The Chandler City Council held its regular meeting on August 14, 2026, addressing a range of topics including water rate increases, microtrenching infrastructure issues, the status of the city's Flock ALPR camera system, and public comments overwhelmingly calling for a permanent ban on automatic license plate readers. The meeting also included unanimous approval of the consent agenda and announcements about upcoming events.
Welcome to the Chandler City Council meeting. To help us conduct tonight's meeting efficiently and respectfully, we ask all attendees to follow these rules and procedures. Please submit a speaker card or comment card to the city clerk before the meeting is called to order. This helps us manage the meeting and ensure everyone has a fair opportunity to be heard. Speakers must be recognized by the mayor before addressing the city council. Once at the podium, please direct all comments to the city council as a whole rather than to individual members or to the audience. Courteous and orderly conduct is expected from everyone present in the chambers. Any person whose conduct disrupts or interferes with the meeting may be warned by the mayor, and if the disruption continues, may be asked to leave the council chambers. And we ask these things in the name of your son, Yeshua Jesus. Amen. Amen. Please join me in the pledge. Aye. One nation under God. And liberty and justice all. Thank you, Rabbi. Thank you, Councilmember. Council, before we uh next on our agenda is the consent agenda. Before we I take a motion in a second, I do have one speaker card related to that. And um, here we go. So I'd like to invite uh Joseph Reck Rock, I'm sorry, who's speaking on item number two? We're gonna give everybody two minutes tonight to share their thoughts, so please come on up. You uh state your name and city of reference, and uh when the light turns yellow, try to wrap up when it's red, you're done. The floor is yours, sir. My name is Joseph Rock, I'm a longtime resident of Chandler. Uh the bill that or the city council here wants to put up is a increase or have a public output on increase of wastewater and water. Well, last November we had, as you all well know, we had a meeting for public input, which I was the only one that showed up on the increase that we had in January. The reason why was the meeting was held at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday. I was the only person that showed up. I went to the information officer and said, When is this meeting? And they didn't know. I had to go to the city clerk's office, and they found it in the internet and said, Oh, the meeting in a couple hours. So I was here for that meeting. I was the only public, the rest of them were city employees. Okay, that was approved, a seven percent increase across the board on our water rates, which was effective in January. Needless to say, now the water department wants another increase. I'm I'm sorry, but if the city council could help me find the trees that grow money, uh I might be able to do something, but the increase is is just starting to get a little bit ridiculous. I think before you people here do anything, you should look into it and say, why is it that we just had an increase and now you want another one? I'm sorry, it doesn't make common sense to me. So that's all I have to say. Thank you, Mr. Ryan. Thank you. And you know, just so you know, Mr. Rock, um we believe me, with these are hard decisions for us. You can stay there, you don't need to come back. Uh, we can address you since this is not unscheduled at this point. But I I know Gilbert has raised their water rates 250, 300 percent, and we have striven to do small modest inflation is six percent on construction materials this year and everything else. We want to make sure that our water lines or soar lines are in good shape so that we are not having breaks, which are even more expensive. So I realize that it might not seem like it, uh, but we are we we really try to keep our rates.