Welcome to the Mesa City Council meeting for February 9th, 2026.

Vice Mayor Summers and Councilmember Haredi are participating by Zoom.

Otherwise, all council members are present.

We'll begin this meeting with an invocation by Pastor Ryan Flores from the Victory Outreach Mesa, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please stand.

Join me in a moment of silence.

Thank you.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

Thank you, everyone.

Our first item tonight is our consent agenda.

Mr.

Christopher, would you come forward and read the consent agenda and 4A has been removed as you were?

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 the council member was citizen request, in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered as a separate item.

Item two, approval minutes of previous meetings is written.

Item 3A, Act and Licker License Application for Arasuva Kitchen, 1940 West Baseline Road.

Item 4A has been removed from the consent agenda.

Item 4B, approving three-year term contract with two one year renewal options for landscape maintenance services zones one and two for the facilities management department.

Item 4C, approving three-year term contract with two one year renewal options for shutoffs and nozzle tips for the Mesa Fire and Medical Department.

Item 4D, approving one year term contract for Kya Gen forentic DNA supplies for the public safety support services department.

Item 5A, approving resolution to apply for and enter into highway safety contracts with the Arizona Governor's Office of Highway Safety for Federal Fiscal 2027 and accept grant funding.

These contracts have historically included overtime for added traffic enforcement and funding for additional traffic supplies, equipment, and training.

Item 5B approving resolution for zoning case 25-56 for property located at the southeast and southwest corners of Williamsfield Road and Signal Butte Road.

Council use permit to allow for two freeway landmark signs.

Item 5C, approving resolution calling the primary election, and quoting designating election dates for the primary and general elections as those dates is prescribed by laws and providing the last date for candidates to file nomination papers.

Item 6A is for continuance to a date uncertain.

This is for approval of a zoning case for a development of minor automobile vehicle service and repair facility near Southern Avenue and Signal Butte Road.

Again, item 6A is for continuance to a date uncertain.

Item 7A and 7B pertain to a development west of the southwest corner of Hampton Avenue and Crisman Road, known as the Lincoln.

7A is approving a resolution for zoning case 25-313.

A minor general plan amendment to change the place type from urban center to urban residential.

Item 8A has been removed from the consent agenda.

Item 9A, approving ordinance, proposing and adopting amended terms and conditions for the sale of utilities.

Mayor and Council members, these are the items of the consent agenda.

Thank you, Mr.

Christopher.

Uh Ms.

Mosley, anything off the consent.

No other items, Mayor.

All right.

We'll entertain a motion for the consent agenda.

Thank you, Mr.

Adams.

Thank you, Miss Duff.

Please cast your vote.

Aye.

We have an aye from Vice Mayor and Mr.

Redia passes unanimously.

Thank you, everyone.

Next we'll move over to 4A, uh 260131, Arizona Farms.

Uh Road High Pressure Gas Line Replacement Design Bid and Build.

We have one person to speak.

Uh Mr.

Winstanley, if you want to come forward, you have your three minutes.

Thank you, sir.

Good evening, Mayor.

Uh Vice Mayor, Council members and staff.

My name is David Winstanley.

I live in District 6.

Um, my wife has dubbed me now the Mesa City Council Gadfly.

Um, and I deserve that.

Um I would like to thank those who asked questions in the study sessions.

I watched one on video and was downstairs earlier.

You answered all my technical questions, but I have two philosophical questions.

Is this really a business that the city of Mesa needs to be in and wants to be in as a business?

It does not benefit the citizens of Mesa at all.

I'm speaking specifically of the MAG Magma area for supplying gas.

Perhaps it makes a profit.

Does it make a profit when you include the support of the city staff?

Does it make enough of a profit that it's worthwhile?

I don't know.

I can't see those numbers anywhere on the website.

Um so that's my question.

It's a philosophical question.

A second philosophical question is when you approve this contract, as I'm sure you will, and you should, you will be adding more to our Mesa taxes.

How?

Because the way the gener the utility general fund transfer is calculated as a percentage, 30%, all utility uses, including debt service transfers, which this will generate, will cause an increase in the in the general fund transfer, which is effectively an additional tax to us citizens.

Do you really want to charge Mesa residents a tax?

Call it a fee if you prefer for construction in Pennell County.

This was discussed briefly during the utility rate discussions in November and December, with a comment that it might be addressed during the budget discussion this spring, but no concrete assignment was given to anyone.

That's what I'm asking for.

My suggestion is since this is a business meeting, perhaps these two philosophical questions can be addressed in your upcoming strategy planning session on February 19th rather than tonight.

But I ask you to give both subjects serious consideration.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, David.

Appreciate that.

Any uh comments from Mr.

Butler?

Would you like to Mr.

Mayor?

Uh council uh appreciate Mr.

Wen Stanley and those and those questions, and we're glad to follow up with David later to try to address any further questions that we may have.

Let me just make it clear though.

The this is not a fee or a tax upon residents that um do not purchase natural gas from the city.

So as a utility, this this operates um this operates as its own standalone utility within the umbrella of our different um our different utilities.

And so any of those uh bonds that are issued to build infrastructure for that utility are borne by the ratepayers within that particular utility.

It's just like Southwest Gas does the exact same thing.

So we are operating our natural gas utility, whether it's in the magma service area or within um the city of Mesa um proper uh with that same principle in mind.

So um ratepayers outside of our service area uh that aren't purchasing natural gas from the city of Mesa are not paying fees are being taxed in order to do that.

So I just want to make that clear.

All right, thank you.

But we're glad to follow up with Ms with Mr.

Winstanley to address any more of this questions or concerns that he may have.

So got it.

Thank you.

Any council member wants to address?

I just want to clarify.

So anyone who's on the Southwest gas and uses but Mesa could use Mesa water, for example.

I'm just giving two separate entities, they would not be paying into the gas portion of that Mesa utility.

Mayor, Council Mayor, that's correct, yes, because they all operate as their own separate utility, and so those costs um are born within each individual utility, so uh they would not be.

Okay, and then my second question is for Mr.

Winstanley and anyone else who would might want to see.

He did propose a good question of what's our revenue after maintenance is paid out and staff has paid out.

So maybe we could have those numbers available for them to see.

Absolutely, Mayor.

Council Mayor will be glad to do that.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

And the revenue it generates, we do have the enterprise fund that does indicate all our profit and loss for each enterprise.

So it's readily available.

Yeah, and and Mayor, I would just add to, and that's that's one of the things.

When we talk about um the different decisions that the city has made historically to generate revenue, um, choosing in this case to to own and operate a utility, um, which then takes pressure off the fact that when we remove the primary property tax, the the city didn't just look at one revenue source, it wanted to enhance those revenue sources to to take into account the growth in the city.

So this decision was made in the 1970s to purchase this utility.

And it's also, you know, the mayor loves to use the term that you know, Mesa is a full service city.

Well, we are in in this case, um, we own and operate our own natural gas utility, and so you don't have other cities in the Southeast Valley or otherwise, you know, doing doing that owning and operating their own utility.

So sometimes when people want to talk about FTE counts from one city to another, well, you have to talk apples to apples, and you have to look at the fact that some cities contract out for solid waste, others, you know, take a different approach.

And so that's just another factor to keep in mind too when we talk about the uniqueness of some of the utilities that um you know we have owned and operated for for an extended period of time.

Well, the same goes to that.

I mean, our water department, we service uh unincorporate unincorporated areas like Leisure World and other county islands that receive Mesa water, and so everybody's paying their fair share into each enterprise.

So with that, I would entertain a motion if there's any comments, Mr.

Adams.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just a quick one.

Mr.

Butler, you know, I've been around a while, but I was in high school back in the 70s, and and I I think maybe you might have some access to the history.

Was this um decision made in the 70s with respect to the Magma service area with an eye towards the future?

What was the what were our or or our leadership thinking at that time, just for mainly for uh information purposes.

Do you do you have any in that information?

Sure.

Mayor and council member, I'll I'll let um Mark Hirschberg also join on that.

He's been talking with some of our gas folks today, getting some of the additional history since this, as you said, dates back to the 70s.

So, Mark, if you wanted to speak to that.

Uh Mayor, Councilmember, yes.

Um, I believe that that was the intention back in in the 70s was that this was an area of potential growth and an opportunity to expand as as the city was growing into the utility enterprises.

And um as the mayor mentioned, uh and council member taylor pointed out some of those areas in the set in Southeast Mesa where Southwest Gas um it serves parts of our part of our residential and and businesses in that area.

Um there's conversations as mayor pointed out um in the 90s, early 2000s about um swapping those territories potentially, and at the time there wasn't an interest in moving forward with that.

And based on the growth we're seeing down there today, both in residential and commercial and industrial, um, the that may be paying dividends and and will continue to pay dividends in the foreseeable future for the Mesa utilities.

So we could we could maybe classify that as a speculative venture at the time that's starting to pay dividends.

Correct.

It seems correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

I think on that avenue, it'd be no different than why did the city of 1913 purchase an electric company?

You know, it would have owned over a hundred years, so there's a lot of great benefits to those uh that have come before us.

Uh, with that, is there a motion to approve item 4A?

Thank you, Mr.

Adams.

Thank you, Ms.

Taylor.

Please cast your vote.

All right.

Thank you.

Mr.

Redio.

Aye.

All right.

Okay, that passed us unanimously.

Thank you, everyone.

Next, we'll move to item 8A, an ordinance adopting titles and schedules, terms, and rates and fees for non-residential water utilities services.

Yes, um, this goes back to when we're doing um utility rate adjustments, and at that time there was a big pushback from our residents about taking um what I thought was a reasonable increase on our uh water rates, um, and it was negotiated down.

So what happened is that amount that we still had to capture, um which we reduced residents um average monthly charge 77 cents.

We decided we didn't want to do that.

That's too great for our residents.

So we pushed all that onto our businesses, and now on average, our businesses have a 20% increase, an average of nine dollars and twenty-four cents a month for nine K Gals.

I don't agree with pushing this kind of rate increase on our businesses.

As I've said before, I know we're taking the vote because of the adjustment, and now we have a delayed vote to give notice to our businesses, and this is what this ordinance is about.

Is the notice and the vote to adopt the new rate increases, and I just want to say I'm sorry to our Mesa resines for a significant increase this year, and I hope residents can absorb a little bit 77 cents in order to be business friendly in um in Mesa.

And there's another point about that, but anyway, I just wanted to oppose uh the offset um putting the pressure on our businesses of 20 percent in one year.

So I vote no on this ordinance.

Thank you, Ms.

Duff.

Any other comments from council?

I just wanted to say it's a dollar and seven cents, not 77.

And then we did this because we were trying to create parity.

Is that correct?

Because the businesses traditionally have paid significantly less than the residents.

Mayor, council member, that that was um the direction that the majority of the council felt like they wanted to uh accelerate the time frame to get to parity.

It had been the injective of council to get to get to parity um on the burden of which the different classes were putting on uh the system, and so by doing this, this just accelerated that um that us getting towards parity between the residential and the commercial side.

Thank you.

That's correct.

Ms.

Go Ford.

I would just add too that um the majority of our small businesses um use less than 6,000 gallons of water, three of which are covered in the service uh fee.

So uh, you know, is it is it an impact?

Yes, but uh looking at our small businesses, the majority of small businesses will not be significantly impacted.

All right, thank you.

Uh Vice Mayor, Mr.

Redia, any comments.

Okay, I don't hear any.

Let's uh move ahead with the uh motion to approve item 26-0111.

Is there a motion?

Thank you, Miss Gilforth.

Mr.

Adams, please cast your vote.

Aye.

Mr.

Reddy, and thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Motion passes.

Next we'll move over to items from Susan Present.

Uh we allow up to three speakers for three minutes.

And because the topics of the speakers raise sometimes are not on our agenda, state law generally prohibits council from responding.

Our first speaker tonight, I hope I pronounce it.

Rohith uh Chandarasker.

I if you're here, Rohe, if I please uh say your name, and you have three minutes.

Good evening, council.

My name is Rohith Chandra Shaker.

I'm a Chandler resident who has worked for years at Milano Music Center right here in downtown Mesa.

The views I express today are my own and my own only.

I'm here to oppose Mesa City's 287G agreement.

I have seen ICE and DHS in our parking lot as they harass and intimidate people in front of our store.

I watched a young couple get swarmed and kidnapped by ice.

I've seen my regular customers disappear after seeing see you tomorrow.

I've watched my friends live in fear of what happens if ice comes through our door.

And I listened to our community tell me they're terrified of warrantless searches and racial profiling.

This culture of collaboration is a stain on what public safety means for our city.

I've watched as Renee Nicole Good's name was mentioned in this hall while I sat downstairs and heard Mesa PD laugh.

On July 1st, 2025, Mesa Police Officer Kent Green ran searches on your flock database at the request of Agent Thompson of the HSI.

You're sacrificing your community at the behest of an ultra-violent government agency motivated by bloodlust and bankrolled by blank checks.

Blank checks that are siphoning away from our health care and education system, all while ignoring the cost of living crisis.

I'm a U.S.

citizen of South Indian descent.

I carry my birth certificate around in case I'm stopped.

Is this the life that was promised to people who did it the so-called right way?

In the end, we know that regardless of how we or our parents got here, the system that you prop up sees us all the same.

So I must stand with my brothers and sisters regardless of their documentation status and say, Ice out of Mesa.

Despite your alterations to city hall rules to manufacture the perception that we are just a few disgruntled individuals behind me, just out of the frame of the camera stand lines of people who feel what I feel.

The groundswell of support for the end of 287G is here.

It's your choice to cower and conserve the old way, or to join your city for a better future.

Does your political imagination consist of mass detention and ultraviolence?

Or do you want a city that is humane and just one that fights for health care and education and wants to see its community thrive?

Now is not the time for your fence sitting for the fabric of our future will be made from the pieces of cloth that lay right here in front of you.

Ice out of Arizona N287 now.

Yeah.

We want you to have some decorum here, the business meeting.

We appreciate your passion.

But please remember we have some strict rules here.

Next is Reggie Braun.

Is Reggie here?

I am following him, following Reggie.

Uh following Reggie will be Ryan Jared Birch.

Reggie, you have three minutes.

Yes, sir.

And I wave my right for the three minutes if you want to ask me questions.

You're always allowed by the city council's meetings to extend that.

If you really do want to hear more.

Preventable crime.

The idea that currently with Breddy who was illegally count uh caring.

That he's being told that he uh was not supposed to be carrying at the time really worries me, excuse me.

Let me back up.

We have a lot of we've had a lot of uh prayers here, so let me just talk to you about a little bit of those of you who say you're a Christian.

Number one, God you shall not put an idol on idolatry or idle thought, feeling, action, or person above me.

Number two, Jesus said, your highest calling is to treat thy neighbor as yourself.

Take care of the poor and those in the prisons.

For those of you who claim to be Christians, you know this, or you should know this, and God says if you do act against that, you shall reap the wind.

Not people who aren't Christian, you who claim to be Christian.

If you don't know the difference about what's right and wrong, treat thy neighbor as you would yourself.

Do not do money, taxes, security, your family above God.

Uh I talked about how that we risk business.

Kittle County currently has a 95% uh slowdown in construction because people are afraid of travel.

We're connected with them, Mesa Wise.

They've recently been told that their ICE agreement is invalid and illegal.

I told you early on that Asians wouldn't like it if you threatened them.

Uh I told you about how Hyundai plant in Georgia was raided and people think it went away.

South Korea has asked US military to leave their bases and consolidate.

That's eight billion dollars.

We're not gonna have any more.

I like the fact that we did the um the 100,000 foot step back, and those of you who went against that, I suggest you speak to your emergency services people.

If you don't, go home, charge your laptop, charge your power tools, and stick attack in it.

And you go away, and then think about if you got sand.

He was a veteran.

He was a VA nurse.

He was legally caring, and the last thing he said to the woman he was protecting was, are you okay?

before they executed him in the streets.

These thugs who did not know how to control him, six, eight of them.

I've seen officers bring down a PCP EDP easier than that.

And when people say, why didn't he comply, folks?

It's because they're yelling conflicting commands.

Stop, don't move.

Come towards me.

Hey, get up, put your head down.

So he was complying.

Believe me, he knew what he was doing.

Please ask me any questions.

Thank you, Reggie.

We'll move over to Ryan Jared Birch.

Ryan.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor.

Council members, Ryan Jarrabirch, District One.

I am here to ask the council again to end the 287G agreement between ICE and the city of Mesa Police Department.

Please end this cooperative agreement.

I thank you for the ability to come back and to speak to you again in front of the council.

I appreciate that.

I think our ability to voice our concerns and speak our own voice.

It's the cornerstone of our democracy.

First responders all over the state and all over the valley.

What we are being told the cooperation agreement actually entails is not what we are seeing firsthand on the streets of Mesa and here in the East Valley.

Travel now everywhere I go.

And I travel with those permanently markered on my arm.

Because I don't know what could happen or how my family would receive notification if I were taken in custody.

Mesa PD custody.

Even I don't trust that I'll be kept safe.

I didn't want to have to advise the community to follow this practice.

When I was working down on the Arizona border, we were told always leave a car distance in between you and the car in front of you because you didn't want to be boxed in by cartel members.

Because you just don't know when or where, or even are for sure whom behind masks.

Everyone, please get home safe.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Burge.

With that, Miss Mosley, are there any other things that we've missed that we need to cover?

I have no mayor.

That was all of the cards.

All right, very good.

I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Thank you, Miss Gold.

Ms.

Taylor, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you, Council Members on Zoom.

Have a good evening.