Well, thank you.

Good evening.

Uh, welcome to our Mesa City Council meeting, August 25th, 2025.

All of our council members are present.

Appreciate them being here.

Uh, we will begin with a invocation from Pastor Brian Crane from the Eternal Life Lutheran Church, after which we'll have the pledge of allegiance.

If we at all, please stand.

Let us pray.

Almighty everlasting God, King of Kings, from whom all rank and power proceed, who instituted temporal authority and committed to it the sword for the punishment of the wicked and the protection of the good.

Lead all our leaders, especially the members of our city council in your way, that they may keep the common peace, turn us away from violence and bloodshed, and nurture whatever makes for peace, honor, and justice.

To that end, O Lord of hosts, give them your divine blessing.

Make and keep them steadfast and good, courageous in adversity, confident in affliction, joyful in sorrow, reliable in distress, victorious in temptation, unmoved in prosperity, and wise, strong, and prosperous in all their endeavors.

Let our government serve for the suppression of all evil, peace in this present time, and the protection of the people, to the praise and eternal worship of your holy name through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Pastor.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance through the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Again, thank you, Pastor Crane.

We need all the blessings we can get up here.

Yep, you bet.

Item one is the consent agenda.

Mr.

Christopher, if you could come forward and read the consent agenda.

I believe 7A is off our consent.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

These are the items on the consent agenda.

All items listed with an asterisk will be considered as a group by the city council.

And will be enacted with one motion.

There'll be no separate discussion unless a council member order citizen request, in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered as a separate item.

Item two, approval of minutes of previous meetings as written.

Item 3A, Act on Liquor License Application for Last Stop Mesa, 2751 East University Drive.

Item 3B, Act on Liquor License Application for Best Tacos, 1712 West Broadway.

Item 3C, Act on Liquor License Application for Thanks a Bunch, 1853 South Power Road.

Item 4A, approving dollar limit increase to the cooperative term contract for McNeil's original equipment manufacturer refugees parts for the Fleet Services Department.

Item 4B, approving three-year term contract with two-year renewal options for special event management services for the Parks Recreation and Community Facilities Department.

Item 4C, approving dollar limit increase to the cooperative contract for a six-year service and capital expenditure agreement for Motorola System Upgrade for the Tupaz Regional Wireless Cooperative as requested by the Department of Innovation and Technology.

Item 4D, approving three-year term contract with two-year renewal options for communications tower support services for the Department of Innovation and Technology.

Item 4E, approving five-year term contract for water and wastewater chemicals for the water resources department.

Item 5A, approving ordinance repealing Mesa City Code Title VIII, Chapter 4, in its entirety, and adopting a new replacement, Mesa City Code, Title VIII, Chapter 4, Titled Sanitary Sewer Regulations.

Item 5B, approving ordinance of adopting titles and schedules of terms, rates, fees, and charges for the natural gas utility transportation and gas service schedule.

And item 6A, approving bingo application for East Mesa Moose Lodge 2082 at 7402 East Baseline Road.

Mayor and Councilmember is these are the items on the consent agenda.

Thank you, Mr.

Christopher.

Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Second by Miss Billsbury.

Please cast your vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you, everyone.

Next we'll move over to 7A.

7A's for the rezoning of Siena Ridge, a 20-unit multiple resident development located north of the northwest corner of East Broadway and South 90th Street.

Miss Mosley, are there any blue cards for this?

All right.

Council, anything that anyone would like to say.

Thank you, Mayor.

I've said a lot in the in the previous two study sessions.

We've gone over this, and uh I just won't be in support of this.

For for one, while I do support the project in general, the plans before us do represent a concerning erosion of our standards, particularly when it comes to the size of the garages.

Our modern vehicles are not getting any smaller, and storage needs are not diminishing.

These undersized garages will not comfortably fit many of the cars that families have come to rely on, and leaving homeowners an impossible choice of whether to use the garage for storage or to be able to park their vehicles.

And when you look at the site plan for this, there are no driveways.

So that parking is gonna end up bleeding out onto the street.

I hope that's not a case, but that's what my concern is.

So this is not really just a cosmetic detail.

This is a quality of life issue.

Over time, it could lead to more congested streets, concerns about property and and uh the neighborhood and how people really are able to use uh their property.

We deserve a community that's thoughtfully designed in how we actually live, not one that cuts corners, and in an area that is very much suburban and dependent on cars, we do need to focus on that.

So I don't support this deviation in the code, and I would hope that a more practical plan that represents the needs and the future needs of our uh residents could be considered.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Any other comments from any council?

If not, I'll entertain a motion to proceed.

Um Mayor, I just wanted to ask.

I'm just curious myself.

Um there's on the four plans in the project, two plans uh are in, you know, a deviation from code, and two plans are in excess of code, right?

25 feet instead of the 22 feet.

So how many oh there's the number of units.

Never mind, I just answered my own question.

Okay.

There's 11 units that are in excess and 18 that are short.

So okay, thanks.

To be fair on that, that's the depth changes on all these units.

Whereas, but several, you're right.

Several of these units are larger by square footage, but they are not deep enough for the cars.

And I think that's that's a concern I have actually.

These are 25.

But not deep.

But that's within the question.

Go ahead, miss, go for it.

But it's within the code.

Councilmember Summer's right.

Even the the the 20s within the code.

The 20 by 25, so they give you a answer with the code.

22 deep is the code, I believe.

That is 20 by 22.

Uh sorry, mayor, uh, council members.

So the so the code requires a 20 by 22 garage that's 20 wide by 22 deep.

So what they're requesting in this is 192 wide by 20 deep or 25 wide by 20 deep.

And if I said anything wrong, so it's a deep Evan will correct me.

I apologize, I misspoke on that.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh Mr.

Adams.

Thank you, Mayor.

I am I'm not unsympathetic to the vice mayor's concerns.

I hear him, especially being a person who one of the vehicles I own wouldn't fit, but um, I'm also sympathetic to the district council members who's supporting the project.

Um I think um maybe the proof will be in the pudding.

We'll see what the parking looks like if the project is approved and moves along.

But um, I think it's something that we should keep our eye on closely.

Um you could make arguments on either side of this.

You could say, well, if um if a guy comes along and he has a F-250 crew cab longbed, he's probably gonna go, well, I don't want to park it in my garage, and I I can't park it here, so I'll look somewhere else.

Um somebody has a uh nice little Tesla or something that'll fit.

Okay, parking isn't a problem.

So I I don't know.

I'm I I can see both sides of this argument.

Um this project has less objectionable issues than others that we've had to weigh and consider here over the last few few weeks, months.

So um uh again, sympathetic to the vice mayor's concerns, and I think it is something that we need to keep an eye on very closely.

Um this project perhaps being an example of did it, did it turn out to be what we hoped it would be?

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Adams.

Any other comments for council, Ms.

Spielsbury?

I guess while we're just talking about that, since in the past I've had some pretty severe concerns about um our parking um standard that we have.

I do think it needs to be looked at closely when we're talking about garages.

Um, since the if it's a garage unit, then it's not a public spot that anyone could park in.

And so I do think we need to look at that um closely.

On this particular project, it looks like there's um enough guest parking spots to kind of fill my concerns there.

Um you just don't ever know.

You don't know how many people are gonna live in these, you don't know how many cars they're gonna have.

It's a guessing game, because some people will have less than you think, and some will have more.

So um, but this this particular project doesn't concern me as some of the other ones have.

So I just wanted to bring that up again and reiterate that I do think we need to look at this this um type of product with the garages is becoming more and more common, and we need to look at it differently than our regular multifamily unit when all the spaces.

Mary knows this very well, but just wanted to bring that up publicly.

All right, thank you.

Anyone else?

If not, I'll entertain a motion to about this project.

Thank you, Miss Spilsbury, second by Miss Goforth.

Please cast your vote.

Motion passes five to two.

Thank you very much.

Um item eight is from citizens present.

We'll allow up to three speakers for three minutes, like Mr.

Christopher said earlier.

Currently I have three, and then we'll read the other ones that turn in blue cards first.

If you'll come up, uh Noah James Markham.

Uh Mr.

Markham, will you come forward?

If so, you have three minutes.

Followed by Mr.

Markham is uh Jeannie Fascinella.

I hope I said that right.

Thank you, Noah.

Hello, or work in the aloha uh mayor and the rest of the city council.

I want to thank you for putting the ocean and surfing in Mesa, Arizona.

And I'm grateful that you're doing that, and thank you for spreading the aloha in Mesa.

I vote yes, I'm getting rid of the ICE and Mesa PD 287G agreement.

I know that many Hawaiians would not like that either.

Especially what happened in 1942 when a hundred and twenty thousand Japanese Americans were sent to Kent concentration camps after the Pearl Harbor bombing.

And one of my ancestors was sent into one of the concentration camps, which Franklin D.

Roosevelt signed into executive order 9066.

And these Japanese were American Japanese.

I asked you kindly to get rid of this agreement with ICE and Mesa PD 287 G agreement.

And please consider making a museum here for the Japanese Americans that were consecrated into Kansas 1942.

Another subject I would like to talk about how you guys took a deaf schooling out of Mesa.

And I'm not okay with that either.

Oh, whoey ho, and thank you for your time.

Thank you, Noah.

Jeannie, are you here?

Thank you, Jeannie.

Following which uh David Wynn Stanley will be following uh Jeannie.

This one?

All right.

Hello, Marin Council.

My name is Jenny Fasanella, and I am a resident of District 3.

I'm here tonight to urge the city of Mesa to withdraw from its 287G agreement and end all cooperation with ICE.

Mesa PD's goal is to protect and serve all residents, regardless of immigration status.

Continue cooperation with ICE is incompatible with that goal.

I understand that the Mesa 287G agreement was entered in 2009.

But the ice of today is different than the ice of 16 years ago.

ICE is not following due process.

ICE has and continues to deport people without trials, without informing their families or lawyers.

ICE detention centers are not safe.

Overcrowded detention centers have led to inadequate food and medical care and numerous deaths.

People have been sent to Sudan, Uganda, and even El Salvador.

We still don't yet have a full list of all of the people who were sent to the Salvadorian megaprison Seacot, or how many remain there today.

According to the Cato Institute, at least 50 of the men who were sent to Seacot came to the United States with advanced U.S.

government permission at an official border crossing point.

We can't hand more people over to ICE because we can't show they will be cre treated according to the law.

Local governments have a choice when entering into these agreements.

No other neighborhoods near Mesa have a 287G agreement.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeannie.

Mr.

Winstanley.

I think uh we should clap for the rain, first of all.

First time I've had to compete with the rain when speaking.

Yeah.

Thank you, David.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor.

Council members and city staff.

My name is David Wynstanley.

I live just south of East Mark in District 6.

First, I want to take a minute to acknowledge the people who keep us free on a day-to-day basis.

By this I mean specifically our Mesa first responders.

We ask them to do some very hard things, most notably respond calmly and thoughtfully in the face of sometimes emotional events.

Whether that's a husband and wife in crisis and a domestic violence call, treating a child injured in a traffic accident, or a loud and boisterous political protest.

I, for one, would like to thank them one and all, both currently serving and retired for their courageous service.

So it makes my blood boil when I hear people talk about defunding the police.

So, ladies and gentlemen, first responders, thank you.

Please pass my thanks on to your your compati your compatriots.

I'm here to speak because some of the folks who hold such beliefs were here last week to request a change in the Mesa police procedures for handling individuals who have been arrested and found to be alien immigrants, specifically Section 287G.

I'm speaking primarily because the Mesa Tribune article on this subject made it sound like there were many Mesa citizens in favor of this change.

I first note that one of the speakers did not does not even live in Mesa, but rather in Tempe.

Tempe is a nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there these days.

But in typical circumstances, including traffic stops, contact with Mesa police does not include any discussion of immigration or emigration status.

This is the right thing to do.

Mesa has been doing it since 2009.

Please continue to do so.

I know that you, the Mesa City Council, know this, but I felt it necessary to be on the record after the Mesa Tribune article that the majority of Mesa residents agree to what we as a city are doing.

Thank you for letting me speak.

Thank you, David.

Uh following that, Miss Mosley, are there any other cards to read into the record for the record?

Mayor, yes, I do have several.

They're all regarding the ICE 287 agreement.

I have Ryan Jara Birsch, Richard James, John Bush.

They all wish they had requested to speak, but didn't meet the first three.

And the others did not request to speak.

They just wanted their name on record.

Cassandra Winchester, Robert Hathcock, Michael Stanley, Gillian Ryan, Trinity Schwabaker, Nathan James, Rachel Dugan, Christopher Cody, Alita West, Betsy Soderquist, Francesca Bauer, and Emma Lynn.

That is all of them.

Thank you.

Uh, Mr.

Butler, would you like to provide any comments tonight or otherwise?

No, Mayor.

I I think it was stated um last week, and I'll just reiterate that nothing that Mesa P D is doing is any different today than we did during the Obama administration, um, the Trump um one administration, the Biden administration, and now currently uh under President Trump's administration.

We are the actions of our officers are exactly the same during all of those administrations.

All right, thank you.

Uh seeing nothing else, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

So move.

Thank you, Miss Billsbury.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right.

We're adjourned.

Thank you.

Have a great evening.

Stay dry.