Regular Meeting - 5/20/2025 6:30:00 PM

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Thank you again for attending a Gilbert
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[Music]
We'll get started in about one minute
here.
Okay. I'd like to call to order the
regular meeting of the Gilberttown
Council, May 20th,
2025 for invocation and pledge of
allegiance. to start first the
invocation by Judy Albrech of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints from
the Highland West
Stake. Thank you, Judy.
Thank you for the opportunity, council
members and mayor and vice
mayor. Our father in heaven, we are
grateful this evening together as
citizens of Gilbert and with this town
council. We are thankful for this
community that we have built based on
the values and standards of many good
people. And we ask for thy guidance and
direction as important discussions are
led tonight and decisions are made. We
pray for thy spirit to be here and to
guide and lead each member and each
person that participates. We pray for
the safety and protection
of those who try to protect us each day.
We're grateful for those first
responders and pray that they will bless
them and their families. We are grateful
for the school system. We're grateful
for the youth and children in our
community and pray that thou will bless
and watch over them. We give thanks for
the bountous blessings that we have and
pray that we might share those with
those around us who are in need and be
aware of those needs. And we ask and
pray humbly for these blessings in the
name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thank
you. Council member Lions will lead us
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.
We'll have the roll call now. Mayor
Scott Anderson here. Vice Mayor Bobby
Buckley here. Council member Chuck
Boniovani here. Council member Kenny
Buckley here. Council member Yan
Kapowski here. Council member Monty
Lions present. And council member Jim
Torus here. A quorum is present. Thank
you. We have one proclamation on the
agenda tonight. The proclamation
declaring the week of May 18th through
the 24th, 2025 as National Public Works
Week and Council Member Kapowski will be
presenting this proclamation.
Thank you. At this time, I would like
any member of our public works team to
come up and join me the front of the
room. Is this okay?
It's being close.
Anyone that is a public works
professional from any jurisdiction or
place, please come join us at the front
of the
room. And please come to my other side
as well so we can fill fill the middle
space, please. Right.
[Laughter]
Um, this proclamation is labeled people,
purpose, and presence. Public works
professionals focus on infrastructure,
facilities, and services that are of
vital importance to sustainable and
resilient communities, and to the public
health, high quality of life, and
well-being of the people of Gilbert,
Arizona. These infrastructure facilities
and services could not be provided
without the dedicated efforts of public
works professionals who are engineers,
managers and employees at all levels of
government and the private sector who
are responsible for rebuilding,
improving and protecting our nation's
transportation, water supply, water
treatment and solid waste systems,
public buildings and other structures
and facilities essential for our
citizens.
Whereas it is in the public interest for
the citizens, civic leaders, and
children in Gilbert, Arizona to gain
knowledge of and maintain an ongoing
interest and understanding of the
importance of public works and public
works programs in their respective
communities. And whereas the year 2025
marks the 65th annual na national public
works week sponsored by the American
Public Works Association. I,
Yankapowski, council member of the town
of Gilbert, on behalf of mayor of the
town of Gilbert, Arizona, do proclaim
the week of May 18th through 24, 2025 as
National Public Works Week. I urge all
citizens to join with the
representatives of the American Public
Works Association and government
agencies in activities, events, and
ceremonies designed to pay tribute to
our public works professionals,
engineers, managers, and employees, and
to recognize the substantial
contributions they make to protecting
our national health, safety, and
advancing the quality of life for
all.
Would you like to speak, Jessica, as our
public works director?
I just want to thank everybody for being
here this evening. Um, very proud of the
team and the hard work and dedication
that they put into um maintaining and
protecting our infrastructure um on a
daily basis. Um, and I wanted to
especially recognize David Fabiano. Uh,
served as our town engineer for the last
seven years. Um and then more recently
as an assistant public works director.
Um he's been battling medical challenges
um over the last two years. We're very
grateful to have him here today. You
won't meet a more dedicated fierce
defender of quality infrastructure for
the town and the world. um and uh the
entire team here and the entire field of
engineering is better for him being uh a
member of the APWA and supporting and
recognizing um and representing uh the
field of engineering and
um just wanted to recognize him tonight.
Thank you, David. I'd like to present
this proclamation directly to you
tonight. um thank you for your
dedication to the profession and for
always doing the right thing and as an
engineer myself you've been such a great
role model to all of us and so thank you
very much. Would you like to say
anything?
I would like to say something um but I
cannot say things like I used to and
that hurts me beyond what you do I can
express because public works the
infrastructure that we live on and exist
in is ubiquitous across our land and
world is what something that all of us
depend upon who don't even know it.
And I'm so glad that Mayor Scott
Anderson has made this proclamation
declaring this National Public Works
Week and I'm honored to be here to
receive it with them. and Young um is a
professional engineer too and uh she's
been a great example of that and the
practice of it and the integrity and
responsibility that it it comes with
that um position. Thank you. Thank you
David.
town staff or any council members that
want to join. That'd be great. Perfect.
Let's do it.
Okay, let's do a few rows. Get in really
tight. Thank you. If you're tall, go in
the back. If you're short, come to
front.
very special. Thank you everyone who
participated. We'll move now to public
hearings. I don't have any requests to
speak. I don't know if the
council has want wants to remove any of
the items from the public hearing list
for separate consideration. We have a
couple that are postponed, asked to be
postponed.
If two has been requested to be
postponed,
staff staff has requested that two be
postponed till June 10th.
And three is by the applicant.
Okay.
We'll pull off seven separately. Then
I'll open the public hearing on the
other items and close the public hearing
and make a ask for a motion that we
postpone item two to the June 10th
regular meeting, item three to the June
24th regular meeting and then approve
item four, five, six, and
7A. I hear a second. So moved.
I second. It's been moved by council
member Bonjiovani. Seconded by Vice
Mayor Buckley. Please
vote. Motion carries
70. Item seven. Council member
Torson. I just wanted to talk for a
second about development paying for
itself along with these fees. if we
could have someone just discuss this a
little bit because I know that fees have
been increased in some areas but it's
not uh it's not for any reason but
paying for what it's costing. We have
any I think we can ask Kyle if he'll
address that.
Good evening. Good evening Mayor and
council. Um thanks for having us this
evening. Um, this is the development
services fees update. Um, we'll go
through a couple quick slides. It will,
um, definitely hit your question, but
it'll kind of paint the picture of where
we're at and where we're going and and
kind of the road that we've been on. Um,
Joseph Huitt is here with me tonight.
We've also got some other staff members
that have been key and very integral
into putting this together. Folks that
deal with the fees on a daily basis and
interact with all of our customers.
Um, so the process that we've been
through in in spring of 2024, uh, we
came to the council's financial retreat
and had a discussion on fees. And at
that time, the council gave us direction
to move forward, uh, and conduct a fee
study. And that included taking a look
at our development services fees, um,
the ICC valuation table, which is the
international code council evaluation
table, um, and then look at calculating
new building permit and plan review fees
as well. um and then come back to the
council with those recommendations and a
final report that was
done. So, as um council member Toruson
was starting to mention on the
development services uh process and the
fees that are involved, um this is
basically the process that that projects
will go through um uh to be approved and
constructed in the town. Um typically
starts with the land use planning and
the entitlements. Then we'll go into the
building and engineering side of things.
Um our inspections then are in um
conducted at the end of the construction
and then they're open for business. Um
the intent of the fees has always been
that growth pays for growth and that the
um taxpayers or the citizens are not
burdened uh with the um development
costs of that development. So the
developers pay for uh their share of the
of the processes. And again this is the
process that most of the uh projects go
through. Uh again, the importance of the
fees is to help cover the cost of the
town process uh related to the uh review
and approval of the development
requests. Um again, as I've mentioned
and and council member Toruson mentioned
that growth does pay for growth in the
in the town of Gilbert, it's always been
that way since I've been here. Uh and
again, the intent is to not burden the
citizens with the cost of that
development. Um you can see over time
that we've had a uh a gap uh begin to
occur between the revenues in um
development services and the fees. uh we
were pretty tight there for quite a
while and then we've seen um that gap
widen over the last last couple years.
And there's several different reasons
for that which I I'll touch on here in a
little bit. Um this was one of the
reasons that we did come to council in
2024 and say, "Hey, we we really need to
take a look at our fees uh knowing what
the intent of the fees is and um
identify this gap that was occurring and
receive that direction to move forward.
Here's the history of the development
services fees. Um you can see in in 1999
we adopted that building valuation
table. Um in 2007 there was a three
three and a half% increase. Uh the next
year there was a 6%
increase. The fee changes in 13 14 and
15 were were done on specific uh
application types or for or for specific
reasons but the entirety of the fees
were not looked at um at those times. Um
there was always an intent and a and a
desire to take a look at those fees, but
there had always been things get in the
way. Um for example, we had the
recession in in late 2008 2009 that put
a hold on a lot of things. Um there's
been some um political direction at the
time not to uh move forward with
different fees. And then when we really
ramped up and started to bring the fees
back, we hit the pandemic. So um for
every step we seem to take forward, we
would we would uh run into a roadblock.
So the process that we went through this
time uh we engaged a third-party
consultant to evaluate the the fees. Uh
they worked very very closely with staff
both in development services and in
budget. Um we identified all different
lines of services. Again going back to
that previous chart you could see the
the flow of the processes. And we
established what we were calling swim
lanes um to identify the timing of each
of the process. So by swim lanes we
looked at basically it's follow the
paper. An application comes in, who
touches it, who how how long do they
touch it? Where does it go after that?
What is the review time? What is the
review cycle? Then we go to a planning
commission, then we've got staff
reports, we come to a town council. So,
we put costs to each one of those
different steps so that we knew exactly
what the cost was um to the town for
processing those different um different
fees. That's what the swim lanes are
for. Uh again, I mentioned that the
personnel costs were assigned to these
different tasks depending upon the time
spent. Uh and then one of the um
discussions that we had too um with
council at the different retreats is,
you know, we want to remain competitive
with neighboring communities. Uh we want
to make sure that we're strategic in the
look that we take to these different um
fees and not um not outpace ourselves or
maybe there's a certain reason u to set
a fee at a certain level even if it does
or does not cover that entire
cost. Here are the different development
services fee categories. Again, you can
see there's quite a few and we went
through each one of the different line
items in each one of those um categories
to determine the
costs. Um this is the valuation table
that was done in 1999. I'm going to turn
it over to um Joseph at this point. Uh
he can talk a little bit to that um what
we would like to do annually going
forward with this valuation table and
then he can run through some um
different um uh examples of what the fee
changes would look like on certain
projects.
All right. Thanks, Mayor and Council.
Um, so you can, as Kyle had mentioned,
we haven't updated the valuation table
since 1999. And as you can imagine, the
value of buildings have increased
substantially since in the last 25
years. And so, one of the goals from
this study is to update the valuation
table to the most current version and
then on an annual basis have it to where
it automatically is updated to the most
current uh valuation table that's
provided by the ICC. And this is similar
to what neighboring communities do like
uh Chandler and
Surprise. And here's an example on the
building valuation table. So this is a
multif family residential development.
Based off of the current valuation table
that we're using, it's $59 per square
foot. And now in 2024 on the valuation
table, it really should be $148 per
square foot. And just to clarify, this
is just a valuation. This isn't an
actual fee. The fees are certain fees
are determined based off the valuation.
And you you'll see that here in um some
of these
examples. And so all of these examples
are actual developments that were
completed in Gilbert recently. Um and so
this one right here is an apartment
within a garage. And so you can see with
the current valuation and then the
proposed valuation, you can see quite a
bit of a big increase. But then you look
at the current fees and then the
proposed fees, they do go up um a little
bit. So it doesn't the valuation doesn't
make the fee go up that much as well.
It's based off of the valuation.
So and then here's a single family home
subdivision. You can say same thing.
Current valuation it's only 230.
Proposed valuation we go up to 660. Um,
one thing I do want to point out is the
standard plan review is a is a onetime
fee, and that's just based off of how
many flooring plans you have. So, you
would only pay that fee for however many
different flooring plans you have within
that subdivision. You wouldn't pay it
for every single
home. And then here's just another
example of a fat fast food restaurant.
You can see current valuation, proposed
valuation, and then what the current fee
would be, and then what the proposed fee
would be based off of this study.
And then here's another one with a small
tenant improvement. You can see current
fees and then what the proposed fees
are. And so just to kind of give you an
idea of what we're looking
at. And then lastly, we have the
miscellaneous fees here. And you can see
like for example, the variance single
family we kept the same. Um you know,
business license fee, alcohol special
event went up a little bit. facilities
permit fee stayed the same. Fire
inspections went up a little bit. And
then even like this three4 three quarter
inch water meter set is a great example.
As when we were doing the study, we
realized that we are currently paying
$190 just for the parts to install 3/4
in water meter sets. So currently at our
$150 or $115 fee, we're losing money
every time we go out and have to install
a 3/4 inch water meter set. So you can
see with the proposed fee, you know, we
have the 190 for the parts and then we
have a very small amount for labor labor
for the employee to go out and do the
install as part of the process as and as
we do with most things. Um we did do
stout stakeholder outreach um on April
16th. We did a presentation to the
chamber and went through um the fee
increases. Um the comments that we
received is that the fees are still
lower uh here than in other
municipalities uh and that the fees
seemed fair especially given the time um
that it's been uh since the fees were um
changed um in early May. Then we also
sent notification to the a homebuilders
association multif family um builders
and the Arizona League of Cities. Um
we've received essentially two questions
from them. Uh when do the fees go into
effect which is July 1st and will it
raise the system development fees? And
the answer to that is no.
Um, I mentioned that there's been some
changes in activity that have that have
caused some of the the fees to change
and and uh created some of that gap that
you saw. Um, a lot of it are market
conditions, you know, uh, the price of
land in town. Um, the ability um to get
into the ground and and make those the
complete those projects. Uh, we're
seeing we're seeing a change in the
project mix. We're starting to see more
mixed use now. We're starting to see
more redevelopment. Um the days of the
the large green fields are are pretty
much behind us. Uh I mentioned there's
reduced availability of land. Uh things
are getting much tighter and much
smaller as we approach buildout. Um and
then what have we done uh and measures
that we've taken as we've seen that gap
um instead of just running to council
and and increasing fees. Um we have
looked at our our staffing models
especially if we as we change processes
uh what can we do better? What can we
can we reclassify some positions? Can we
move some positions into other areas
where there's uh more uh value add than
than uh the current process? We've
looked at a lot of streamlining of
processes. You've heard me talk in the
past about how we have a menu of plan
review options that folks can choose
from to meet their needs. Um and then
we've added a lot of lines of service as
well to development services over time
that were never captured with these
fees. Um we're doing a lot of fiber
review and and inspection now uh as as
the fiber makes its way through the
community. And then we've started
helping out uh public works and CIP with
review of their projects as well to make
sure that they're meeting the standards
of the town and um protecting that
infrastructure that you heard so much
about a few minutes
ago. So with that, I know this is uh a
lot of the same information you heard
during the the last retreat. Uh Council
Member Torres, I hope I hit your
question about uh uh growth pain for
growth. Um we're here to help answer any
questions. As I mentioned, we've got a
lot of team members with us as well that
would be more than happy to come up and
and answer specifics.
Thank you. Any
questions? Thank you. I think I failed
to open the public hearing. Close. I'll
open the public hearing. Close the
public hearing on item seven and
entertain a motion.
Go ahead. I make a motion to accept it
as written.
It's been moved by council member Torres
and seconded by Vice May Vice Mayor
Buckley. Please vote.
You vote.
push.
Try again there. There you go. Motion
carries 70.
Thank
you.
Uh I next need a motion to recess a
regular meeting and convene in special
meeting.
I make a motion to reset the regular
meeting and reconvene the special
meeting. Yes, I'll second. Is that where
I'm at? Yes. It's been moved by the vice
mayor, seconded by council member
Bonjiovani to recess our regular meeting
and convene in special meeting. We have
two items to be considered in the
special meeting. Item eight and nine,
both related to the budget. And I think
we'll start with the Can we do them both
together, the presentation, Kelly? Okay.
Good evening, mayor, members of the
council. I'll start our um budget
hearing off today uh similar to how we
did our study session a few weeks ago.
I'd like to start by providing some
background in the current economic
conditions we are in and potentially
anticipating in the next fiscal year.
Wanted to start with uh what we
understand the loss of the residential
rental sales tax as uh that equates to
about $9 million a year. That actually
started in January 1st of this year, but
that will flow through uh forward. That
was a permanent um uh elimination of
that tax category for us rolling
forward. So that'll be the full $9
million in fiscal year 26. And then
state shared income tax reduction, which
was a stepped down reduction towards the
current flat tax that had an impact of
about $5 million to the town of Gilbert.
And again, that is permanent moving
forward for a total impact of about $14
million of ongoing revenue uh that the
town would use to provide for the
various services um that our residents
receive. That was uh and Kelly can
provide more detail, but that was the
bulk of the new ongoing revenue we would
have to address the needs of the
community in the upcoming fiscal year.
Council did increase the sales tax rate
last fall and that took effect on
January 1st of this year. That sales tax
has been identified to provide for some
quality of life projects that are
underway as we speak. We still are
seeing inflation and supply chain issues
that are not yet fully resolved.
Continuing to impact construction
schedules and construction costs across
our capital projects. Continue to
address wage inflation and market
competition for FTEEs. And again,
increased workload on staff by our
inability to uh bring forward the
positions that we believe are needed
across our service lines to meet the
demands of the community in the upcoming
fiscal year. And I know we'll be having
ongoing dialogues about how we address
that issue because it's not sustainable
moving forward. We've got growth and
aging infrastructure that continue to
provide budget pressure in addition to
the capital projects that we have
identified and have underway. Now, we've
got a lot of projects in the upcoming
five and 10ear CIP plan uh that will
need to be addressed and a lot of those
address aging infrastructure and
reconstruction of aging infrastructure
as our community continues to age. And
then there is the potential for a
recession on the horizon. It's been uh a
long time coming. Uh since the great
recession of 2008, 2011 and 12, we have
been watching signs of of um that
potential um occurring um for several
years now. But with a lot of the things
that are happening in the economy with
tariffs uh and other factors um as I
said some of those supply chain issues
um we will continue to be watchful for
potential recession within the next
fiscal year and have to pivot
accordingly to make sure we stay within
um our available revenue streams. In
summary, fiscal 26 is going to be a
difficult budget year for the town and
the available revenues moving forward
are also likely to continue to be tight.
We wanted to highlight some revenue
differences in how funds that are
collected are used by Gilbert in
comparison to some of our peer
communities around the region. This one
is the vehicle license tax that
currently goes into the general fund of
every community except for Gilbert. And
Gilbert places that into our streets
fund uh for the maintenance of our
streets. It's about $14 million a year
though that other cities make available
for general government services such as
police, fire, parks and wreck uh and
other u service lines that are funded
out of the general fund. And then
looking at revenue differences and we
talk a lot about rates and rates are
important um as we compare ourselves to
cities from around the region, but it's
also important to understand the revenue
that we collect off those rates. And
you'll see the charts in front of us.
Starting with the sales tax per capita.
This is fiscal year $24. Ybert has
available to it uh to spend on a per
resident basis
$540. Um which is the lowest of any of
the the cities here in the region. Moves
on up to Scottsdale has
$1379 available per resident in sales
tax dollars to spend in general fund
dollars. in total and looking at all
categories. Again, Gilbert is the lowest
at 999 and this is based off fiscal year
25 budget budgeted dollars as we have
not finished the fiscal year yet. And we
are the lowest in uh the highest being
at the other end of the range. Uh the
city of Glendale has
$1,784 per resident available to spend
on general fund services. So again, I
know we've had a lot of discussions
about this. We will be having additional
discussions about this, but these is
this is the dollars that we have
available to spend on police, fire,
parks, and wreck and all those other
services funded out of our general fund.
Uh it is tight and made tighter by
actions of the legislature uh and
impacts to our available revenues for
fiscal 26. With that, I will hand it
over to Kelly Post uh and she will walk
us through the rest of the presentation.
Thank you, Patrick.
Patrick's got the tough news, I've got
the good news. Um, we get a lot of
accolades in Gilbert. So, even with the
small uh per capita revenues that we
have, we do a lot with those dollars.
So, third safest uh and most affordable
city in the top 100 places to live, most
caring city in America, number one city
for economic growth. So, a lot of really
great accolades are happening in
Gilbert. As you know, we continue to do
our zero base. We do a third of the
organization every year. With all of the
inflation, we've actually had to add
money into these zerobased budgets
overall and just in order to keep uh the
same services that they've provided in
the past. They just cost more to do. Um
so we've lost a little bit of ground in
our total savings here, but are
continuing to operate and we continue to
look at those cost savings uh every
year. Our budget process uh goes pretty
much the whole year. We're kicking off
in September. Um going through executive
team, town manager's office, financial
retreat, uh and council study session
which was in April. And then tonight is
our preliminary budget adoption. Final
budget adoption will be
June. Uh as you're aware, according to
Arizona statutes, the preliminary budget
adoption, I mean, arguably is the more
important of the two. Uh the number that
is adopted by council tonight will be
the maximum amount uh budget number
expenditure that the town can have for
next year. Final budget is allowed to be
a lower number but not a higher number
or it could be the
same. Uh with the recommended positions
for the fiscal 26 budget, there's a
total of about 34 uh full-time employees
across all of the funds and about 171 18
LTAs or limited term agreement employees
which typically have a one-year
contract. Um that would be part of the
one-time money as opposed to ongoing
because the ongoing money was very tight
this
year. With that, the largest part of our
budget is our capital improvements and
that's about $1.7 billion of
improvement. Most of those uh investment
is in the streets area and the water
improvement area which you're aware of
on those large
projects. If we break that number into
the projects that we're currently
working on that we'll continue to carry
forward, there's about $1.2 billion of
projects that are in current year's
budget that we're continuing to work on.
They take more than one year to
complete. So, we'll carry those uh money
forward and then in addition about $490
million added for additional projects or
additional scope on those
projects. As you're aware, the full
amount of our CIP projects is budgeted.
Um, and that's the most conservative
approach to make sure that we can issue
the contracts, that we have the money we
need to complete the projects when we
start them, that it's uh guaranteed and
and set aside for those projects. But it
does make the total dollar amount that
we adopt in our budget uh larger and it
is larger than will actually go out
money that will go out the door for next
year um because these projects will take
multiple years to
complete. If we look at a comparison
between fiscal 25 and fiscal 26, it's
about $116 million of difference. The
bulk of that difference is in our CIP
investment on that bottom line, which is
84 85 million of the 116. You'll also
notice the debt service line is lower
and that's related with paying off the
university building debt which is
council's approved and is coming up at
the end of
June. For our property tax, we've got a
levy of $34.8 million that will maintain
the rate that we currently have and have
had since 2024. So 98 cents per $100 of
assessed value.
And the upcoming milestones today is
preliminary budget adoption which will
set that maximum number for the budget
expenditure. It's the CIP review um
which is later on the agenda and then
the property tax levy u public hearing.
Final adoption will be on June 10th
which will be the last time council will
discuss those
items. Any questions?
Thank you Kelly. questions. Council,
Council Member Torus, in in the budget,
are there things that we can discuss
tonight that I'd like to see removed?
Um, yes. I assume you're talking about
electric vehicle. Absolutely. That's one
of them. Yes. So there's an opportunity
uh with direction from the council that
that could be directed to not purchase
that vehicle until the study session in
the future where council has the
opportunity to talk about electric
vehicles or to give direction to say we
only want it purchased as a um a gas or
diesel vehicle um or it can be left as
an electric vehicle. Whatever the
direction from council is we can
accommodate that.
Fantastic. And then uh in our budget,
just because there's so many things that
we've gone through in iterations of
priorities uh and I'm h I'm halfway here
between eight and nine. I know that. Uh
I wanted to ask on the budget. There's
certain things I I believe it's group D.
I could be wrong. Uh there's things that
are in our budget that we really aren't
looking at funding and we really don't
have a a income stream to come in unless
they've been left off at as we've
cleaned this up as it's come forward.
But for instance, I'm looking at the
bottoms of group D. Uh Freestone ball
field
improvements. Are those still in the
budget as a as a number but without
funding? Kelly, if I could jump in real
quick. Uh, mayor, council member Torus
said, yeah, those group D items are not
included in the budget. That's from
those quality of life projects. Uh, we
do not have uh identified funding for
those. Um, and those are not contained
in the budget. There's not a placeholder
for there is not. Okay. So, is that that
was my other question. Yeah. So, the
capital improvement plan, we do have a
lot of information about future projects
that help us for planning purposes. only
fiscal year 26 is in the budget with
actual funding. The other years help us
for planning. Um and so those group D
projects are not in the fiscal 20 budget
26 budget. Right. Thank you.
Other questions council.
It's kind of scary. Thank you, Kelly.
Thank you.
Patrick, did you have something else?
Mayor, uh, members of the council, I was
just going to again remind us the
preliminary budget as required by
Arizona state statutes is just setting
the EP upper expenditure limit. The
final budget um is what the actual
budget approved budget and the items
contained within that um that evening on
June 10th. So the and in fact the only
decision the council's making tonight is
just setting that upper expenditure
limit. We can still have ongoing
conversations about items contained
within it. items can be removed. So
things can go down, they just can't go
up. Correct.
Council member Bonjivani. Thank you,
Mayor. Um, I just want to point out and
and Kelly did a good job at want to
reiterate that the budget that we that
we are preliminarily approving tonight
is the highest number. It doesn't mean
that's what the budget is because I see
all the time um the comments I hear a
lot from residents is $2.5 billion. you
guys need to cut money and we're not
spending anywhere near $2.5 billion.
That's just the budget, the top line,
the topline number that we could spend.
Um but in in histories um over the
years, we don't come anywhere near that
number.
Thank you, Council Member Torres. Kelly,
I hate to make you get up and come. Um
would you please you you and I had a
discussion about this. We're at 0.98.
what the difference between 0.98 and I
think it was N65 or four or whatever the
discussion we had what it would cost
us to lower that at this point.
Uh if we were to target a lower property
tax rate then we would have to structure
our future debt to be within that which
would cause us to have to pay additional
interest. I don't have that number off
the top of my head anymore. I know we
talked about it at study session. It was
$10 million over the course of the
budget if we lowered it by 1.2 cents or
something. It was about $10 million over
the course of this bond.
And as you know, I really despise
property taxes. But what most people
don't understand is that the town of
Gilbert's portion of property tax is
about 10% of the property tax you're
paying. There's schools, universities,
the county, there's other things in
there. So, it is a small portion. And
the most if money grew on trees, which
it doesn't, uh, a higher rate would pay
it off faster with lower interest. Yes,
that's But right now with and I'm going
to call it a credit card payment. We're
we're ahead of the absolute bottom
number, but we're not
uh going lower is going to take forever
to pay that bill off. Correct. So
until we start stop charging the credit
card, we're going to sit here and make
sure the bills paid is kind of where we
are, right? All right. I just wanted to
confirm that 10 million was the number
and All right. Thank you. Thank you.
Any other comments, Chris? I think are
we u just having a public hearing on the
the levy
tonight? Are we taking action or just
having the public hearing?
Kelly,
it is a public hearing. We have a public
hearing both tonight and a second public
hearing at final adoption. Um, but the
action tonight is that we set the final
public hearing for the June 10th meeting
for property tax. Okay. So, that's what
we're doing on item eight is setting the
final date. Yep. And then if you wanted
anything different, this would be a good
time to give staff that direction so
that we could create the final budget
documents in accordance with what you
want.
Okay, with that I'll entertain a motion
by the council on item eight.
I'll move to approve item eight.
It's been moved by Council Member
Kapowski, seconded by Vice Mayor Buckley
to approve item number eight. Please
vote.
Motion carries
70. Moving on to item number nine, which
is acceptance of the preliminary budget.
In other words, setting a upper limit.
Is that correct? I'm looking for a
motion on that.
Move to approve item nine. Nine as
written.
Who did that?
Did you make the motion?
I'll gladly second it. Move by. Uh, I'll
second it. Council member Buckland,
seconded by Council Member Bonjiovani.
Please
vote. Motion carries. 70.
Mayor, it didn't um Mayor, let me reset
it. It looks like it froze. Give me one
second. has not voted 70.
Can I excuse myself? No, you can't.
My dad. Sorry. Sorry. Yes. Sorry. You're
too
late. Motion does carry 70. Thank you.
Uh need a motion to adjourn the special
meeting, reconvene, and regular meeting.
I make the motion
to adjourn the special meeting and
reconvene the regular meeting. Second.
Been moved and seconded to adjourn
special meeting reconvene regular
meeting. All in favor say I. I. I. With
that we'll move on to the consent
calendar. Vice mayor.
Thank you mayor. Um to be to begin the
consent calendar portion of the meeting,
I will pass the time over to our town
manager, Patrick Banger, to provide an
overview on the items, and they are
items number 10 through 24, I believe.
Um so he will provide an overview of the
items on the consent calendar this
evening. Patrick, it's all yours. Thank
you, mayor, vice mayor. I'll walk
through these. I did receive a request
um that we will incorporate in the June
10th meeting uh to uh walk through these
in chronological order as they're
contained in your packet. Up to this
point, we had been categorizing under
our three pillars. So on the slides in
the future, we'll have the pillar it
falls under, but we'll follow the
chronicological order they're in, but
for tonight, um they are still grouped
in the format we've been following up to
this point. As always, please feel free
to ask any questions you may have on the
items up for your consideration
tonight. The first under strong
economies claim settlement contingency
request. It's agenda item number 20.
This is for all the claims settlements
against the town for the period of
January 1st and March 31st of 2025.
You'll see enumerated the uh various
funds and and funding categories where
those funds would come from.
Agenda item number 14 is a Nationwide
Retirement Solutions contract under
Prosperous Community. Nationwide
Retirement Solutions is the sole vendor
for the employee elected deferred
compensation plans. This allows
employees to participate in Deferred
Compensation Plans and as a part of the
benefits package offered to all
full-time employees and helps attract
and retain best-in-class talent for
staffing of town lines of service. The
town does not contribute or pay any
administrative fees for being part of
this plan. This extends it for two more
years. Agenda item number 20 123 or I
think that's actually 12. A little typo
there. Apologies. The Symmetra contract
under Prosperous Community. This is stop
loss coverage for the self-insured
health trust for fiscal 26 with Symmetra
in the amount of 1.668184
668184 million providing an essential
safeguard that ensures the stability of
our self-funded health plan while
mitigating excessive financial risk and
this is funded from the health fund
budget. Agenda item number 19 legal
services contingency again under
prosperous community general fund
contingency request for legal services
in the municipal courts. This uh stems
from a 29% increase in DUI and
misdemeanor cases and as a resulted in
additional impacts to court services
vital to the justice processes including
public defender appointments and
language assistance interpreters. The
cost of this is about $140,000 and that
comes from our general
fund. Agenda items number 10, 11, and
12. These are IGAS with the Arizona
Department of Transportation. falls
under our exceptional built environment
category and these are ID8 IGAS for
additional funding through the Federal
Highway Administration the highway
safety improvement program and there's a
5.7% match agreement for the town to
participate in this program each one of
those is listed below our matching
amount is a relatively small amount of
around
$2,300 per one for the items listed um
we talked earlier about the additional
Hawk traffic signals We're putting in
around town an eastbound right turn lane
at Germaine and Power and a southbound
right turn lane at Higgley and
Guadalupe. Any terms and conditions are
the standard terms and conditions that
come along with the acceptance of these
dollars. There's nothing out of the
ordinary. Agenda item number 13 is the
caretaker landscape and tree management
contract under exceptional built
environment. It's a contract with
Caretaker Landscape and Tree Management
not to exceed
$275,000 per year and a total of 1.375
million over 5 years to manage
landscaping services at two surface
water treatment facilities and 30 remote
well and booster sites. And this item is
funded through water rate
funds. Agenda item number 15, the police
department motor vehicle towing
services. This is under exceptional
built environment. It's a motion to
award contracts for Gilbert Police motor
vehicle towing services to the blow
companies following RFP solicitation to
attract vendors able to meet the
necessary criteria for f for motor
vehicle towing services. Those companies
are all city towing, Apache Sands,
Priority Towing, and Valley Express.
There's no financial impact to the town
as the town of Gilbert does not
compensate or reimburse the vendors for
the stated towing services.
Agenda item number 16, Kimley Horn AE
services under exceptional built
environment. Motion to approve a
contract with Kimley Horn for AE
services for irrigation system
replacements at Freestone and Crossroads
Park. The irrigation systems at these
locations are aging and in need of
replacement. It's about a
$91,000 uh expense to the general fund,
replacement fund within the general
fund. And as uh for some of our council
members that are newer and not as
familiar with our parks, Freestone and
Crossroads are two of our oldest parks
in the system. And these these
irrigation lines have reached the end of
their useful life. Agenda item number
17. It's a PMCM contract with Kennedy
Jensen under exceptional built
environment. It's a motion to approve a
contract with Kennedy Jensen for PMCM
services for project phases three and
four for seven well projects as part of
our wells department development
program. just under $2.8 million and
that will be funded through water rate
funds, system development fees, and our
water rate MPC
bonds. Agenda item number 18 is a job
order contract task order with Sunland
Asphalt and Construction under
exceptional built environment. It's for
asphalt concrete removal and paving
services with Sunland Asphalt and uh and
Construction LLC for street improvement
projects in multiple intersections
throughout the town. It's around
$351,000 and will be funded through the
roadway and maintenance
fund. Agenda item number 21 is the
fiscal 26 through35 capital improvement
program plan under exceptional built
environment. This is a motion to accept
the fiscical year 26 through 20 25
capital improvement plan and declare it
a public document. Each year, the plan
is reviewed, prioritized, and updated as
it programs the infrastructure needs for
the next 10 years to maintain the
quality of life for our residents. The
plan identifies the funding sources for
each project identified for up for the
upcoming year which are incorporated in
the budget. And and again, just to um so
everybody's clear, the only projects in
this plan that are funded are the ones
in the upcoming upcoming fiscal year 26
budget, which you will be voting on the
final version of on June 10th. Any other
projects in years 2 through five while
we try to identify funding sources for
those projects, they are not funded. any
projects that are five years out in
duration. Uh most of those we do not
even have funding uh revenue streams
identified
for agenda item number 22 the Maricopa
Association of Governments. It's a grant
under exceptional built environments to
authorize the grant application and
acceptance of any awarded funds through
a grant with me Maricopa Association of
Governments for their arterial widening
program. Application addresses
improvements to Hickley Road from Warner
to Amber. This is a 7030 program which
if awarded will result in just under
$8.8 million in $8 million in grant
funds awarded to the town and the town
match would be just under $3.8 million
of town funds. The town source of that
match would come from the 2022 general
obligation bonds approved by the voters.
With that, mayor, that conclude, vice
mayor, that concludes the consent agenda
for this evening.
Okay. Thank you, Patrick. Um, does
anyone have any questions?
Just a quick question on 15.
Council member
contracts. Is there does the town have
any opportunity to
uh gently massage the customer service
of some of these tow companies forward a
little bit? Uh, actually I know some of
these people as clients, but I also know
that they can be
pretty not resident friendly. Like they
like to close and even though they're
there, not return a vehicle until the
next following day or the next following
Monday. If they're doing business with
us, can we not require them to be
available on weekends for because I've
gotten calls on it. I mean, they won't
let me get my car till Monday, yet
they're there. And it would seem that
maybe requiring a little bit better of
customer service would be appropriate.
Mayor and Council Member Toruson, as
long as depending on the guidelines of
the contract, and I don't have all those
details in front of us. So, as long as
they're abiding by the rules of the
contract that they have to follow those.
So, if they're in violation, that would
be a violation of our contract between
purchasing and our traffic section. They
would investigate any complaints for Oh,
there you the enforcers for failure.
Yeah, Chief's exactly right. It depends
on what's written in the contract, but
we we perhaps can do a better job of
educating our customers to talk to us
when they have issues so that we can
track complaints, verify if they are
complaints that are uh against the
contract language that we have with
them. Uh and then we can respond
appropriately at that time. Can we in
the future maybe alter our contracts a
little bit too? If there are weaknesses
in those contracts after seeing those
complaints and understanding what those
challenges are, then absolutely we could
adjust those in the future. Um but but
being aware of challenges that that c
that customers might be experiencing so
that we can address them. How's this?
Before the next time this comes up, can
we have a conversation about that? Yep.
If I can add one thing, and keep in mind
this contract that you're approving
tonight is a five-year contract with
five one-year extension options. So, it
may be 10 years until you review it
again. But if there are amendments that
need to be made uh for cause, we can
obviously come back. Um but and not
speaking about those on this contract or
those that bid. If there are issues with
tow companies because the examples you
gave, we hear that often and they can
always contact the police department to
see if they're in violations. There are
two sets of rules. We have the state law
which all of them have to follow. We
also have our contract which these four
companies have to abide by.
sort of an answer.
Chief, is it possible to make some of
those adjustments
um with this contract since it
technically hasn't been executed yet? Uh
this contract has gone through an RFP
process and and is
set. We believe it allows us to
manage the way that we need to. that
allows PD to operate the way that they
need to to clear vehicles off the
roadway. We believe that it allows
customers
uh appropriate levels of uh of service.
Uh and so when our vendors fail to do
that, it's our job to hold those vendors
accountable. Uh we can't do that if we
don't know specifics. Uh and sometimes
uh complaints aren't as specific. And so
that is why I I I started with a perhaps
we can do a better job of making it
clear this is where you can come to PD.
You can you know here is where you can
file a complaint about a towing
experience you might have so that we can
look into it and see if in fact those
details were the way they they were
expressed uh and determine how how that
works with the contract language.
Okay. Is that it? Anyone have any other
questions?
I would. Council member Lions. Thank
you, Vice Mayor Buck. Is there a
um I'm understanding what you're saying,
this is already set, right? And the
complaints that I'm hearing that council
member Toransson is talking about is a
person something happens on a weekend
and they can't get to car a Friday and
they can't get it to Monday. There's a
lot of our citizens that work irregular
work weeks and that could be problematic
if they've got to get to work or
something. Would you mind taking a look
at the T's and C's and letting us know
if there is provisions for weekend
retrieval if possible?
Yeah, absolutely. I will do that. Uh,
and
um, I don't have them on the top of my
memory to to be able to answer that
directly right now. Uh, but I will
review that specific question uh, and
respond back with some details for
council of what those are. All right.
Thank you. I didn't mean to put you on
the spot. I didn't figure you would have
it, but I would appreciate that
information. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Yep. Council member Bonnie,
is there a a a time-specific reason that
this has to be approved tonight or can
we review this next meeting after you
guys come back with some answers?
We can. If the contract does not meet
with council's expectations, we
would put this RFP aside, rework the
contract, and rego through this process.
If you have dealt with towing companies
in the past, this is a big process and
they uh will work hard to try to wedge
competitors out uh to adjust and tweak
and and and the same things that you're
describing are the things that we go
through to get to this point. We do feel
like we have a a solid contract that
allows fair treatment of customers in
the in the existing contract and in the
process that we followed. Okay.
All right. Council member Lions. So, if
I understand you correctly, the if we
did ask for a change, you would have to
go through the whole RFP process again.
you couldn't we don't have a policy to
allow for addendums to it or more
clarity. It's hard set fast. It would be
this is a five-year term and so the
opportunity to open that we could
certainly ask them uh the the four uh
respon you successful respondents uh to
this RFP. If they are willing to do
that, they could decide that that
changes their their payment and and cost
structure, which it could snowball into
a the RFP that needs to be redone. Uh
and it is a number of months of work.
That's not the problem. Um but looking
at what are we going to get changed uh
and making sure that that it's the way
we want it to be. Um I believe that we
are there. I believe that we have the
ability to provide the services the
residents need. We need to hold them
accountable when they fail to meet the
obligations that are in there. Um I I do
understand that. I just I don't feel
like that answers the question that has
been brought forward because we can we
can delay this get you some answers and
bring it back. I would I would
appreciate on June 10th without amending
the contract. Um it's certainly
something we could do. And then I think
we need to understand because I go and
and have issued contract addendums with
companies in the past and say this is
only what we're going to bid on and
that's it and you lock the rest of it
down and if you don't want to bid on
this you're going to be disqualified.
We're the end customer. We set the
requirements. They need to dance to our
sheet of music per se. So we could say
hey look we want this added. Please bid
this part of it as an addendum to that.
And we have that ability. Correct. We
do. and and they then again couldn't
respond, but if they want the business,
they'll dance to our sheet of music and
that's my expectation to communicate to
them. Does that make sense? Yep. Thank
you,
Mayor Anderson. I just want to caution
you. I don't know that any of you have
ever dealt with these companies when
they're negotiating contracts with us,
but it's a nasty, nasty process and they
will all um claim that they're being um
wronged in some way or another and mess
up. Hawkins being very kind in talking
about going through this process with
this particular industry. So, just so we
go into this all understanding that
that's what we face with this industry.
They'll challenge the contracts. They'll
say somebody's doing it. The town is up
to something. There's just lots of lots
of moving parts to these contracts with
these towing companies. I've been
unfortunately in some of those
discussions with him.
Oh, okay. Council member, are you
finished? Mayor Anderson. Okay. Council
member Torus, how's
this? Can we have an internal policy
that we decide not to deal with people
that get a lot
of poor reviews?
We have removed towing vendors from our
list in the past for poor behavior and
we have the ability to do that. Okay.
And is it possible that we can recommend
maybe they have weekend hours and the
people that comply with giving us
weekend hours, we tend to reward a
little bit more than those that don't.
I will explore our options with with
legal and and our purchasing experts. Uh
it's negotiating.
I want to wait till the 10th. So So
mayor and council, I I just pulled down
the contracts, right? So there's four
contracts that were on the agenda.
They're all the same. Here's what it
says about hours of operation right now.
This is what if they were approved, what
they'd be required to do. They've got to
provide their services 24 hours a day, 7
days a week. That's the towing when
called by the police department. The
hours of operation,
um it's it requires them to be open 9:00
a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.
And they have the option on Saturday and
Sunday to be open. And if they are going
to be open on Saturday and Sunday, it
has to be open for a minimum of four
hours. Currently, they're not required
to be open on the weekends. Now, the the
council and the town absolutely has the
right to um postpone the RFP to, as as
Hawin mentioned, we could reject the RFP
and start over and put in new
requirements, including being open on
weekends if that's something the council
wanted to do. Just understanding it
would just delay this process somewhat.
But if that was what the council wanted,
a requirement to be open for a certain
amount of time on weekends. Um, right
now it also excludes certain holidays.
Um, just the major holidays. Right now
they're not required to be open. That's
something the council has to do. What
what we don't know and I think we would
need to get feedback or at least the
recommendation would be from the towing
industry is would we get any bids,
right? I don't know if they're normally
open on weekends and from a staffing
standpoint and a financial standpoint if
it makes business or business sense for
they be open. One concern would be and I
think we need to get solicit feedback
from the industry is if this was a
requirement that the town had and we get
no biders because they say look we don't
do this because doesn't make financial
sense to be open on a Sunday when you
may get one person in a 4-hour window.
Or maybe they do. I I I don't know. I
just don't know what the industry would
would require at that point.
Okay. Uh, council member Buckland was I
had so Thank you, Vice Mayor. Um, Chris,
to add to that, under the contract
center packet, so under H vehicle
access where you were looking at talks
about time, but in here it actually just
says that um the contractor must make
all towed vehicles um stored at the
facility available to the owner, blah
blah blah blah blah. um during the
contractor's business hours. So this
portion it's it's their business hours.
I do know
having run the RFP process for this,
having run this program for years, um
other cities all had a uh single toe
contract. Um, we chose to do this
because it did um we felt like benefited
our our um citizens better so that
somebody doesn't get the monopoly and
then start controlling things in a
negative way. But I what I recall was
none of the other cities who had the
single to contract also um had nobody
was getting their their cars out on the
weekends. They have to be available to
tow them and those guys are not your
business people. they're not the ones um
responsible in the office. So I I think
we can table it. I can't remember who
said it if it was you Chris or someone
on the dis here that I do think we will
struggle to get uh someone to put in for
the RFP if we're going to put force them
to now have people in the office on
Saturdays and Sundays when they don't
normally.
I I don't have the the the staff member
here tonight that that helped set this
up, but I do know that as we set the
scope of work and put out the RFP, we
looked at what the marketplace is of all
of our comm uh surrounding cities, what
do they have in their contracts? Uh and
we would mirror that. And so this is a
level above that. Uh and and we can
certainly do that. uh and and we would
we need to do what's best for Gilbert.
Uh we believe this contract does achieve
that, but but absolutely we can pursue
and answer additional questions and and
take care of that. Okay. Council member
Von Giovani. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Um
could we do something as simple as throw
another RFP for Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday?
keep these keep these contracts but
throw another RFP for Friday, Saturday
and Sunday in the future if we get more
complaints.
It is something we could consider. What
you would have is company A towes
car and and the person and and they
didn't respond to the weekend RFP.
Company B towes a different car. They
did respond to it. person who owes car A
wishes to get it on the weekend. It it
certainly it adds a level of complexity
uh that that may not get us to where we
want to go.
Should could we have the RFP stating
that if your car is towed on Friday that
goes to this
company? If we do a separate RFP for a
weekend, it would go to that company on
the weekend. What I don't want to make
too much of a problem if there isn't a
problem to begin with. One or two people
is not a problem. So what I'm saying is
can we reserve the right to do another
RFP for a weekend if we get a bunch of
people now having complaints um to your
department. Okay. And I think I'll I'll
just look at Chris, but yes, we have the
right to issue an RFP for another line
of service that we don't have a contract
for in place. Okay. I just don't want to
make a problem if we're two
people. you know, if it's a if it's a
number of people, then maybe we could do
another RFP. And um Mayor, Council
Member Bonjiovani, the the contract on
the termination says the town may
terminate this agreement for any reason
or no reason with 7 days notice. So to
your point, I think if the council were
to approve these contracts, but
then hear from residents that the
weekend being open on a Saturday, Sunday
is very important and you think the
numbers justify it, we could go out and
do an RFP, even though these are 5-year
contracts with one-year renewals. If
council wanted to do so, we could
terminate at any time, whether it's six
months now or three years from now, do a
new well, we would do the new RFP and
then and then coincide the termination
with the new RFP with the requirement to
have not just 9 to5 minimum hours Monday
through Friday, but also include
weekends. So, we could do that now or we
could do it at some point in the future
if the council feels like that's an
important component to have.
Young, are you finished? Yeah. Okay.
Council member Goparrowski. Thank you,
Vice Mayor, and thank you, Chris, for
that suggestion. Um, my concern with um
adding the additional requirements and
and service levels in the RFP is that
that cost is then going to be extended
to the customer. And so there is that
risk that if we ask for that higher
service level that then all customers
are going to have to pay more for that
service. Um, so I would suggest what um,
town attorney Chris Payne suggested is
let's get some input over the next six
months of from our residents and then
decide if we want to terminate these
contracts and issue a new RFP.
Okay. Council member Lions.
Thank you, Vice Mayor. Um, to your
point, Council Member Kapowski, I agree
with you on that. Uh, my concern
primarily is, like I said, people who
work in a regular work week and also
those folks are getting charged for each
day it's sitting there and oftent times
the people that hit in hit get hit with
this are the ones that are least can't
afford it. So, that's that's where my
mindset with it is. I understand what
we're doing. I just want to make sure
that we're not putting an undue burden
on our citizens for our convenience.
that that that's primarily my motivation
for it. So, I agree with you as far as,
you know, let's get some data, see how
many people we do have impacted by it,
and then we can move from there. So, and
Mayor and Council Member Lions, if I can
also add that uh based on the RFP, based
on what they bid for, their their fees
are set based on what they agreed to in
this RFP. So, um it's not one set of
fees and then the next day it's their
own. The toe companies can do that with
their their other toes, but they have to
abide with the terms of this contract of
what fees they propose. That was part of
the evaluation process uh for
procurement is evaluating those fees,
making sure they're comparable and fair
for the market. And I'll also add that
the four companies that are on this RFP
are the current four that we currently
have over the last five years.
Council member Toruson, rather than slow
this down anymore,
just applying typical
business, why don't you make a few calls
and say, "By the way, I'd like to know
what your hour you intend for your hours
on Saturday and Sunday to be and just if
anybody happens to be open Saturday to
Sunday, let's push some business their
way and people will start to fall in
line when they're not getting as much
business. Can we just make it simple and
move forward?"
We can absolutely reach out to the
companies and do that.
Okay. So, Vice Mayor, anyone else have
any question? Council member Buckley
Buck Black. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Um,
Council Member Torres, I and and uh
Lions totally get your why. That's
loving our citizens and I love that. I
think the concern that I have based on
the contract and knowing how it works,
it's the same contract we've had for
years. there's a rotation and they go on
the list and to deviate from that
because someone chose to be open special
on a weekend and not can get us hung up
in the contract itself. I think um what
council member Kapowski said makes
sense. I would like to take it a little
further in terms of I staff is crushed.
We know that they're ex beyond lean. Um
a ton of work went into this
For the most part, I think the contracts
have been working because they no one's
changed them over over the decades.
Doesn't mean there aren't problems along
the way. Rather than go to a lot of
research, my interest is not having not
tying our our very busy staff up with
that, but just pay attention to the
complaints. If we get complaints that
don't come to the to the chief, then
it's our obligation to to pass that down
so they have awareness, they can have
the conversation, get, you know, deal
with the tow company and then what our
contract does allow is if we get a ton
of complaints and we find that they're
not providing good service for our
citizens who deserve that, then we can
terminate them. Give them the seven days
notice and terminate them. I'm not as
concerned about the weekend um getting
the car back only
because I I I and chief and his staff,
we didn't tow cars that were drivable.
They were they were total in crashes or
they were DUIs. Um for the most part,
sometimes abandoned but rare, but
they're cars that are not drivable
anyways. And to get it out, you crash on
Saturday and to get it out Saturday
afternoon, you're not getting in the
body shop anyways. And so they're never
going to get you in the same day. So I
don't think it's as big a problem as
we're concerned. I really appreciate and
love, you know, the fight for our
citizens and and and want to do the
same. But I think we're making more of
it. If we just go with
it, we pass through, it comes to us,
they track what's going on. You find the
problem offender and you deal with it
and then you get them off. We have
others on the list and others that want
to be on it. That would be my
recommendation.
Mayor and council, if I can just add one
more thing. We do as part of the
contract, we audit them. We do not just
wait for complaints to come in. So, we
do audits of the uh each of the toll
companies to make sure they're in
compliance not only with what they're uh
that their paperwork's in order, they're
charging the fees that they're supposed
to be charging, and their response times
are within the contract guidelines as
well.
All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chief.
Any other questions up and down the DIS?
Yeah. Are we are we good? Thank you,
Vice Mayor. I I I agree. I think we
don't even know if there's a problem
yet. So, let's see if there's a problem.
If we get heard from if citizens let us
know that there's a problem, let's turn
it over to Chief and his staff and we'll
let's just see if there's a problem. If
there's a problem, you know, Chris said
there's ways for us to get out of it.
So, let's just see if there's a problem.
Okay. So, so I'm going to try to recap
this. We are going to go ahead and vote
as the group the group numbers and vote
yes for this. Well, whatever the vote
ends up being. Okay. I just wanted to
make sure I I have this straight. Okay.
Anyone have any other
questions? All right, Chief. Thank you.
Thank you both very much. All right. So,
with no other questions, I'm going to
make a motion to approve the consent
agenda items number 10 through
24. Can I have a second?
Second.
Okay. Seconded by council member
Coprowski and please
vote. So motion carried
70 and with that I believe I will turn
this back over to the mayor. Thank you
vice mayor. We have two items on the
administrative calendar. First is a
presentation the auditor certified
public accountant presentation of annual
audited financial reports for the fiscal
year
ended June 30th
2024. Hawen, are you doing this one,
too?
Yes, mayor and council. Sorry, I walked
all the way back there. Um, we did do
the staff report last time. Uh, and so
this is now to fulfill the the statute.
Uh, our auditor is here to to present uh
their portion. And without further ado,
I will turn the time over to Jim.
Thank you, mayor and council, for having
me here tonight to present the results
of the town's fiscal year 2024 uh
financial statement
audit. Um these results are reported in
three separate audit reports that I'm
going to cover real quick here. Um the
first one would be the report on the
audit of the financial statements. So,
as Hawin mentioned earlier, he presented
the uh the ACTUER um the town's annual
comprehensive financial report. And
within that report, we issue our opinion
on those financial statements in that
report. Um and then in addition to that,
we issue what's called a single audit
report. And because of the level of uh
federal funding that the town receives,
they're required to undergo a single
audit. It's also known as uniform
guidance audit. And within that report,
there's two separate reports. One is our
report on internal control over
financial reporting and the other is
report on compliance with federal
programs and the results of these
reports. Uh the first one I mentioned
the opinion on the financial statements.
It was an unmodified opinion. That's a
clean opinion. That means the financial
statements are free of material
misstatement and can be relied upon. Um
and then within that single audit
report, the report on um internal
controls over financial reporting, this
is where we disclose any deficiencies we
found during the audit. We had no
material weaknesses or significant
deficiencies to report. Um and then
moving on to the the report on major
federal programs. Also with that one, we
had no deficiencies to report there as
well. Um and in addition to that, no
other findings that we'd report in a
management letter. So very clean audit,
very good job. Um and then just a few
final comments working through the
audit. Uh management was very helpful,
very cooperative. Everything requested
was provided to us. Um we had no
disagreements with how um things were
reported in the financial statements. Um
and then at the conclusion of the audit,
we were able to get the management
representation letter signed. Um that's
all I have. So if there's any questions,
I'd be happy to answer them. Any
questions concerning the
audit? Thank you. I think this is just a
presentation
tonight. So, we'll move on to the
next administrative
item, which is uh consider acceptance of
the budget report and contingency report
for the third quarter of fiscal year
2025. I entertain a motion.
25 was just a presentation. We need
motion for 26. I'd like to make a motion
to accept item 26, the uh acceptance of
the budget report and contingency report
for the third quarter of fiscal year
2025.
I'll second
it. been moved by council member
Toruson, seconded by council member
Boniovani that we accept the budget
report and contingency report for the
third quarter of fiscal year 2025.
Please
vote. Motion carries 70. Moving on to
communications from citizens. Vice
Mayor.
Thank you, Mayor
Anderson. To begin,
um, thank you. To begin the
communications from citizens,
uh, I will now read the,
um, the rules of
decorum. We value your participation of
our community members.
Sorry, I need my
glasses. Okay. We value the
participation of our community members
and robust exchange of ideas. However,
it's essential that this discourse
remains respectful and constructive,
reflecting the professionalism expected
in such forms. Misinformation and
personal attacks undermine our
collective efforts and do not contribute
to the productive dialogue necessary for
our town's progress. This is an
opportunity for the public to address
the town council directly about issues
impacting the town. Accordingly, the
town council will not allow for moments
of silence or playing of music or other
recorded materials which could distract
from the meeting decorum or violate
copyrights. We understand and appreciate
the passion our community members bring
to this session. We remind everyone that
clapping during the meeting is not
acceptable. This practice can disrupt
the flow of discussion, potentially in
intimidate others, and distract from the
respectful atmosphere to we strive to
maintain. Tonight, we'll invite you to
come up to the podium. When you when you
come up to the podium, state your name
and your city of residence, and you will
have three minutes to directly address
the town council unless otherwise
indicated. the current speaker will be
using three minute. If the current
speaker will be using three minutes of
another person's time, that person
should state their name, the city they
live in, and acknowledge that they are
donating their three minutes to the
current speaker. In accordance with
state law, we are not able we are unable
to provide responses to the public
comments during this meeting. Please be
assured that your comments and input are
heard and
valued. And our first speaker will will
be Timothy Cano.
Um I'm here for speeding. I about two
years ago somebody came through my back
wall.
Um if I would have been over
there, we probably wouldn't have been
here. Um this has happened to me
Saturday night again and I want to see
what we could do about this because I
feel something needs to be done. I've
been in the same house and it's happened
to me twice.
I reached out to to to you
uh maybe a couple months ago here. Um I
didn't get a response. I don't know if
that was moving when the other Bridget
was here
or but I just I want to come to you guys
to see what we can we can do about this.
I I've already done
petitions, got and there's nothing been
done. You guys put a
uh a photo radar out there. Not It
didn't do anything but make him drive
faster.
Can we direct somebody from staff to
talk with this gentleman? Yeah, Vice
Mayor, if we can get your contact
information, we will follow up with you,
sir. if um chief. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And and you
know, we're not allowed from the dis to
respond. So, um Okay. Thank you, sir.
You're welcome.
Okay. Our next speaker is Monica C. I'll
let you come up.
Hi. Uh I'm Monica Kjukano. Thank you
very much for the time you're uh giving
me. Uh I'm here to uh discuss about the
differentiated tax between uh uh
personal property actually and rental
property that we have. And I read in the
press that you're planning to increase
the property tax for the rental
properties. And I find that um that is
something that it's not fair because the
money that we pay the rental property
with was already taxed. We pay taxes on
the rental and if we have to increase
the uh to pay more taxes on the rental
properties that will be passed along to
the renters. So this is my concern.
That's why I'm here today.
Patrick, can we have the same followup?
Yeah, mayor. And I could just um maybe
provide a a response to incorrect
information that we are not raising
taxes on rental properties.
Perfect. Thank you. That's wonderful.
That was quick. Perfect. All right.
Thank you very
much. With that, that concludes the
communications from citizens and I will
turn this back over to Mayor Anderson.
Thank you, Vice Mayor. You can see on
our agenda, future meetings, uh, future
study session, and I know council member
Bonjiovani talked about another possible
study session to add to that list. So,
follow up on that. Uh, next is
communications report from the town
manager.
Thank you, mayor, members of the
council. Tonight, I'll start with
department and division highlights,
beginning with uh as we're well aware
from the proclamation earlier this
evening. It's National Public Works
Week. So, we're going to be highlighting
our departments and divisions within our
public works department, which
constitutes solid waste, environmental
compliance, fleet, and streets.
This a picture of our solid waste. Some
of the members of our solid waste
division and highlights some of the
services they provide to this community
is curbside collection, customer
outreach and education, front load
containers for commercial customers, and
rolloff containers for
residents. In 2024, they serviced almost
4.2 two million black cans, which are
our general refugees that heads to the
landfill, and just under three million
blue cans, which is the recycled
materials that go through the central
material recycling facility and on to
reuse and other products. We landfilled
approximately 86,000 tons of trash and
we recycled just under 17 million tons
of recyclable materials. We collected
200 roughly
255,000 bulk piles of trash and that
constituted
16,000 bulk tons of waste collected
through our bulky item pickup service
and we recycled 129 tons of glass
materials. The division highlights to
highlight some of our employees. Some of
our bulk operators participated in the
Swana truck rodeo in Tucson. John Burrus
placed first place in rear loader
competition. Cole Horde placed first in
the rolloff competition and Dar Darren
Huralt pl took second place in the rear
load. The team rerouted all commercial
routes to be more efficient and
implemented a new routing schedule for
commercial and rolloff drivers. We
acquired 30 to 35 new commercial
customers and serviced over 2,300
rolloffs in March 2025 alone. and the
bulk team minimize zones A, B, and E
from seven routes to
six. Upcoming, we've will be partnering
with Goodwill to provide monitored
donation containers, helping divert
textiles from the land use and support
reuse initiatives. And we also will be
piloting the bulk service call-in pilot
to improve our current bulk service uh
in October for efficiency and reduced
illegal
dumping. Moving on to environmental
compliance and this is some of the
members in our environmental compliance
division. The division's duties involves
environmental permitting, compliance and
enforcement, storm water operations and
maintenance, air quality, and
residential and town generated hazardous
waste. Some of the statistics for uh
that team, 7.2 million pounds of
materials were diverted from our
landfills since 2017.
Just under 118,000 pounds of e-waste was
recycled, just over 680,000 lbs of
material collected in total, just under
13,000 residents served, and just under
5,000 gallons of latex paint recycled.
We saw an 8.8% an 8% increase in total
weight brought into the household wet
hazardous waste facility from the
previous year, an 8.5% increase in
e-waste, and an 8.7% increase in the
number of cars from the previous year
years of service. And that was for the
year
2024. The storm water operation and
maintenance
impact just under 145,000
uh storm pipes cleaned in 2024.
44 uh and that's probably linear feet. I
apologize for that. Uh 44 infrastructure
repairs replacements,
1,713 individual storm structures, just
under 5,000 infrastructures inspected,
and 12 tons of material removed from
those lines. In regards to our storm
water infrastructure, there are just
under 11,000 structures, just under 85
miles of storm pipe itself, and 407 dry
wells in our
community. Moving on to the fleet
division functions. The fleet division
maintains Gilbert's vehicles and
equipment, including emergency response,
sanitation, and public service vehicles,
ensuring a safe, clean, and safe
community. They do vehicle procurement,
maintenance and repair, fuel fuel
management, life cycle cost,
preventative maintenance schedules,
regulatory compliance and disposal of
vehicles through an auction, as well as
various sustainability initiatives. And
the Gilbert fleet ensures that all town
vehicles are safe, cost-effective, and
ready to support public services.
Looking at impact, we've got a 70%
technician productivity ratio, 7,900
average annual work orders processed,
and
1,160 plus vehicles equipment supported.
The preventative completion rates in
January of 25 overall was 46% in March
of 2562 and for PD 74% in January 25 and
in March uh 99%. We also made some fuel
island improvements uh to our system as
well. Moving on to the streets and a
picture of the streets
crews. Their mission is to maintain the
roadway system ensuring a high degree of
reliability, safety, rideability, and
meeting or exceeding all applicable
regulations for roadways in a
cost-effective manner.
streets infrastructure itself. We have
943 centerline miles of street in
Gilbert. Just under 39,000 traffic
signs, 30,000 plus street lights and 13
plus over 13 million square feet of
landscape. The pre pavement preservation
impact. So the pavement condition index
was
72.7. Our target is 72 and the national
average is 66.
105 miles of surface seal treatments
were completed in 2000 or I'm sorry
fiscal year 25 and 95% of all pothole
work orders were completed within one
working day and our target is 90% for
that
measure the street lights impact 410
street lights were upgraded to new
foundationmounted poles for some of the
newer members of our council. uh a lot
of the poles that were put in at at
various points in Gilbert's development
were mounted into the ground and we're
seeing the early degradation of those
poles from exposure to water uh that is
eroding the steel and forcing us to
replace a lot of those poles early. So
we are proactively going around and
remounting a lot of those poles into
raised pedestals to avoid that contact
with the water and extend the light of
life of that infrastructure. and 100% of
all street light work orders were
completed within 5 days or less. And our
target is to get those done within less
than seven
days. Moving on to retirements,
recognitions, and awards. We would first
want to congratulate our uh town of
Gilbert employees who recently graduated
from Park University cohort 5, a masters
in public administration. I'll highlight
some of those individuals. Shawn Marie
Aurula, she is our health and well-being
manager on the people team. Ariel
Harton, she's an IT specialist, too, on
the IT team. And George Tol, who's a
recreation coordinator, too, in parks
and
recreation. In addition to Salanto, who
is a planner in the development services
department, Seth Brownwell, who is a
sergeant in our police department, and
Keith Newman, who's a senior planner in
our development services department.
A huge round of congratulation to those
employees for continuing their career
and and advancing their skills. And
lastly, we want to congratulate Officer
Mat. He was recognized by the National
Association of School Resource Officers.
Exceptional service award for region 7.
He was recognized for his dedication to
building strong relationships with
students and ensuring their safety
exemplifies the true spirit of Gilbert
of the a Gilbert Police Department
school resource officer. So again,
congratulations to Officer Mat for great
recognition for the work he's doing and
he's currently a school resource officer
at Kulie Mil Middle School here in town.
And with that, mayor, that's all I have
for this evening. Thank you.
Reports from the
council, Council Member Lions. Thank
you, Mayor. Uh just a couple things with
Memorial Day coming up u this weekend.
Uh you're all invited to HD South uh
where we're going to have the Veterans
Advisory Board are going to have a
Memorial Day celebration on the civic
lawn from 8:30 to 9:30. Um a little over
100 years ago, groups of of folks in
this country got together to remember
those who gave the ultimate sacrifice
for our our freedom and we want to come
and remember them. Um the event will
include a flag, a wreath ceremony, and a
battlefield cross as well as a PMIA
table and more. So, I encourage you to
come and take a part of that if you
would please. Um, if you've noticed in
the Heritage District, the military
tribute banners are up. They will be on
display from uh May 14th through July
8th, coinciding with Memorial Day and
Independence Day. Uh, that's the display
periods. At that point, they'll be taken
down and then reinstalled for Veterans
Day. We want to thank everybody who
purchased a B banner and uh for honoring
their veteran. On the second slide here,
the Veterans Advisory Board also has the
State 48 shirts back and they're in
stock ready to purchase. This is part of
our fundraising. Uh so head over to town
store and grab you one. And we do need
volunteers. So if you're looking for a
way to get involved with the veteran
community, scan the QR code uh for more
information or uh contact me or one of
our veteran advisory board members.
Thank you. Thank you, Council Member
Bonjivani. Thank you, Mayor. from Parks
and Recre. We're having an H2O Fest.
Beat the heat at one of Gilbert's most
popular events, the H2 H2O Fest. Join us
on Thursday, June 5th, Freestone Park
from 300 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. for water
slides, food trucks, music, and more.
Three sessions will be held to ensure
optimum slide time for each participant.
Participant tickets are on sale now.
Thank you, Council Member Torus. Uh
tomorrow in this room at 6 o'clock
there'll be a redevelopment committee
meeting and it'll be interesting to see
what the south anchor to is proposing.
The south anchor of this heritage
district is the southwest no the
northwest corner of Gilbert and Elliot
and they'll be showing plans for what uh
they're proposing uh to build here and
to see if it fits with the vision that
they signed off on a couple years ago.
So, it'll be an interesting day to to
take a look at what's going to happen
here.
Council member Caproski, I just wanted
to add on to Council Member Bon
Giovani's comment about the H2O Fest. If
you haven't been to it, it is your one
opportunity to use the sloped hills at
Freestone Park as a slip and slide. Very
fun for families.
for the mayor. I I just want to again
thank the Salt River Puma Maricopa
Indian Community and President Harvier
for meeting with us yesterday. It's a
very special meeting and um I want to
thank the staff that organized that
also. They did a wonderful
job and I told the u the president we
didn't want to wait another 10 years to
do that again because I think it's
worthwhile to get together and talk
about issues that we share. Plus, I wish
I had the two figurines up here. Gave me
a couple of beautiful figurines and it
um so it was a very special
time. Any other
comments? If not, Council Member
Buckman. Thank you, mayor. Uh just as
we're approaching um June 10th and the
the final budget adoption, I've been
pulling a lot of data. Um got charts and
graphs. Not going to show that today,
but just something I wanted to throw out
um on the radar is uh in looking at uh
multiple things. I'm going to speak
specifically about our staffing.
Um we are based on the data I have found
the lowest staffed municipality in
Maricopa County at 5.88.
88 FTEES per thousand. Next closest to
us is Chandler 6.25 and they don't
provide their own trash service. And if
I think Jessica's here still or somebody
can attest that that's more than 100
employees that we have to supply for
service that they don't and they still
have more staff than we do to uh handle
their their large workloads. Uh the
average was around 8.3 and the high was
temp 11.99. So, I just uh wanted to
point that out as we approach the budget
and I know we're, you know, it's tight
and we're hurting on money, but uh we I
uh think I can speak for the entire
council that um appreciate you staff,
all the staff that's sitting here now
here at 7 a.m. still here tonight. Um
coming in tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.
Just a a big um um a lot of gratitude
for how hard you work doing more with
less. Uh, I just want to make sure
everybody everybody knows that. Thank
you. I don't know how Tempe gets all
those people in that upside down
pyramid.
I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn.
I make a motion to adjourn. We are
adjourned. Thank you.