The Avondale City Council held a regular meeting on October 15, 2025, with Mayor Pineda presiding. The meeting included employee introductions, a consent agenda vote, a public art program update, and council member reports on current events. All members were present except Councilmember Solario.
I'd like to call to order the regular city council meeting of September 22nd, 2025. Would you all please rise and join me with the Pledge of Allegiance and a Moment of Silence? Congratulations to the United States of America for which one nation under Godismo with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Marcella, can we have roll call, please? Councilmember Conde. Here. Councilmember Garcia. Here. Councilmember Solario. Councilmember Weiss. Here. Councilmember White. Present. Vice Mayor Nielsen. Here. Mayor Pineda. Here. Thank you so much. Ron. Expires Mayor and Council. Up first, uh, we have our employee announcements, and I believe Jody, our director of development services, is going to start us off. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm happy to introduce sorry. Three um newer employees with our development services department. Um, first I'd like to introduce Martin Moreno. Martin is one of our new planners, and he joins us from being a recent graduate from Arizona State University, and he was also a Marvin Andrews fellow. He worked at City of Tempe, and he also had worked at Phoenix Impure during various internships, including public works and capital improvement projects. He has a passion for local government and also planning and development. He received his master's degree in public administration and a uh bachelor's degree in government from Georgetown. Um he enjoys pickleball in his spare time and exploring new parks. You have a new best friend starting today. Um he enjoys pickleball exploring new parks and restaurants and riding his motorcycle little adventure. Uh secondarily, we have Zachary Jones. Zach just joined us last week. Um he is also a new planner in our planning division. He most recently was working in Nevada and doing some environmental planning, such as soil conservation. Um he also was a planner for Missoula County in Montana. He came here to the desert into the heat, and he's uh he's loving it. Um he has a master's degree in geography, and he went to the University of Montana and has a bachelor's degree in natural resources planning from the University of Wisconsin. And he enjoys also being outdoors and playing and watching professional disc golf, and um actually went towards the northeastern part of our state in surprise this past weekend to play um in a disc golf um event there. So another outdoor adventurous. And then Gilbert Garcia, you've might have seen him around. Um he worked in our finance and budget department for many years. Um he took an opportunity to become our new building permit technician too, uh which is in our building services division working with our permitting center. Um he has great skills in his utility billing division, where he worked in uh managing revenue with the supervisor, and his skills and his ability to be very detailed oriented, uh, manage intake and be a project manager is what we're looking for, and he's going through training and working with his supervisor Don right now. Um, and we have no doubt he's gonna be super successful helping our team and our department. And in his spare time, he enjoys cookouts, game nights, and holidays together with his family, and on occasion he golfs, and he is a local Avondale resident. So, congratulations from joining development services. Thank you all.