Thank you everyone for our council meeting here May 19th. All of our council members are present. So thank you. We're going to begin this meeting by invocation by Pastor Tim Alman from the Christ Greenfield Church followed by the pledge of allegiance. And I believe he's going to be on video. Pastor Almond. So with that, please stand and then we'll have the pledge of allegiance. Good evening, Mesa City Council members. My name is Pastor Tim Almond from Christ Greenfield Lutheran Church and School. We have a campus in Gilbert as well as East Mesa at Silver Valley Elementary School. But we also have partnered with you to work toward eradicating uh poverty and and addiction and despair uh depression and anxiety through our ministry called La Mesa uh there in kind of central Mesa as well as our partnership with Eden Village which will be Arizona's first tiny house project uh undergoing fundraising all of that right now as as we speak uh to serve those who often cannot find full-time employment. for one reason or another uh but are in need of dignity and care and love and support. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your partnership in bringing love and light out into the community. And I just love to offer a simple prayer as you begin your work tonight. Heavenly Father, thank you for every single man and woman who has given of their life to bring love and light and wholeness into uh the city of Mesa. I pray Holy Spirit that you would come give a spirit of love and care and collaboration. May they listen well to one another and may they establish uh policies that are pleasing in your sight uh for care and love for every person who calls Mesa their home. Uh be with them in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you. God bless your evening. Peace. Thank you. Join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance 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 everyone. Uh just a recognition, I want to thank those that um participated our mayor and council and firefighter Mark Kelly Keller's uh funeral this past week. We appreciate all those that work so hard and also a success story on the neon gardens. We open that. We had the ribbon cutting for that. So in the future, you'll be able to see our neon garden. But tonight, I'd like to recognize someone whose leadership has shaped Mesa today as we know it. Since uh 2006, city manager Chris Brady has led our city with integrity. He has guided Mesa through times of great challenge and great opportunity, helping us grow, thrive, and become the city that we are today. On behalf of the city council, our staff, and the Mesa community, I have a proclamation, Mr. Brady, to read your behalf. And I'm proud to present that to you. And I want to read a portion of it be about your remarkable service and lasting legacy. And I know this just doesn't happen by yourself. Your sweet wife, Shauna Brady, was behind you all the way because I'm sure when you come home from work, sometimes you need to vent. But with that said, let me just read a portion of the proclamation. Christopher J. Brady has served as a city manager of Mesa, Arizona with dedication, integrity, and visionary leadership since January 1st, 2006. And under his guidance, the city has experienced remarkable growth, innovation, and prosperity, including the revitalation revitalization of downtown Mesa and the expansion of education, economic development opportunities. His leadership and visions attracted multiple Fortune 500 companies to Mesa, including Apple, Google, and Meta, brought Arizona State University to downtown along with the construction of the worldclass media and immersion experience called the Mix Center, and directed the construction of the city's first true city hall intentionally designed to embody the transparency in government. Mr. Brady has consistently served the citizens, its citizens, and knowledge with respect, integrity, and instilling in all city employees the importance of embodying those core values and delivering great service, great work with a great attitude, a philosophy known as the Mesaway. and the mayor and city council of Mesa, Arizona, together with city staff and community members wish to recognize and express profound gratitude for Christopher Brady's exceptional service, transformant leadership, and enduring legacy. With that, by virtue as mayor vested in me, we do proclaim May 19th, 2025 as city manager Christopher J. Brady Day. So, what a great recognition. With that, Chris, will you and Shauna join us at the photo at the Please council. [Applause] Okay ready. My pleasure. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] [Music] Like I'd like to say on to your next rodeo, Mr. Brady. Item two is the consent agenda. Miss King, if you'll come forward and however, we're going to take 8A off the consent agenda. Yes. And we'll go through that. Thank you. Thank you, mayor and council members. These are items on the consent agenda. All items listed with an asterct will be considered as a group by the city council and enacted on with one motion. There will be no separate discussion unless a council member or citizen requests in which event the item will be approved removed from the consent agenda and considered on as a separate item. Item two, approval of minutes of previous meetings as written. Item 3 A, act on liquor license application for Bookaeppo, 1730 South Val Vista Drive. Item 3 B, act on liquor license application for Power Meeting Center, 2224 West Rio Salado Parkway. Item 3 C, act on liquor license application for Courtyard Mesa at Reglville West at 2224 West Rio Salado Rio Salado Parkway. Item 3D, act on liquor license application for Sheridan Mesa Hotel at Ridleyville West, 860 North Riverview. Item 3E, act on liquor license application for Guru's Indian Kitchen, 4459 South Power Road. Item 4 A, approving three-year term contract with two-year renewal options for vehicle rental services for the police department. Item 4 B, approving 8-month term use of cooperative contract with renewal options for sewer and inspection CCTV equipment, parts, and services for the water resources department. Item 4 C, approving one-year term use of cooperative contract with renewable options for emergency pipeline and sewer repair services for the water resources department. Item 5 A through 5H are resolutions authorizing grant applications by the following agencies to the totem modem Nation and accepting subsequent awards funded as a pass through grants. Item 5A from Compud. Item 5B is from Desert Sound Performing Arts. 5 C Gene Lewis Boxing Club and Youth Center. 5D, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 5E, Save the Family Foundation of Arizona. 5F, Alice Cooper Solid Rock Teen Center. 5G, Tooth Buds. 5H is from the City of Mesa Office of Urban Transformation. Item 5, approving resolution to enter into a conduit occupancy agreement with light source communications to occupy portions of city-owned conduits. Item 5J, approving resolution of adopting and publishing the city of Mesa comprehensive safety action plan as a guiding document regarding the vision for transportation safety in the city of Mesa. Item 5K, approving the city of Mesa's 2025 title 6 program updates as required for every three years by the Federal Transit Administration. Item 5 L, approving resolution to enter into a lease agreement between the city of Mesa and the US Postal Service for city-owned property located at 135 North Center Street. Item 5M, approving resolution to enter into a development agreement with Higgley 202 industrial regarding sewer line improvements and temporary use of private wastewater system for the project related to zoning case 23276 on property located east of Higgley Road and north of Thomas Road. Item 6A, introduction of ordinance anna annexation case 24-1031 for annexing property at the northwest corner of Elliot and Haw Road. Item 6B, introduction of ordinance amending title 5, chapter 13, section two of the Mesa City Code to provide solid waste residential development fee as set forth in the schedule of fee and charges. Item 60, introduction of ordinance with the proposed amendments to chapters 34 and title 87 of title 11 of the Mesa City Code pertaining to manufactured homes, parks, and subdivisions, and recreational vehicles and recreational vehicle parks and subdivisions. Item 7 A, approving subdivision plat for Coyote Landing, a condominium condominium phase 2 for property located north of the northwest corner of Crimson Road and Southern Avenue. And item 8A has been removed from the consent agenda item. Mayor and council members, these are your items on your consent agenda. Thank you. I have a motion, please. I have a motion by Vice Mayor Summers, a second by Council Member Duff. Please cast your vote. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll go back to uh item 8A, take action and adopt the tenative 2025 budget. We have some members of our committee like to speak. Mr. Davis, if you'll come up first and then followed by Darin Taylor here on deck, Mr. Davis, thank you. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Carrie Davis and I'm here to discuss the budget. The city's proposed budget for 2526 indicates that there will be approximately 4,800 employees. That's what's included in the full-time equivalent for the city's 2025 2026. That amounts to an increase from the prior year from 4,692, an increase of 108 employees. It increases the expenditure for compensation by 58 almost $59 million, which is an 8 8.8% increase. It's going from 667 million to 725 million. And so with the reduction of the sales tax for rentals and the reduction for the shared revenue from the state, it seems that the city is looking at a reduction of somewhere in the neighborhood of about $40 million. And so I recommend that the city not adopt this budget and that you send it back to staff for additional consideration to meet the needs of the community and also to reduce the amount of expense that the city is paying. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Miss Taylor, and then Antwanet Andrew is on deck. City of Mesa Council members, Mayor Freeman, thank you for having me. Um, I first want to thank you for having the two budget meetings that you hel you held for the public. Um, I do appreciate that you guys came together to do that for us. But with my thanks, I also do bring considerable concerns. Um, I am a resident. I'm a constituent of district 2 and I am imploring you to please consider tableabling the vote, sending it back for more consideration on the budget. And here's why. This is aside from the fact that in those two meetings, as much as I appreciated them, these were holding up phone boards with information that we could have found online. It was simple to review the QR codes for comment and in discernment. They showed me that not all the CO council members were present to answer questions and that gave me a loss of confidence in the fact that I would be submitting questions through a QR code instead of having somebody there to answer those questions on a Q&A forum. That points to the potential that not everybody has a comprehensive understanding of the budget and I feel like the council really should be the guiding members who are determining whether or not this budget is good for the city of Mesa. The city of Mesa does appear to be growing with developments. My issue is that these developments are built out of debt. And though we have a AAA financial rating, it shows that we are good at managing debt and that is not admirable. Currently, the city of Mesa's debt is approximately 78.8% of its annual revenue. That is egregious. And that debt is being passed on to the residents and the local businesses to pay back through things like the utility fund, which is estimated to increase by 44% in the next 5 years. It is proposed that we will have increases in capital taxes. This stifles businesses from desiring to plant themselves here and stay in Mesa along with other increased taxes and fees often labeled as other which does not build confidence as a resident. At top this we are currently paying out of our city reserves approximately $25 million a year to keep the metro rail going which is truly a depreciating asset. I would love to see that ripped out entirely. Give us back our roads to the citizens. We are a suburban city. We are not an urban city. It is truly depreciating. The council report states the following that the reason that we have increases is primarily due to the combination of increased cost of existing positions to recruit, retain quality employees, increased overtime costs, and increased cost of commodity services and contracts. This language is vague and the platitudes of making Mesa better are incipid and disingenuous when we are spending more than we can afford. Residents do demand to witness better financial management, not more spending. I want to see cuts in budgeting that seek to find a staggering $51 million increase to our city in other departments and arenas. And I know you guys can come together as a council. You're intelligent and instead of going into debt to make future profits, which is not for leadership, I am encouraging you to come together and find areas where you can take money from where it is, not where it can come from. Thank you for hearing me out. Thank you for thinking rationally. Thank you, Miss Taylor. Answers. Thank you, council members. Uh, I'd like to mirror a little bit of what uh Dorian was saying. Uh while I do appreciate having the opportunity to view the budget, I feel like the budget in its current form had many other or miscellaneous categories that I feel the Mesa residents deserve to know better um in clear and concise terms where that money is flowing in from and how it's being paid out. Um, and also, you know, I would like if the city could share with the Mesa residents previous projects paid by for with the bonds uh and where this city has greatly benefited. Currently, we're still in a deficit even with the newly acquired bonds that we voted on in the 2024 election. Um, based on the comparison charts that I was able to view on the 14th, the data that was pulled and used was pulling from cities like Phoenix, which is an urban and distinctly opposite of Mesa's suburban makeup. This landed flat with me. It was misleading and frankly a waste of poster board in my opinion. Um, as a realer, I would not pull comps for a property in a completely different demographic to sell a home here in Mesa. So I I feel based on these few facts alone, I would urge you just to table this uh voting on this budget until more clarity can be made available to the residents um and have a clear financial uh picture and you know because this is landing on the residents backs right we're we're the one that's responsible for the debt. I don't think um I have I don't I don't feel that there's a vast understanding um of the generally accepted accounting principle here to just realize and understand that we are in debt. So that's all I have. Thank you Antoinette. Mr. Win Stanley you're up followed by Frankie Bower. Good evening Mr. mayor, esteemed council members, and resilient city staff. My name is David Winstanley. I live in Southeast Mesa, just south of Eastmark uh in District 6. First, thank you and especially the city staff for being open to input from your constituents. You they have accepted multiple questions in multiple formats and responded kindly even when the questions were uneducated. I'm beginning to learn the difference between how a city finance requirements are compared to the corporate world. I would also praise you and the staff for developing a five-year plan. Um, that is really terrific. But I'm speaking here tonight because until an hour ago, uh, I had not heard any difficult discussions. I do not sense, uh, a commitment to balance, to use Mr. Brady's word, the city's expenses against its income. The value of a five-year plan is lost if it does not define the path forward to achieve its objective. Obviously, we disagree about the objective because that plan presented tonight still shows six consecutive years of expenses higher than income. It is a plan that hopes to survive on savings, the reserve balance, until the growth of the economy raises income. Your five-year plan shows a small decrease in general governmental next year. That's kudos for that. But then it increases corresponding to exactly the amount of income that comes in not reducing uh or not grasping the ultimate point of trying to get income equal to expenses. Um when will we have the hard discussions seriously eliminating the structural deficit? We are only talking about 5 a.5% 5.3% next year. Councilwoman Go forth asked me directly where would I cut? I took a look at page five from tonight's budget and I have the following observations knowing full well that there are caveats we can't talk about in three minutes. I noticed that the city attorney has an increase of 11% in the budget while the city library services has a 10% cut. Is that really the priority you intended? Data and performance management and economic development show increases of 17% and 6% respectively, while parks and wrecks shows a decrease of 2.3%. Again, is this the priority you intended? Perhaps we can reduce or eliminate the city's contribution to visit Mesa since they are more than adequately funded by hotel bed taxes. In the police budget, the executive bureau has increases of 30% while the operations bureau has only 7.8%. 8%. Our officers deserve equal pay, but why does their management need so much more? The arts and culture budget is increased 6%. It is not obvious that they have contributed their 2%. Finally, there are two big swing values in the budget that are hard to understand uh and obviously can't be covered here. Centralized appropriations uh has a hund00 million that has not been spent in the past two years and yet it's budgeted again. Thank you for letting me speak and I look forward to continuing these discussions next year, but perhaps a few weeks earlier so there's more time for discussion before you have to pass the budget. Thank you. Thank you, David. Frankie, hello everybody. Uh Frankie Bower, District 6. I'm in the Malberry community. Uh, mayor and council members, I also am talking about the budget and uh oh, so sorry I just lost my apologies. Uh, we cannot keep kicking the can down the road. Year after year, we ask residents for more. More taxes, more bonds, more sacrifice while failing to make the hard decisions that would prevent this pattern. That has to change. For example, we've known since 2021 that Arizona was moving to a flat tax. We've known since 2023 that the rental tax would be eliminated. That's four and two years respectively of advanced notice. And yet, no meaningful financial adjustments were made in that time. No ser serious effort to prepare. While you may not be asking the public for more right this moment, the overspending projected over the next 5 years makes it clear that it's going to continue to come year-over-year if we don't make any changes. Uh and that's no no longer going to be acceptable. We should not approve this budget as it stands today. There's clear opportunity to cut non-essential spending uh in areas the arts area, the culture area, the recreation area. These are very valuable, but they're not the the vital resources that we need to be maintaining as a city. Um, instead, we should be looking at funding these programs instead of with public dollars, looking at uh the nonprofit sectors, the private sectors to see how they can help supplement them so we can keep the services but get the burden off of the city and off of the taxpayer. Um, there's also still room, as some of my colleagues have mentioned. Sorry, I keep losing my page. Um, to streamline services and consolidate roles within city operations, also to look at overall compensation. But instead of responsibly tightening spending, this budget continues a pattern of excessive growth with little regard to long-term sustainability. If this budget is approved as is, just don't come back to us as the voters in 2026 asking for more bonds or tax increases. We got to do the work now. We need to do the responsible thing and just confront the truth. Right now, Mesa has a second highest outstanding bond debt in the state, not a statistic to ignore. This is a flashing red light to us that if we don't shift course now, we're going to keep digging ourselves deeper into a hole rather than working to climb out of it. Council members Heredia and Duff, you guys have been in office now or on the council for over seven years. You've had multiple budget cycles, ample opportunity to make the kinds of changes that we desperately need. Spills, I think you've been on for about four years or so. Um, Vice Mayor Summers, uh, council members, go forth, Adams, and of course our our newly appointed mayor. This is your chance. You guys are new to your seats, but and the trend is very clear. I've watched every budget meeting. I've watched every study session. I've seen the questions that you're asking. I can see you guys can see there's opportunity. There's things we need to cut. Let's postpone this. Let's dive deeper. Let's find where we can cut rather than continuing to kick this down the line. We can't follow the same path that got us here. We elected you to make the tough calls even if it's not the popular one. Please do so. And thank you guys very much for everything you do. And Mr. Brady, congratulations. And I hope you enjoy your retirement. Thank you, Frankie. With that said, Mr. Brad, do you want to address any of the questions there and then council if you want to? No, I will just say mayor because I've said this all along. Um, Mesa's financial position is solid and it's not just from a um city manager who has over 40 years experience doing municipal budgets in some of the most complex organizations in this country. whether it's the city of Houston, whether it's the city of San Antonio, uh whether it's here in Mesa, Arizona, I've had my hands on all those budgets. I've seen those um analyses. I've seen the budget processes work and I've uh know where we stand as a city. And then outside of my word, um, you can look at most recently the reviews we had by the New York rating agencies, which I'll praise Mesa for its 5-year forecast, for its ability to um see up ahead and make changes, which we've always done. I've been doing this for 20 years in Mesa. Uh, they've seen how we make those adjustments that we um understand the dynamics of the budget. Um, we recognize also that this is a growing community. Uh, when individuals talk about, oh, look at how much money this city is spending this year. Yeah, we're adding police stations, we're adding fire stations, we're adding libraries. Uh, those are expensive, but we recognize that over a period of time. uh as we've allocated and set aside money uh we will be fine throughout the five-year forecast even to the fifth year we come very close every year of meeting our stated financial goals now do we have work to do absolutely but we say that every year um and it's hard it's a hard decision it's a complex budget um recently there was a story in the newspaper about uh comparing municipal debt Mesa was average right in there with everybody else what's different about Mesa when people compare not too many other cities have an electric utility. Not too many other cities have a gas utility or provide the water and wastewater services like we do and provide for regional services of a wastewater treatment plant like we do. So that's kind of a tough comparison because it's not apples to apples but this is a solid budget. U we recommend it. Council is the tenative budget that sets the caps sets the high limit. Uh we appreciate the input we've received from the council, from the community. The online um uh comments have been very helpful and we had those conversations just a few minutes ago. Um and it's it's a tough conversation because budgets do impact people's lives. Um and we we're always sensitive to that, but we recommend this budget and thanks for everybody for participating and uh we look forward to continuing these dialogues uh through the next year. Thank you. Thank you councel. Anybody want to add something? If not, okay. Thank go ahead vice mayor. Thank you. Mr. Brady, downstairs um during our study session, you discussed how different departments were impacted differently on the amounts of cuts and we heard a little bit about that today. Could you reiterate what you stated downstairs and why some are cut different than others? Absolutely. Thank you, uh, vice mayor. Um, so listen, when we we set a goal for achieving a certain reduction in in, um, whether it's reduction or increase in revenues, uh, for the city for that we wanted to accomplish at the end of this year, that was about $9 million. But to begin the process, to kick off the process and in fairness to all our departments, we um, as a city manager, which I'm by charter required to provide a proposed budget to the city council, we went and did we have a budget kickoff meeting. It's very exciting. Uh, and I I came forward and explained the challenges that we had as a community, as a city, in our budget with the flat tax impacts, um, the rental tax impacts. Um, and this was the first year was fully effective. So, for to say, well, we knew in advance, yeah, we talking about it all year getting ready for the budget, but we talked about the need for us to start making some incremental changes in our budget. And so we started with a 2% and our goal is to get a 2% total for the budget. So we had every department provide that to us. But obviously as we're going to those discussions, as hard as it is to make uh some of these cuts, and you saw that in just parks and recreation today, it's very very difficult. It impacts people's quality of life. But there are support departments um that support public safety mostly. So, for example, Fleet, the majority of their work that they do is making sure those patrol cars get in and out, making sure the solid waste trucks are ready to go. And it just didn't make a whole lot of sense to keep cutting back the mechanics that do that work because it meant it would impact our ability to provide services. So, we were able to find and there's a a variety of there's just a handful of those kind of departments, right, that where we have that that's not typical. most of the departments came through with their um reductions or found uh opportunities to increase uh revenues, but that's how we do it. At the end of the day, we were shooting for $9 million. We came back to the council with 11 billion. So, we overachieved and we are um optimistic about the future, but there's going to still have to be some tough decisions next couple years. We're trying to make it incremental. Um not trying to overreact. Um because if we were to go and make a big decision and lay cut programs and then find out next year you didn't need to, that would be a bigger mistake uh than what we're doing now. So thank you, Vice Mayor. Any more? Anyone else? Miss Bilsbury. So this we vote on a tenative budget which then caps it and then we I mean can we continue to make changes throughout the year as as we see a need? I mean I know that's really hard on the departments I'm sure but it is I mean you're presenting a their budget plan for the next year beginning July 1st. Um but I think the conversation knowing going I think council probably when you come back after the summer break um which would be like you know whatever August se September time frame it's a good check in to see how the forecast is doing how the economy is doing and then getting as you get ready to go in early on right before January February when the budget starts heating up maybe have some conversations about okay if we're going to cut out of 3% like maybe have those conversations about well what's kind of the range of sensitivity the council's open to right because you know every year it's going to get tighter and tighter and so even if it's parks and wreck and say okay how should we prioritize those programs but I also think you need to hear with what we have how many thousands of people are going to still enjoy a lot of programs but I I think it's always good to kind of have that check-in and then you can make some decisions about what kind of reductions, what does next year look like? Is it another 2%? What does it look like going forward? Because if all we're looking at is our reserves and how much we have in reserves, we're good next year. We're good the next year. It gets good and a little smaller, our goal is to start course correcting a little bit to make sure we're not drawing down so much so quickly. But we can do that. We have time. That's why the rating agencies like the fact that we've built up our reserves so significantly that we can absorb the news fire stations, the new police stations, and we can make small adjustments over time to make it work. And so we have time, but we can't pause and just say, "Well, we won't we will skip this year." that I guess that be my first advice is keep having the conversations, keep evaluating where you're at and just keep making those little tweaks every year. And that's what we've done. We've been doing this for a long time. And when we show the rating agencies, hey, four years ago, 5 years ago, here's how we thought that was going to be. We're very conservative, but look, we actually did better than that. And that's pretty consistent with where we're at. And and I do appreciate the suggestion to hold the community meetings earlier. I I think that having um the community have a voice in this was good this year, but they were the second one was last week, which didn't give a lot of time to do a lot with some of those comments. We got um quite a bit more um comments submitted than I was expecting. So, those those were helpful for me. Um I think that was obvious in our last discussion we had during our study session. So, I would recommend moving those earlier as well. I know it's hard because we are in the middle of a budget season with different departments presenting, but we could do that maybe before we even finish the um well, I'm speaking for Scott. Sorry, Scott. Or it could happen where you start instead of waiting till with all the council presentations, we could start maybe a little sooner than that. Um so you could you could certainly do that. I think um what's important is council, you listened, right? You listen to those online comments and the majority of those online comments are don't cut our programs. Don't raise our fees so much. We listened. It worked. It worked. Right now, that doesn't mean there's not more work ahead, but actually what you set up actually worked because you heard from a lot of people who were impacted by budget decisions and you listened and we made changes. And I and I think that's because once it gets down to the programs that affect them in their daily life and their kids and and their quality of life and I mean we have a you know a handful of people who are really involved and I wish it was more. I wish we had more people that were coming. I'm in my fifth year on the council and I'm still trying to wrap my brain around a city budget of $2.6 6 billion because it's completely different than you're going to look at your household budget or even um I I did accounting for our family business for 20 years. So, it's even way different than that. So, um it is complicated. It's confusing. There's a lot of um ins and outs of it. And so, I appreciate citizens getting involved and and coming and um trying to understand and and learn and and do a lot of um research on your own um to to understand it all. And um I get that there's just different philosophies too of how you do it. So um I I I appreciate all of the work that goes into this. Every single department has given us excellent presentations and shown us the hard decisions they've had to make. I think there's a lot of things we can still look at. There's definitely things that I still have questions about as well. Um but I I do appreciate the incredible work that our staff does. um our budget department is incredible with all of the um questions they constantly get asked and and this is hard. This is really really hard and and there's seven of us up here with different priorities, too. So, I think trying to kind of get a feel for what some of our priorities are on the budget moving forward is also going to be really helpful. So, just wanted to make those comments. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Spillsberry, Mr. Adams. Well, thank you, Mayor. Um, this has been a quite a learning experience for the new guy in district 1. And I would preface my remarks by by thanking all of the department heads um Mr. Brady uh and uh Mr. Butler and others who uh have filled in a lot of the the gaps for me. it. Um, I just have a few few remarks I'd like to make and just kind of share my my thoughts and philosophies here. You know, when I ran for office, I promised the voters of District 1 that I would support a balanced budget. I promised fiscal responsibility. I made these promises not as empty words, but as commitments to be upheld. And uh the budget before us reflects not only a loss of residential rental tax revenue, but an overdue and welldeserved increase in public safety sworn personnel compensation, which I wholly and fully support. I recognize that we cannot cure this deficit we face in one year. Perhaps not in two. The pain required to do so would be draconian. and essential city services. Those that we must provide would suffer. They would be affected. I believe we should endeavor to cure the projected deficits faster than the five or more years that are projected. I do not feel we look closely enough at non-essential expenditures this year. Perhaps expenditures in non-essential areas should have been reduced by more than 2%. That's subject to debate and opinion. When reducing expenditures, however, fire and medical and police are not where we should look. I am 100% supportive of the budget allocations we've allowed for public safety. Our return on that investment is clearly evidenced by our safe community, number two right behind Virginia Beach in our in our city's size. And that relates to so many things, business relocations, people, uh the quality of life, uh that return on investment is there. Um this is also true of other core essential services such as utilities, engineering transportation solid waste, those things that a community is obligated and should provide. Where we begin to differ is in the definition of what is essential. In my opinion, some things are a must and some things are nice to have. And that while we talk about differences between municipal budgets and my business's budget and my family's budget, some things are pretty much the same. You take in so much, you spend so much. You spend more than you take in. That number has brackets around it. However, when we get down to essential, we likely have as many opinions on what is essential as we have people in this room. And I recognize that. That's where it gets really tough. What's essential? So, in arriving at a position on this budget, I will fall back on promises made. My word is worth something to the guy I see in the mirror, and it should be worth something to the people who voted for me. I struggle to support this budget as presented for those reasons. I wish that it set forth a stronger foundation to cure the projected deficits or imbalances or whatever we want to label them much faster than five or more years. As a policy maker, it is not my place to drill down in the weeds and decide what specific individual small expenses should be reduced. We have we have good people running our departments, but it is I think incumbent upon me as a policy maker to say that it needs to be done much faster. So that's that's kind of an overview of where I'm at on this whole budget process. It's um I respect other points of view. I respect everything that's been said and probably will be said, but uh I have my view on it. Those are the things I ran on and those are the commitments I made and that's where I stand. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Mr. Adams. Miss Duff, did I see you moving your hand? Yes, I was debating whether to I I just wanted to point out and um just a few things that were very hard large figures that were hard to overcome in our budget this year. And of course, we've discussed the rental tax and the flat tax. So, there's 40 million public safety. I think that was about another 40 million that we needed to increase our um wages. And of course, we're opening a new public safety facility and that needs things. So, there's another approximately 40 million. Correct me if I'm not. Huh? On the wages and the opening of the Yeah. Okay. 20 million. Um and then the other one that's really hard that is some is our in our utilities. We have a large um debt because of the central reuse pipeline and our wastewater treatment plant and those are essential. for treating water as we go forward. And I don't think we can appreciate enough what this will mean to our city as we go forward in um the shortages on the Colorado River. So, it's not business as usual and then we're just increasing, you know, costs and stuff. These are just ones that are just sudden huge increases and we've tried our best to cut back as much as possible and not to take any additional even though we're growing and need more personnel and and costs are accelerating and stuff like that. It's not like we're a static budget and we have no impacts and the city isn't growing is the dynamics are very difficult. We have a lot of work to do and yes, we have to get this corrected as quickly as we can, but it's not something you can turn upside down immediately especially when about 60% of the budget is in public safety. So, we're going to set that aside and protect that. So, this we're we're starting to get whittle down and the support services for the public safety, it starts getting smaller and smaller, piece of the pie. So when you talk about your 51 million or whatever you want to cut like it is such a small piece of the pie to do huge cuts. So we will continue to you know cut make cuts be strategic more efficient. Um we have made some measures. will continue to do that and continue on this mission, but it's not something that you can do quickly without huge compromise in the services um whether it's in public safety, whether it's in utilities um and do with substantially less revenue. It's comes down to the quality of the city you want to live in. We could go to bare bones. I don't know what your public safety is. I don't know if your trash is going to be picked up twice a week. I you know there's some things those what is the quality of life that we stand for in Mesa. We have to make compromises but just to suddenly just cut as much you know the 50 million. I don't think we're getting having a hard time getting over the the swim um and and the the these and I don't want to discount those are important services but wow that is a small amount of service that we provide to the community. So steep cuts and all the other things it's a serious adjustment in the quality of life. We have work to do, but the criticism that we didn't cut 50 million, I think is unrealistic and it's not a city I want to live in. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Duff. Hearing nothing else, I'm just going to finish up with a few comments and maybe Mr. Brady can jump in. You know, I've said in the beginning, we're a full service city. We provide every service out there and for a reasonable $2,200 a year, you get combined services throughout our city. And that's including our general obligation bonds. In fact, I know from experience that our constitutional general bond obligation or percentage that we're allowed to spend in our community is barely over 20% of what we are authorized to do, which is significantly less than a lot of our neighboring communities. We have um an obligation to approve our budget constitutionally for our city. And what I really like is the forecast that we see every few months, at least every six months of how our city's moving ahead financially. I'm thankful for the opportunity, Mr. Brady and staff, to have a reserve fund that really exceeds our expectations to hit us and help us during this difficult time because we've had, as many of you commented, a $51 million hit to our budget and we've been able to draw down those numbers. But with that said, I do agree that we need to look at our forecast to make sure we have a five-year forecast. And if we can do something less than that, then we will do that. Some of the rental income, I know that was brought up. There's a two-year lag on some of the income that we receive. Maybe it's not rental, but is it state shared revenue? Which one is it? State shared revenue. Is a two-year lag. So, we're receiving monies today, but we're planning for tomorrow of these cuts as they they leave our city. But with that said, I'll always support our tenative budget and moving forward. It's just so important that we hear from our community to make sure we're doing the right decisions. But it's painful when you have to look at what areas do we cut within our municipality to make sure we're providing all services. But yet the advocacy from our parks and wreck, our swim uh programs was just off the charts and some of our little leagues. So again, we're we're evaluing well, do we cut those services? But today, we've tentatively decided to leave them the same and not do anything there. But be re rest assured out there that we're doing our very best and continue to give advocacy towards our budget. So with that council, if there's nothing else, I will entertain a motion to approve the tenative budget. Thank you. Motion by Miss Bilsbury, second by Mi Mr. Heredia. Please cast your vote. Okay, we have six to one with Mr. Adams voting no, rest uh voting yes. Thank you for that. Okay, moving forward. Items 9A and 9B are are to conduct a public hearing to take action on the 2025 district assessments for Mesa Town Center Improvement District number 228. I declare the public hearing open. Miss Anderson, do you have any blue cards for this? There are no requests. Thank you, Miss Anderson. Do any council members want to address this item? Okay. I hearing none. I declare the public hearing closed. I'll entertain a motion to approve the resolution for item 9B. Thank you, Mr. Adams. I'm sorry. Okay. Motion by Miss Duff, second by Mr. Ready. Please cast your vote. Motion's unanimous. Thank you. Okay. With that, uh item 10 is items for citizens present. Uh, Miss Anderson, do you have any blue cards from citizens present? There are no requests. Oh my. Thank you. Okay. Uh, with that, um, I think that we need to conclude this meeting by I'd like to ask a round of applause for Mr. Brady since this is his last meeting. So, if we could do that again. Thank you. So, here's what's scary. I Jim and I are trying to figure out how many council meetings I've been to through my career. It's almost 3,000. Not just here, but other cities. So, thank you for letting this be my last one. Thank you everybody. All right. Okay. You're not out of here yet. I have to entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Miss Goforth. All in favor say I. I. I. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you. [Music] [Music]