This is a one minute warning, we'll start in one minute.

The regular council meeting January twentieth, twenty twenty-six.

We'll begin with the invocation, which will be led by Amy Keller, Communication Director of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

Thank you, Amy.

As we come before thee tonight, we wish to thank thee for the gift of thy beloved son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Help us to be more patient with one another.

We're also mindful of and pray for those who are struggling or mourning at this time, and for those who suffer in silence.

We are grateful for the freedoms that we enjoy in this nation and for those who have fought and sacrificed so much to defend these freedoms.

Please guide and protect our military and those that lead our nation.

Help us to continue to make it a wonderful place by looking out for each other and lifting each other up to thee.

We thank thee, Father, for Mayor Anderson and his life of service to our community.

We thank thee for all of our town council members and other town employees.

And Father, we know their job is not easy.

Please guide them in their efforts and help them to know of our appreciation.

Finally, please bless all those who are in attendance tonight.

That those who speak may communicate their thoughts and feelings with civility, respect, and understanding.

Help us to remember that though we may differ in opinion, we are united in our desire to serve this community.

And Father, we offer this prayer in gratitude and humility in the name of thy son Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you, Amy.

Our Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Councilmember Buckley tonight.

We'll go forward with roll call.

Mayor Scott Anderson.

Here.

Vice Mayor Chuck Bongiovanni.

Here.

Councilmember Bobby Buckley.

Here.

Councilmember Kenny Bucklin.

Here.

Councilmember Young Kaprowski.

Here.

Councilmember Monty Lyons.

Here.

And Councilmember Jim Torgeson.

Here.

O'Qorum is present.

Thank you.

This time we'd like to make a special presentation recognition of Kevin Boudreau for his years of service.

Kevin, if you join me down here.

Thank you.

You're looking at a man that has given 33 years of his life to service to his community.

And we are very grateful for that, as was expressed even in the prayer tonight.

We're so grateful for those who choose to serve in the community.

Kevin has served 18 terms on one of our municipal property corporations.

18 times.

Yes, I saw that too.

And he served uh 18 terms as president, three terms as vice president, six terms as secretary treasurer.

And as he said, he oversaw uh infrastructure projects over a billion dollars.

Uh his leadership supported decades of rapid population and infrastructure growth and our ability to keep up with that.

And he's been known for his consistency, accuracy, and deep instant institutional knowledge.

And he's highly valued for mentoring new board members and ensuring smooth, transparent financial processes.

It's a volunteer position that probably isn't recognized very much.

People don't know what's happening, but it's very important as we prioritize our capital improvement projects.

Uh, and in this case, uh, especially water and wastewater projects.

So we have a certificate for you, Kevin.

There's more if you want.

Yeah.

We'll give that to Kevin.

And I would ask if you'd like to say anything.

Uh Mayor Anderson.

Uh thank you.

Uh yeah, you we've known each other for four decades probably.

Uh no, just it's been a privilege when we first moved to the town.

I think there were 10 stop lights and uh part of economic development and the water resources municipal property corporation.

It's just there's a lot of first class people in Gilbert.

So I just want to thank the town uh for its growth in a wise and uh prudent uh manner, and just uh appreciate being a resident here.

Thank you.

Let's give him a round of applause.

Thank you.

At this time, I'll uh turn the meeting over to our vice mayor who has communications from citizens.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh we value participation of the community members and robust exchange of ideas.

However, it's essential that this discourse remains respectful and constructive, reflecting the professionalism expected in such forums.

Misinformation and personal attacks undermine our collective efforts and do not contribute to a productive dialogue necessary for our town's progress.

Uh this is an opportunity for the public to address the town council directly about about issues impacting the town.

Accordingly, the town council will not allow for moments of silence or playing of music or other recorded music, which could distract from the meeting decorum or violate copyright laws.

Uh we will we uh while we understand and appreciate the passion of our community members bringing this session, we remind everyone that clapping during the meeting is not acceptable.

This practice can inter can disrupt the flow of discussion, potentially intimidate others, and distract from the respectful atmosphere that we strive to maintain.

In accordance with state law, we are unable to respond to issues that have not been properly noticed.

Therefore, the town council uh may only listen to citizens who wish to address them.

And at the conclusion of the open call to the public, response is limited to individual members of the council responding to criticism made by those who have addressed the public body, asking staff to review a matter or asking that a matter be put on a future agenda.

However, please be assured that your concerns and input are heard and valued.

In accordance with state code, each speaker is limited to three minutes.

Um priority will be given to Gilbert residents, business owners, and property owners.

Public comments will be limited to 30 minutes total at the beginning of the meeting.

The town clerk will notify the council once 30 minutes limit has been reached.

If additional comments remain, uh they they will be heard after the conclusion of the public hearing items with the same three-minute limit.

When you come up to the podium, please state your name and city of residence.

We're going to start tonight with uh Barbara Colvin.

Can you put the mic on, please, Barbara?

There you go.

My name is Barbara, and I reside in the town of Gilbert.

At the January 6th Town Hall meeting, I stated I was sending each of you an email asking three questions.

I didn't get any responses from any of you, but I did notice two of you on Go Gilbert making comments and the Vice Mayor doing a podcast.

Finally, today I received a reply from Taylor Porter, Town Council outreach coordinator at 1247 this afternoon.

It was two o'clock before I saw the email.

So after I read and digest what she says, I'll get back to you.

Until then, I want to reiterate that when I and two friends attended your second listening session.

We asked specifically and directly, quote, are you at least going to stop approving more apartment building construction?

They looked us in the eye and said, definitely yes.

We have seen nothing but more construction.

What gives guys?

Not only is all this apartment construction going on, but we have Kelly Faust, who has been the budget manager for 10 years plus, saying fiscal year 26 was rough and fiscal year 27 is going to be rougher.

Exactly.

How much do you think you can squeeze out of us?

There is only so much we can give.

Everything is going up, but yes, that doesn't mean Gilbert has to do a hundred times that Gilbert had Patrick Banger for 14 years and Kelly with over 10 years, and neither one of them realizing the shit was going to hit the fan for maintenance, new construction, and costs.

It all has to hit right now.

Back to the exorbit number of apartments being built.

We all agree we are in a drought.

We are not going to get more water from the Colorado.

In fact, we may get less.

So why are we continuing with all of this apartment construction when we are having water issues now?

Finally, at the meeting on October 14th, 2025, I informed you that your phone system needs fixing.

Calling the main number of 480-503-6,000.

You listen to the options.

I press six for meetings because I wanted to find out when the town hall meetings were.

Then press one for questions.

You hear the town clerk message, then it plays music, and then it disconnects you.

And it's still doing that today.

I did it again today, and that's exactly what I got.

So you are telling me that in three months no one is able to correct this?

Thank you.

See you next meeting.

Thank you, Barbara.

All right, Richard Young.

No, that's the one I pressed.

Okay, Richard Young, uh, Gilbert resident.

I'm here to speak about in opposition to the illegal program adopted by HR and the police department, the 30 by 30 program.

Uh it's a social engineering program.

And it's not only illegal, by the way, it is illegal not in the go-to-jail sense, it's illegal in the lose federal funding and get the your pants sued off by private citizens illegal.

We don't want it.

It also violates a policy put together for equal opportunity in hiring by uh Mayor Anderson and Councilman Torgeson.

So it's illegal and it violates an adopted policy.

It shouldn't do that.

Now city, the town also screwed up in adopting it.

They say on their web page that it increases female hiring in the police department by 30%.

Go to the 30 by 30 webpage.

It exists.

It doesn't say increase by 30%.

It increases the total to a minimum of 30%.

Those are two very different numbers.

Very different numbers.

And before the banshees come in and say that I'm opposed to women being police officers, let me say that I am not.

Hire people who are competent, male or female.

So no, I'm not opposed to hiring women police officers.

They fouled up in another respect on their web page.

They say that it's by demographics.

Well, illegal.

We've already covered that.

But you go to the uh 30 by 30 web page, and their proposal is 30% at a minimum to change the culture of the police department.

Gentler and kinder, I suppose.

But that uh is social engineering, and I don't think we want that.

If the incredible, well, if big hairy mongo is breaking into my home and I call 911, I don't want Taylor Swift coming to save me.

She'll look cute in the uniform and maybe distract Mungo.

I hope she can run fast, but I want these guys that we have back here.

These tough looking guys are policemen.

That's who I want, and I think the rest of you want that.

The reason for having police is to police.

The core goal of police.

There are some very tough, big, mean guys who know no pain out there, who are happy to impose pain on us.

And that's why we need tough guys to deal with them.

The police must be police.

And that's it.

Get rid of that silly program.

Richard, thank you for your feedback.

Uh David Rigby.

Good evening, Council.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to the citizens of Gilbert.

A few council meetings ago, I put forth a request repeating uh a statement that Young Koprowski made about listing capital improvement projects, listing what the transportation bond funds were going through, going towards making that uh clear for the citizens, so that we could be on board with you.

I look at seven people in charge of a two billion plus dollar budget and think that's overwhelming amounts of work to be done by such a small group of people.

There are people in this community that are smart and intelligent, and even on a voluntary basis, could review things like QIT's uh recontracting after being involved with the initial shoddy work to build the North Treatment Plant.

Why were they rehired?

Why wasn't that company sued for that within the time frames that they needed to be for that shoddy worksmanship?

Why are the citizens of Gilbert paying for that shoddy workmanship and now paying for them and paying for a construction manager at large to oversee something that keeps ballooning in price?

That's a lot to oversee when I think of two billion dollars plus into various projects.

If this could be broken down, citizens in this community would also be watchdogs for what's going on.

I feel like I've given the allowance money to my teenage kids and just said spend it the best way that you can and try to make it work.

I'm looking at how things are adding up and consistently it doesn't add up.

It's given the excuse.

Well, construction costs are increasing, water prices are increasing.

With foresight, we would know, you know, we could assume that all these things are going to gradually go up, and we should plan for that.

When I look at the town of Gilbert's employee budgets, they increase 10 to 20 percent per salary.gov almost every year for the past 10 to 14 years.

So that foresight is in place, that adjustment and change is in place.

Can't we foresee the construction costs are also going to go up in a similar fashion?

This isn't a surprise.

This is simply bad, bad budgeting.

And if the town council needs help overseeing that, then let's call in committees.

Let's do more as a community to help out.

Invite us to be part of this process.

Let's find threads to pull on, let's expose what's going on, let's do a better job.

Maybe our public works employees are over their heads because we ballooned our population and continue to do so with high density housing.

Maybe because the infrastructure is overwhelmed by large numbers of people, we've bitten off more than we can chew.

Perhaps it's time to slow down, invite in more help, find competent people to oversee these budgets and do better for Gilbert.

That's it.

David, thank you.

Staff, can we have someone um email David um information about our potential participation in the public works advisory board, please?

Thank you.

Okay, Greg Bamford.

Vice Mayor, Chuck, Mayor, Scott, members of the council.

I was here two weeks ago uh talking about the sale of the 18.9 acres that's coming up at Ray and Santan Village Parkway.

Since that time, we've had community meetings and more information has come out.

Um what I find is very troubling.

We were attracted to that possibility for a church site because it had the general plan designation, it had a zoning and a neighborhood, and so many other factors that were compatible for what needed to be put there.

It's been mentioned already here tonight about the burgeoning population growth.

The faith community has not been able to keep up with providing the alternatives for family strengthening for some alternative to the Gilbert Goons, some alternative to the uh fireball that's thrown into the barn.

We need some things, and we had a presentation at the last meeting with the uh anti-human trafficking.

These are uh major moral decay, and we need something besides more residential units.

So we've been pursuing that only to find out that even though the property was appraised at 6,390,000, the town is driven.

They can claim that the state statute that drives them to do nothing but to sell that land at the highest price it can bring, even if it takes changing the general plan and giving that buyers a year to close, giving them endorsement to bring their uh application for a higher more dense use.

My plea is that don't we have the ability as a community to put priorities?

Every one of you, every day representing our town, have to live in in a system of priorities.

Where is the resources best spent?

And I'm suggesting that we need an awakening and and some very solid thinking about the quality of life and the future for the families in our community.

And I urge you to rethink this notion of everything falls second and subservant to the economic reality.

We need some starch in our attitudes and our willingness to have more of a balanced uh land use in our community, not just runaway uh residential development at any cost.

Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

Okay, Randy Nelson.

Good evening, Randy Nelson.

I'm a Gilbert residence for the last uh 15 years.

Uh and by chance our cards came up at the same time.

I'm speaking about the same thing, those 18 uh whatever acres that are 50 feet behind my house.

Uh I'm extremely concerned about what is going in there.

Uh the interpretation of that state statute.

I have just been informed this afternoon, as a matter of fact.

I I I misunderstood what that statute read.

I was uh Bianca told me this afternoon, uh straighten me out a little bit, which made my head explode.

Uh that we we as a community have to go by the state statute.

The state statute is telling us that our quality of life doesn't matter to our community.

I I can't believe our interpretation of that statute is accurate.

Uh quality of life doesn't matter to us.

In other words, listening to, I I did go to the bid meeting the uh last week.

Uh the fellow from the traffic department was explaining the only entrance and exit from that land because the odd shape is uh about a hundred feet south of Camilla.

That means every headlight going in from sunset to sunrise goes directly into my bedroom window, 250 feet from from that entrance.

So my quality of life is gonna just be wonderful, and there's several other houses the same way.

And the state statute is telling us that we have no input about that.

Quality of life, the state is telling us, quality of life doesn't count.

We have no input.

The state tells us that we have no input of quality of life in Gilbert.

I think our interpretation of that statute is wrong.

I would like you to re uh take another look at that statute, because we it can't possibly be correct.

Our interpretation cannot possibly be correct that that we have no input of quality of life.

The church, I'm not a churchgoer, so I'm not in favor of church necessarily.

I am not in turn in favor of such high density housing going into uh every single square inch of land in Gilbert, which is what we're doing.

And and there's no question that that's what we're doing.

And and quality of life.

That's all I want to say.

Quality of life.

The state cannot control our quality of life.

Please look at that statute again, please.

Thank you.

Thank you, Randy.

Uh Cindy Barnes, and Cindy is our last one, folks.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

My name is Cindy Barnes.

I lived in Gilbert till I was 36.

I still call myself a Gilbert native, and I reside in Queen Creek now.

On December 11th, former council member Larry Morris and I met with Lenar President Alan Jones and his staff regarding the proposed development that you'll hear tonight, Harvest Harvest Grove.

Our concerns were not really heard very well.

We made no progress on our concerns that we had spoke about back in your November meeting about the density, the traffic congestion, the placement of the two-story homes directly facing the park, the wastewater treatment plant and the town's adjacent 22 acres that may one day be your police and substation.

I served 12 years on the on Gilbert's Parks and Rec Board at the time that we facilitated dozens of neighborhood meetings as we were building your legacy parks.

This is McQueen, Crossroads, Freestone, all those amenities.

I've seen firsthand what happens when we put a home too close to a park, especially one that is lighted with as many fields as we have lit at the soccer complex.

This is not hypothetical, folks.

Two-story homes next to sports fields create predictabls.

Light pollution, noise complaints, evening traffic, and very frustrated homeowners.

The complaints don't come from the first home builder, which I've tried to tell Mr.

Jones that it's going to come from your second or third home builder, homeowner there, because they're not going to understand what they've bought next to, especially when they might move in during the summer when we're not playing.

It's 115 degrees out there.

This is not a central park amenity of the soccer complex.

This park has older sodium sports lighting.

It's near one of the largest wastewater treatment plants in Maricopa County, and it's got significant nighttime lighting around that the wastewater treatment plant.

While Gilbert's planning guidelines may not explicitly prohibit two-story homes adjacent to parks, other communities such as Queen Creek do.

And I clearly remember that when many of our parks were built in the 1990s.

Mayor, you were the planning director.

I was on the parks board.

We we worked very well with knowing that we would have a two-story home, and we urged you to not have it near lighted ball fields.

You listened to that call from your parks director, then Mori Alman.

Tonight I'm asking you to make a stipulation, please, if you approve this zoning case.

Please do not approve two-story homes that are going to be next to the soccer complex.

Um they're only 161 feet from the wall that you'll have to build next to the soccer complex.

That's not very far, Mayor.

That's probably the to the um the lobby out there, so it's it's still significant impact.

It's not like it's 2,000 feet away.

Um I'd like you to protect the town soccer park that's serving 2,400 families for the fall and spring.

And I hope we've learned these lessons before, and I hope you'll not repeat them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Cindy.

All right, to um begin consent portion of our meeting.

Um I'm gonna pass the time over to our town manager Prince to provide an overview of items on the consent uh calendar this evening.

Don.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Okay.

Um so tonight I'm gonna go over the consent agenda items to provide uh both the council and the community.

Just some information about these items and some additional details.

Um to start off, just want to uh mention that um a continued focus on preparing for the future and ensure ensuring Gilbert's resilience is always top of mind.

And how we do that is through focusing on these three pillars, which are strong economy, prosperous community, and exceptional built environment.

Okay.

All right.

Um agenda, sorry about that, a little bit of technical difficulties.

Um parts and procurement contract.

Uh, aqua aerobic systems incorporated.

Um agenda item number two is a purchase contract with aqua aerobic systems incorporated for the procurement of parts and services for the repair of the ozone generation equipment located at Santan Vista water treatment plant, and this contract is not to exceed 250,000 annually and may be renewed for up to four additional one-year terms.

This item is funded via the rate supported water fund and the city of Chandler as it is a jointly operated facility.

And that falls under our exceptionally built environment pillar.

And it is a co op cooperative purchase agreement for the purchase of refuse and recycling vehicle parts and sublet services with BTE body company in the amount not to exceed $625,000 through October of 2028 with options for two one year renewals.

The cost of vehicle parts and sublet services incurred by fleet the fleet department for this agreement will be charged back to the rate supported solid waste and recycling funds as appropriate.

These funds are part of the division the division's adopted annual budgets as approved by council.

Item number four is a cooperative purchase agreement, several cooperative purchase agreements for traffic signals and intelligent transportation system materials, also under our exceptional built environment pillar.

These are cooperative purchase agreements with four companies.

These agreements will enable the town to purchase traffic signal and intelligent transportation system materials and equipment, including signal poles, cabinets, related parts, radios, ITS network sites, traffic signal LED bulbs, pedestrian push buttons, and emergency vehicle preemption devices to maintain town effective traffic systems, effective traffic systems across the town.

And those four purchase agreements are with first one is with Paradigne Traffic Systems Incorporated in the amount not to exceed 400,000 annually, Clark Transportation Solutions in an amount not to exceed 160,000 annually, Sierra Transportation Technologies in an amount not to exceed 150,000 annually, and Western Systems Tech Western System Systems Inc.

in an amount not to exceed $30,000 annually.

These agreements total an amount not to exceed $740,000 annually for the term of five years and are HERF funded from the streets division traffic operations budget and the streets division traffic signal maintenance budget.

Item number five is a contingency and construction contract with Felix Construction, also under our exceptionally built environment pillar.

A motion to improve to approve water fund contingency in the amount of $870,000 and to approve a contract with Felix Construction Company in the amount of six million nine hundred and seventy-four thousand two hundred and eighty-five dollars to progress the construction of seven wells that are part of phase four of the wells development program.

This phase includes a 16-inch water transmission line to improve water quality within the project areas.

This project supports Gilbert's efforts to improve water infrastructure to meet the needs of its residents today and in the future.

This project is funded by the following sources water fund, which is rate supported, system development fees, which are growth-related fees paid by new commercial and residential development, 2022 WRMPC water SDF bonds issued in 2022 by the Water Resources Municipal Bond Corporation that are repaid with system development fees.

With the contingency approval, there is sufficient funding to cover the remaining contract amount.

Also under our exceptionally built environment pillar.

Excuse me, in an amount not to exceed $360,960 for the urban lakes renovation and irrigation systems replacements at Freestone Park and Crossroads Park.

These projects synergize the scope, repair, and replacement of two facets of the park's infrastructure and enhance construction efficiency, reducing park closure time.

These items are funded via the general fund.

And that is under our Prosperous Community Pillar, and that is a motion to accept the risk management claim report for FY26Q2.

And with that, we'd be happy to answer any questions council may have.

Mayor, Council members, anyone want to need more information on any items.

Which one, Jim?

On number six.

Number six.

Any others?

Um is staff prepared to do a uh more information on number six.

Thank you, Suzette.

Good evening, um uh mayor and and council member Torgeson.

Can is there a specific question you have on this?

Is this the continuation of what was approved last year?

It's a continuation of that of us continue to basically upgrade those those parks in the the lake systems.

Okay, that was it.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Councilmember Torgus, would you like a separate vote on that one?

Yes.

Okay.

So no further questions.

I'm gonna move forward to approve the consent agenda.

Items uh two through five, seven through nine, and the reappointment items 12 and 13.

Can I get a second?

Second by Councilmember Torgeson, please vote.

Motion passes seven to zero.

All right, so um, Councilmember Torgus wanted a separate vote for number six.

Um Jimmy, you'd like to give that motion.

I'll make the motion to approve item number six.

Is there a second?

Uh second seconded by um council member buckley.

Uh motion or motion given by Councilmember Um Kaprowski.

Please vote.

Motion passes six to one.

Thank you.

Mayor, uh, the next rest part of the meeting is yours, sir.

Thank you.

We'll move on to uh public hearings.

We have uh three items on public hearings.

I'd like to, I do know 10 A and 10 B will consider those uh separately.

We'll not vote on those at this time, but item 10, the liquor license, unless somebody has a problem with that one.

I'll entertain a motion to approve.

I may I may have to approve items.

It's been moved and seconded to approve item 10.

Please vote.

Items 10A and 10 B we'll take um separately.

Items item 10A is a general plan 25-02, zoning Z2508, Harvest Grove, neighborhood commercial.

Is there a presentation by staff?

Keith.

Mayor Anderson, members of the uh council, good evening.

The project before you, as you've already stated, is for Harvest Grove.

Oh, this is the can you put the yeah, the other one?

Thank you.

That one's next.

Yeah, talking about the right one.

Oh, that's okay.

Oh, is it open to paper?

Oh, we did.

Um Mayor Anderson, members of the council.

Um, you'll have to open the the public hearing agenda on this one because I think they're bat lifted backwards.

Are we should we be uh hearing item 10b?

Correct.

Okay, 10b, general plan GP2503 zoning Z2503 Harvest Grove.

Perfect.

Thank you, Mayor Anderson.

I appreciate that.

So the first one, 10B, is for the Harvest Grove uh uh larger development.

Um as you can see the case numbers are on the screen in front of you.

Uh the project site is located.

You guys are are fully aware of where this is located at the southeast corner of Germain Road and Valvista Drive on an approximate three hundred and eleven acre uh property uh south of the Gilbert Regional Hospital and uh and a bunch of uh commercial areas that are in that area and in medical areas.

So the request.

No, uh uh.

There we go.

The request before you tonight for this project is for a minor general plan amendment on 179 acres of that larger 311 acre project, and then a PAD rezone on 311 acres with uh with some deviations.

So as a presentation overview, we'll go over some general plan and rezoning stuff, the open space, our traffic team, Susanna Struble will come up and explain a few uh traffic and circulation items.

Um phasing is in here too.

Uh we'll go over PAD deviations and then public participation.

Still not working.

So general plan and rezone.

The general plan exhibit, which is on the screen, is the request by the applicant is to change the existing general plan designation, which is, as you know, is our guiding document for land use, which will allow the applicant to change the undering underlying use of the land on a 179.37 acre portion of an overall 311 acre site from two and a half to three to two to three and a half dwelling units per acre, which is what the whole thing is today, to six different general plan land use categories.

And you can see them on the screen.

There's regional commercial, there's three and a half to five dwelling units per acre, uh, five to eight dwelling units per acre, eight to fourteen dwelling units per acre, fourteen to twenty-five dwelling units per acre, and also and there's also some residential 25 to 50 dwelling units per acre.

So, as you can clearly see on this slide in front of you, the applicant is proposing to place the more dense land use categories above that dashed blue line, which that dashed blue line indicates the dividing or the boundary line for the Santan character area.

Everything above that line is not in the Santan character area.

So they're proposing to put the greater density in that area, which will consist of regional commercial, two multifamily designations, and some town homes, which I'll show you that in the development plan in just a few minutes.

Um, the less dense product is everything that's further south of that blue line, which is inside the Santan character area.

The second request for tonight, as I've already stated, is for a PAD rezone.

The existing zoning is on the left, which you can see there's SF-15 and SF35.

Everything outside the Santan Caracter area happened to be zoned SF 15, which is a little, which is smaller lots originally.

The applicant is proposing eight new zoning districts, and you can see them all on the screen.

There's kind of similar to the general plan designations.

You have regional commercial, you have some multi-family high, multi-family medium, and those are all up above in the Santan care outside of the Santan character area above that blue line that I showed you before.

Below the blue line, you'll have MFL, multifamily low, single family attached, single family detached zoning, single family six, which is 6,000 square foot lots, and single family eight, which is 8,000 square foot lots, and that's all a below the blue line, as you can see on that graphic on the right in front of you.

This site also excludes or this development, this proposed development exclude excludes the neighborhood commercial piece in the bottom left-hand corner, which is the next case item 10A that I will present be presenting before you.

At that time, staff was recommending denial of the project due to uh many outstanding concerns.

These outstanding concerns included the alignment, alignment with the Santan character area vision goals or policies, which we didn't believe it it met, limited access along Coronado Road, which is that collector road on the far eastern boundary of the site that had only two entry points restricting access and circulation, which hindered excuse me, emergency response, and concentrated a majority of the traffic toward the center of the site on that center spine road, which is called Rome Street.

There were also 125 alley loaded homes fronting Rome Street, which is that center collector, and then Kingbird, which is the northernmost collector south of the commercial.

And that placed homes very close to the sidewalk and a very busy right-of-way, creating a lot of safety concerns that we had at that time.

There was also safety concerns with respect to on-street parking and bike lane conflicts along Rome Street and Kingbird.

And then there were multiple requests for a lot of setbacks and smaller lots and a lot of deviations and coverage, lot coverage inconsistent with which with the land development code and the character area of the town that we thought at that time.

Since the November 18th public hearing, the applicant team has worked really hard to address our concerns and has made key updates in response to issues raised during the hearing and subsequent reviews as they've recently resubmitted to us revising their plans.

I want to note that after several reviews, town staff no longer has any of those major concerns.

Those have been resolved.

The updates of the plan and the revised plan that is on the screen in front of you on the right side.

This site plan includes the following changes from that original from those original concerns and original design.

They have reduced the number of residential lots, which before on the plan on the left was 1,741 lots.

They've reduced it down to 1,678 lots.

They have decreased the overall density of the whole project from 5.54 dwelling units to 5.40.

I would like to point out that the area within the Santan character area has also been reduced to about four and a half dwelling units per acre, whereas before it was close to more like five and a half dwelling units per acre.

The addition of Coronado Road on the east boundary, which now extends for it now extends from Germaine to Queen Creek Road, has been put in place.

These homes now back onto those roads, like a traditional single-family neighborhood.

These homes, these alley loaded product have been relocated, and you can see on that on that diagram on the right.

They've been relocated to be south of the commercial of the multifamily high on the north and north of the multifamily low towards the south, which creates a better land use transition between higher density type uses, buffering those higher dense uses from the lower dense use, the less dense uses of the single family that's kind of surrounding it and in between.

Traffic engineering concerns have been alleviated and covered in and are covered in stipulations, and they have reduced the number of technical variances that were they had originally proposed from a I'd say approximately 60 technical variances down to about 10.

And you will see a lot of uh conditions of approval in the ordinance that have addressed some minor concerns that we still have.

Uh but through the platting process as we move forward, um, we will be able to continue to work on some of the minor comments or concerns that we that we still may have with the development.

So the development plan.

This slide shows the the color version of the new design and a little bit larger for you, so you can see it.

And it have I have some more numbers for you.

So I've already told you how many dwelling units.

There's 1678.

As a part of that total, 965 units are single-family homes located mainly in the Santan Character area.

Um lot sizes range from about 1,650 square feet up to about 10,800 in those SF8 lots, which provides for a ride a wider range or wide range of housing options.

The plan also proposes 713 multifamily units on three separate parcels, which I've already discussed.

580 of those multifamily units are located at this at the north end of the development outside of the Santan character area.

And 133 multifamily units are located inside the Santan character area, south of that blue line at the south end of the project in Parcel 11.

There is not a design for Parcel 11 at this time.

That will become that will come at a later date through a design review case.

So we don't know how they're going to lay that out yet.

The proposed density for the development, as you can see, is about 7.75 dwelling units per acre outside the Santan character area, and about four and a half inside the Santan Character area for a total overall density of about 5.40 through the whole Harvest Grove development as a whole.

Site access will be provided by five major entrances, one off Jermaine Road, four off Alvista Drive, which one of them is in access into the commercial development at the north end, and one along Queen Creek Road.

All residential entrances tie into one mile into the one mile central collector known as Rome Street that carries most of the traffic or some of the travel, a large majority of the traffic, and then you have Coronado Road on the side on the east boundary that has four entrances that will also help disperse the traffic, placing less pressure on Rome Street throughout the middle of the development.

One of the concerns, oh, let's see if this is out of space.

Yes.

One concern raised at the November hearing, 18th hearing, was whether the proposal complied with the Santan character area.

Since that time, the applicant has worked closely with staff to revise the plan in several meaningful ways.

These revisions include a slight reduction in density, now at 4.54 dwelling units per acre within the Santan Character area portion of the site, which is much closer to the target density of three and a half.

Removal of the row homes along Rome Street and more logical land use transitions, as I've stated before, for those alley loaded products.

They've improved they've they've created entry landscaping with citrus trees and layered plantings arranged like crop rows at the main entrances of the development, and that theme will also exist throughout the development in a lot of the open spaces.

The applicant will probably go more into detail on some of these agrarian-themed elements that are now proposed as part of this development that we will continue to work with the applicant on as it moves through the preliminary plat process.

They will also incorporate agricultural themed elements within parks and amenity areas.

Overall design is more the overall design is more consistent with the nearby Santan Character Area aligned communities, and there are several of them, like Waterston, Leighton Lakes, and Belrose.

So this we believe this project more aligns with what has been built and constructed in those communities than it did before.

With a 44.2 acre central park in the middle in that dark green color.

And then all of all the other parks, there's about if you add them all up, there's about a little over five acres of pocket parks, and then there's about 4.6 acres of trails and corridors throughout the development that provide pedestrian access and it's an amenity that uh residents can use to improve their quality of life and to create a a well-connected community, which is also uh part of the Santan Character Area compliance.

Um phasing, there are three phases, and you can see on this phasing plan.

Uh the top phase, phase one goes all the way down to king to uh I think that's partridge street.

That's phase one, and then below that kind of don't towards the kind of where the multifamily low is is in between that is phase two, and then phase three is below the multifamily low all the way to Queen Creek Road.

And they're anticipating if this gets approved that the opening phase will start in 2027, phase one, and full build out will be completed by 2032.

That is all I have for you.

Oh that is all I have for you at this time.

And now I would like to turn the time over to Susanna Strubel, our town engineer, to go over some of the uh items that the traffic team has been working on with the applicant and how some of our concerns from that standpoint have been addressed.

Thank you.

Thank you, Keith.

Um, and good evening, Mayor, Mace Mayor, and Council members.

Um Keith actually pretty much covered everything that I am going to speak about tonight.

I'll be a little bit more specific on a few items here.

So with the um, this isn't working.

Now it is okay.

As you know that this is an area of town that does receive a lot of traffic and is expected to continue to grow with more traffic.

As we talked about at the last council presentation on this item, we are this development is putting about 27,000 new daily trips into this area.

That's seven times greater than the current zoning, four greater than that Santan character area, and is showing some oversaturation current conditions that are uh somewhere around eight to ten years earlier than what was expected.

Um we have worked very diligently with the developers team, the developers team's work traffic team has worked very diligently with our traffic team, and we are really on track now with that traffic impact study.

Um we have received the final copy, it's a pretty thick copy, but there everything that we have talked about that we've worked through, all the modeling that we have done, is aligning exactly the way we were expecting it to, and what we feel is necessary to mitigate the amount of um uh generated traffic in this area.

Um, and we have placed a step on the um the approval of this that it that basically states we want that traffic impact study to receive its final approval before the first preliminary plat approval.

We do have that complete package in our hands.

We're just continuing to review it at this point in time.

Um traffic circulation, which Keith really did cover.

Um Coronado Road, they have agreed to do the half street improvements between Germain and Queen Creek.

Um Partridge Road.

We talked about bringing that from Rome all the way over to Partridge, but the study now is showing that with that additional access point on to Coronado, we are not going to need that, and that is still providing proper circulation in that area.

Um intersection spacing was a big one.

How are we getting our local streets providing the proper spacing?

They have one area right now that we think is the only one that we're looking at from a roadway to roadway intersection, and then the other intersections that we are looking at at this point in time have to do with the alleyways to the local streets, and those have been reduced really from about 50 of those down to about 10.

Um, and they and we have kind of agreed on what that spacing should be, and they've worked very diligently to assure that the lot layout is meeting that at this point in time.

Rome Street design, we had already agreed to how that alignment was going to work, but that design now, as as Keith again said, standard collector um street cross section, that 80-foot width with the raised media and on that on Rome Street, and then the on-street parking removal off of Rome Street as well, and all of those are very positive to support the cure the the circulation and the safety on this project.

Thank you.

Am I not pushing it enough?

Thank you.

So traffic mitigation, um, which are really carried in and covered in the stipulations on this project, is for them to get dedicated and build that coronado road from Germain Road to Queen Creek at the half street major collector standard.

They are going to extend the southbound dual left turn storage by an additional hundred feet at Germain and Valvista.

Contribute towards building a dual left turn lane from eastbound and westbound at the Queen Creek and Valvista.

Construct new right turn lanes at all access points on Valvista Drive, Germain Road and Queen Creek, and then install new traffic signals at Valvista Drive and Partridge, Germain Road and Rome Street and Mercy Road and Rome Street, and then they will be upgrading the traffic signal systems at Queen Creek Road and Key Basic Gain as well as Queen Creek Road and Coronado.

And then as we continue to work through the design review phase stage in the plotting process, they will be installing some or looking towards some traffic calming along Rome and some of the areas that may be long stretches.

From an engineering technical variance, I we have already talked about that.

We have one location really where that local intersection will be receiving a variance.

We feel comfortable that they've covered all the safety concerns at that location.

The alley spacing again, we feel very comfortable that we resolve that and are comfortable with the safety at those locations as well.

The horizontal curve on Rome Street and Partridge, although it does not meet our town standards, it does meet Ashto, which is in alignment with a standard that we believe is is appropriate.

Again, we're still looking at that Roosevelt Water Conservation District relocation, assuring that that RWCD is in a right in agreement with that, and prior rights aren't going to cause us some challenges as we move forward.

And then we do expect that there may be some miscellaneous design considerations, not real big items during the con during the final design plans as we go through the platning process.

And so from that perspective, we believe they've met everything that we were expecting out of the traffic parts of this and the circulation elements, roadway design elements, and we're approving also those those products as they've come through.

Thank you.

Thank you, Susanna.

So my the next part, I'll go through this fairly quickly is PAD deviations.

Throughout the process, the applicant is proposing some PAD deviations that we've been working with them on, and we are in agreement with all these deviations.

So the deviations include things like regional commercial, just a few setback deviations.

Which we which we have agreed to, not too drastic, some of these deviations.

Oh, next slide.

And then multifamily, we have also the same thing.

We have lands.

This one's a uh decrease in the amount of percentage of landscaping for the MFH.

Uh and then multifamily medium is a setback deviation.

Next slide.

And then on this one, you got some lot size deviation lot size deviations, and then another uh kind of a block coverage deviation.

Again, lot size deviations and a minor setback.

In the blue is are things they're exceeding.

So and then again, some more similar type of deviations, um, minimum lot area, they are exceeding the minimum lot area for for four lot sizes, and then and then some setback deviations on the various lot sizes for SF6.

SF eight exceeding the lot sizes by over 2,000 square feet on some of these lots on a lot of them, and then and then a deviation for site for uh side setbacks.

Um that is the deviations.

We are in agreement with all of them and have worked hard with the applicant to to square those away.

Um the last part of the presentation or is public participation.

Next slide, please.

Um, there have been there was a neighborhood meeting in February of 2025.

It's been a while.

Six surrounding residents and property owners attended.

Um town staff received 12 emails, about five phone calls from surrounding residents expressing opposition, and we have held three meetings with other interested parties, like the hospital, um, to to discuss with them what is going on.

Um, town staff also received a letter from the Gilmore developer expressing concerns that the proposed regional commercial and multifamily areas of this development don't reflect the area's established vision.

They urge a distinctive mixed-use design, like similar to their design, their commercial development uh that has high quality architecture and pedestrian-oriented placemaking rather than a conventional disconnected shopping center.

Um, the manager of the soccer Gilbert Soccer Fields, which you heard from during the call of the public, Cindy Barnes, um, met with staff and has expressed these concerns concerning density and um that it's two times what this is this zoning allows conflicts with the Santan character area.

She expressed concerns about traffic, schools and emergency access and how that will impact those things.

She's also expressed concerns to staff about trails and open space.

Um that um there needs to be larger trails and and so forth in the in the uh along arterials and collectors.

Um she's also expressed that one of their biggest concerns is the park's edge next to the soccer fields.

Uh their concern with two-story homes facing the soccer field and the light impact and the noise impacts that uh with uh single family homes uh jacent to the soccer field, which I'm sure the applicant will talk about that transition and the the separation distance as well with the soccer field.

Next slide, please.

So, as far as that is concerned, um those are all those concerns, and then planning commission.

We met with them in September the 10th and presented this project to them, and they recommended approval with a vote of 42.

Next slide.

Um that is uh uh the main part of my presentation.

So staff, as I've stated, applicant has done a ton of work.

We've demonstrated what that what all the changes are and the concerns that have been addressed.

So as a result, town staff is moving to that you recommend approve that you approve this project tonight, you approve the general plan amendment request, and that you also approve the rezone subject to all the conditions listed in the report.

Next slide, please.

I wanted to make note that there are some um corrections to the development standards tables that I just showed you.

Um a few things that were crossing out that are that the applicant has that that were kind of typos that we didn't carry forth into the ordinance.

So you can see on the screen um what some of those things are.

Um SFA, you have some front loaded stuff and some rear-loaded setback uh uh things they're proposing.

Next slide, please.

SFD, kind of the same thing, they have this front loaded and rear-loaded product.

Next slide.

And then in the SF6, same deal.

We just didn't uh include some of the proposals from these different lot sizes in the front load and rear loaded project uh product that we wanted to throw into the table.

Um, and this is always right before the question slides.

So next slide, please.

So that concludes my presentation, and if you have any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer them.

I know that the applicant Brennan Ray is here, and he has a presentation for you as well.

Thank you very much.

Questions for Keith.

Councilmember Lyons.

Keith, um, what do you project with the commercial being added to this, the revenue generated from that particular uh part of the project?

Uh Mayor Anderson, Councilmember Lyons.

Um, I would like to defer that to the applicant.

I know that they have data and information on that.

Okay.

And uh the other question from your perspective, uh, from staff's perspective, is this the best and highest use for this particular property as it relates to revenue generation for the community and sticking with the character of the Santan characteristic?

Uh Mayor Anderson, Councilmember Lyons.

Um as far as the highest and best use of that, I don't know.

I don't I don't I don't know if it is or not, but it is a use that is compatible with a lot of the surrounding development in the area.

The applicant has worked very hard to change the design to um be more along the lines of what you see in other neighborhoods in that area, like I stated before, like Waterston Central, which is not too far from here, and Leighton Lakes and so forth.

So we believe that that that character that they have are proposing has changed and is evolving and is better than it was before given the design changes, and it's a lot more similar to some of those other neighborhoods.

So it's really hard to say whether or not a property is the highest and best use.

Uh but we believe this project is a very good project now, and um it has come a long way, and it fits the character of the area um much better than the previous version.

My last question I think would be for Susanna.

We had a a lot of concerns about the the traffic in this area, and I'm assuming based on what you said, you think that those have been addressed appropriately.

We have mitigated them as best as we possibly can with the uh with the improvements here.

As we continue to see development come into this area, we'll continue to watch it and and continue to modify some of the signal timing, some of the signals, some of the locations of some of the collector roadways, et cetera, to continue to lessen that impact or or balance that impact appropriately, not just from this development, but from all of them.

Okay, and and the completion of Coronado north to south there between Germain and Queen Creek addressed one of your biggest concerns.

Absolutely, it did.

It gave us an extra opportunity to move some of that through traffic in different ways.

So all right, thank you.

That's it.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Keith.

At build out of this in 2032, you said.

Um, is there an approximate number of the amount of population that will be in this neighborhood?

Because it's a huge project.

Um Mayor Anderson, um, Vice Mayor Bon Giovanni.

Um, I don't have an approximate number of population for you.

I haven't crunched that information on that level.

16 times three.

So 32.

Okay.

1600 homes times three would be what 3200 or so?

Homes?

4800.

4800, sorry, I'm bad at math.

Okay.

Not strong suit.

Okay.

The applicant may have more data and information on this as well, this information.

So is Chief Silver here?

He's in the back.

Sorry, Chief.

Chief, without giving me any kind of special secret sauce that you would hurt the safety of the town.

Can you give me an idea of how many full-time officers we would need to cover another 4800 people?

You can rough it up.

Yeah.

Um 4800 people.

I mean, if you use our current formula, staffing, which we don't just rely on that model.

Um trying to remember can you what council member buckling what the number I gave you before?

1.16 if I recall correctly.

Per thousand.

Yes.

So if someone can do that math real quick.

Monty math.

Um I'll just add that Valvista, you know, the improvements that I've seen.

I'm not a traffic safety guy or an engineer.

Um my main concern is the volume on Valvista, but regardless of this project, that volume is going to be there from what I've seen.

It's added more uh ingress and egress points, which will reduce you you have more uh more intersections, but yet the volume is greatly going to be reduced from what it was before.

So I like that from my side.

Um but any complex that you're gonna be adding, whether it's apartments, businesses, it's gonna add to the need for more police officers.

Okay, thank you, sir.

Yeah.

Uh Suzanne or Keith, quick question.

Um, this is like I don't know, 520 something pages that we had to read for this, so I might have missed this somewhere.

Um was there anything about the cost of the infrastructure changes?

I I remember seeing something about a reimbursement agreement or something like that.

Um I think in that reimbursement agreement that maybe I'm gonna have to probably call a friend on this one.

Um would include some of the work that's done either in the water water area, we've got a well site that we'll be purchasing.

There is also some area where we've got um some improvements to some wastewater items as well that we potentially will do some reimbursement on.

And then uh, you know, there may be some traffic areas in there too, but I don't know exactly what those are.

Okay, because I know we see in a lot of our contracts that we get, we always see a not to exceed dollar amount.

Is there one for this project?

No, not that I'm aware of.

So no matter what this bill is, we're gonna be reimbursed for it.

Great question.

I you know, maybe maybe uh I'm not quite certain where that reimbursement is that coming in off of the um hold that till we can hold that.

Okay, that's fine.

Thank you, Susanna.

I apologize.

I can look that up for you or work with others to figure out what that number is, but I don't know that we've absolutely provided that yet.

Not a problem.

Thank you.

Not a problem.

Thank you.

I'm good, Scott.

Councilmember Torgison.

I just want to make a comment to thank Susanna and Kyle, because I leaned on them really hard because Kyle has something on his badge that says to make things happen and to say yes, and to get to a point of yes.

Whether this pans out and it's approved or not, I appreciate the fact that you got it across the finish line.

Because I know that it was a lot of work and people were pushing very hard.

So I just want to say thank you for that.

Councilmember Buckley.

I'm not sure who this I would direct this to, but I'd like to to ask about the commercial.

Uh it appeared to me from the one slide that showed what that was originally there and the other.

Was that cut back?

And I don't know if that's maybe it's just my eyes, the way I'm looking at it, but um it looks like there's less commercial in the second one than there was in the first one.

Yeah, no problem.

Um Mayor Anderson, Councilmember Buckley, in just a second, we'll I'll show you that um slide again, and then we can see the comparison.

Okay.

And I had another question as well while she's looking for that, but um in when you had the list of all of the and I think maybe you answered part of that.

All of the infrastructure that has to go in, there's a lot of different components that have to be built.

Does the town pay for those?

Does the developer share in that?

And we can go we can go back to that slide.

Yeah.

Um Mayor Anderson, Councilmember Buckley, yeah, we we'll we can definitely answer that question after I show you the that the commercial map real quick.

Okay.

And I and I'll probably let Susanna talk more about that.

Okay.

Okay.

Keep going.

Okay, the slide.

Perfect, thank you.

Okay.

Okay, so the slide on the left is the the one the plan that we showed you in November.

Right.

The slide on the right is the current proposal.

So as you can see, the total commercial in that top left-hand corner, it's about 40 acres or so, roughly.

It hasn't changed.

It's the exact same design.

Exact same size.

The top left.

Top left.

And which color indicates the commercial.

The pink.

Those pink buildings.

Okay.

Correct.

Right.

Yeah.

No, that I yeah, that doesn't appear.

I'm thinking the one photo is bigger than the other photo.

Oh, that could be.

The scale.

Yeah, that could be one.

What I was looking at is the commercial at the bottom.

Oh, okay.

The yellow.

Um Mayor Anderson, Councilmember Buckley.

So the yellow at the bottom is that parcel 11, which is multifamily low.

Ah.

And then below that, that pink is parcel 10.

That is a commercial piece that's part of item 10A on the agenda.

So that's a different, that's not part of the main master plan.

But that is a 12.05 acre piece of commercial that um has been accepted from this overall master plan that I'll talk about in the next the next uh item, the next presentation.

Okay, and and over on the the second what what we're looking at right now, that has not it looks smaller, but that has not been reduced.

Has that commercial been reduced?

Mayor Anderson, Councilmember Buckley, it has not been reduced.

I just uh snipped this a little bit bigger, the one on the right, so it kind of the scale is off.

Okay.

That's the one.

So it may look like it's larger or or it's been reduced, but it hasn't.

It's just the scale of the drawings aren't the same.

But but it the commercial acreage has not changed, it's the exact same.

Okay.

That's I just wanted to verify that that we have an in all of the changes, we didn't lose any commercial.

But my other question, since we're on this, is the blue line.

So that's it's gonna be the same.

It's just the photos smaller.

The blue line hasn't moved either.

That's correct.

Okay.

All right.

Well, that that is good for that one.

And then if Suzanne can maybe answer the other questions.

Which you may have answered earlier.

And Councilminister Buckley, we were talking about the request that uh um Councilman Bon Giovanni had as well.

Um the uh we did used to have a maintenance agreement in there that is is no longer needed because we're not asking for that wider right of way.

So we think that that might be what you were referring to.

And while we were discussing that, I apologize I was not listening a hundred percent to your question, so could you restate that for me?

Yeah, well that well, that's quite all right.

I um well actually I I think you probably answered most of it and and what Chuck had uh mentioned as well.

So I I think that probably I'm gonna I'm I'm still just just to make note of this.

I am I am still concerned about the future regional traffic issue that's gonna happen here.

And and uh I I just want that noted that I do still have concerns about that, and and no one's talking about it.

So but I think in the future the town needs to be looking at that and and taking a little more serious and look.

Councilman Buckley, um, we do expect to bring before the council in the near future an ability to ask for some funds or to um put in a contract that allows us to look uh more in depth in this whole area, which includes not only Santan Vault Mall area, but this area as well, and basically figure out where some of those challenges are and what will be our best solutions to accommodate that.

So that is in the works.

We are working forward with it.

Um and once we kind of get that nailed in a little bit more, we'll be bringing that back to council for consideration.

Okay, okay, within that a certain time frame.

So who is paying for like the traffic signals and the RWDC low relocation?

That was the area that I wanted to clarify.

Right.

That is all being paid for as a part of the development of the developer as they move it.

So when they relocate the RWCD, a lot of those signals, and I gave you that one list here, it kind of shows where there is a little bit of cost sharing that is going on there, and others where they're actually doing those improvements as a part of it.

So we'll share in some of those.

Correct.

And as we usually do, right?

Correct.

And um and then the developer will handle the rest.

Okay.

All right that answers my question.

Including, I believe they are working on one up at Mercy as well that is going to support us with some changes they're making there to help us.

So that's really off a little bit farther off than normal.

So they're leading to that.

Thank you very much.

And and I want to thank you and Kyle and the whole staff that has worked for so long on this project.

It's been a great team building exercise.

Yeah, awesome.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Any other questions for staff?

If not, I'll open the public hearing and invite the applicant up.

Good evening, Chair, members of the council, Brendan Ray, 2325 East Camelback here on behalf of Lenar Homes.

Uh we are certainly grateful for the opportunity to back be back in front of you on Harvest Grove.

We appreciate the continuance you gave us last November, which allowed us and afforded us an opportunity as staff indicated in their presentation to work with them.

And we're proud to stand before you and tell me that we did everything that we were asked to do.

This council was very direct in some of the comments that we received in the last meeting.

We heard a lot of feedback from staff, not only as we've gone throughout this process, but in the last hearing as well on November.

And we are proud to be able to stand and say we've done everything that we were asked to do.

And we are excited that about this development and moving forward.

As was indicated, we work hand in glove with staff.

Sometimes I feel even closer than a hand fits into a glove, as we work with them on this, multiple meetings uh every month, uh, multiple emails bouncing all over, including uh staff taking time out of their personal schedule on the weekends to take phone calls from me in particular, and so we are very appreciative of staff and everything that they done have done, and I think that your gratitude for them is well noted and well deserved as well.

Um, for they have gone above and beyond what is typically required uh for an applicant as we go through this because they like us recognize the importance of this piece of land um of its situation of where it sits, and um we uh you know want to have to create a development that is something that the town can be proud of, something that Lenar can be proud of, something that us as development team can be proud of, and we would request your recommendation for approval.

Uh I don't think it's gonna work.

So um again, just to touch on a little bit of the background and how we ended up with the changes.

I think it's important to note as we've talked about in the past that Lenar has been developing uh in the business for over 70 years.

Um they've worked hard to stay and become one of the country's top builders.

This is a list of 31 communities that they've developed within the town, and Harvest Grove is going to be no exception.

Harvest Grove builds on the decades of experience uh that they have observed through their own building and through other master plan developments within the town.

The design team equally architect engineers, land planners, traffic.

Um, we've had the opportunity to work on 38 different communities within the town and are very proud of the work that we've done in the past.

Next slide.

We've spent a lot of time talking about this, and I'm not gonna belabor it uh in terms of the area and the uniqueness that this piece sits in uh as it relates to the surrounding area, how we look at transitions from the intensity of the 202 further south into the Santan character area.

Next slide.

Harvest Grove, as I mentioned at the last hearing, is a complete neighborhood.

Uh Keith went through and did a compare and contrast of the current general plan of what it allows in our proposed general plan.

If you recall on the current general plan, there is not one speck of commercial land on this, and we are coming forward with 45 acres, 33 acres, which is going to be in phase one.

And based on the commercial developer of that particular site, we believe that it's going to be bringing on annually conservative 1.4 million in sales tax revenue to the town.

Revenue that would not would not otherwise be uh available to the town were it not for this particular zoning case.

Next slide.

When we look at it in terms of the addition of single family housing, which this council has more than once talked to me about the need to provide single family housing of various forms in it.

We currently the town receives property tax.

Of that, the property today, the town receives a little over 400 annually.

We estimate that with this development that that's going to be an approximate 800% increase to where it's going to be an average property tax of 340,000 that'll be coming to the town as a result of this.

Next slide.

A third of the site's open space, which is a very critical component of the Santan character area.

Next slide.

And with this development, we'll bring an estimated minimum of 45 million impact fees, 18 of which will go directly to water and sewer.

We also know that through the impact fees, while the town's police impact fee does not provide for people, it does provide for equipment.

It does provide for necessary things to ensure that the town's not only police department but fire department has the necessary equipment and tools and resources to be able to do their job as well as they do.

Next slide.

When we talk about those improvements, that does include improvements to mitigate our impact, but does take into account the regional nature of everything that runs through this site.

So there is a benefit to the town, apart from our development and mitigating the impact on it to help mitigate some of the regional traffic and growth in this area.

Next slide.

As we kind of look at it, again, I can go into a lot more detail if you want, but you can see there that we're responsible for paying for a lot of stuff.

Traffic signals, intersection improvements, a traffic signal up at Rome and Mercy, which, as Susanna indicated, is a little bit outside the ball field, but nevertheless, we recognize the importance of it and are willing to contribute to that.

Next slide.

On the south, similar as well, in terms of the improvements that we're making.

Again, all with an attempt to mitigate it.

And again, that mitigation does take into account the regional impacts that flow through this site.

We just cannot ignore it.

We cannot simply turn the blind eye to the regional nature of this particular intersection of Val Vista.

And so that is incorporated into our traffic impact analysis.

Next slide, please.

So very briefly, I appreciate Keith's presentation, how he talked about some examples of community.

And as Lenar has gone through this process, and as we went back and looked at it since the continuance in November, we went and looked at a number of other successful communities within the town and said, all right, what do we need to do to make it successful?

And so you look, three examples, one of which is Leighton Lakes, and you can see within Leighton Lakes, you've got a mix of housing product, a comprehensive open space, and then an extensive trail system.

Next slide.

You guys are very familiar with kind of some of the images and theming of Leighton Lakes, and we've tried to pick up on that as well.

Next slide.

To more a more recent example that the town has built or seen built is the Waterstone.

And I happen to represent Tri-Point homes on all three of those water stones, South, Central, and the North.

And as we look at that again, kind of you're going to hear a constant theme as we talk about it.

This is within the Santan character area.

And you're going to see a mix of housing product, comprehensive open space network, and trail system.

Next slide.

Again, image and theming when we talk about it, agricultural theming, the Santan character area.

These are some examples, and this is what's been approved and constructed, and you can see forms, materials, and those types of things that all go in to make it a quality community.

Next slide.

These are just some additional examples from Waterston.

Next slide.

And then one that Keith particularly mentioned was Belrose.

That is a LANA community.

And like others, there's been was a focus at the time this was approved on open space trails.

Next slide.

This is probably one of the best examples of kind of forms, materials, and landscaping that's within the Santan character.

And you'll see as we go throughout this presentation that we're building on a lot of what's been done before, what has already been approved in the Santan character area.

And so we're excited to be able to talk about that, and I'll go into a little more detail next slide.

Keith walked through all the changes for you.

I'm not going to belabor them, other than to say this is a list of approximately 14 notable changes that we've made between the last meeting and where we are today.

Next slide.

Again, I can go into as much detail as you'd like relative to the development plan.

Keith touched on a lot of it, and there's certainly a lot of design considerations that I can walk through if necessary as we laid it out.

But I think importantly, if you go to the next slide, one of the things that we wanted to do was to be responsive.

And so what we've done importantly, as Keith indicated, was pull some of the townhomes out of the Santan character area.

We've removed the alley loads that Keith highlighted.

Next slide.

Again, I can go into more detail.

But one of the things as we talk about the north area and the commercial, and I would agree with what Keith said, Councilmember Buckley, the amount of commercial that we're proposing has not changed from the very beginning.

We are keeping that.

But I think it's important to note kind of the design theme of this commercial development.

And you can see on here, this is an example where we believe a lot of it, even though it's outside the Santan character area, nevertheless is consistent with the theming and everything that we've established.

Next slide.

You know, and again, that's consistent with the agrarian theming.

Next slide, please.

This is the anchor.

I am allowed to say that Fry's is very excited to be in here.

They are very excited to be here.

They are already in anticipation.

They have they are so excited about this site that they at risk have gone through a design review application with the town, going through two reviews.

If Fry's could put a shovel in the ground tomorrow, they absolutely would because they are so excited about this site.

There have been a lot of rumors of them wanting to locate in this area, and we have provided a home for them, which is on a great corner, a going home, going home corner.

And so with this development with this Fry's comes again that 1.4 million in annual sales tax revenue.

I know there's been a lot of discussion this council about a fiscal shortfall that you fast are approaching.

I'm not going to stand here and say that we'll solve that fiscal shortfall that you're facing in the next couple of months.

But what this development does provide as it moves forward is a path is an opportunity for the town to acquire additional revenue that it did not have in the form of this commercial development in the form of additional property tax, in the form of the commercial spending, 65 million, and that's a conservative estimate that will be spent within a five-mile radius of this site.

So, next slide, please.

I'm gonna go the south, we can talk about.

Next slide.

I won't go and do in through detail through all of these, but this is kind of a written summary of the goals and policies.

Next slide that we are meeting.

And you can see on them that there's a bunch.

Next slide, and next slide that we are meeting.

So, what does that mean?

Next slide.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Um, and that's why what we are showing to you today, and what Keith indicated as the preliminary plat process, that's where a lot of this detail gets vetted out, is some of this stuff that we're gonna kind of go through, high-level theming.

What's important from an agrarian standpoint and the Santan character area is the use of natural materials, stone, slump bock, slump block, steel, and open fencing.

Next slide.

The entries are also important, and you can see on there examples of what we're doing.

And again, the main photo in that picture is Bellrose, the community located off of Chandler Heights in Greenfield.

And you can see there that we are building on the forms and materials, the landscaping, the very very intentional planting reminiscent of farm rows.

Next slide.

That this is the entry for Harvest Grove.

And again, I'm going to be repetitive, slump block, stone, landscaping, materials.

All the things that have been done in other developments that have been built and approved within the Santan Character Area are reflected in this development.

Next slide.

We talk about the park and which builds off of that entry theming along Valvista.

And you can see there kind of some representative examples in terms of form, reminiscent of farmhouses.

Again, through the use of materials and design, it will reflect that rural agrarian heritage.

Next slide.

Examples of streetscape, examples of landscape planning.

Again, reminiscent of Rows of farming fields, very specific planting and how that is, reminiscent of Rose of agricultural farming.

We want to have canopied streets so that residents and guests and everyone are able to walk through it as we go through it.

Again, next slide, please.

As we look at it, open space, again, a core central theme of the Santan character area, and we are providing it in terms of what you see on the screen, with almost a third of the site being open space, parks, trails.

Next slide.

And this is kind of a pretty good summary of where we are from materials and quality.

And we're very purposefully showing you these.

That as we go throughout the preliminary plat process, staff's expectation is that we're going to have a lot of this stuff in it.

And I can assure you that we will, and that's why we're very comfortable showing it.

You can see on there the image of a silo for a playground structure.

Some of our playground equipment will again have that agricultural theming as we go through it.

One of the things, next slide, please.

I know that we talked about, and that I know that Miss Barnes mentioned in her concern was a lack of a trail kind of along Valvista.

And so in between the last hearing and today, we dug into it and looked at it.

And this is from the town of Gilbert's Park, Open Space and Trails Plan.

And what that calls for is a 10-foot concrete path along Valvista with a four-foot DG trail.

We are providing that.

This development will have that.

I've got 80 feet of landscaping along Valvista Road, and within that 80 feet is going to be this consistent with the town's approved parks master plan.

Again, next slide, please.

As we look at it internally, again, still consistent theming, trails, open space.

You can see on here all the trails that we're going to have running through this site.

Next slide.

Again, we talked about the I know there was comments at the last meeting, and I know Susanna indicated it relative about your streets aren't meeting our standards.

And as we work with staff, we've come back and said, all right, it makes sense.

We will agree to meet the town standard.

Next slide.

So that's what we've done on partridge as you look at it.

You can see the cross section here as far as the changes that have made.

Rome and the various places of Rome.

Next slide.

You can see again meeting the town standard.

Next slide, meeting the town standard on Rome Street on the collector streets.

Next slide.

And this is Kingbird, the last collector street that we'll kind of talk about in here.

And so with that, I've I've been here a while, and I'm about to wrap up.

I know you wish I would have probably sat down sooner.

But nevertheless, we know that there were a number of questions that the Mayor Anderson, you specifically had of us at the last meeting.

Next slide, please.

And so we wanted to make sure that we were being additionally responsive.

I know we stood up and responded verbally, but we wanted to make sure that we were kind of belt and suspenders hitting the questions that you asked.

And one of the questions that you asked kind of dealt with agricultural theming.

Again, activities, themed open space, products, landscape designs or fencing.

There are some examples in there.

And again, without going back through everything that I've gone through, there is a lot of that.

We do plan on having, if possible, or where possible, I should say, looking at you know, maybe community gardens or orchards or things of that nature.

Again, all consistent with the Santan character area.

That was some of the things that Keith mentioned.

There's additional details that we've got to keep working through with staff.

Not part of the approval with you today, but part of the why behind why we're standing here before you.

Next slide.

I know there was a comment, Mayor, about how are we meeting the intent of the Santan character area and what elements provide rural and agricultural character again form, materials, substance, natural materials, landscaping, all of the things that have been done at other developments within the Santan character area.

We are taking from those, as you saw, from Waterston, from Belrose, and building upon that for Harvest Grove.

Next slide.

There was the question about horses on the property.

Uh it hasn't changed.

No one can keep a horse on the property because of the zoning, but nevertheless, um mayor, you asked a question specifically about trails.

And it was in response to that question and uh Miss Barnes that we uh looked closer and saw the town's master plan relative to that.

Next slide.

So as you can see, there's been a lot of thought, planning, and consideration that have gone into this.

Um all of this is to make Harvest Grove the quality development that it is intended to be on a very key important piece.

We are grateful for staff again.

We work closely with them.

We do not take lightly the fact that they uh now are recommending approval.

Uh and I feel like I should have you know background music, kumbaya uh playing as I say that, because it has been certainly something that you know, as as Susanna indicated, it was a team building experience.

Not only a team building, I'm sure for the town staff, a team building is us as well.

As I showed you at the very start, as a design team, Lenar, as a developer, has had a considerable amount of experience working in the town, and we are proud to be able to come forward with this one.

I leave you with this.

1.4 million in annual sales tax, a significant increase in the property tax, 45 million in impact fees, 18 of which is water and sewer, and 65 million in estimated annual spending within a five-mile radius.

We um request your approval uh in accordance with staff's recommendation.

Mayor, there is uh in council, there is uh one stipulation at the appropriate time that we do need to talk about, kind of clean up uh if if I may, I can I can do that now or at the appropriate time.

And I know that there was a comment relative to the soccer fields, and mayor, if you'd like, I can address that comment now, or I can wait till after questions.

I defer uh to you and the council.

I would like the uh answer to the question about the uh the uh single story versus two-story.

Yeah, perfect.

Thank you.

Uh if you can go a couple slides.

One more perfect.

So as we look at it and as we look at what exists today, um Stratford Estates, uh, which is on the north side of the park, uh, which has a combination of one and two-story homes that are on it, uh, has a single loaded street from home to light, that's approximately 110 feet uh as you look at it.

That's an existing condition.

It's built, it's there today.

When we look at what we're doing, if you can go to when you look at what we're doing, uh we are considerably more than that.

Um hundred and sixty feet is the separation.

Ms.

Barnes had it correct, um, but if we look at that, that's about half a football field length away.

Um so that's a fair distance.

And when you consider what we are having between it, it's a little bit different than what exists with Stratford on the north, in that proudly, we have a collector street now in uh Coronado, and you can see on there the cross section that's gonna have landscaping on both sides of that road.

Additionally, once you get behind the landscaping, there will be landscaping on our site, uh, and all told that.

And so that distance and separation is 161 feet.

Residents will be notified of it in the public subdivision report, and that public subdivision report stays with the property, it does not go with the owner from owner to owner.

That is there.

Um, they will be notified of the lights uh through the C C and Rs.

Again, that is a public record that is recorded against the property that does not go away with any subsequent purchasers.

So as we look at it, considering what exists in the area, um, considering the separation that's going to occur between us, we believe that what we are providing in particular along uh Rome, not Rome, Coronado, uh, is appropriate.

Thank you.

Other questions for the applicant?

Okay.

Vice Mayor.

Yeah, I can I call um Chief up again, I'm sorry.

Get your exercise in tonight, buddy.

Sir, how do you feel about having two-story buildings?

160 feet from a potential new police station.

This they would not be near to the police station.

So the police station would be in between the cemetery and the no.

If you can go back one slide, a good illustration.

No, one more.

One more.

Thank you.

That's the south side, Chief.

Okay.

So that's sorry.

So the cemetery is to the right.

Our plans are to be to the right to the east of that, where you it looks like a bunch of asphalt grindings there.

So that 15 acres is where the police department would be.

So we have uh pretty plenty of separation between PD.

Okay.

And thank you.

We could plant some trees.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Other questions?

Councilmember Torkus?

Brandon, thanks for everything you've presented here.

You're shortchanging yourself on the sales tax impact.

Because it's an average of 560 a resident.

So it's closer to 2.7 million than 1.4.

1.4 would be collected by the FRIES.

But the impact is closer to 2.7 million.

And you had mentioned something about uh parcel 11.

And uh is that something that uh Lenar is considering would consider making single family attached rather than multifamily.

Yeah, through the mayor, council member Torgeson.

Um we wanted to be conservative on our numbers, uh, which is uh in terms of sales tax revenue.

So thank you for that.

Um with respect to parcel 11, um, which I know the folks at home can't see, but it's the yellow portion right there.

Um currently we are proposing that that be zoned multifamily.

Um is agreeable should this council want to change that designation from multifamily uh to uh single family uh attached, that would be acceptable.

Thank you.

Other questions council member Buckley.

At what point would we need to say if we want that change to single family attached?

Uh through the mayor, uh councilmember Buckley, uh I believe that is something that would be included uh if a motion to approve is made, um that motion would need to include um uh a change in in parcel 11 for that designation.

Uh I mentioned in Mayor, I don't know if it's appropriate time.

Uh we did have a slight modification to one of the stipulations that is not within my presentation, so I can't put it on the screen before you but uh of the of the zoning ordinance stipulation A has some um clarifying language as to when um dedication of right-of-way is to occur, and what it uh effectively says is that the dedication is going to occur uh when that phase is being developed.

Um so we would request similar language in um B Bravo that it that the dedication for Coronado slash 156th way be at the time um that given phase is being developed.

Um and so that is an additional clarification to to B as well.

It's just to make it consistent.

This is going to be a phased takedown from Lenar, and they can't dedicate nor improve land that they do not own yet.

Okay.

Well, so I would like to see what the rest of the council thinks about that.

I think that that should be single family attached, correct?

Especially because that's in the south end of the count of the character area.

I would not want to see multifamily there.

So does everyone else agree with that?

Or I don't know how we handled that to make that change.

We'll handle during the discussion we can add that in as an addendum to the uh motion.

On the other one.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I'm requesting everyone consider that.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Kaprowski.

Brennan, given the item that you just mentioned regarding stipulation A and B that the dedication of right-of-way occur when the phase is being developed.

Is there some kind of end date certain for when the last phase would be obtained and dedicated?

Through the mayor, Councilmember Kroprowski.

I don't know that answer.

Let me ask and see if I can't get an answer.

Through the mayor, uh Councilmember Kaprowski, the phase takes down is approximately 18 months in between.

So we would again, in the event that the council chooses to approve this, then we'll proceed forward, take down phase one.

Contractually, we're obligated 18 months after that to take down phase two, and then contractually we're obligated another 18 months after that to take down phase a three, which would be the southern end.

But I know that these stipulations uh will run with the land.

Thank you.

Would you be comfortable putting a year date on the stipulations?

Through the mayor, Councilmember Kroprowski.

Uh I don't uh I don't know in terms of that, in terms of taking it down, obviously there's a contract between the parties that requires that.

Uh it's been my experience uh that when we do those on stipulations, while I understand the intent behind um is to ensure that we keep moving and marching down the the ball field.

Uh I know that there are sometimes things that come up that are outside of your control, outside of our control that impact that uh in terms of a timing uh standpoint.

I'd certainly defer to the town attorney as well uh on that uh too, but uh let me ask and and I'll just uh through the mayor, council member Kroprowski.

Um I I don't know that that's something that we can agree to.

Um certainly understand the intention behind it and why we would do so.

I think importantly from the town's perspective, in the event that that this is approved, um, that this development um would be required to make those improvements at the appropriate time, which I think that's important to understand.

I think it's also important as you know that I can't go start building on-site improvements, I can't start go building homes, home sites and that without those exterior um uh um dedications made and put in place.

Put another way, uh we are always required uh in the initial part of any development before I get people occupying it and on-site stuff, that the off-sites, the perimeter off sites are completed, and so those would would proceed uh on-site development, you know, as those parcels and that takedown does occur.

Okay, thank you.

Could you just confirm that you did mention the request though for stipulation B that the dedication of right-of-way occur when that phase is being developed in that language?

Yes, through the mayor, councilmember Kroprowski, that is correct.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Brendan, thanks for the hard work with staff.

I know this has been a long, long, long journey for you.

Um you identified 69.41 acres of open space or about 29, 29 percent.

Um, how much of that is actual functional usable park versus buffers, drainage and corridors through the mayor, vice mayor, Bon Giovanni, I got the vice mayor right.

Uh, if you'll give me uh one minute, let me let me get that information for you.

Sure, sure.

Mayor um through the mayor, Vice Mayor Bon Giovanni.

Uh, as we as we look at it, we we I can't give you an exact acreage on her.

This is active, this is open space, um, you know, active versus passive.

Um, I know as we look at it from the town's definition, uh, we've we we do meet the required criteria.

I know that as it relates to to trails, that that figure I know that I can give you relative to the amount of trails that we've got running through here.

Um the uh required amount of trails, bear with me.

In terms of trails, we are required to provide approximately 7,000 linear feet per the Santan character area.

Um we are providing two times that we are providing approximately 14,000 linear feet, which is approximately 2.76 miles.

Um if I was to take into account everything, paths, trails, everything.

Um we far exceed that by a substantial amount.

But in terms of what's required, we're providing double what the Santan character area requires.

And there's a specific mathematical computation uh that that plan dictates.

Okay, thank you.

Other questions.

Thank you.

I have two requests to speak.

Um I think I'm up and have three minutes.

Andrew Burgesson.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members.

Uh my name is Andrew.

I'm a resident here at Gilbert.

I work in the emergency department, and I'm also uh the dad of five children.

My wife and I moved here about 10 years ago, and we intentionally chose Gilbert as the place we wanted to raise our family.

So thanks for allowing me to speak tonight.

I want to be clear, I'm not opposed to growth.

A lot of the commercial things that we heard about tonight are nice.

What I am opposed to is the shift towards high density housing that fundamentally changes what Gilbert is and what makes Gilbert so great.

For my perspective in the emergency room, I see for real not just the retical and the theoretical impacts of the consequences of when population growth outpaces infrastructure, and that ends up in our lobby while we're struggling and doing everything we can in the back.

Um it adds strain to fire, police, hospitals, not to mention roads and everything else.

Um public safety.

Also, as a parent of five, I see this through the lens of a father.

We moved to Gilbert for neighborhoods, schools, open spaces, and a sense of community.

These are not accidental qualities that we see here in Gilbert.

They are a result of intentional planning.

Gilbert is great because it has grown thoughtfully and not reactively.

Please don't change the things that make this town great.

We talked a lot about the things that they're doing to make this place beautiful, and a lot of the things that they put up there were beautiful.

And it's true, but all that is is putting lipstick on a pig, and the pig is high density housing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Andrew.

David Rigby.

This is the fourth uh meeting that I've attended for this with uh several continuances of this, um, sacrificing time from family and from work, and as I think of the sacrifices each of you make to help this community be what it is, it it doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Something that Brennan Ray alluded to and that Mayor Anderson asked, uh a question that's made me chuckle several times, uh multiple times as I think about it is can you put a horse on it?

And uh I love that question.

And I love as I look at this area, and you look at that overall aerial map, and you see that big green rectangle tangle, that parcel of land that's undeveloped that has uh such potential that in our general plan the 2020 citizen voter-approved general plan, it designates that area as Santan character.

That Santan character is listed or described as an area that is designed to celebrate Gilbert Sonoran and rural agricultural roots with the combination of rural and suburban neighborhoods that enjoy the natural environment, including wildlife small-scale agricultural activities, emphasis placed on outdoor living enjoyment and the ability to live and play in a secure and safe environment.

Low and medium density residential development blends with farming, trails, open space, and commercial uses to make the character of the Santana area.

Um the bottom line is this project project, no matter how you you dress it up, no matter what road changes we make, it increases the traffic ten or uh seven times and and creates a premature deterioration of the roads ten years earlier.

Uh, this is something that the Councilman Bucklin stated in an interview with the Gilbert Sun News.

We must make sure that we are handling the little details that can help extend the life of our infrastructure, or we will be forced to replace early and waste tax dollars.

Some of the roads, including Higley Road, are starting to wear with cracks and unevenness that can affect our vehicles and lead to earlier deterioration.

None of us wants to see too many apartments forever change, the character of our community.

If I can end with anything, the Santan character area uses that word for a reason, character.

And putting some wagon wheels up and subtractor tires and using rock as your fence doesn't equal in in what I'm interpreting that as Santan area character.

The people of this town have repeatedly stated we do not want more high-density housing.

We do not want more burden on our infrastructure.

We do not want more traffic issues.

More people equal more problems.

1.4 million in revenues that about equals the 5.5 new policemen that would be required to manage that new infrastructure.

As a father, as someone who drives down this corridor, as someone who loves Gilbert and doesn't want to see the general plan so blatantly disregarded and pushed aside.

This, if I was given an assignment to create a plan for a community, if each of you were given an assignment to create something that meets that Santan character, and this is what we came up with, what grade would you give yourself for that?

And if the answer isn't an A, Gilbert can do better.

And that's what I conclude with.

Thank you.

Mr.

Ray, would you like to address any of those?

Mayor Council, um as I ran through my presentation, uh, which I don't need to go through again.

Um, you can see when we look at at what has been built within the Santan character area, the existing communities that a lot of people call home, that a lot of people are proud to call home.

Um we've taken those elements and um added it to our development.

Uh and in some instances have enhanced and improved what has already been built.

Um Lenar is is proud of the request that is before you provide proud of the details that we've put into it to be able to get to this point.

Grateful uh that you would allow us the additional time, uh, the continuance in November to work with staff.

We again are very appreciative and do not take lightly staff's recommendation for approval.

Um I know that uh Councilmember Torgeson um tasked staff with a lot of things.

Um collectively, the seven of you task us with a lot of things as well to ensure that we could come to a consensus with staff uh who sees it through a different lens than we do relative to the Santan character area, and we would request your approval with the modifications that we've talked about to stipulation B and the parcel 11 in accordance with staff's recommendation for approval.

Thank you.

I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the council for discussion and/or motion.

Councilmember Lyons.

Um, and I've struggled with this one a lot, uh, is a couple things.

One were and first of all, I want to give I I've watched this process for the year I've been on council just on this one project.

I think this is one of the first ones that was brought before me long time ago, and it's it it seemed like mud wrestling through this whole thing as I've watched it, but um staff and Lenar have worked to try to resolve those issues that have manifested through it.

Many times I felt like the goalposts were moving on staff's part.

Uh sometimes I felt that Lenar was digging their heels in, but you know, here we are tonight, and staff is recommending approval.

Here's my issue.

I've been told several times that this master plan is critically important.

And the point was made by the gentleman a few minutes ago that's voter approved, and we're at a critical stage in our development in this community, and one of the things I struggle with a lot is is the density, and we're looking at two times what was in the master plan for this particular project, two times.

And when you look at the multifamily, and I don't think Chief Solberg mentioned this or explored this, but I I've had officers talk to me about the fact when we put these high density units in, it drives a lot of need for additional resources in those areas from a police perspective and police presence.

And I've I've struggled with this one, but I I think that that's that's where I'm landing with this because when you look at that Santan character district in my mind, what I'm looking at with this and several other developments I've seen in the community, it reminds me of Irvine, California, not Gilbert, Arizona.

And that that's an issue.

And then I the thing that stuck in my head today as I was coming to town hall, as I turned on on Warner off of Higley, and there's some multifamily going in there next to Morrison Ranch, both north and south of Warner, and and frankly, it's one of the most unattractive developments I've seen, and I don't I don't think it fit.

Unlike when you get down to Cooley Station, that was well done.

And I think we really need to pay attention to what we've said we were going to do in the past, and the thing that I've came up repeatedly when I've talked to people on the street, is that the multifamily, they don't feel like it fits the character of Gilbert at this particular stage in the game.

The other aspect of that, I was down there the other night for a funeral and pulled out onto Queen Creek, and the traffic was so bad I couldn't cut three lanes over to get into turn lane to go into the gas station.

And then I headed north on, so I had to turn and go north on uh Valvista, and it was a struggle all the way up that road.

And I end up going across the 202 and deeper in the town to get to what I wanted to get, just because of the traffic that's there.

And I'm thinking about the fact that we are adding 6,000 people.

I think was the number you guys came up with earlier, or 4,800, what was it?

4800.

So that's at three people per house, which given the demographics of our community, and I know it's about three people per household, but I can tell you in my neighborhood, it's more like four and five.

So I I just I don't know.

That's that's what I struggle with.

And and I got to commend Lenar.

I think you guys have done a good job trying to answer the mail.

Staff, you've done a good job trying to address the issues.

I just don't think we're there for me for the reasons that I stated.

So thank you.

Councilmember Buckman.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you, Councilmember Lyons.

I um I appreciate the comments about uh taking care of the little things because I mean that.

Um for a long time, I was totally against this because I don't think the little details were being dealt with.

I think the I didn't think the important pieces that will create a really solid end product were there.

Um I do respect the process that it's gone through.

I thank staff for towing the line and holding the developers accountable to meet our standards.

Keith was asked a question earlier about best use.

We're talking about like the top.

We're gonna we may not agree on what that is.

But I don't think for a second that Keith or Kyle or Susanna are gonna sign off on something that it that they believe is not a good use and a value add to our community.

Um we keep talking about density and in different forums, and from an emotional perspective, I don't want it.

Absolutely not, I don't want it.

Um I was a cop, yeah.

I spent a lot of time in apartments, but I also saw when they were done right or when they conform to different higher standards, um, such as the multi-crime free housing standards or SEPTED standards.

I stopped having to go to those places.

One of the key factors is the open space, right?

People aren't stuck on top of each other, um, lighting good.

Um the open space is huge.

Um is this SEPTED design?

I don't know.

That's not been said to me.

Uh is it multi-crime free housing?

I I you know, according to the program, I I doubt it.

But I can tell you if it's built right from personal experience, I I spent a lot less time in apartments when they're done right.

So I when I campaigned, um, and that quote was from when I was campaigning.

You never heard me say I'm anti-apartment, you never heard me say I'm pro-apartment.

It's what's the right thing to do in this time.

Um, what what's the best product we can get in this time?

And it may be an apartment, it may not be.

Emotionally, again, I don't want them.

I just I like the single family rooftops.

But I I also can't have everything I want.

I want um low taxes, okay.

I want low taxes.

Gilbert, we tap into we we we take a beating over the water rates right now.

Um some of you took a beating, uh, Monty and I excluded when you raised the property tax.

I mean the uh TPT sales tax from one and a half to two percent and it took courage to do that.

But you also leveled the playing field because prior to that you were not um leaders were not encouraging by local because I could go on Amazon and not pay a tax.

Now that's an even playing field, and you've helped generate revenue for this town.

But like I said, we're tapping into four revenue streams, and we've shown at the financial retreat in different meetings.

Every other city around us is tapping into six, one is tapping into seven.

So we have been absolutely um keeping as much money in our residents' pockets as possible.

And there's this paradigm that we're stuck in because mathematically, you cannot have low density, low taxes, and the ultra-high standard that we provide in this community that I love very much.

Now it doesn't mean you have to have high everything, but we have to find balance, and we keep talking about density, you know, as a truth.

It's we don't it's not good.

Well, multiple things can't be true.

It's that that density that helps us keep our taxes low.

Because if we keep if we keep density out, it's something like we're we're facing a 20 million dollar plus financial uh shortfall going into July.

And not by anything these residents have done, not their fault, not anything this council has done, or our staff.

Legislative actions, mandate from a prior governor, and in 2028, a presidential mandate is gonna take effect on the big beautiful bill to another three and a half million dollars.

So we have to find balance between that density, where those taxes are to be responsible for to our citizens that we represent and being able to provide the services that that they demand, and quite frankly, that have put this community on the map is one of the most vibrant award-winning communities in the country.

And so um, I just want to say, let's I hope, you know, with my my colleagues that we are looking at it from that lens, not a myopic lens.

Um I was not there, but based on all of the hard work that staff has done, that uh the developer and uh Brennan has done based on the fact that we rely on our citizens through a citizen of uh advisory board, right?

We ask residents, very smart residents to volunteer and tell us what they think they think this is good for Gilbert.

Perfect, no, haven't met a community that is, but good for what we need.

Our citizen uh advisory board said yes, and our staff challenged them even further by saying no, not until you way too many stipulations that they wanted.

And thank you again for holding them accountable to lower that to a standard that our our staff, who has extreme high standards thinks is good for Gilbert.

So, based on those things, um I I'm I'm I'm for it now.

I wasn't before, but I am now.

Councilmember Koprowski.

Thank you.

Um I think some of the comments regarding the Santan character area have been a little too strict and stringent in this development.

The Santan character area was developed in 2000, and we're now sitting in 2026.

Some of the context about this parcel that I am taking into consideration for this project is the fact that the 202 has been built, and that our Mercy Gilbert Medical Center is just north of the site and employs over 1,500 people.

I had some real concerns about this project in previous meetings, but I've seen some great strides made to get to today, as we've heard from many people applauding staff and uh Lenar for getting to this point for staff approval.

A real concern I think that we have in Gilbert is where is our workforce going to live?

As I mentioned, we have the Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, we have two high schools nearby.

We have the future expansion of the police substation.

Where are those people that are gonna work in those places going to live?

One thing that I appreciate about this particular site that has been presented is that there's a variety of five different housing products, and they're for sale products, single family attached and detached.

I would support the um moving parcel 11 to single family attached as well, because I think that that attainable housing is what our workforce needs and what when our when our children grow up, and if they choose to stay in Gilbert, they're gonna need some options for housing.

And I and I and I like those options in this development.

This is a transition area between the 202, Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, and that and that Santan character area.

So I think that I'm not putting as strict of a lens on that Santan character area, and I'm looking more at what's gonna fit the town of Gilbert where we stand today, and I think that with the changes that I've seen from previous meetings to now, especially in the addition and dedication of right-of-way for Coronado and the infrastructure to support the traffic.

Um I am now in support of this project.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh people always ask me where do I where do I stand, you know, politically, and and uh and I always always say to them, you know, when it comes to business, I'm on the right, when it comes to people, I'm on the left, which makes me a perfect moderate, which is horrible at times.

And this is one of those projects.

Um at first I was real excited about it because when I took a look at the finances that it's going to bring into the town, we're gonna be hitting a cliff here soon, and this really fills those coffers up a little bit.

Um then we hear from people, and I keep hearing the um, you know, the master plan that that people voted on, and especially in this area, I live in this area, so I I I travel that road every single day.

And I know the homes that are around that area, I I own one of them.

Um this point, I I have to lean more towards the people than the money.

Um, because uh there's a lot of larger properties in that area, and I really think a project in that area with larger project with larger um uh homes and and larger properties uh would fit in that area better, just like the voters voted on.

Thank you.

Come on, councilmember Buckley, you want to say I can.

Councilmember Buckley, you want to say I can I can I don't I'm I don't have a big long speech like everyone else here, but I I have not totally been for this project as Brandon or Brennan knows, and I've talked about it a lot, and um I appreciate all the work that staff has done, what Brennan and Lenar has done to bring this project together.

Uh I I do have one question, and or or just a comment, I guess, is that the multifamily that's going in is in the north end of this project, and there's only a small amount that's actually in what we consider the character area.

Uh and do you would you know like how many multifamily is in that little strip?

There's just a small strip in there, and I I think that's important to note is just not all of those multifamily are in the character area.

Just an estimate, I think would Mayor, if if appropriate, may I answer?

Sure.

Through the mayor, Councilmember Buckley, there's approximately a hundred uh units uh that are part that are multifamily within the Santan character area.

As you correctly noted, um we worked really hard with staff to pull all of the multi-family out of the Santan character area, except for a sliver.

And the reason that sliver remains deals with the alignment of Kingbird as it comes in.

Kingbird is an existing road uh that exits out on the west side of Valvista, and so that Kingbird alignment on Valvista is fixed.

And so when we look at that, when we look at something that we didn't talk about, um including providing a well site, a very much needed well site to the town, uh, and and not wanting to have straight streets running through it and try to make it a unique community when we look at that.

The well site, again, it goes commercial well site, and then multifamily, it's approximately a hundred units that would fall behind fall south of the Santan character area.

As I stated, we moved the multifamily out.

We moved the town homes out of the multifamily area uh in that portion so that um you know 99 percent, 95 percent, someone might correct me on my math, but uh almost all of it is outside of the Santan character area.

Right, and the Santan character area is almost totally single family of numerous different levels and town homes.

Yeah, through the mayor, council member buckley, that is correct.

As we've uh worked and understood the Santan character area, uh, and I will certainly defer to the author of it, the mayor.

Uh when we talk about Santan character area, um it's not a de-use per acre type analysis.

When you talk about the character area, it's it's the design, the feel, all of those things that we put in it, the quality, the materials, uh, all of that.

Um and when we look at it, again, it's it's not a deuse per acre.

If we were to look at it on that, um the dwelling units per acre is calculated on the entire uh Santan character area, not an individual development.

And so when we look currently today, there's 1.36 DUs dwelling units per acre within the Santan character area.

If we look at this development plus other developments that are in uh in progress, um that overall density DU raises very minimally to about 1.5.6 DUs per acre, which as the mayor again who wrote the wrote it and was there the night it got approved, um, that is is well below the target density mark that was identified at the time that Santan character area plan was approved.

Okay, very well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um you know I agree with a lot of things that council member bucklin stated and also Councilmember Koprowski.

And all of all of the efforts and the work and reading, and I did read some of that book, but uh it you know, with with the change of parcel 11 to single family attached, uh I would be in favor of this project.

Council memory tourists.

I think we need to be mindful of what this pres what this is today as opposed to the past and the future, because today it does fill some holes.

Uh it's more like 2.7 million in sales tax, which is sizable.

It's a big point, it's 10 percent.

No, it's closer to 15 percent of what we're missing.

Um planning supportive of its staff has become supportive of it, working hard, probably probably begrudgingly at that point because I pushed real hard on it.

Uh the SDFs will help a lot with they do pay their own way, whether it's apartments or homes or whatever.

These developments do pay their own way, despite what people on Go Gilbert say.

But I do have a problem.

And at the last meeting, there was discussion of the evolution of the area and how the 202 was there in the hospital.

And at first I jumped on that bandwagon saying, Yeah, there, you know, we're right.

And then the next day I was in my office, and I've argued with myself over things.

I want to, I might like something, I want to find ways to prove myself wrong.

Uh I'm my own Israeli tenth man.

And uh I literally physically turned around and faced a different wall.

And I looked back and I didn't see anything that looked like Gilbert.

Nothing.

It didn't honor the past.

It served the present.

Not sure how it really plans for the future, but it definitely didn't honor the past.

Uh I know there's been changes to it, which is awesome.

And it seems like my seatmates here are pretty comfortable with these changes.

Uh I sit here conflicted.

I didn't think I would be.

I'm extremely I'm still conflicted about this.

And uh I was its biggest champion a month ago.

But we have to do what in that last moment we think the right thing to do is.

And is it to help fill the holes?

Is it help help to pay for the water center, or do we look and say it's more helpful to stick to the uh the past to look at uh what would resemble uh the culture of Gilbert?

And I want to leave every one of you just thinking about that as this comes forward, because I am personally conflicted at this very moment about this whole plan.

Councilmember Bucklin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Am I allowed to ask Brennan a question?

Sure.

Brandon, please.

So um kind of processing my thoughts and my experiences uh going back to an apartment that I was at all the time on the bike team, and once they uh change their standards uh to multi-crime free housing um almost never there.

So you've asked for two stipulations.

If we ask for a stipulation that you build that multi-housing to the uh it's it's uh septic uh crime prevention through environmental design.

Uh it's an actual program for crime prevention, which uh I I can't speak for the chief.

I hope would make him feel better.

I know it would make me feel better.

Are you willing to uh to that stipulation?

Uh through the chair, through the chair, through the mayor, council member buckling, give me one minute.

Uh through the mayor, council member buckland, we would be agreeable to a stipulation that the multifamily um be designed uh in accordance with the septic or crime prevention through environmental design principles.

Thank you.

I think the only other thing I'll mention is um just so we're accurate, and looking at the actual number of homes, uh you guys are using the calculation of three, it's actually 5,032 homes.

Um that puts us right about at the $300,000, uh 300,000 population threshold, which then uh once we cross it, we uh are eligible for an additional three percent of the state shared revenue that currently just Phoenix Tucson and Mesa are seeing.

So thank you.

Anything else?

Let me uh summarize my uh feelings and thoughts about this by first um thanking both the applicant and the staff for working as hard as you did to get to the point we're at.

Uh there's a lot of work that's been done on this, and I appreciate that.

But at the same time, I'm gonna disagree a little bit with Councilmember Kaprowski and the lens that we're looking at this project.

Uh somebody somebody made a comment tonight that made my conscience kind of take over when they said asked what would the people uh if you were asked to sit down and design a project like this in the character area and you came up with this project, what grade would you would they give you?

And I have to tell you right now the people back in 2000 when we wrote this plan would give us a D or an F.

Um and uh somebody had mentioned, I think it was uh Mr.

Rigby mentioned the the vision of the character area, and we've stuck pretty much to that vision in my opinion until we've come to this project, because in that vision it's very specific about the language, and the people that wrote this were very specific about it, to the tune of uh my having to de debate the then town manager about what the densities were gonna be in the Santang character area because they felt so strongly the people in the the area actually wanted the the density not to exceed two units to the acre.

And they wrote this as uh the character area being a combination of rural and suburban neighborhoods, uh rural and suburban neighborhoods, what's a rural neighborhood?

Uh and I I tried to find out what what is rural character, and what I've found looking up various sources is that rural character is a character that encourages connections with the natural environment.

Uh nature's um mentioned a lot in rural character.

Uh rural character fosters a close connection between neighborhoods and and neighbors, and I'm not sure that uh all that we're representing in this case will would meet that.

Uh it also talked about more than a third of the area in the project would be dedicated as non-urban, meaning farms, forests, ranches, equestrian uses, things like that.

And it says in the vision, a natural environment, including wildlife and small-scale agricultural activities.

Um the last uh sentence in that uh vision says low and medium density residential, low and medium density residential, uh, which is what how we arrived at the 3.5 for the entire area.

It was a blend of it would be a blend of farming, trails, open space, and commercial uses that would make up the character of the area.

But it's a mix of rural and suburban that is important.

The suburban maybe is is more associated with the projects the applicant referred to in Waterston and Belrose.

Uh but the rule is different than that.

And there was we pointed out several of the goals of the Santan character area plan.

Uh one talked about preserve and reinforce natural and historical landscape character, and one of the bullet points specifically mentioned preserve the visual openness associated with the region's rural setting.

The more we get into higher density, the more loss of that rural setting that we'll be.

And we've been able to hold the line for for 26 years for the most part.

Um the plan does also indicate multi-use trails.

Uh, it's very specific.

Alternative modes of trails, equestrian is is indicated there.

And I know we can we can say, well, there isn't any it wouldn't go anywhere, but that's the idea of planning for the uh the equestrian trails, is that they could connect and get to places that I know uh many of our equestrian users are are unable to do because they're blocked by some of our subdivisions.

Um and it is to again respond to the a little bit about the horse on on the side and a horse on being able to ride on the property, and and I recognize that the areas characterized by higher population density, proximity to the loop 202 freeway and significant traffic volumes, but there is an equestrian project in the middle of Gilbert.

It's called Silver Creek that's at the corner of Warner and Valvista that actually provides equestrian trails within the development and a horse barn where people can uh board their horses that live in the subdivision.

It can be done.

Um I would look for preservation of the character in that area that would look more at those types of things.

Um to me it's a quality of life issue.

It's uh somebody mentioned intentional planning, and this was intentionally plan it planned the way it is, and the way it is pretty much developed, and we have to hold to that.

Um in my opinion.

Thank you.

Do I have a motion on the floor?

Councilmember Kaprowski.

I just want to and Mayor and Councilmember Bongiovan, Vice Mayor Bon Giovanni.

I just want to, I guess, discuss the item that you brought up with the desire of the people to build this area in a lower density format.

And my question is who is going to develop it in that format.

Property values in Gilbert have doubled in the past five years.

A half acre property in this area would easily go for a million dollars.

How many people are do exist that are they're looking for homes in the million dollar to two million dollar range, and is that what the future of Gilbert needs.

There's higher risks as well with the area with the state legislation.

If there were if these were all one-acre properties, they could be one-acre properties with three accessory dwelling units per property, and none of that would come to council for approval.

That would be by right.

A developer that it property owner that wants to bring this forward.

And yes, it was a bit rough in the beginning, but they've come to the point where we have staff approval.

I'm wondering why at this point we're still pushing back to the well, I I made no mention of anybody uh wanting to build on acre lots on this site.

Um as a matter of fact, we compromise way back when we approved the plan, as I said, at 3.5 is the overall density for the entire area, which means there's some areas that will be higher than that, some that'll be lower.

Umtifamily was not discussed at all because that was not an option at that time.

Maybe it's changed.

Councilmember.

Um I'll make a motion to approve item 10B, General Plan GP 25-03 zoning Z 25-03 harvest grove with the changes of parcel 11 to single family attached housing with the multifamily design to set TED design standards, and in the stipulation A and B that the dedication of right-away occurs when the property is turned over to the developer.

Is a motion is there a second?

Second.

Second motion by Councilmember Koprowski, seconded by councilmember Buckland.

Please vote motion fails.

We don't have to do another vote, do we?

The next uh item 10 A.

Um wait for the presentation to be pulled up.

It's for the Harvest Grove neighborhood commercial site.

Um did it work?

Maybe it did.

Oh, it's you, okay.

Um, this is that that exception piece down the far bottom left-hand corner at the corner of Valvista and Queen Creek Road.

It's about 12.05 acres.

Um they are proposing to next slide please uh change the general plan amendment from two and a half two mayor yes I so I thought from the prior meeting that this one was contingent on the other one I thought that that was part like part of it was that not accurate they were being listed as separate items okay okay so this one's proposed uh general plan amendment from two to three and a half dwelling units per acre two to three and a half dwellings per acre to neighborhood commercial and a proposed rezone to from SF35 to neighborhood commercial so as you can see on the general plan exhibit um so it's changing that from that two to three and a half to to neighborhood commercial at that corner on 12.05 acres next slide please and then the zoning would be changed from SF35 to conventional zoning of neighborhood commercial um and that's pretty simple it's that that's they don't have a development plan for this it's just a conventional rezone no deviations it will follow the the the standard code requirements and the and land development code and they will come forward they would come forward if you decide to approve it at a later date for it for design review um they had a neighborhood meeting same neighborhood meeting as the larger there's that larger project um six surrounding property owners residents attended they didn't really comment on this property too much um town staff has not received any public comments concerning this neighborhood commercial corner um next slide please uh so staff is uh recommending that you approve that that rezone next slide and that's it that's my presentation thank you thank you pretty simple project on that one any questions for Keith Councilmember Lyons was this change requested um with the rest of the development in that section in mind half section in mind uh mayor anderson council member lions originally it was kind of it was supposed to be part of the original master plan but they took it out of the the master plan to um it's kind of hard to explain so that the the thresholds on like general plan amendments uh so that the uh the larger project could just be like a minor general plan amendment they kind of just took it out of it uh it's not technically part of the master plan but it is if that makes sense the applicant can explain the reasons why they took it out of the master plan better than I can but they removed it from the original the bigger master plan was this part of the original master plan that this would be commercial it it was contemplated to be that way originally but they they took it out and I I would kind of prefer that the applicant kind of explain why they took it out of the original master plan well well my question for you is yeah question for you is this though if if we had we have just shut down the other part does this hamstring if we make this change would it hamstring a a future stab at this by now saying this is commercial and you can't do anything else with it would they have to come back and go hey let's let's zone it back to residential mayor anderson council member lines I don't think it hamstrings it I think this site can live independently on its own but then again I can have the applicant address that even more there's not we don't have a development plan so we can't see how it relates to it and how it would how it would complement the other development that would have been around it or that could be around it in the future but I can have the applicant address that Vernon does that make sense what I'm asking through the mayor through the mayor council member lines we request that this application be withdrawn thank you we have to do any kind of a vote on that Chris Mayor Council no if you take no action on this and it's deemed denied or withdrawn yeah thank you thank you that completes our public hearings administrative items item 11 fees consider a motion to direct staff to publish a notice of intention to change sales tax options rates and license fees for the town town of Gilbert and set the public hearing date for April 7th 2026 staff Kelly you have a good evening mayor and council thank you I do have a presentation with information about the proposed notice of intent for tonight.

Thank you.

I do have a presentation with information about the proposed notice of intent for tonight.

I will try and do fast for the people who have heard this before.

I know several of you are familiar with the information already, but also not too fast for the people who might be hearing it for the first time.

So tonight, as you know, Gilbert is a fantastic place to live.

We get a lot of accolades, and we are for our many services, police or parks are great place to live.

We're fiscally responsible in a lot of different ways.

We do zero-based budgeting, so a third of the organization gets looked through their budget and brings it down to exactly what's needed to provide the level of services that have been authorized by council.

And anything else is taken out so that we maintain that really tight budget in all of our departments.

That means there's not money to deal with unexpected things that come up.

We do that on purpose.

We use contingency for that purpose.

Contingency has to be requested.

Anything over 100,000 comes to this council.

Anything below that comes to the council through a quarterly budget report so that that transparency is there, and you know any of those changes that are happening throughout the year in the budget.

We also have a triple A bond rating, which allows us to get the best interest rates possible when we do need to go to the market for cash flow reasons on some of the bigger projects when we do need bonding, and we get the best interest rates available.

We pay the least amount of interest so that taxpayer dollars are going towards projects and not other purposes as much as possible.

We also do benchmarking.

We do two different reports.

Um, Gilbert Benchmark Report, which is compared with comparative cities across the United States, and also the Valley Benchmark Cities, which compares us to our neighboring cities here in Arizona.

That gives us a lot of good information to decide how our operations compare to the other groups.

On the next slide, we've got some information about those comparisons.

These are a couple of graphs from the Valley Benchmark Communities report on violent crimes and property crimes per thousand residents.

The top blue bar is the maximum of the Valley Comparison Cities, about 14 cities.

The bottom yellow is the least.

Green is in the middle or the median, and then Gilbert is the orange, and you can see that we are near the bottom on both of these graphs.

So Gilbert is a very safe community, and we take a lot of pride in that.

The next slide shows the graph of the park acreage that's developed per thousand residents.

Gilbert is also near the bottom on this, which is not such a good thing.

We are working to develop park acreage to bring us up a little bit off the bottom there.

We're never going to be at the top, but we can at least do a little bit better.

I think we've got the groundbreaking of Gilbert Regional Park coming up.

On the uh additionally, in the benchmark communities, there's a full-time equivalent employees to staff that we use per thousand residents to provide our services.

So we could provide very comparative and competitive services compared to our other municipalities and jurisdictions.

But Gilbert is, you know, you can't even see the yellow line at the bottom.

It's covered up with Gilbert's line because we are the lowest.

We have been for more than a decade.

Um so we use a lot less staff to provide that those competitive award-winning services.

We also do very well on our outstanding indebtedness.

This is a report that the state puts out, and you can see that Gilbert is not at the top, uh, not at the bottom.

We're kind of in the middle of uh what our indebtedness is per resident per capita debt.

We use debt when we need to, but we try to do it very responsibly.

Gilbert's revenue sources.

Um we're gonna look at how we fund all of these different services.

So on the next one, it shows all of Gilbert's revenues, different funds that we have.

Unlike some people might think that town revenues are just one pot of money that we commingle all together.

That is not the case.

We have to keep it separated in these various funds or different checking accounts.

Each of these areas has its own restrictions, and we have to manage those restrictions and make sure the money is used for its correct purposes.

So one of those are the water fund.

Only water fund revenue is in there, and only water fund expenses are in there as separated.

Tonight we're going to talk about the general fund.

That's where we do most of our general operations, police fire, parks and recreation, our IT services, our HR services, all come out of this general fund budget.

General fund is made up of several revenue sources, mostly sales tax.

We also get some state shared revenues, which is state shared sales tax and state shared uh income tax, also called urban revenue sharing, and then that 11% is other.

That'll be your parks and rec fees, any of your park uh court fines or uh parking tickets, those types of things is a smaller amount of the revenue that is collected.

You'll notice and council, you know this, there is no property tax in there.

Most of the other communities that we're comparing against do contain property tax or other source of revenue, like a transfer from their utility funds to offset their general fund.

In Gilbert, we don't do that.

These are the revenues that we use to support our general operations.

When we deal look at specifically at sales tax, this is a chart of our actual sales tax revenues from last year.

Residential rental was an allowed you, allowed tax category at that time.

The legislature has changed that.

It is no longer an allowed tax category, which results in about a $9 million revenue loss per year to the town of Gilbert moving forward.

There was no alternative revenue given by the legislature to offset this loss.

It is simply a loss of revenue starting in January 1st, 2025.

State shared income tax is also one of our largest categories as we talked about before.

The green lines here represent the total amount of individual and corporate income tax that the state receives as part of the state shared revenues.

It used to be that 15% of that was divided out by cities and towns based on our population.

In about 2022, the state implemented a flat tax, so the revenues declined.

They knew that the revenues would decline, and so in order to offset that, they changed the state formula to allow for 18% to be divided out to cities and towns to help offset that difference.

If revenues had stayed the same to what they were in 2022, we had no growth, no people moved here, nobody got a raise, no businesses expanded, nothing happened, and we had the exact same income tax revenue as we did in 2022, and we used the old state formula.

Gilbert would have received five and a half million dollars more revenue this year than we did under the new system.

So there was a loss of revenue to Gilbert under this system, even though we appreciate the efforts to hold the cities and towns harmless.

Also, with the state shared revenues, the legislature for the first time last year took money off the top from the money that is supposed to go to cities and towns and be divided out.

They took from both the state shared income tax and the state shared sales tax and diverted that money to their own project, which is helping support renovations at the Diamondback Stadium.

This was a legislative priority.

Local governments were not consulted about our desire to participate in this project, but nonetheless, we will be participating for the next 30 years.

Total loss of revenue to Gilbert's about 1.5 million dollars over that three, that 30-year period, so a small amount of money, but hopefully not a pattern that continues with any additional projects.

Also with state shared income tax, as you're aware, the one big beautiful bill has made changes to the federal income tax rules.

Oftentimes states try to keep the income tax rules very similar between state and federal to help create less confusion for taxpayers.

There's a state work group that's working on that conformity, making the rules similar between Arizona's income tax and the federal income tax.

The estimated impact to the state is over 400 million dollars.

Gilbert's portion of that would be about 3.5 million dollars.

This would take effect to revenues that Gilbert will receive starting in July of 2027, so about 18 months away, but we're looking ahead to see that coming.

Also an impact on state shared revenues.

The four different types of state year state shared revenues are listed here on the screen.

We're aware that Santan Valley has incorporated, so they will become, or they are now the 92nd city and town in Arizona, which means they now get a part of the revenues from the state shared formulas that are shared based on population.

Because they are now part of that group, Gilbert will be receiving about 1.8 million dollars less per year because their population will count for them in the cities and towns.

So as we look to the future and what those changes mean, go ahead.

If you are adding up the total impact, it's over 20 million dollars of impact to Gilbert based on these changes.

You also notice that these changes have nothing to do with decisions that were or were not made by this council or the city or the town.

They are simply decisions that were out of our control, and we now need to figure out what to do moving forward to maintain our services and what we would like to do for Gilbert.

Our budget in 2026 is balanced, revenues and expenditures, but we are undersized in several of our service areas.

There is a lot that we had to cut out of the 2026 budget to remain balanced and fiscally responsible.

There was $5 million of items that were requested as ongoing because we know that we believe there will be an ongoing need for those items.

They had to be funded as one time because we simply don't have enough ongoing promised revenues in our structure to be able to afford to include those in an ongoing capacity.

Within that, there's about nine and a half FTEs or full-time equivalent positions that were requested that couldn't be funded in an ongoing capacity, so we had to do one-year agreements for those positions or LTAs.

Overall, there are about 97 positions across the town that couldn't be funded that were requested last year.

We are anticipating that you're doing great.

We can go to the next one.

We are anticipating that uh fiscal 27 will be uh worse than fiscal 26.

There will be less revenues available, there will be more needs across the town.

Some of the uh scope of what we're looking at as we start the fiscal 27 budget year.

There's uh just under 200 positions that are requested, and there's uh just under 100 million dollars of ongoing one-time capital improvement and salary growth and health care costs that look to need funding for next year.

Well, we anticipate we'll have about 15 to 16 million dollars available to try and meet that 100 million dollars of need.

We'll be considering as we've talked with council a lot about these issues.

Um we're looking to maintain a balanced budget.

We're gonna have to do that with a combination of items.

We'll look at newer expanded revenue sources, looking to grow our commercial development and tax base to improve our revenues in that area, delaying projects or decreasing current levels of services or expenses so that our revenues and expenditures stay balanced.

We talked with council at the retreat in December, and direction was given to look at both short-term and long-term options at helping close our revenue gaps.

Some of the short term include parks and rec fee update, which is underway right now, prosecutor diversion fee also underway right now.

Those will come to council as separate items in the upcoming weeks and months.

We're also looking at coin operated sales tax, tax license fees, communication sales tax, and restaurant and bar sales tax.

Those we'll discuss a little bit further tonight.

On the longer term side, we're looking to build more hotels, expand commercial property rental, increase resident or restaurant offerings, and continue to explore any other options that we can that are in the best interest of the town to help close that gap.

Tonight we're talking about some potential changes to our sales tax areas.

One of them is coin operated.

This is an option in the current model city tax code that we don't have turned on right now.

It would tax specifically uh laundromats and uh car wash services.

Right now, those are not taxed in Gilbert, but they are in these surrounding communities that you can see on the screen here.

The next one is a tax license fee.

Um we currently charge two dollars as a one-time fee.

Most of the other communities around charge an annual update or annual renewal fee.

Um, and then you can see the cities uh on the screen that and the cities, the amount that they charge per year.

The recommendation is to do $50 per year for Gilbert, which would match many of these cities.

Communication sales tax is the next one.

This would be your cell phone bills or any landline bills that you have.

Um currently our rate is two percent.

We would be looking to go to 2.75 percent.

This would match Chandler's rate and be in the middle of the pack with the surrounding communities you see here.

One thing I'll note about the chart on these sales tax rates is remember that these other communities are also using primary property tax or other sources of revenue to help decrease the their reliance on sales tax.

We don't have that option here in Gilbert because we don't have those other sources of revenue, so ours all has to come from our sales tax and those of corresponding rates.

Similar with uh restaurant uh bar restaurant and bar sales, we would be looking to increase from 2% to 2.75 percent.

These are the surrounding communities in the comparison there again towards the middle of the pack here on the rates that would be proposed.

The anticipated customer impact of these changes would be $50 per year per business, and that is per business, not per business location.

So a QT that has multiple locations in Gilbert only has to pay for one tax license for the town of Gilbert.

Uh $12 car wash would be 20 cents additional in tax.

A 40 dollar sale bill, the taxable portion if that was 40 dollars, it'd be about 30 cents per additional tax, and a $50 dinner night out would be about 38 cents additional tax with these changes.

The timeline for this is tonight we're discussing it.

If it is approved by council for the notice of intention, that allows us to start to do public notice and outreach.

We would begin that tomorrow.

Um, it does include some mailers that we would need to put out in the next uh couple of weeks to specific businesses and following all of the requirements in state statute for notification.

On April 7th, tonight's action would also make April 7th the date of a public hearing where council would hear public comment and also be able to make a decision.

Tonight's action won't make any decisions on any potential changes to sales tax.

It simply would begin a noticing process so that that discussion could move forward.

Uh, May 1st, we would need to do notification to Department of Revenue.

It has to be 60 days in advance of any changes, and then any changes to sales tax have to begin at the start of a quarter.

In this case, it would be July 1, 2026.

Any questions I can help with.

Any questions?

Okay, one.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Kelly, do we have a plan for the whole 20 million?

We do not at this time.

Okay, thank you.

I'm assuming that all of you receive the same correspondence from the chamber I did.

Be interested in any thoughts.

Yeah.

Councilmember Lyons.

Um sorry, I'm leaning back there, forgive me.

This was something you do are you aware of the email from the chamber?

Yes.

And I think that's something that you and I talked about the other day when I when we had our meeting, correct?

Yes, we do need to get a plan for the full future.

It's going to take a lot of different efforts that are going to have to come in pieces because we can't do all of the pieces at the same meeting.

Like we mentioned, the parks and rec fees will come later, the prosecutor diversion fees will come later, and there's some additional work that will need to be done.

Okay.

Um and this is one of the reasons that I'm pushing that one effort to bring in the third party to help us to look at some of these issues.

I I do think the chamber makes a good point in the sense that if we if we don't know how to solve the whole problem, we could actually be hurting ourselves by doing some of these things.

And I know that uh in my conversation with the chamber that you're talking about uh like going to a restaurant on baseline there, if you go across the road, you can get a whole lot cheaper than if you did it in Gilbert, and I wonder if we'd end up with leakage into Queen Creek, Chandler or Mesa on lease the sales tax for the food and stuff.

So I think there's some pitfalls of this that I'm I'm concerned about as I ruminated from when we talked, and I and I I think we need to look at this from a holistic perspective rather than trying to hodgepodge it and take it a little at a time.

So from my perspective, uh putting together a team to attack this holistically and come to council with recommendations to cover the whole gap, I think is the for me would be a lot more comfortable of a position.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kabrowski.

Um I think that the council, you know, based on the presentations we've been given and what Kelly has presented, we're in a tough spot in terms of the financial place, and so we asked staff what levers we can pull.

These are the levers that we would support out of several that they presented.

The others were even worse, so we're not considering those.

Um I think we have to move forward with something quickly.

I'm not sure whether there is a quick solution to this 20 million, unless you're gonna implement a primary property tax, which we said was off the conversation table for now.

Um I would suggest that we reduce the restaurant and bar sales tax to two and a half percent from the proposed two point seven five percent.

Um, but I do think we need to seriously consider moving forward because we have few options.

What are we gonna start cutting?

If like if you if we aren't gonna move forward with these, then what are we gonna start cutting from our budget?

And we already know that there's some strains in that area already.

Yes, thank you.

Nice mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

I um I bought my biggest competitor last week and got the whole team together, and we had to figure out some revenue situations we had, and we had to make a plan.

And you have some very smart people up here.

I don't I think you guys, some of you are much smarter than we are, but you have some very smart people up here that um this council is not a part-time council.

You know, we're not like councils that have been in the past.

I'd like to see us actually get together, not just have a financial retreat for a day or two and hear recommendations, but let's get together for a day or two.

And if we have to make it public, we make it public.

But let's just discuss what we can cut, what we can do, what we can't do, and let's let's let's you know, let's kill the gold of the golden calf.

Meaning I asked a question this week about um some revenue, and I was told that we can't do that.

And I asked why can't we do that?

They said because it's policy.

Seven of us up here make policy.

I I I don't care what a council did five years ago, six years ago.

If they don't like a policy change that we have five years from now, then that that council can change our policy.

But I want to see every possibility on the table.

And things that you know, one of us may come up with someone from the community from the public may come up with an idea.

Sometimes when you're so set on how we've done things all the time, you know, it it makes it it takes away out of the box thinking.

You know what I'm saying?

I I told the story yesterday, I'm gonna tell it again really, really fast.

Well, when I uh I I basically raised my kid by myself since he was six months old.

When I got home from work, I hated change in my pockets, so I put it all in a in a in a bowl in the kitchen.

And once in a while I'll miss it and fall on the floor, and he'd run over and pick it up and throw it back in there.

And I came home from work one day and I saw him on the floor just looking all around, and I asked a babysitter, what's he doing?

So he lost he lost a quarter.

He's looking for a quarter.

So I asked him, I said, Dustin, what are you doing?

And he's like, I'm looking for a quarter.

So I got on the floor with him, and I'm looking all around, and after about 10 minutes, I'm like, man, I don't see this quarter.

What where do you think you lost it?

He goes, I lost it in my bedroom.

I'm like, if you lost it in your bedroom, why are you looking in the kitchen for?

He goes, 'Cause this is the way we always do it.

And I think sometimes we get stuck, not we, but people get stuck in the way things we all we we've always done it this way.

So that's the only options we have.

I love for this council to sit down with department heads, and if we can do it, we have to do it with the public, we do it with the public.

And let's just throw mud on the wall and let's see what we can come up with to take care of the whole 20 million at one time.

Because I don't want to put a full-time tax on people if we don't have a plan.

So that's just a recommendation.

Maybe I'm a you know minority up here with that, but um I'd rather see us work together than just throw our hands up in the air and say, let's let's do this and let's just raise taxes, Councilmember Buckley.

Me, am I up?

Wow.

Um, initially we've all talked about this, uh, all of us have talked about this in um retreat and in meetings and our one-on-ones every month or every two weeks, whatever we've needed.

But I I do have you know, in looking at things and trying to put all this together, we're trying to piecemeal, I think an issue of where we don't have enough funds, and we're we're actually picking here and picking there and finding uh numerous places that we can again once again increase taxes on our citizens.

And I I am I have a real problem with with doing this because when you see this all put together and how many different things, and it's not all our citizens.

I get that some of you know, some people will be coming from you know, out of town and buying and stuff, but it still affects the majority of this still affects the residents here.

And we need uh, you know, I my studies in college were business administration and accounting.

Well, accounting was pretty boring for me.

And so, but I still I still did it because I wanted to have that information.

We we need a plan on this, not just trying to piecemeal this.

I think that we need to put a plan together, and it's similar to what council member Bon Giovanni was.

I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Bon Giovanni.

Um was alluding to, but we can't fix a problem, we can fix this problem, which is not a huge problem right now.

But then what are we gonna do in 28 when this possibly we need to look more to the future on this before we stick all of this to our residents?

We've got to look and see what the projection is, and and I'm sure you probably have done that, maybe.

And um, you know, and for 28 and 29, and I did on different things I've seen numbers of what 29 might be like, but I think we need to have uh uh a set plan and and maybe go back to the drawing board, and and as council member Lyons mentioned that you had suggested some additional staff to help you with that because it's a it's a big job.

And as council member Lyons mentioned that you had suggested some additional staff to help you with that because it's a it's a big job.

And I want I want to see us go back to the drawing board you know whether that be for the next month it doesn't have to to and I know that's probably a lot for a month time but even if it's two or three I don't think that it's going to cause a major budget issue at this point for us to take more time to have some kind of a plan that we can show our residents that that we're working toward and try and find a way which I don't know how we're going to do that because I I did not continue I mean I continued all my accounting but then I never thought of it it much again and until until here and so that's kind of where I am on this I I would like to see us put together a plan of for an overall plan of how we're gonna do this because once and and you I'm sure you're aware and the rest of council is aware that once we start charging a fee we can't take that fee away we can but it's very difficult to do that.

And I I honestly I just cannot see at this point and I know initially I I was all for this and but then when you start looking at this and looking at how this affects our citizens and our residents after we've already increased water rates we've got another right water rate coming I just in good conscience I I can't do this I just can't do it and I'd like to to see um hopefully get you some additional staff that can you know you can sit down with and do that fairly quickly not you know as quickly as we can so we can come back with a good plan that makes sense and that we can actually explain to the residents why we're doing it and how we're doing it and it's a one time plan it's not you know this month and what scares me about this is what come you know July for our our 2027 or yeah 2027 fiscal year or is that 26 I I still get those confused but um what's gonna happen you know what's gonna happen when we go to do the budget again so that that's just where I'm at I can't do this to the residents I just can't do I can't do these and know that we can't change that once we I mean we can but like I said when would we change it that's gonna be if that if I were saying that to uh myself as a resident I my first question would be well then when could you change it back if we do all this can you change it back in six months is that a is this a temporary or is this permanent and it's the way we're doing it in my book is permanent so mayor could I provide some context and answers to the questions thank you you've asked a lot of questions about the the impact and budget and looking forward and I want to make sure you have full information to make decision what's proposed with notice of intent would be maximum amounts so if approved you could not take action uh an April 7th you could take action on some of the items or not all you could do something as council member Kaprowski mentioned a lower rate on sales on restaurant and bar if we don't do a notice of intent then we cannot we we would not be able to take action on any of these items and that will impact what we can bring to you as a balanced budget for fiscal 27 if uh we are working in the budget process right now um there are a lot of really important items that don't have funding unless we find additional funding and this is for fiscal 27 these items that are on the notice of intent tonight are the items that could take the quickest action and be in place for fiscal 27 so if you want the full range of options for what could be available and brought to you in the fiscal 27 budget we are anticipating to bring you a prioritized list of the items that would be requested in 27 that only have funding if we have additional revenue and then you could make a decision at that time with more information uh before the April 7th note or public hearing that is recommended or that's uh on the notice of intent recommended here on what would not get funded or what could be funded and your comfort level with that.

And then you could make a decision at that time with more information before the April 7th note or public hearing that is recommended or that's uh on the notice of intent recommended here on what would not get funded, or what could be funded uh and your comfort level with that.

If we do not do a notice of intent tonight, we can still do something in the future, but it will not be in place in time for fiscal 27 to start.

Councilmember Torqueson.

Thank you, Kelly, very much.

Uh first I just wanted to note that although we're indebtedness is at 5300, our most comparable town would be Chandler, and there's 1700 and something.

We, of course, are building uh a half a billion dollar plus water treatment plant, but we should recognize that there's a a huge disparity in debt.

Chandler will probably catch up, but that's just so that we can have that perspective.

I want to get to a deeper issue, and I think we have to re-look at everything we do.

I've been talking about priorities.

And I can just go back to the 2020 general plan and the CIP that's come from it.

What hit in 2020?

COVID, the pandemic.

Every single thing that we're dealing with has been turned on its ear because of that.

The construction budgets are up 116 plus percent from 2020.

Yet your paychecks not, at least mine's not.

I serve on council, mine's lower than it was in 2020.

Uh just ask my wife.

Um we have to look at things differently.

We're gonna would today with the information that people have today, the way they feel today, would they approve the same thing they did in 2020 if they read it?

Probably not.

Would we be pushing the same agenda as 2020?

I guarantee not.

We're gonna have to look at some reprioritize.

There's things that we've done, there's an extra half cent in the sales tax.

Does that no longer do we take some of that that we were hoping for quality of life projects and fill the gap and wait by us a year to rethink what really is the quality of life in Gilbert and take a little time before moving on things.

We have a this much going up in increases, but our money's gone this way, and thanks to the state, it goes down a little bit.

But everything we've done, we've never turned around and said, okay, we're gonna we keep referring to what the state and the federal government's done.

We haven't solved it.

This doesn't solve it because we'll still be talking about it next year this time.

We're still gonna be complaining that they robbed us of of uh rental tax.

And how do you explain to this the average citizen?

Well, sales tax is gonna go up again because the guys that so many of them resent are now not paying that tax, but we've shifted the burden over to you to everybody.

So we shift the burden.

We don't it's not that we have to absorb it, we have to start planning.

We have to start doing things that mean the town generates revenue that it that it brings builds its tax base, not taxes its base more.

And we're gonna have to look at more public-private partnerships for parks.

We're gonna have to look at uh this land sale, for instance, that we discussed tonight.

I know what policy is, but that's what gonna be close $18 million?

Was that the number total between the two properties?

That's pretty much it right there.

But nobody's talking about that.

Nobody's saying, you know what?

Well, it's policy.

I want to put it at the CIP project.

I don't care what policy's been.

I want to take that and throw it at this massive hole and buy us a year.

I want to slow down and figure out what we're doing because if we just keep going back to the well, it will go dry.

And we're gonna have to rethink.

We do have to rethink what our what we supply to people.

People got so upset saying that their their uh bulk trash would be cut.

I got calls on it, yet those are the same people to complain that there's a 2.7% increase in the cost of it.

We're gonna have to rethink all this.

We have to rethink what we're what our priorities are.

And we can change policies as Chuck had recommended.

We can do things here and not stick to the straight and narrow on it without affecting our our bond rating.

And this plan here, as much as I appreciate how hard the work is, and it's 38 cents on a $50 dinner bill, it doesn't fix the problem unless we continue to tax them forever in the same fashion.

And we only got halfway there, so why don't we just double it?

Why don't we just double it right now?

And that'll fix the according to this.

That fixes the problem.

But it doesn't.

What fixes the problem is is changing what we've been doing.

We have to pivot, and right now we have an opportunity to change some policies in the short term and and not affect anybody.

Not that 38 cents affects a dinner bill because it really doesn't.

But we have to do this.

We have to pivot.

We have to rethink.

And we have to look at 2020 as unfortunately outdated a decade earlier because it's not the same world.

It's not the same costs.

It's not the same priorities.

They're just not.

Think of our South Southeast or regional park.

There's been no real change.

The things we'd hoped would be done aren't done.

They've only gotten more expensive to do, and people can't perform on contracts that they want to perform on.

This doesn't solve our problem.

And it doesn't solve our problem in a way that is well thought out for this future and looks at where people's priorities priorities are today because the world's different.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I'm not saying I'm against any things that we're talking about tonight.

But I'm what I'm against is not having a full plan.

And the land sale was one of the things I brought up last week.

Um there's there has to be things that we haven't thought about before.

You know, and maybe we do something different.

Maybe we again have a day or two or two-day meeting, bring in the chamber, bring in people from the community.

The worst thing we can do is they could have an idea that's just great.

I mean, the you know, the A muffin was founded by a franchisee, not by corporate office.

Worst thing that can happen is maybe they have an idea that really won't work, but at least we can educate them about why that won't work and work with the community, with the people to come up with a solution for this.

And I know there's there's time frames on this, but we've got to take the blinders off.

We've we've got to look at every possible solution to make to cover this 20 million, right?

And probably more, right?

And I know that we run very, very, very lean, but hey, you guys came up with nine point something million with these taxes.

We can come up with something else.

I'd rather see us working together with the community on this and finding a solution and finding it as fast as we can.

At least if we can't find a fast solution, then we have included the community and they understand that with us.

Councilmember Buckman.

Thank you, Mayor.

So I accountability starts with us, those of us in this diet, and I agree with everything that's being said in terms of we need a plan.

I absolutely agree with Councilmember McTorgeson that the world has changed, and 2025, 2026 now is different than 2020.

Well, we just made the decision as a team that on something that could have generated revenue, but but basing it on something that as it was 25 years ago, and now you're talking things have changed in five years.

And I feel like we're going in circles.

I I said that so let me back up.

Council Member Alliance put together the forge committee to get resident eyes from some very, very smart business people in our community, very successful business people in our community, a very diverse group, and they volunteered a lot of time, they spent a lot of time to make suggestions.

And so everything that was presented to us at that retreat were things that our residents said we need to consider.

And then at our retreat, we nibbled them away, and I said we are we're trying to solve a 20 million dollar problem with less than 10 million dollars.

We're nickeling and diming it.

And I I I'm just confused because maybe we don't understand that what we're doing is setting the lawful budget authority starting July 1.

And by not hitting that deadline, we are literally walking into a 20 million dollar shortfall with the shortest staffed agency in Maricopa County.

Now I'm willing, absolutely willing to make the hard decisions.

We pushed the 9.8 million dollars at a 20 million dollar problem.

No one else did.

Our residents gave us options to solve that for the short term.

They also look, they also gave us things for the long term, which we're taking action on.

We're trying to we grow our way out of it.

We're trying to bring more revenue through commercial.

But those things don't happen starting July 1.

Those things won't happen for two, three years.

By the time let me look how long this last development took an entire year just to get where we're at.

It had we said yes, it was the I think they said 2028 before phase one was even close.

So those the growing our way out of it, we have to.

And that's got to be part of the larger plan.

But it doesn't fix the now.

Um so what we have to be willing to say and agree is we're gonna go into 20 uh this next fiscal year starting July 1, 2026.

With a shortfall.

Which means what services and or service levels do we need to cut because we will not have the lawful budget authority to spend more than that.

If we do, we're violating the law.

Am I wrong in that?

We will have enough next year to maintain our current level of service, but we won't have money to add police officers or fix any of the issues about we funded them one time in 26.

We won't have any money to fund them ongoing in 27.

Okay.

So I just want to make sure we're all looking at this thing from the accurate lens, me included.

Um we do need a plan.

We need to look at it holistically.

I I love the idea of just listen can we wait 90 days and come up with a better plan, a holistic plan that covers the problem.

But we have to be willing to accept that risk.

I don't want to cut more people.

We were just talking about short staffing and police.

Um I just want to make sure everybody is on the same page and the understanding of the because every decision has has consequences and benefits, and the benefit is we slow it down.

I like the idea of being triggered trigger fast, right?

You pull a trigger, smooth the slow, slow is fast, so you hit the target every time.

Um and I feel like we're going way too fast.

Um I agree with that.

But we have to be willing to accept those impacts by saying no.

Unless there's another way to somehow create that threshold so that we don't um so that we can add those cops and those firemen.

Keep in mind that if we're sitting we're just setting the date for the hearing, we can there's flexibility at that time to do uh what we'd like to do, what which would be not pass it at all if we've got a plan in place or keep it in place.

Um change the numbers as council member Koprowski was suggesting.

It's very flexible, but I'd hate to lose that option.

But can't are we permitted though, because I thought there's what we're also setting is the ceiling, are we not?

Yes.

So we're saying on a 20 million dollar problem by saying yes, we're saying we're gonna basically fix 9 million of it.

We're not gonna be able to in that fiscal year add the additional 10 and a half million, correct?

Uh mayor, councilmember Buckland.

With the rates as proposed, that would be correct.

The maximum would be 9.8 million dollars.

If you wanted from the dias to do a rate that is higher than that, we could do a rate the maximum that would allow for the full 20 million dollar um revenue, and then you would still have the options to do anything lower than that.

I heard you say that though that with this number we have a balanced budget for 2027.

Is that correct?

We have a balanced budget with adding nothing new.

Nothing new.

And there are some significant needs that we may have heartburn not funding.

But I if we have revenue, we can bring you those options.

I can get you more information over the next 60 days.

Yeah.

When you say we have revenue, we're talking about what is on the agenda tonight.

That's correct.

We have we will bring you a balanced budget.

It may not have all of the services that you hoped to have in it for fiscal 27.

Councilmember Koprowski.

Um I I agree with you, Mayor, in terms of we'd hate to lose this option, but it sounds like we need a lot more discussion prior to that public hearing.

Um and then I heard a couple other things mentioned.

So I have a question for you, Callie, in terms of um the quality of life projects is through our sales tax and we have some flexibility there.

It sounds like some of the revenue we might get be getting in one-time revenue might be currently proposed for one-time projects.

Would it be possible to dedicate that one-time revenue into our already slated quality of life projects?

And then move some of that into other general fund items.

Um so if I answer if I understand question right, can we use some of the quality of life revenue to fund general fund projects?

Um that is within council's purview.

The complication is we cannot use one-time revenue from quality of life to fund ongoing things in general fund.

We would have to take ongoing revenue, which would mean permanently not doing some of the quality of life projects unless we found revenue later that we wanted to replace it with.

But we can't do like a one-year reprieve with one-time revenue and use that to fund additional police officers that will have an ongoing contract with the town for employment.

And even if we decided to reduce the quality of life program, let's say we took out like all the tier three items.

Is it even possible to start doing that in this year since we kind of slated a lot of that money for the tier one projects?

I mean, it is an option to not fund those items.

They have consequences of their own, but it would have to be a permanent unfunding.

Uh we could look at how that what funding remained in the quality of life.

Um and what it could, what that cash flow could fund.

Uh quality of life is about $55 million a year.

So taking if we took $20 million out of it, um that's half.

Okay, thanks for that explanation.

And it sounds like you know that would probably come back to us in some kind of workshop being proposed.

Thank you, Mayor.

Kelly, again, why can't we use one-time money to put it in a budget for full-time position ongoing and let us breathe until we figure this rest of the stuff out?

With one-time money, we can't guarantee that the town would be able to continue to pay the salaries in year two, three, four, totally understand that.

But why can't we do that?

It is against our financial policies uh and a best practice.

Uh it could using one-time money for ongoing things can have ramifications about our credit worthiness as well.

Um can we um as a council get that information and make that decision and maybe make a change in policy once we have that information?

I don't want to be stuck in a rule that's been out there forever because it's out there forever.

I'd rather have us give the information be told straight out.

This is what's gonna happen if you do this, and then we can take that risk and say we're willing to make that risk because we have a hole right now that we need to fill, and it might buy us another year to come up with a better plan.

Is that possible?

Uh I think we can get you some more information.

We may need a closed session with Chris.

I don't care how we do it.

I just want to know if it's possible.

So if I might, Mayor, Vice Mayor Bon Giovanni.

I think there are specific instances where one-time money is appropriate to use for FTEs.

We have several places in the town where um that is a difficult situation to get folks to take positions in that manner.

So I'm thinking, and Chief might be able to speak to this as well from a PD perspective and others.

We it it is just really, really challenging to have a one-time you only have this contract for a year for many positions within the town.

Obviously, that's information we can bring back to you just to for more clarity as to what that looks like.

Where we can, as Kelly mentioned, just the past couple of years, having all the LTAs that we have put in, we have done that.

We will continue to do that, but in some circumstances it's just not um does not make sense for us to do that from the pool of candidates we get or don't get for those roles and getting those filled.

So that's one of the challenges, but we're happy to come back with more information on what that looks like.

Totally understand that.

I'd rather have a full-time job than think that I'm gonna have a one-time one job for one year, but at the same time that puts fire under us to solve the problem, you know, and and if I got hired for a full-time job, I would hope that there's money there in the future for that full-time job, and that's on us to make sure that that happens.

Um again, I'm not against any of the strategies we have right now.

I'm just not for pulling the trigger until we have a decision to we have it solved.

Councilmember Lyons.

Kelly, I just want to make sure I understand um with the current spending levels we have and the revenue we have coming in.

If we make no changes, we can fund 27.

We can continue to fund our same level that we have in 26 into 27.

Okay.

Now, with that said, there are challenges that we need to address that we need this extra money for.

And that's that's the gap we need to close for 27.

Now, with that said, though, when we get out to 29, it's a different story, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

So I think that there is some room for us to take a hard look at this and find I think we're covered for 27, and we can do potentially what Chuck was uh mentioning to cover the things that she's saying that we may need to address that they're thinking that are important and give them an opportunity to come back with us with different options that we can look at and then leverage some of the stuff that Mary and Dan and others are working on, try to look at growing our way out of it, which is what Kenny was referring to earlier.

But it lets us take the time to do a holistic approach on this, and we can bring in a third party, we can bring in citizens, we can bring in the chamber and use that brain trust to help solve the issue.

And I think we get a better buy-in from the community if we need to make changes to our revenue streams as a whole, because right now it's very volatile, and we could if we did it that way, we could take a hard look at how do we create some consistency in our revenue streams and we don't have as much risk in it.

But getting everybody to buy into that, it would make that discussion a whole lot more productive, I think.

Are you tracking with me on that?

Councilmember Torkinson?

Just to re-clarify, one-time money, let's say, like the sale of this property that we're talking about, can go to a one-time expense.

So if we were able to take shift some things from FTs over to LTAs, we could cover it for a year.

Saying everything goes right.

I mean, obviously there's uh anything can happen.

It's less than optimal, but the world's less than optimal today.

We can survive it that way.

And by a year a time, just rough numbers, by a year of time to solve the problem long term rather than knee-jerk and just jump in the way we are.

We can get some of this accomplished if we do it that way.

Yes, we would be able to use one-time money to do LTA contracts.

Um we'd have to have the department speak to their success in being able to fill some of the positions uh under those conditions.

It's a challenge, but it's not as much of a challenge as it is not to have someone.

Any other comments?

Councilmember Buckley?

Uh just just a quick question.

So if this if this does not pass for going to um the you know, the public hearing, the what we're doing tonight, if this is not passed, we can come back if we wanted to.

If we got the you know, everybody got together in the 60 days something, you know, transpired and and we had we had a plan.

We can come back again, right?

And and ask ask for the same thing, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

The timing would be delayed, and so it would impact the uh amount of ongoing funds that would be available in fiscal 27.

Uh we lose a quarter, we lose 25 percent at prorated amount, right?

But that option is still there to still vote on this or make these changes in the future.

Okay.

So so this affects the money we have coming in in 2027.

So we we balance the budget in 27, but we really don't have we don't have the money for what we're doing in 27.

There's some significant needs of the town that cannot be funded, some ongoing needs.

So depending on what council decides tonight, um whether that option stays on the table and we bring you that prioritized list uh in the upcoming month, or if we leave it off the table, we will still bring you a balanced budget.

Um we can bring you one-time items.

Uh it simply may not contain all of the service levels that you are expecting for 2027.

Okay.

And that okay, that I wanted to clarify that again because that's what I thought you you know we were saying and doing.

But but I I do agree that sometimes we have to, you know, bite the bullet, and I we need to do a comprehensive plan so we stop hitting our residents with all of these numerous different taxes and fees and water and sewer, uh all the water and sewer, all that we have to do.

I mean it's that's that's a critical infrastructure.

And um, but I I wanted to make sure that because I don't I don't plan approving this tonight, and I just wanted to make sure that if that happens that we can come back again if and when we need to, but hopefully we can make it through until 28 and make it through 27.

All right, thank you.

Thanks.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I hope it was a week ago, because I hope it wasn't more than a week ago, because I might be a little upset.

But I hope a week ago I asked for all CIP projects under 10 million dollars and starting shortly or starting next year, and I was told I'm gonna get it tomorrow.

I wish I would have got it today, so I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna put you on the spot for a second.

You don't have to answer it if you if you don't know the answer.

But are there any 10 million dollar projects or less that we can that we can stop and delay on the C CIP project that can be worked into the general fund?

I don't know that off the top of my head.

Um but it could be an option once we get a list and we take a look at it all.

Uh for one-time funding, that can be an option.

I yeah, for me one time funding, two time funding, three time funding.

For me, it's like you know, if you're gonna use your one-time funding for a future thing and you light a fire under your butt, then it has to happen, right?

And then you have to make sure you have that money.

I mean, that's what I've done in my business is I I can't guarantee funding for the next 10 years in my business.

Sometimes you have to do things right now to put pressure on you to succeed in the future.

So I'm looking forward to that list.

I hope to go over it with other council members and staff and see if there's anything that we can cut.

I think we beat this one uh sufficiently.

I won't say one thing there, though.

Do you want to be one more time?

No, I just want to say I know how hard you worked on this, and I know how incredibly disappointing this sounds.

And this no way whatsoever reflects on you, your work or anything, because I know you bust your shops, and I really appreciate you.

Thank you.

As long as you have the information to make an equated decision, then I have done my job.

And mayor, members of the council, if I might.

Um I appreciate the conversation.

We understand um how difficult this is.

We were pleased to bring this to you for a discussion as you know was asked of us and are happy to continue the conversation moving forward as to what this looks like uh for us as a town um and how we get through this really difficult time where revenues are concerned.

Thank you.

What what I'm hearing up here, Dawn is that uh we do need to have a plan, put together a plan and use various stakeholders to do that.

So that's something I think we need to think more about in very soon.

Councilmember Buckley, you have something to do with the No, I just wanted to thank Kelly for her work and I know how hard you work as well.

And um uh that's no reflection as the the others have said on you at all because uh you you've done a fantastic job and you'll continue to do a fantastic job, but we just feel that you know the time has come that we need to look deeper into having having a better plan that better serves our residents.

But thank you.

Do I have a motion?

Motion to deny um number eleven fees.

It's been moved and seconded that we deny item number eleven, please vote.

Motion carries five, too.

Thank you, everyone.

Well, now's the time to really get to work then.

Uh we we need to work on work on that plan.

Future meetings.

Uh anybody have any future agenda items.

You can see there's something on there about red light speed cameras.

The state is addressing that, I think.

And we can talk to Rob more about that.

Report from the town manager.

I have no uh additional reports at this time.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you.

Any reports from the council members?

I have one.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor from Parks Direct.

Um Truckapalooza.

This is always a great event.

Truckapalooza is a fun and affordable event for the whole family.

Come learn about dozens of vehicles, including emergency vehicles, transport vehicles, tow trucks, public safety and safety trucks, buses, and more.

Guests can climb inside, honk the horns, flash the lights while talking to the men and women who drive these amazing trucks.

The date is January 24th at Gilbert Regional Park from 9 a.m.

to 1 p.m.

And then the community connect expo, the town of Gilbert Community Resources is launching a new community event designed to bring together local nonprofits, Gilbert Public Schools, and human service providers to connect residents with essential resources.

Attendees will have the opportunity to explore services related to housing, mental health, employment support, town departments, including parks and recreation, police, fire, water resources, and environmental services, school initiatives, financial assess uh financial assistance, education, and much much more.

February 7th, 2026 at HD South from 9 a.m.

to 12 p.m.

Thank you.

Any other councilmember Kabroski?

There's a few um upcoming events in the community.

Um on February 5th is the Gilbert Sister Cities East West Fest held at the HD South in the Sever in the New Severson Center.

Uh tickets can be purchased at Gilbert Sister Cities.com.

Um we also have the Gilbert Symphony Orchestra coming up on Thursday, February 12th at 7 p.m.

at the Hickley Center for the Performing Arts, which is celebrating um numerous um days that are celebrated in February, such as Statehood Day, African American History Month, Valentine's Day, um President's Day, etc.

So that should be a fun one.

Uh there's also another event on February 11th at the Higley Center for the Performing Arts, which I believe is open to the public, uh, which is tied to the um lunar new year celebration and has um musicians from Higley Unified School District and China students as well.

Thank you.

We have no report from the mayor's office tonight.

I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

We are adjourned.