of the amount per capita spent on government again Mesa there's a two or three cities that are that are spend less than we do the vast majority spend more than this because uh we're all subject to inflation and so what you've SE across the board in the region and throughout the country is increases in utility rates Mesa is uh the proposed rate that we are proposing is far less than what other cities and other utility companies are doing the reason for that is because we have been wrestling with this for months and we have and and we have initially came back to staff and said you know what can we lower those proposed increases more than you know we don't like can we get by the the bare minimum in order to do that we put off off large capital projects that need to be done in order to preserve these utilities and services for our children and grandchildren eventually we're going to have to do them but we have delayed some of those and we have also said we're going to increase rates Le less than the amount of increased costs so that's what necessitates us going into our reserves so we are doing the bare minimum increase possible and uh going through some contortions in order to accommodate that so that we can continue to to show compassion for our rate payers and we continue to do the absolute minimum when it comes to passing on costs to our to our rate payers so uh I know all of that is is not appreciated by this crowd to the extent we would like it to be but it's it's it's the the facts so for those reasons I uh I am compelled uh by math and by the reality of the situation uh to support this increase all right uh well call for the question I see there's been a motion made by Mr Heredia seconded by council member spillsbury mayor can I just first I just want to make sure it's clear that you're voting on all of items 9 a through 9 G is at the intent for all council members thank you thank you very much uh Mr Smith Council so that this is uh agenda items 9B through 9h oh 9 a yes okay I'm sorry 9 a through 9g correct yes okay so the the the motion is for 9 a through 9g all right are we clear on that Council please vote thank you that motion passes unanimously the next uh item on our agenda is items from citizens present I do have one request to speak uh Alex and I'm sorry sir I should have your name down by now I'm going to I'm going to learn it as soon as I'm not here anymore Alex vanich can you say it for me vichich okay chich try to you have three minutes thank you sir mayor City uh Council um you didn't disappoint us you did what we thought you would do so we expected this um the models the models the models well maybe the model needs to be changed we're hoping that coming up in April uh you'll hear us a little bit louder I I I I'm hoping that for those of you that are concerned about your increased cost of living in Mesa will come back uh in the real world companies have to make cuts and the cuts usually happen in personnel and I understand there was no discussion here or no ideas thrown out hey maybe there's some people that if somebody leaves somebody retires maybe we don't replace that person you it might not necessarily have to fire somebody or let somebody go there are different ways of reducing costs let's just be a little bit more creative with with some of these numbers I would appreciate that next time being mentioned um the water 72% of the water is for farming I think uh we're getting water from the hila and the Salt River most of it's what um there's plenty of water for residential and so yeah we can talk about that later but that being said uh we'll be seeing you we hope that the community will be engaged and continue to be engaged and uh we'll see you next year mayor Giles congratulations on your final uh final city council meeting thank you have a good night okay that concludes our agenda is there a motion to adjourn thank you Mr Summers and Mr Freeman all in favor please say I I thank you we are adjourned [Music]