Well, welcome everybody.

It's been a short morning already.

Welcome to the ASA City Council session for February 5th 2026.

Councilmember Adams is unable to attend, and he's excused.

Otherwise, uh Councilmember Vice Mayor Summers is participating by Zoom and all other council are present.

Vice Mayor, are you still on board?

I'm here.

Thank you.

Roger that.

Item one is to review the agenda we have for Monday, February 9th council meeting.

Council, let's go through that.

And if you have any questions, we have the appropriate staff here.

Mayor, I also just wanted to note you received an email from Holly yesterday explaining about due to the pending state law change dealing with the primary election date and the new permanent date for that.

We're gonna have to add an item to Monday's agenda that you'll see this afternoon that will change.

Well, Holly, do you want to just reconfirm exactly what we're doing on Monday?

It will be the resolution to call the primary election.

It was originally scheduled for August 4th, and it's potentially changing to July 21st.

Um the governor's expected to sign it next week, which will push everything back two weeks, which means our deadline to call the election moves up.

So we are pushing it from February 23rd agenda to February 9th.

So we wanted to go ahead and get in front of that.

And so we just want to avoid having to call a special council meeting so we could go ahead and take action on Monday to get ahead of that.

Did this happen uh before?

I mean, I think I remembered like two or four years ago this happened.

Yes, you may recall in 2024, it did happen to us as well.

It's always like a last minute rush.

And and what they're hoping, this will be a permanent change, and so they're hoping this doesn't have to happen again.

We'll see.

Yes, the bill this year does say that it will be permanent, which will be great.

All right.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I'm gonna start out one question.

4A is the Arizona Farms Road high pressure gas lines.

Scott, can give us an overview why we're investing in that purpose of it.

I know when you go from a four-inch line to a 12-inch uh line, uh the capacity greatly increased by uh same in the fire service.

We have the same thing with our fire hoses, but uh explain why this is uh happening for Mesa.

Excellent.

Good morning, Mayor Council.

Uh Scott Boucher, Energy and Sustainability Director here at City of Mesa.

And um, so yes, this pipeline, just first to give you an overview here are uh the two service areas that the city of Mesa has for natural gas.

So you've got our City of Mesa service territory.

Um you'll see that Southwest Gas does serve some of the city of Mesa.

Uh and then down to the southeast, we have our magma service territory.

Um as you can see, the magma service territory is very large.

It's almost it's uh more than twice the size of our City of Mesa area.

And currently we've got about 45,000 City of Mesa customers and 36,000 magma customers.

Um the magma service area is growing uh very fast.

We're adding about 2,000 customers per year, and that's been happening consistently for the past eight, 10 years that we've been adding uh 2,000-ish customers a year.

Uh and then we also have some very notable customers um that are like larger users.

One of them will be LG, which is a battery plant being built in Queen Creek.

They're getting ready to have first gas delivered to them the end of February, so the end of this month, they will start receiving gas from the city of Mesa and start um operating their equipment to produce batteries.

Um, and then also CMC Steel, which is um in the city of Mesa, but in the magma service territory.

So there's actually one square mile that is in the magma service territory but is in the city of Mesa City limits, and that's down where CMC is and a lot of other industrial customers.

Um the reason the the project that we have is we're going to abandon about four miles of pipe that was installed, uh, I believe in the 1960s.

We purchased the magma service territory in 1979, and one of the things that we found out, so we're audited every year for our natural gas system, and the ACC went through our records, and this piece of pipe, we did not have sufficient records that came over with the purchase to prove the pressure that that pipe could operate at.

So we've been operating at a lower pressure than what we would prefer to in order to get gas to all of those residential customers and then especially gas up to the north to our uh industrial customers.

So what we're doing is we and we committed with the ACC when they found that um deficiency in our records that we would, because it was part of our master plan anyways to replace that pipe because it is a smaller pipe, that four-inch pipe.

So they we committed to having that replaced.

Um it's part of our master plan and has been in there.

Now we did upsize that pipe a little bit as we were moving forward from an what was originally in our master plan of an eight-inch pipe to a 12-inch pipe, and that's because there is so much industrial development that we think will happen in the northern portion that we want to be able to serve um going forward.

And so um with that, I can answer any questions that you might have about the project.

Well, I was just asking why that's so important for you know our city for our utility.

So it it's important with the growth, and what we have run into is that was really so that's our southernmost point in which we get gas, and then we have to get that gas from uh EPNG up to the north to where most of the customers are.

Although we're starting to see growth down around Attaway, we're getting subdivisions that are being built down in that area.

Um what we had was a constriction happening um in the south that we weren't able to operate at the pressures that we need to in order to make sure that we're providing reliable service to all of our customers.

This is going to allow us to not only operate at a higher pressure, but also with a larger diameter pipe, we'll be able to flow more gas.

When it really was starting to become an issue was in the winter time when it's really cold and everybody's turning on, you know, taking showers in the morning, um, getting ready for work, cooking, using a natural gas stove.

That's when we would have uh potential issues, and we'd have folks out really checking our rake stations to make sure that we're keeping the pressures that we needed for our customers.

This is going to alleviate that issue and make it so that you know I don't have measurement specialists who are stressing out whether or not we're gonna be able to deliver gas to everybody up to the north.

So the longevity of this pipeline will be, I mean, you're talking the the eight-inch or the four-inch was there for him since the 60s.

Since the 60s, yes.

Yeah.

So these pipes typically will go 40, 60 years, depending on you know what happens with them.

But yeah, this will be a piece of uh infrastructure that will last for many decades going forward for the city of Mesa.

And how do we fund this?

This is funded with our capital program, which then is repaid with the the um utility rates that we charge for our magma customers.

Okay.

Thank you.

Only question I had, counsel.

I just have one really quick question.

This this one four-inch or four-mile piece that you're replacing.

Are all the other components the same size?

I mean, are or is this the only one that's gonna be extra large?

So it's a it's a mixture throughout the entire system.

So there is another project that's happening today along Gansell Road in which we're adding a larger pipe in there too, and that's that north-south spine that this will connect into that helps us get gas to the north.

This is all part of our master plan on how we'll be able to deliver gas to the customers as the system grows.

I see.

Okay.

Do we all we eventually want to go completely to eight-inch lines?

Is that like a goal in the future, or is some of them already that large?

It it's a mixture of everything from two inch, four-inch, eight inch, twelve inch throughout our whole system, depending on what loads we see, uh, and who we're gonna, you know, what type of zoning is what drives a lot of it on how we plan out how that will okay.

All right, thank you.

All right, thanks, Scott.

Thank you.

Council, any of their agenda questions, Mayor.

Yes, Mr.

Summers.

Uh I was just looking at item five A, uh, which is the highway safety contracts with the Arizona Governor's Office.

Um my question on this, I mean, make this brief.

So there's DUI task force, which is great, pedestrian bicycle safety 40,000.

We've had a lot of concerns in the community about um e-bikes and e-motorcycles safety.

And I'm wondering if a grant like this uh in the future might be worth pursuing and some discussions with the governor's office about uh a focus on e-bike safety for one of these grants coming up.

Very good.

We have the appropriate person to answer your question.

Vice Mayor, Mayor Council.

Yeah, that's a that's a good question, and that's actually something I can take back to our traffic unit and we'll research that and get back to council with.

Okay.

Yeah, Mayor and Vice Mayor, a lot of these are um standard.

The police department receives these grants through the state uh on a pretty consistent basis annually.

And uh so when you think of DUI enforcement activities over the holidays and special events, those are some of the things that we receive um funding for from um uh from the governor's office through these grants through through the state um via these grants, and that's certainly something vice mayor, we can see if there's opportunities to apply for grants that would cover that.

Thank you, Mr.

Butler.

That that's kind of how I read this grant as just one that we get on a fairly regular basis.

So really this is about throwing out that idea to work with our intergov, the governor's office uh to see if we can bring this issue to light because it's it's really something that's created some traffic issues.

I think we're gonna see in one of our presentations coming up.

Um where we need to provide some some level of education and enforcement uh in a state partnership in a grant would be very welcomed.

Yeah, absolutely.

We can definitely look into that.

So thank you, Mayor.

Question?

Yeah, does this particular grant dictate what where the money can be spent on these you you've listed like seven areas?

Yes, it does.

I know last night I was driving, I had two e-bikes past me faster than I was driving.

So uh it's like my gosh.

Uh but uh yeah, their their lights are on and it's like staggered.

What kind of vehicle is that?

Well, it went to vehicle, it was e-bikes coming down the road.

So I think that's a valid question about getting some grant funding to help facilitate our e-bike discussion.

Definitely with something we'll look into when we'll get back with you.

All right, thank you.

Vice Mayor, any other question on that?

No, uh that's it.

Thank you.

All right.

Okay.

I have uh on 7A, that's the the hand the Lincoln.

Um I met with Ray Brennan Ray and his law firm, and I was just curious to know if anybody was here representing that.

Oh, hey, how you doing?

Did you all consider?

I'll wait for you to come up.

Oh that's Mr.

Ray himself.

How are you doing?

Good morning.

Good morning.

Mayor Council.

Any further discussions on some of the landscaping conversations we had to really use high quality in that area around that that development?

Yeah, through the mayor, council member Taylor, yes, that is something that we are considering um as we discuss that is something that uh will go through the design review process as we work closely with staff.

Um it is, I don't believe I could be mistaken.

I'll defer to staff, but I don't think that's part of the zoning approval.

But those types of things that uh we talked about the landscaping and particularly the materials and quality, uh, we are still planning on pursuing uh some of those items.

Awesome.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

That's great.

Mary, you want to weigh in?

Is there anything just on your side while Brent Brennan's here?

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Um so we haven't been part of the conversation, so I'm not exactly sure because Brendan hasn't um communicated that to us in terms of what the discussion was in terms of what some of those changes might be, but through the design review process, we can capture some of those items to make sure that you know we get that enhanced landscaping and those types of things.

Well, we caught him early in the process then, didn't we?

We always catch uh Brendan early in the process.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

You're welcome.

Any other questions on that?

Thank you, Mr.

Ray.

Thank you.

Uh-huh.

And then I have one other question from a resident about A.

Um, just checking in to understand the adoption of these terms, rates, fees, and charges for non-residential.

I was looking, I know this is the commercial.

So this is the change between this is the proposed changes that we had already discussed prior when we were discussing residential rate changes.

That's correct.

Um based on and and Brian Brian, Brian, why don't you go ahead?

Yeah.

Yes, Mayor, uh councils.

Um Brian Retchell, Office of Management and Budget Director.

So to um Councilmember Taylor's question, yes.

What this is council adopted the notice of intent uh rate adjustments for non-residential rates in December.

This is that additional increase in adjustments that the council uh requested that we do.

So this is that so for instance, I think one went from 19% to uh 25%.

So it's that six percent uh increase that will be adopted on uh or for consideration for adoption on Monday night.

So so this isn't a new process, council.

This is again just bringing back to um since it needed to be a two-step process to comply with the uh notice of intent.

This is the second phase of of that.

Has the city received any feedback from the community on this or our commercial landscapers or any I mean anybody?

No.

No, I I haven't.

I don't know if you have nobody.

Okay.

This is all part of the utility increases, and there's a lot of voices at that time.

So from the decisions that were made by council to raise um non-residential 20 percent, and so do the proposed you know, to offset the residents that they didn't want we have lowered their rate.

Oh, yeah.

No, I remember I'm just wondering if any additional comment was made around that.

I'm opposed to it, but it is the will of the council.

I'm opposed to the holding, but thank you.

All right, thank you so much.

I appreciate it, Brian.

I have a question on 6A.

That's the um do we want to discuss 6A now?

The Sun Devil Auto.

I mean, we're you're okay with everything going forward.

I mean, you may not be okay, or was there some ordinance changes we're considering too, Mary, on some of this uh mayor counseling?

You you did, but that's okay.

Um, so this case is separate from the text amendments that we're looking to do as it relates to the administrative review processes.

So this case is is you know, this is a zoning case for a specific project.

Those text amendments are a citywide policy discussion, and what we'll be doing today is a presentation to kind of get some direction from council on how we want to address those changes um to those cases that are tied to an ordinance that council approves.

So we will have a discussion on that this morning, and then this is a separate case from that.

Gotcha.

Mayor, I will I would say though, um, you know, a lot of times when Mary comes up, there's a lot of hypotheticals as they talk about changing the process.

But um item six six A and Sun Devil and the Sun Devil item is an example of how text amendments and the implications that you'll be discussing later have real consequences on the decisions that you all have as as council.

So they're they're they're not linked, but they are um they are basically um you know one and the same as far as a uh policy discussion from the council.

So okay.

Well, we'll wait for study session then, right?

But I do have a question on five B that's the monument signs.

Uh you know, in the past we discussed monument signs along uh the MCC uh corridor and and how uh this uh permitting is moving forward meets the threshold of what we've said in the past.

I know Evans on on standby and yeah, mayor may or council.

So this is a freeway landmark monument, which are allowed uh signs within the zoning code.

It's not a billboard, so that's the difference when we were looking at MCC, that was a billboard, which is off-site advertising versus this is a freeway landmark monument sign, which is advertising for the uses that are on that site.

So that's what what is before you with 5B.

Okay.

Very good.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Council, anything else?

All right, then we'll switch gears and go to item 2A, a presentation to receive an update on Maces crime statistics for 2025.

Chief Butler and your team.

Vice Mayor, do you have any questions?

None right now.

So, Mayor, as the chiefs are coming up, just wanted to um wanted to really stress the reason why we felt it was important to get in front of you today is that you know, at the end of the day, public safety is your number one priority.

And um, and I hear that from of course all seven of you, and um we uh make sure that the men and women of the police department and of Mesa Fire and Medical all have the resources that that they need, and then um of course the results that you want to see for a safe community that results um from that.

And so the chief is coming forward today to talk about um how 2025 ended and and uh just report out on the good work that the men and women of his department are doing.

So with that, Chief.

Thank you, Mr.

Butler.

Uh good morning, mayor, vice mayor, council members.

My name's Dan Butler.

I serve as the chief of police.

Here with me today is Chief Nesbitt.

She's the chief of staff and is an assistant chief.

Uh I don't know if you can see behind me, but we have a pretty good contingent of the rest of our executive team.

Uh so Chiefs Walker, uh Spicer, Cutler, and uh Sterling, and also Deputy Director Pat Phelps, uh, Tara Hall and Kevin Rosier are here.

They did a significant amount of work uh to help us get this presentation ready for you.

Um so as we go through, you're going to hear us talking a lot about crime, crime statistics, and the safety of the city.

And I kind of want to level set this, because I'm gonna get into um some crime statistics from other cities throughout the country and some even in uh in Arizona.

And as I'm talking about them, it may seem like they don't have great police departments with leaders that you know serve well, and it's absolutely not true.

I know many of them.

Uh in fact, one of the comparable cities that we'll talk about is the city of Tucson.

They have an incredible police chief.

He's probably one of the best in the nation.

Um, and really why I want to say that is the men and women that he serves with, they go out there day in and day out and do everything they can to make their communities safe.

Um, and where I'm going with this is we are safe, not just because of the police department.

We are safe because of everybody in our community.

What we have here in Mesa is is significantly different than a lot of communities around the country.

And what that is is we have community support um across the board, day in and day out.

I I mean, last week I had people buy my lunch when I was out for lunch just to support the police department, and you know, they didn't know who I was, they just saw an officer in uniform and and that happens.

And that happens to our men and women every single day.

Uh what's also unique is we have the support of all of the directors from the city.

When you're talking about safety and reducing crime, this is a city effort.

Um fleet, streets, everybody helps us get to this point.

Um, we have support of counsel, mayor and counsel.

I mean, it's er every one of you unequivocally support the police department.

And I know you've heard me say that before, but I I think it's important as we're talking about this to say it again.

We all come together to support it.

And then uh Mr.

Butler, I know I've been a incredible headache for him in the last seven or eight months.

And uh he he's he's been great in and supporting us as well.

So uh we'll jump right into it.

Uh at if at any point you have questions, uh absolutely, you know, raise the question.

Um some of it maybe we'll cover it later on in the presentation, but uh we'll we're happy to address it whenever.

So um here are our our violent crime incidents.

Uh what we saw in 2025 was a reduction.

Uh what we saw leading up to 2025 from 2020 to 2024 was a steady increase in violent crime.

So uh our our city had been seeing a steady increase and it started to stabilize, but we saw a 14% reduction.

Robberies are some of those that we've have seen a continued downward trend uh from 2024 to 2025, they decreased by 14 percent.

So that's pretty significant.

Um but even going back to 2020, that is something that we had on our mission to do have as a reduction, and they had a year over year reduction every single year.

Uh aggravated assaults, that was the big thing that was really keeping our our violent crime rate high, is those aggravated results uh aggravated assaults.

And that was one of the ones that we made uh a huge uh reduction on, and it was the first time in five years.

So that was one that we're really, really proud of being able to impact that.

Um reported sexual assaults and rapes also dropped significantly, and this is a multi-year trend, so that's something that was it was continuing to go.

Um 2024, we had a really low homicide rate number.

So our 2025 numbers give us an indication that there was an increase.

Um, but it was just based off of a really, really good year.

So it's actually within our historic norms.

Uh 2024, we also had a hundred percent clearance rate.

As where we sit right now, and more cases are being investigated.

You can't really tell what your clearance rate's gonna be because those cases take a while.

Uh, we're approaching the 90% clearance rate.

Um, for context, the national average is right at about 50%.

So uh really really effective.

That's that's a big deal, Chief.

Right.

I mean, it's a huge deal, sir.

To be able to solve crimes at that level is it's something to really, really be proud of of this department.

And and again, these reductions uh it's it's everybody.

It's it's our community, it's our police officers, it's the professional staff behind the scenes that are supporting our police officers, the pe professional staff members we have out in the field um that are taking those calls that we don't need a police officer with a gun and a badge.

It's our our records clerks who are providing services, all the rest of the city folks that help us get to this place.

It's fleet getting our vehicles ready, being able to deploy out there.

So this is one large city effort to get to this point.

So don't think for a moment that we're saying, hey, the police officers are doing this by themselves.

It is everybody, it is our entire community coming together to make this happen.

So uh we'll transition on and I'm gonna have Chief Nesbitt uh jump in and she'll have the next several slides.

Chief Butler, can I bite in before you hand it over?

I'm just trying to follow along.

I appreciate all these figures and such.

Um on slide two and three, I realize you're making different points.

I'm trying to pull it together with the graph.

And so they're all related to the same numbers, is that it?

They are so the graphs are aggregates of all the robberies, rapes, homicides, err uh aggravated assaults, domestic violence, non-domestic violence, everything is incorporated in those recorded in those graphs.

Okay, great, thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council.

Um, like Chief uh Butler said, I'll have the next few slides.

The first one I'm going to start with is calls for service.

As the city continues to grow, overall calls for service increased about five percent from 24 to 25.

Uh that increase reflects population growth and activity, not breakdown of uh service to those to our community members.

At the same time, dispatch calls for service actually declined uh by about four percent and have decreased every year since 2021.

You can see that on the graph.

If you look at the top line, that's gonna give you the overall and then um the dispatched and uh proactive activity separated in the bar part.

So that for uh reference.

The trend indicates improved call triage prioritization and operational efficiency in how calls are handled.

Um what's particularly notable is the increase in officer initiated or on view activity.

Those proactive contacts increase nearly 18% from last year and are up roughly 60 percent since 2021.

Uh, this shows a continued shift towards proactive policing.

Uh officers identifying issues before they become calls for service rather than responding only after something occurs.

So I have a question.

So the calls for service are both dis dispatch and officer initiated.

That's that is what encompasses calls for service.

Is it council member go forth?

Yes, that is correct.

It's dispatch and proactivity, the combined.

And then that's why the bar graph we break it out so that you can see what we're doing, what we're getting from dispatch versus um what we're proactively doing.

So did you say that has been um an intentional uh shift in initiating calls, officer calls?

Yes, and uh, council member go forth, mayor, uh vice mayor.

We'll be able to speak a little bit more as we go on, but this is directly related to um Comstat, if you will, and the analysis that we use and our commanders being very proactive on a daily and weekly basis in pushing out resources based on what we're seeing uh happening in the community.

Yeah, I would say this is really impressive.

This is just phenomenal that that that's the way we do policing in the city of Mesa.

We're proactive in that way.

So thank you, Mr.

Someone said that.

Can I piggyback back off that?

Just to make sure I totally understand this, because one of my questions was what's the difference between a dispatched call versus a call for service?

So you're saying a call for service is the police are doing this internally to go out and dispatches I'm calling in.

Sorry, Vice Mayor, no council member Taylor, no problem.

Dispatch calls are calls that the community member is calling into our dispatch center, and then we deploy officers based on that.

Right.

Okay, and then proactive calls are traffic stops that result in additional activity, maybe investigative things that result in an arrest or maybe uh a call that has to, you know, something that has to be investigated.

So I'll give an example of maybe we pull over a vehicle and there ends up being a fight inside that vehicle between two parties that might result in an uh domestic violence investigation, which would actually be a proactive contact.

That's the way it would be categorized.

Or sometimes our our DUIs, that would be a proactive contact because we're out there proactively doing traffic enforcement and it results in a criminal contact.

Um that's proactive.

That's very helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, that's your on-view.

Yeah, and that's proactive on view.

Mayor, correct.

Yeah.

So I I I want to make sure you use the word on view, that is the proactive uh cylinder of that.

And then we think you're calls for service or separate activity.

So they're two separate things, but combined, they equal the same result.

Yeah, and it and it's a great training.

Sorry, Scott.

Is it you don't want to both right?

You want as long so yeah, no, the G use the actual proactive.

I mean, any time that they can be proactive in their um enforcement and and being out in the university reactive, they're gonna be in a better situation to um to address the needs on the community.

And so they've done a great job, and I think that as that chart shows, this has been a tremendous um increase that we've seen over the last five years.

Uh can I ask on how much does the real-time crime center and sometimes we have the trailers with cameras when there's an area of concern and being able to have that viewing of you know and being proactive in that way.

Um mayor, vice mayor, council member Duff.

Um it has a significant impact.

And we've actually run programs where um we take officers offline from responding for calls for service, because you know, all of these, right?

Dispatch and proactive slash on view all fall under the calls for service umbrella.

So we take them off from responding to calls for service, and we have the real-time crime center call out crimes as they're seeing it occur, and then the officers respond to it.

So it is significant.

Um, that has been an incredible in investment by uh council and by our community and and our city management.

Um it is a large portion of why we are as successful as we are.

Of course, it is our community, of course, it is our the men and women of the department, but that technology makes our our jobs so much easier.

And I'd just like to add on one comment that when we have proactive policing, whatever immigration status is not asked, is not part of the interview process of what's going on in the car or activity.

I just want to put that out there that that is in our protocols as officers.

They do not inquire anything to ask for ID.

You have to ID yourself, but nothing about immigration status.

So I want people to calm down in the and the idea.

So I'm gonna get someone who emails that proactive is not about immigration.

Thank you.

Absolutely correct.

You are correct.

I think that's a warning for all of us if you're doing on view and proactive, that we better be careful in our driving habits.

Yes, Mayor, absolutely.

Go ahead, we're gonna hit on that in just a little bit as well, you know, because there is kind of a call that we have uh for our community when it comes to traffic safety.

Okay.

Continuing with calls for service, looking at specific call types, several high-risk categories uh saw meaningful declines in 2025.

Calls involving shots fired had a 17% decrease, armed robberies had a 36% decrease, and subjects with a gun had a 20% decrease year over year.

Uh, these reductions are significant given the seriousness of these type of incidents.

One area that did see an increase was calls involving juvenile disturbing, and we saw an 11% increase there.

Uh that increase basically reinforces the importance of our collaboration with schools, uh, with families and with community partners, and to address youth uh related concerns proactively.

Overall, these trends uh reflect a department adapting to growth and remaining focused on appropriate responses when it comes to public safety priorities.

Okay, this is motor vehicle crimes, so not not uh motor vehicle crashes, so specific to crimes.

Motor vehicle related crimes continue to trend downward in 2025, as you can see on the graph provided.

Stolen vehicle uh stolen vehicle crimes declined by approximately 17% and are down substantially since their peak in 2023.

Vehicle burglaries and thefts of motor vehicle parts also continued multi-year declines with reductions of more than 50 percent and 70 percent respectively from uh since 2021.

These sustained decreases reflect focused enforcement strategies, regional partnerships, and targeted prevention efforts that have measurable impact over time.

We really um want to highlight our crime prevention officers, our crime uh our CAOs that you all work with directly.

They really help get us into these communities to address different things that the community can do to make themselves safer as well as how we can um assist them if they're having ongoing issues.

You can go to the next one.

I'd like to interrupt just a minute.

Just to comment uh our CAOs are so invaluable and making a difference whether things are happening in neighborhoods.

I've had sections of my district where it was it was did not feel safe for anybody to walk on the street.

It was a problem area, high incidence of crime, and they've gone in there and worked with the businesses and um the people and ever and work collectively, held meetings.

And they've gone in there and worked with the businesses and the people and ever and work collectively, held meetings.

And it has made a huge huge difference.

One of those areas is Country Club and Southern.

When I started on council in 2019, and today is remarkably different, and the businesses just rape and they engage and they assist each other and are you know collaborative and that kind of policing, whether it's on you know crime ridden areas that are problematic or in neighborhoods that are having issues for them to actually engage with the people to understand the issue and work collaboratively to resolve them.

Huge difference.

Otherwise, it was just a constant whack amount of i issues and never making progress.

So I just want to commend them and their engagement and their presence with the community.

They're very well liked and um, you know, make a difference.

Thank you.

I'm sure they're listening now.

They're great asset.

Can I just chime in, Mayor?

I did on all that.

I completely agree, and I appreciate that relationship that we have as council members with our CAOs, and they're doing a phenomenal job.

Has that been around?

Have has that position been around a long time, or is that fairly new?

Not to put you on the spot, but I didn't know if that sort of Mayor Freeman, uh, council member go forth.

It has been around a long time.

What we did in 2022 is uh increased it from one per station to two per stations.

So we saw the value, we saw the problem-solving abilities of that position organization, and uh increased it, and then naturally the type of work that it is.

I mean, the best human beings for our community come, you know, want to do that.

They want to go out and solve problems, they're problem solvers, and they do it with a compassionate heart.

A little shout out to Ashley and Elsie.

They were the two CAOs that I went on my ride along with, and I actually was wondering for the public who are watching one.

Can you just give a brief description of us what a community community action officer is?

And then can you brief us on like the cost savings to the public in that we have these officers that come into our community, and I'm I'm totally parroting Jen over here, they were amazing.

And the prevention that they help us see, they drive down because they're active in the communities, because they're getting to know the local business owners, because neighborhoods kind of get to know them and see them more often, and it it builds a bridge between the perception of the police officers and the general public.

Do you have an idea of a cost drive down as a result of that position being so effective?

Mayor Freeman.

It's okay if you don't, I'm just curious.

Council member Taylor.

Um, I don't know that we've done an analytical dive into the impact that they make.

I've read studies throughout the years that talk about the cost of crime.

Yeah, that's where I'm going to be.

You know, one of the ones that I read probably 20 years ago talked about a homicide and the average cost of a homicide from start to finish being over into the millions, single homicide.

Um I don't know specifically of anything, any research out there about what a community action officer's impact to crime would be, but um there is a correlation that the academia has drawn into the cost of crime for communities.

And you know, what's great in Mesa is we you know we're heading in the right direction when it comes to crime.

You know, we are efficient as a police department.

Um sixty percent of our police department is sworn, 40% is non-sworn.

That's by design.

Other agencies aren't like that.

So we have looked at for greater than 20 years what positions in our organizations can be done by people that don't need a gun and a badge, and then turn those positions into non-sworn positions with the same level of service with the same impact that a swarm member has.

So from an efficiency standpoint, from a standpoint of how we get the things done to make our community safe.

Um we are really, really good from a police department perspective.

We can try to figure out that cost of crime.

I think that would be something we would need to partner with ASU to get some type of data.

Um we can do our own numbers because we have great human beings that work in our office of strategic initiative and uh community engagement, but I think that's better suited for um academia to work on.

Okay, that's great.

I'm just thinking of the positive impacts of efficiency when you have that role in neighborhoods.

People think more about who's present, what are they gonna do?

Right.

What is what is the community vibe, if you will.

So if we can be proactive in that regard, it's benefiting everyone, both from a community perspective and the feel of the place you live and also from a financial perspective.

And then really quick, can you describe that role?

Just sure.

Uh community action officer, it's really like the Swiss Army knife of uh policing.

So they do everything.

Uh they help with investigations, they solve problems in neighborhoods, um, they bring the other resources of the station together.

Um there, you know, it is a home that is you know selling drugs or something like that, they'll get with this investigative detectives, they'll get with the street crimes detectives together, they help create a plan to solve whatever is ailing the community.

Um just I mean the Swiss Army knife of policing is really the best way to describe it.

All right, thank you.

Um stay there.

Okay, so continuing with motor vehicle crimes.

I just talked about decreases, but I am going to draw your attention to an emerging trend, and that is I'm sure you're going to be surprised, uh, thefts of electric bikes, motor motorized scooters, and similar devices, right?

So um, as we see more usage of these um modes of transportation, we're going to see evolving criminal behavior.

And it comes hand in hand.

So the Mesa Police Department is actively addressing issues through focused enforcement, public education, and adaptive strategies.

This slide uh highlights how crime patterns change over time and while why enforcement and preventative strategies need to continue to be flexible so that we can adapt.

Okay.

Moving on to traffic accidents and citations.

Traffic collisions increase moderately uh in 2025, continuing a national and regional trend that has been ongoing since 2020.

We really have seen this, and I I don't have any um data that says this, but I think COVID threw a wrench into the way our uh citizens drive on the roadways, right?

From not having a lot of vehicles on the roadways and then trying to get back to regular roadway saturation.

So traffic fatalities also increase slightly.

However, um in 2025, uh the fatality numbers remain lower.

You can see uh compared to 2022 and 2023.

That'll be the red line that you see with the the boxes that have like the 37, 38, those numbers.

In response, the department has increased traffic enforcement activity, combined citations and warnings rose by more than 20 percent, reflecting an intentional effort in um improving roadway safety through education and enforcement.

And I'd just like to tag on to that.

That um also we're looking at ways.

I'm advocate for looking at ways through our road designs and um access for uh a number of different ways that we can do a lot just through our roads and how we design them appropriate for an area, and that needs to be part of it because you will never be able to um significantly decreases without a transportation collaborative on this.

Mayor, vice mayor, and council member Duff.

Um, for many years we have been in collaboration with the transportation department.

We work hand in hand with them, even way back when I was the traffic lieutenant.

We had a lot of collaboration in how can we reduce speeds, how can we um increase safety, what do we need to do with stop signs, what do we need to do with um lights, and all of those things.

So the traffic unit has an amazing relationship with the transportation department, and we are always working together.

I'm a question.

I have a quick question.

So I imagine you have or transportation has drilled down into are there patterns within the traffic accidents that you're seeing more of?

Is it at intersections?

Is it you know, is it pedestrians, what which particular areas are are continued rising, or is it everything?

I don't I don't know, you know.

Mayor, vice mayor, and council member go for it.

It is complicated, right?

Because obviously the most congested areas we are going to have um crashes, and then we're looking at significant crashes, and so we unfortunately with our MVD form, and we have to be better about this.

This is about data collection, and that form has a lot of boxes that we can we can check.

But when you um contact a driver, they're most likely not going to tell you that they were on their phone or that they were inattentive, and so it's deducing that piece of information that helps drive what is the causation.

So we are trying to work with um the department of transportation to figure out what's the best way that we can derive some of that information, but we also have a DDAX model, and I've talked about this before where it's data driven and it's related to traffic and crime, and it's a traffic and crime model.

So where you have um concentrated areas, uh deploying resources there, and so to your point, absolutely, that's why we have we look at our intersections and the traffic unit collaborates with the districts to say here's where we're seeing a lot of crashes, here we were seeing high speeds, here's where we're seeing driver inattention, and we try to deploy resources specific to that to at least um sometimes just being there controls driving behavior, correct?

Here we were seeing high speeds, here's where we're seeing driver inattention, and we try to deploy resources specific to that to at least um sometimes just being there controls driving behavior, correct?

But there's so much to it, and it is complicated, but we do work hand in hand with trying to figure that out.

Yeah, I know you do, and I I've had intersections where it's about left turns, and do you do you get an arrow and that that that's been changed and has decreased the number of incidences that occur in that intersection?

Absolutely.

Yeah, we had a transportation safe streets for all grant, and they looked at all the you know places where collisions and and dangerous roads and how they occurred, and the result was g giving money for that left turn, having a protected left turn.

Um but it has a lot of information about where they are, um, not necessarily fatalities and stuff, but it crashes.

But mayor council that as the chief alluded to, that they work hand in hand with transportation.

So even this week, as I had a meeting with transportation about future project needs, one of the big considerations is safety, safety along that.

So, of course, we have capacity and growth-related uh demands that we have to meet on our transportation network, but safety uh considerations is something that uh the police department transportation work closely at.

So when we're thinking about where improvements need to be made, that's a huge component of the thinking that goes into um transportation projects.

Did you say this was a nationwide trend?

Yes, um mayor, vice mayor, and councilmember go forth.

Yes, it is a nationwide trend for increase in traffic fatalities.

Uh, you know, if the Phoenix metropolitan area doesn't rate great in traffic fatalities, but we're not alone in trying to combat this uh problem.

Okay, it's still me.

So uh traffic accidents and citations as we continue.

Uh it's important to note that we have had an increase in traffic stops, including a strong emphasis on warnings.

And a warning is basically we are going, we're going to document that we stopped you and what that is for, but it you don't it's not attached to a fine or um a court date.

It's just an educational stop, an educational contact.

And this reflects a strategy about education and the importance of education, and that we're just not enforcing for the sake of enforcement sake, right?

We're just not issuing tickets just to issue tickets.

The data shows a clear focus on preventing serious injuries and fatalities by addressing unsafe driving behaviors before they result in crashes.

Roadway safety efforts remain uh centered on accountability, awareness, and saving lives.

Chief Nasma, you mind if I just jump in real quick?

No, for sure.

Um, this is important, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members.

This is important enough for us that uh as we started analyzing this data last summer.

Uh it was it was an indication that we were not making the impacts that we desire uh from a policing and safety standpoint.

Um so we looked at our organization, did a re reorganization, and in January added six more officers to the traffic unit to really um get our arms around this now.

They won't stay there forever, and I've said that to the men and women of the Mace Police Department, um, so long as the results aren't there.

So if the six officers go there and the results, the impacts, the outcomes are not what they need to be, and that is having safety in our community.

That is making sure that people can utilize the streets, crossing sidewalks, hopefully in sidewalks, um, and and drive around and not have the fatalities or serious injuries that we have had.

So we we are apt to actively adapting to make sure that we have the impacts and the outcomes that we desire.

I just have another follow-up question.

Do we do anything for those that are driving good behavior habits like you have gift cards or something?

Or you know, when you pull somebody over, it's not the best of times for them.

But if we pull somebody over and said, Thank you so much, and hand them a gift card to someone.

Mayor Mayor, but your budget allow that?

I don't think we could um city manager about that.

We can't make a traffic stop unless we have a violation.

So that would be the first thing.

So but surely we have had programs where we have pulled people over um during the holidays.

You've seen like our turkey for tickets, right?

So they don't have good driving behavior.

We are pulling them over for a traffic violation.

However, we are trying to make it a positive contact, and that's part of what the educational component is.

I'm just thinking of other positive impacts too.

But yeah, I I mean I get it.

We'll work on that.

We'll see what we can do.

I just think something could be done for somebody that hey, you did something really unique as a patrol officer, and you wanted to hand out hey, you know, thank you for a service or whatever.

But anyway, carry on that's a cycle.

What have a question on this?

I'm sorry.

Of the fatalities are do we know how many are pedestrians or bicyclists, you know, and versus car?

Mayor, vice mayor, and council member Duff, we do.

I do not have that specific data with me right now, but we track pedestrian fatalities, motorcycle fatalities, vehicle fatalities.

Um we break it down categorically so we can see, and that is part of the reason why you see GOHS does give us a ped bike grant, you know, for that educational component to help people understand um the roadways and be more safe.

Okay.

Proactive patrol and community engagement.

So mission-directed patrol, I talked about that earlier.

That's when the commanders deploy their resources based on the information that they're receiving on a regular basis.

Um we saw that this doubled uh in 2025.

In 2024, we had over 13,000 occurrences, but in 2025, we had over 29,000 incurrences.

And so that gives us a hundred and thirteen percent increase in that category.

Uh, this reflects a deliberate shift towards proactive policing, increased visibility, addressing problem areas, and engaging with community before issues uh escalate, and that's the primary focus of that.

I am going to specifically talk about two uh types of crimes that happen.

Human trafficking offenses, they uh increase significantly.

33 offenses in 20 uh 24 to 61 offenses in 2025, and that's an 85% increase.

And I see your shock.

How is that good?

Why are you talking about this?

Well, um, the reason I'm talking about this is because it is related to targeted investigations.

So we're uncovering crimes that we didn't normally uncover.

It doesn't mean that we have any additional victims.

This is just a more proactive way to address this crime and put a dent into what is happening.

So the investigative work is really what we're looking at here, and so we are attacking things that we that may have gone unnoticed before because of the way those crimes are committed.

And at the same time, uh vandalism reports have declined.

We had 832 vandalized uh vandalism reports in 2024 down to 704 in 2025, which is a 15% decrease.

And we're seeing a steady multi-year decrease since 2020, which we had uh one over 1,000 vandalism type reports, which includes criminal damage and that type of uh crime.

I have a question around that.

Do you think the decrease in vandalism over time is because we're seeing a decrease in gang activity?

Are they associated with one another?

I'm from the East Coast originally, and I know that they go hand in hand generally.

Do you want to answer to you?

Uh mayor, vice mayor, council members, councilmember Taylor.

Um I I think that any time that you see an increase of proactive policing, you're going to see a decreasing of all crimes.

Um in respect to gangs.

Um, I think I have my gangpin on.

I served in that unit.

Um we have a long history of uh making sure that we don't have a significant gang problem in our community.

Now, do we have gang members?

Absolutely.

Do we have gang members that come from other cities and and do criminal activity here?

Absolutely we do.

Um, but what we do is we address those with um some serious intentionality uh to ensure that you know those problems don't increase.

So going back to your point, um, I think because we are so proactive as an organization, um, it makes sense.

And you know, I I think I alluded to this in the beginning.

Every time in my career uh where I have you know been looking at our Comstat numbers, which is the monthly process that we do where we analyze how effective we are.

When I see a decrease in crime, I see a correlating increase in proactive police work.

So to me, the vandalism aspect has everything to do with the men and women of the police department going out there and choosing to make a difference in our community, choosing to ensure that crimes don't happen because they're stopping the individuals in the areas uh that would have committed crimes had they not been there.

So I think that's the real reason that we see that decrease in vandalism.

And that would include the trifecta of our real-time crime center, our air team, and our patrol team all working together with the community, with the community action officers, that whole entire cluster of the case.

Well said, Councilmember Taylor.

We'll switch seats next time.

Okay.

Uh continuing with proactive uh patrol, can you go to the next slide, Chief?

Thank you.

DUI arrests increased uh by about 8%, reflecting continued emphasis on impaired driving prevention and roadway safety.

So we had uh slightly over 2,000 arrests in 2024, and in this year we had 2200 arrests, so we saw an increase in taking impaired drivers off the roadway.

Weapons violate violations and prohibitive possessor arrests increased in 2025.

So again, you're probably thinking, why is this good?

And so we talk about this a lot in ComStat.

Um it reflects effective proactive patrol and enforcement strategies.

Um while this increase uh category can seem counterintuitive, they indicate officers are actively making contacts uh and they're developing information and identifying criminal behavior before it becomes uh more serious, and that's really what's happening there.

So we're getting the guns off the road off the street prior to a crime happening.

And these efforts uh they focus on getting these guns off the roadway before they are used in additional crimes.

And I would like to say that oftentimes we get these recovered weapons and we're able to process them through Nyvan, and then they solve additional crimes across the valley, across the state.

And so having these contacts, and especially we have a lot of contacts with our prohibitive possessors, and then we're getting these firearms, and ultimately these firearms are being used in crimes.

So it's we're solving crimes as well as proactively preventing additional crimes from happening.

So for context, arrests increased from uh 1,720 in 2024 to 2,036 in 2025, which is an 18% increase again, directly reflected uh the proactive engagement that our commanders are pushing out at their uh respective districts, and it helps us with prevention, accountability, and maintaining community trust.

I'm gonna jump back in here.

So we're gonna talk about incidents uh along our light rail.

Um so we we have the statistics here.

Overall the red line, you can you can see uh incidents at light rail.

By light rail, what we're talking about here is uh within 500 feet of light rail stops.

So it's the areas around light rail where people who would be riding light rail get on and off light rail.

Um 50 percent of all of those are actually the police department.

So that's our bike officers, that's our patrol officers, that's our community action officers being in the area and doing proactive police work or or on views.

Um and then the top stop that the top offense at all the stops in 2025 was drug paraphernalia.

So that's individuals having you know some type of device that is used or associated with the illicit use of drugs.

Now, uh 1,500, you know, you can you can see it it goes up and down, it's a down year from 2024.

I think in in context, what I would like to say is, you know, when we look at light rail, we look at well, who's using it?

It's no different from the conversations that we have all had about use of force and how rare use of force is for a Mesa police officer.

Um and so we put it into a a context that the same way that we do use of force and use of force is a quarter of one percent of the time an officer uses force.

Pretty low, right?

Those are pretty successful outcomes, um, if if I have to say so myself.

But from the context of light rail, at these stops in 2025, there was 1.8 million people who rode right light rail.

So 1,500 incidents, 50% of those being Mesa police officers, that's 0.08% of the time someone is involved with some type of crime along the right light rail.

So um while perception can be one thing, the the statistics show something comprehensively different.

1.8 million rides, not riders.

Gotta throw that out there.

Rides.

Um and I'm glad to hear that it's such a low statistic.

That's very encouraging for the freight rail.

Okay, so um the I started off with this, you know, we're doing we're doing a comparison of like cities um to Mesa.

Um for the purposes of this slide and what we talk about in the police department, our comparison is with cities of a comparable population.

Um, so 500 to 650,000.

Now we can drop it down to lower populations.

Um right now, so before I go to that, so right now we are the safest major city in the nation, major city of population over 500,000 in the entire nation.

Um, if you dropped it down, there's another city that comes into the equation.

Um it's Virginia Beach, and they are the safest, but they are uh depending on census data, anywhere from 50 to 80,000 people less than us.

Um and what they also have that's different from us is a major military population.

So it if you have an understanding of the military and the military population, the bases are separate entities, they're like their own towns, which means their crimes are not reported to the community.

So we are right neck and neck with communities like that as well.

But for the the sake of comparison, uh you can look at Kansas City, you can look at Sacramento, Fresno, Tucson, Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Memphis, and Portland.

They're all within our categories across the board.

So Chief, can I ask?

So their their crimes aren't reported, but their population is accounted.

It's a counterforward.

Right.

So for us, we always look at our brothers and sisters south of us in Tucson.

And again, the you know, the leadership in Tucson, the the men and women who serve are great human beings.

So I I don't want anybody to hear anything I'm not saying, and I'm not saying that they're not great at what they do.

Um but what we have that they don't have is incredible community support um across the board, and um we have funding that supports our our police department.

We have all of the things that that we need, the city support in order to do our jobs.

Um across the board, Mesa and Tucson are almost the same, identical median income, demographics, every aspect of it, uh, but their outcomes are not similar to ours.

So we're really proud that we are the safest major city um i in the country uh with our population size.

And also, let me add to this so this is 2024 uh UCR data.

Um our next slide that we're gonna go into is gonna talk about 2025 data.

So UCR data is recorded and posted by the FBI, and it's always a year in advance.

So as we're moving forward, uh counts mayor, council members, you'll you'll recall that when we do our budget presentations.

We most times talk about a year in their in reverse data instead of 2025 because it's gonna take until January, February of 2026 for our 2025 data, not just ours, but everybody's 2025 data to be posted.

Any questions?

So you just heard um Chief Butler talk about what may what makes Mesa the safest city in its class, and that like he said is 2024 FBI um UCR data.

This graph shows 2025 preliminary victim-based data by the major city chiefs association, and it indicates that Mesa is currently the safest city among similarly sized uh cities of that 500,000 to 650,000 population.

And this is a projection that we expect the FBI data to emulate.

So this is just the initial um forecast.

So uh that is pretty much we just want to show the difference because you will see mostly 2024 UCR data, what we talk about just because of the delay, but we have expectations that we're still gonna stay the course as being a safest city of our size.

Um so one of the things I I want to talk about, you know, earlier this year I had an opportunity to be sworn in, and uh one of the things that I I bragged about on the city perspective is a wallet hub survey that went out.

Um and in that survey it listed Mesa as the 11th the 11th best city and the best city in the in the state of Arizona.

Um pretty pretty lofty stuff.

Well, these these surveys that um organizations put out, um they're they're they're great, you know, at times and other times it doesn't tell the story the way that the story should be told.

So when you put a survey out that says the safe to safest city score composition, um it makes you wonder about well, how safe is Mesa.

Well, you you just heard an entire presentation about how safe we are.

We're the safest major city in the in the country with a population of our size.

Um so we started digging into what this is and what the score composition is.

Uh 60% of it is home and community safety, uh, 20% is natural death disaster risk, and 20% is financial safety.

The next slide, I'll get into what the metrics that were utilized for home and community safety, um, so you can kind of see for yourself how they come up with this this type of index.

Um what I also want to do is talk about like the financial safety aspect.

So there is a 20% weight on the rankings for this that talks about debt to income credit score um and then unbanked households, so members of the community that don't have um banking accounts with a traditional banking inst uh instant institution.

Um for me, like I look at crime and crime statistics, and it just doesn't make sense to have metrics like that to drive a score and then to judge us as a police department on it as well.

So here are some of the uh scoring breakdowns uh that we dug into uh the presence of terror terrorist attacks, road quality, um, perception of safety, right?

So uh a feeling, which is important because it's a it's an important aspect.

Um our brothers and sisters at the fire department get to impact our uh our crime statistics score, community safety score on and how many they have, EMTs, the number of officers that you that we have.

So we would be heavily penalized when it looks at the number of officers per thousand residents, and that's a very antiquated and traditional model of how many cops that you should have.

Um in some cases, the it people would argue that we need two police officers per thousand.

Well, you heard me talk about how we are different than every other police department in the nation, and we don't have more police officers that we need, police officers that are doing jobs that you don't need a gun and a badge to do.

Um we have civilianized those positions, professional staff members do that.

So to weigh us on what that scoring would be is not it's not accurate for what we are.

It could work well for other police departments that have 10% of their their staff, 20% of their staff is a as uh as non-sworn members, but it doesn't work for us.

So for me, that this thing um it doesn't actually it doesn't accurately reflect what we are as a major city and that wraps up our uh presentation.

Um this would be an opportunity, Mayor, council members, if you have any last questions.

I feel like we've uh we've spoke a lot, so well we we needed you to.

Right, and and Mayor, if I if I could, and that's one of the reasons why I I appreciate the chiefs and and their executive team coming coming forward to uh give this, because you know, we we spend so much time on a zoning case or on you know sale of property sometimes, and and you know, because we we sometimes take for granted um because they do such a good job uh day in and day out, the Mesa Police Department, and we have such a safe community that we're not in a community crisis that allows us to spend time focused on other things at this dais while this is our top priority, and you know, we always say a budget is a reflection of a community's values, and that's why um we value the men and women of of uh public safety and of the Mesa Police Department as being the top area that we fund in this community so that we can have safe streets because it doesn't matter, you know, say all the time it doesn't matter how good we do in an economic development recruitment.

If people don't feel safe, they're not gonna come to your community.

So what they do day in and day out is extraordinary.

Five chief, correct me if I'm wrong, five hundred thousand interactions a year that Mesa PD has with our community members.

Is that is that accurate?

Mayor counsel, uh Mr.

Butler.

Um so we look at that number.

We can look at just calls for service, and that that number ranges right around 300,000 people.

If you assume there's only one person, you would have about 300,000 just on patrol.

That's not not our officers, not our community members or our uh professional staff members, but being in policing, riding on the streets four or five times a year, it's never just one person.

So if you say 500,000, it's absolutely accurate.

It's probably way more than that.

Yeah.

So I mean, put that in the context, right?

I mean, that's nearly 1,400 interactions a day.

Six it was 60 interactions, almost 60 interactions an hour.

Almost every minute of every day, the men and women of that department are having some impact out in the community.

And you think of all, you know, what that means, because you know, sometimes those are the fun uh events, and they're in their um building relationships in schools or community groups or other things that they do proactively, but a lot of times those are really tough interactions that they're having um with someone at a bad time.

And the times that they get it right day in and day out is astronomical considering the challenges uh that they have.

And so it's it's really something that you know, I I think it's important that we take a pause like this and have this presentation to talk about this.

Is our most important aspect that we do as a city to ensure that our residents are safe, and uh so I think it's really important to highlight that um uh they do an extraordinary job with that, and it's money well spent.

It's a great investment in our community, each dollar that we spend on our public safety, and so um, and and the proof is that they are innovative, they're creative, they you they're great stewards of those of those dollars, and they keep our community safer because of that.

I just like to just take a minute and um our police department is doing a wonderful job, but I know there is a segment of our community due to what's happening with federal agents across the country that are in fear of our police department, and I just want to spend a moment to differentiate between our police department and federal agents.

We are not our police department does not engage with federal agents.

They are on their own agenda, their own actions.

We do not engage in any form, anyway, and anything that we do.

And I know people say, well, I saw police the other day with you know, doing ICE, I'm like, no, please pay attention.

Do they have a Mesa police um uniform?

Do they have the badge?

Do they have that is a police officer?

And if you see that engaging with ICE, unfortunately, and DHS and all that are not identified in there.

And it's a problem because how do you differentiate them from whatever else?

But please know that our officers are identified in their uniform.

They do not engage.

If you see something, I'm aware of one incident where there is an engagement, just because someone called 911 while there was an incident and didn't realize that I was there.

But we are committed to protecting our residents and their welfare.

And we are not working with eyes on.

So you might see ICE out there and DHS and all that.

That is not Mesa Police.

Please differentiate.

If you have any questions, please contact my office, the non-emergency, the emergency number, whatever you need to do.

And I just want to regain the trust and our police department and differentiate them from ICE.

I had one suggestion in a meeting yesterday, and I just want to toss it out there, and I apologize.

So I don't know.

There was a talk of some kind of fluorescent marking, some kind of marking that can be seen at a distance and say that's a Mesa police officer.

That is not a Mesa police officer.

I'm just putting it out there.

So I just want to put it out there that our in no transactions are we engaging with ICE, whether it's on the street.

Um in our booking, we fill out a Arizona form.

And that is an Arizona form required by every municipality, and the information is um it does have question about citizenship, but that is required by Arizona law, and every municipality is required to do this.

This is nothing special.

We are um so I just want to calm people, restore the trust.

If there is an occupation, please differentiate and please engage with us so that we can keep everybody safe.

Thanks.

Would you like to respond to that, Chief?

May Mayor uh council members.

Talk about engage, you know, right.

So different levels of engagement, I think you can address that.

Uh what I would recommend is everybody who's listening who wants more information, uh, whether they agree with the stance that we have or not, take a look at the Mesa Police Department transparency page.

Uh we have comprehensive information on there about our policies, about our practices, and about the philosoph philosophy of the Mesa Police Department.

Now, we will work with our federal partners, um, their federal law enforcement, uh, but the Mesa Police Department does not enforce federal law.

We do not do it in the field.

And what I believe Councilmember Duff is speaking to is do we ask immigration-related questions in the field?

And we don't.

So we absolutely do not, though authority is granted to us through Arizona revised statue 11-1051.

But that authority is also granted to us to make notifications to the federal authorities only after a person is arrested for a law that a Mesa police officer has the lawful authority to arrest them for.

So we do follow state law.

Um just like all the cities in the valley follow state law.

Um respect to um, you know, f fluorescent, you know, there's a safety component that I I would completely reject the idea of of changing to make an officer more readily um identifiable at a distance.

Now it's important to have uh, and we have standardized, you know, what size a police patch, the badges, the shoulder patches.

We have all of those things on our uniform, but throwing an officer in a fluorescent uniform when that officer is being asked to work at two o'clock in the morning uh to do proactive police work is is it's not effective.

That means somebody could sneak up on the officer from a distance and know that it's an officer by the reflective material.

Um really important for us.

We are always doing inspections and looking at the status of our uniforms to ensure that they fit within our standards of uh of police officers.

I had an opportunity to speak with them before, and they look um exactly how they're supposed to look as well.

Mayor counsel, do you have any questions on on that?

I don't I I appreciate the differential between engagement.

But uh I I do know that if our federal authorities were in a serious situation where life safety was compromised, what would be your response?

Uh mayor counsel, we would absolutely respond, just like we would every other member of our community.

Uh we're here to make sure that everybody in our community is safe.

They're right.

That that's the key.

They're here to protect life and safety, and they're they're gonna come to anyone's aid um if there is a situation of danger, and that's what these men and women do day in and day out.

And so just want to make that that clear.

You're treating everyone the same in that regard.

Good.

You know, I I thank you for this presentation because uh I enjoy the professionalism of our sworn and uh professional staff over the years, they've just been phenomenal, and having transparency in our community is is critical.

Uh recently I was on Face to Nation and I was asked the immigration question, and apparently they don't let me wear my cowboy hat, you know, in an interview, but I wore it anyway.

But you know, as I addressed that question, I said Mesa is transparent, not only because we work with our Latino Hispanic community talking about immigration, and that we sponsor El Grito and Dio de los Muertos and have transparent conversations with the pastors in our community.

All council does and has that opportunity.

And it just showed that we are reaching out.

You know, our population in Mesa is about 27% Hispanic, according to the recent census.

So the question was asked to me, you know, Arizona's four percent Hispanic or Latino, but knowing Mesa is quite a bit more.

And with that, I just said that we have a great working relationship, and that's based on all levels in our department, especially our policing, our public safety, and what we as residents enjoy in our community.

Uh what I did like is uh I'm just gonna go on our com stats to help drive missions in particular areas in our city to help reduce crime uh is that's critical.

So the commanders, as they get that information, uh I think that's essential.

Real-time crime center, essential.

Uh, you know, you can solve crimes with one person versus uh, you know, having the whole view uh but um and then uh thank you for addressing the ratios on policing, because some feel like we should have higher ratios uh per thousand versus what we have today by using technology, I think is critical.

And just uh addressing our overall arching, having a good vision of what is needed in our community so that we can provide the proper uh policing for all areas of our districts, and some districts require a little bit more uh massaging than others, but uh regardless, I think we're spot on on what we're doing.

And I just one other question I've always asked Chief Butler when he was, I mean, uh Chief uh cost when we're gonna be at par for patrol.

You have a I mean I ask you that all the time, but I don't I know through attrition and this and that, we're we're we're almost there, are we?

Uh uh Mayor Freeman, uh members of count council, um that that's always that's always the challenge, right?

But we are in such a fortunate situation that um we hire people for anticipated vacancies a year in advance.

Um so money is set aside through uh the city manager through Brian Richel and his teams to ensure that we're ahead of the curve when it comes to staffing our police department.

Now, this this one's more complicated because we can take it back to the mid-90s when there was 400 police officers in Mesa, and then by 2008, we were up to 850 police officers.

Uh those are tier one police officers from a public safety retirement system standpoint, that which means they retire at 20 years.

Well, we doubled the size of our police department 25 years ago.

Um, those and upwards of 30 years ago, those individuals that doubled when we had massive growth, 450 people are all retiring right now because this is the time for them to retire.

Um so the challenge is is how do we feel filled a growth boom from 25 and 30 years ago with men and women today, and we're doing a nice job.

You know, at any given time, there'll be about 30 police officers of the 840 or so police officers that we have that are not working with us.

So um we're always in a really, really good position.

Um we do an effective job.

I would argue that, you know, yeah, would I love to have another 40 or 50 cops on patrol?

Sure, if you were gonna give me 40 or 50, um, 40% of them would be professional staff members, you know, our CISs that go out there and take those calls for service that don't need a gun and a badge.

Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, if you find a whole bunch of money in the uh in the enterprise funds, send it send it my way.

So and mayor, that's I mean, really bad.

Kudos to the council because you've prioritized this.

And it and as the chief was saying, I mean, we're we're a big city department with big city challenges, and so the men and women who choose to come and work in this department want to face those challenges.

There are some departments where they don't have the complexity that we have here at uh the Mesa Police Department.

And so the fact that you work uh and empower um the the team here at the city to give uh the proper wages to be competitive with those other departments to make sure that we're taking care of people from um uh uh medical situation from medical situations with the retiree health care and and the things that we do, that allows us to go out and compete to get the best here at the city when we talk about our academies and funding our academies.

When we talk about our public safety training facilities and the other things that we do, all of this is an ecosystem that relies uh on all those parts to work.

It's not just one of those parts that can work.

And so um really appreciate everything that you all do uh to support this department, and then that's reflected in the voters.

Our last public safety bond was nearly 75 percent.

I mean, that's unprecedented, unprecedented if you go around to other communities in in this country and and see, and that that doesn't happen by accident, right?

Because this it is that trust of the community, it's those relationships, it's the understanding that they use technology and innovation, and they don't just you know throw an FTE at the problem, they think how can we do it most cost effective and find ways to do it.

And so um kudos to all of you for doing that, because if we didn't have your support uh as as that budget comes through every year, reflecting that value of the community, uh, we wouldn't be able to fill those positions that the chief was talking about.

Okay.

Well, uh Vice Mayor, I just want to see if you had any comments, and then we'll move on to another council member question.

Yeah, um thank you for the presentation, Chief Butler.

Um looking at the comparison now across cities.

I I definitely like to see uh Mesa on the low end of that.

Um but it does raise a question I've heard throughout the conversation is things like the base is a big city, we have a great deal of complexity within our city and our police department, um, and that there are social economic variables that tie into uh crime rates here.

So we hear every once in a while a comparison to other cities.

Um important are those social economic variables, and if we take those into account, apples to apples, where are we in in level of safety, both on this graph and and in communities around us?

Um mayor, vice mayor, I I think uh It's a math problem.

It it is.

So this is this is a complex uh question uh because there are a lot of variables that go into it.

Uh certain media, you know, certainly like median income of a community.

Uh there is pretty decent evidence that shows the higher the median income of a community is the um lower the crime rates are um for for whatever reason, right?

We could all have our own theories.

You can you can read differing opinions on research.

Um it's it is tough.

So one of the things that, and maybe I could use this as an example.

So um a number of years ago, um, I was the second in command of our superstition station.

Um, and at the time, you know, we are what we always are, and that's analytical, and we would do comparisons to other districts.

Um superstition would be compared to the West Side, like a central station when it comes to crime.

Um, and they're different, they're different communities.

And so um, in those, and and what I've said to our our east side commanders, Commander Rash and Commander Williams, is you know, you you cannot police uh the Northeast Station, the Superstition Station the way that you police a West Side station.

The communities are comprehensively different.

Um populations, demographics, median income, everything is different.

And so what I would say is our east side stations um are more comparable to other smaller communities uh like Gilbert.

So, like superstition.

When I was out there in in uh second in command, we had the exact same population as Gilbert.

And this has been a number of years.

So we would do a comparison in response times uh across the board to Gilbert.

They were kind of a comparable for us.

Well, now Gilbert has grown, so it's uh it's a little bit larger than just the superstition station as it sits now, or even the superstition station prior to the opening of the Northeast Station.

But if you compare the Northeast Station boundaries and the superstition station boundaries, then you get some actual comparables.

And those comparables are in population.

While you know, Gilbert has a little bit larger population than those two stations within the the whole of our community.

Um the crime outcomes are nearly identical.

I mean, they're within 10.

I mean, we're talking about 500 uh crimes when it talks of violent crime for Gilbert, and that in those two stations, it's about 500 crimes as well.

Now, there are things that they do better, like our assaults as comparables.

Gilbert, uh, Gilbert and Mesa in Mesa with those two complete comprehensive police stations and the entire town of Gilbert, we have more assaults, but then they have more rapes uh as well.

So the the numbers are up and down, but from a comparison standpoint and how we do to other communities that are smaller to us that are in proximity, you really have to look at an area of the city, try to make it as even as possible, and it's never gonna be perfect.

The the numbers, the statistics, median income, demographics, they're all gonna be variable, and just get your your very best.

So, from I hope I uh Vice Mayor, I hope I answer your question.

If you were trying to compare us to uh Gilbert, if you took those two stations, you'd have a pretty decent comparison.

Response times, uh crime rates, crime outcomes, all of that would be about the same.

And that's just two of our police stations in, you know, out of five.

I mean, we still have three other police stations.

Yeah, I I appreciate that.

Um, I think it speaks to how you empower your commanders and our various patrol divisions to tackle the problems that are specific to a large complex city.

And that is very much why you've been so successful in keeping this uh uh uh safe community.

Uh I also appreciate I think Tucson probably comes the closest in that social economic demographic uh on a 30,000 foot citywide scale to to measure success.

And uh so once again, thank you for that.

And uh also the uh new patrol station up uh in the northeast looks fantastic.

But I in closing this out, I want to thank you for the work you've done.

Um the physical work in the superstition uh patrol division station, that is an older station that wasn't meeting the needs of of the officers doing the work.

Um Mr.

Butler, Mr.

Butler, not Chief Butler.

Thank you for uh for focusing on that and making that workspace um a better environment to do the crime fighting that needed to be done.

I know there's a lot more to be uh to be upgraded there, but I appreciate that.

And also for our uh crime prevention and outreach.

Don Blake has been doing a fantastic job down there.

I was looking through these stats uh when it comes to uh vehicle theft.

And every time I go out and to a public meeting and Dawn's with me, uh, she always talks about securing your vehicle.

So I like to I like to think that the message has been uh heard loud and clear with the number of vehicle thefts, uh thefts from vehicles, to be clear, uh coming down citywide.

So thanks again for your work.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Ms.

Gofor.

Um just again uh as well.

Thank you for this presentation.

Thank you for um all the work that you and the entire department does.

Um I think what you're doing is working.

Um, and I think that holistic approach where you have um community engagement, you where you have comstat, where you have sworn, you have unsworn.

Um that that holistic um approach to policing is obviously working, and so very grateful for it and uh appreciate everything that you do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah.

Sure.

No critical analysis.

I'm just here to give you praise.

I had the opportunity in our time off when we were on break between December and January to ride along with Ground Patrol to do a fly along with our air team to tour the real-time crime center to meet with a lot of our police officers.

And I was so impressed that I was preaching it like the gospel to everyone around me with how incredible Mesa is as a city with how we've structured our police force and how they operate.

Thank you so much, police chief Jan Butler and Assistant Chief Nesbett, I really appreciate both of you.

Uh putting so much effort into this and creating a very unique uh situation for our police officers to be visited by, as you said, police chiefs from all over the United States to see how we operate.

That is a huge compliment to the city of Mesa and your teams for being so structured and orchestrated.

And I just wanted to mention that uh I think it's very impressive that out of approximately 517,000 residents in Mesa as of around 2024, that our violent crimes sits at 0.49.

That's amazing.

That's a half a percent.

And for the public to recognize that they live in an extremely fortuitous situation, that that is how low our statistic is for violent crimes.

Also, thank you for sharing that the increase in certain types of crime exposures is because we've been able to extract out things that would go unknown, unseen, such as child trafficking, human sex trafficking, human trafficking, which is a huge problem in the United States right now.

So the fact that you are able to have more eyes seeing these heinous crimes happen and we can be proactive in stopping them, is a great comfort to me as a person who wants to be out in the public place and know that I'm safe to ride my bike, go for a walk, go shopping alone.

I don't have to stress over anything, particularly being attacked in a parking lot, which a lot of people forget happens.

And then I'd also like to compliment you.

I watched one of your videos on Facebook recently, and I was just very touched by the fact that we should also remember the real-time crime center is also used to identify things such as senior citizens who have left the safety of their facility who may be um you know having struggles with dementia or Alzheimer's and they wander off.

I think it was really encouraging that we also can use it for heartfelt rescues such as that.

So I I did want to ask one question.

Gain is uh something we do annually.

I thought it was a great experience.

I attended a few different neighborhood uh events for it, and I just wanted to ask your feedback.

Is that something that you find is extremely helpful with the community's interactions with the police officers?

And would you like to see more of that?

I mean, is it is it a fruitful experience?

Um, mayor, vice mayor, uh, council member Taylor.

Um for us any time that we can get out into the community and engage, like it's fruitful.

Um is one of our our signature um events for the police department, for the fire department, for the city Mesa, everybody comes out for that.

It was great.

So it's really cool that our community gets to interact not just with our police officers but with all of our city departments.

Um but it is a it's a lot of work, but we're proud to do the work.

Um, you know, last Tara Hall's in the back, um, you know, with our uh office strategic initiatives and community engagement.

It's her and her team that do the bulk of the work coordinating and setting that up.

Now they work with everybody from the city as well, but uh they do a significant amount of work um on that event.

So, yeah, any time that we can engage with the community, like we're happy to do it.

Well, I found it extremely helpful to look at the different departments.

I'd also like to remind the public that we have an amazing bomb squad that sits quietly behind the scenes at our various events to keep us safe from the things we very rarely think about when we're excited to attend a huge sporting event, a big downtown Mesa event, and that was an excellent reminder for me as a resident.

All the moving pieces that are set in place so that we can just we can live peaceably and enjoy our lives.

So thank you so much.

I greatly appreciate your time.

All right, thank you, Chiefs.

I just want to take one thing, and I I know I'm gonna upset everybody, but I just want to clear up um a statement that was made that our jail enforcement model, and we're talking about immigration is related to civil offenses, and that is absolutely does not happen.

A civil offense is no one is arrested for a civil offense.

That's your parking tickets, um, you know, traffic, whatever.

These minor things that you just get a ticket, you pay the fine or show up in court and debate it and such.

These are minor things that has nothing to do with our jail enforcement agreement on immigration.

We do not arrest people for civil offenses.

So I wanted to clarify that with anybody.

I've been getting some comments about a statement that was made.

I want to clarify it.

Civil offenses are not a right arrestable offenses.

Our agreement is when someone is booked in our jail or a holding facility.

So please differentiate our agreement from civil offenses.

Thanks.

I assume you want immediate to make a statement on that.

We we only arrest individuals in Mesa for violations of the criminal code.

So the only time that someone would be physically taken into custody and transported to our holding facility would be when they commit a violation of Title 13 in Arizona revised statutes.

And Title 28, there is criminal offenses in that.

Thank you, Ms.

Duff.

With that, council, uh we all good.

We'll move on.

Thank you.

Chiefs.

Thank you.

Item 2B is a presentation of private direction on the process to modify site plans as part of the proposed administrative review text amendments.

I know I don't need to be able to do that.

We need a break.

Do you want to break?

Yeah, okay, let's take five.

Assistant planning director for our long-range planning team, and Kirsten uh Dvorak, who is one of the assistant city attorneys.

As you'll remember, back in early January, we came in with a proposed text amendment related to HB 2447, which is one of the uh pieces of legislation that was signed that is requiring cities to look at creating objective standards as it relates to design, administrative site plan approvals, and um administrative uh subdivision and plat approvals.

You'll remember back in July, we came in with those amendments to the subdivision, so the platts now uh preliminary plats and final plats, that's all done administratively now that's not coming to council or to the PNZ anymore.

So what we're dealing with now in this administrative text amendment relates to objective design standards, which we're gonna put aside today because that's something that we're working uh with our development community on, and then the administrative approvals of site plans.

What we're looking to do is to really start to streamline processes, and when we look at those site plans, really what we're looking at is where are the buildings located, what kind of parking is on site, how are how is trash being addressed?

Are we sure that we have enough access for fire vehicles?

All of those things that we look at for site plans.

And what we want to do is establish a predictable process.

So we're looking at really creating an objective process moving forward.

With this amendment, we'll be modifying the Mesa zoning ordinance as it relates to the design review in the site plan process so that we can meet those requirements of the state.

We wanted to start by talking a little bit about what our current process is.

So in the zoning code today, council will have to approve any rezoning as it relates to a planned area development, the the um business incentive zone, any kind of an overlay, that's a legislative action that council approves.

That requires an ordinance, and typically, but not always, there's a site plan associated with that request to council.

Those site plans then are there's typically in that ordinance, there is a condition of approval that says with this rezoning that council is approving legislatively, you have to comply with the final site plan as submitted.

And that's a very standard comment, and it's been a policy and a practice in the city for for many many years.

So this is how the ordinance and the site plan are tied together in that that stipulation in that ordinance.

Once that initial site plan is approved through that ordinance, there is a way to modify that site plan.

And so if the site plan modification meets what is today defined as a minor site plan amendment uh criteria, it's approved administratively.

So for example, in the minor site plan uh criteria, amendment criteria today, if you change the cumulative uh square footage of a site by 10% or 5,000 square feet, whichever is less, it it would be a minor site plan.

Once you exceed that 10% or that 5,000 square feet, it would kick you into that major site plan modification.

So there's a series of criteria.

It looks at circulation, it looks at the square footage of buildings, it looks at all of those those kind of aspects of are we creating a major change to our site plans as we're modifying this as the applicants are looking to modify their site plans.

If it is a um a major site plan modification because it does not meet those thresholds that are identified as the minor site plan, council approval is needed again because that stipulation in the ordinance says you have to um adhere to the final site plan as approved.

When a site plan modification comes in, typically they're not looking to change the zoning, they're only looking to really change the site plan.

Sometimes, yes, they will be changing the zoning, but typically if we're looking at a site plan modification, they're just looking to modify that site plan.

And the way that the Mesa zoning ordinance is written today, that is classified as a rezoning, which is a legislative action, which is why you'll know as council, you often see site plan amendments, which are categorized as a modification to a condition as approved.

So council is seeing those today, and that's how we work with the process today.

As part of this process for the administrative review text amendments, in listening to council and and the need to streamline processes in listening to the development community about how you know sometimes it's challenging to develop in Mesa.

In adhering to what the state is requiring under HB 2447, as part of that larger package of text amendments, one of the things we're looking at is separating out legislative development plan modifications or site plan modifications from those administrative development plan or site plan modifications.

And so we've we've worked really closely with comments that we've heard we've heard from the stakeholders.

This honestly is probably the biggest policy, actually, probably the only policy discussion that we've heard from stakeholders.

The other are really technical of should should the should something be five feet or six feet.

Those are those are things we can negotiate and work with the development community as we're going through the tax amendment.

But this really is a policy decision and discussion for council to really look at what do you as a council want to see coming back to you when it relates to site plans.

So what staff did is we looked at what our current practices are and we've tried to create some flexibility moving forward for the development community so we can further streamline those processes, adhere to 2447, adhere to what council is telling us they want to do to make business um more make Mesa more business friendly.

So the first as the I'll start with the legislative development plan modifications.

That if someone comes in with that site plan modification, that development plan modification, and it meets either either one of the following criteria that is it's a rezoning, always a legislative action, it's an overlay request, always a legislative reaction uh uh action.

Or if there is that development plan condition that sits on the site plan that is tied to that ordinance that council has approved as part of that rezoning, that that if that condition is met, then there is a two-pronged test.

And the first relates to the site plan, and this is the key one, because as you're changing that site plan, that's the the condition that you're changing in the zoning ordinance, is that that condition to comply with that site plan that's been approved.

And so if you're changing the site plan and it's a substantial site plan modification, and we've tried to put objective criteria on what that substantial modification would be, and those are listed here.

That's the first prong test.

So if that that's a yes, so you're increasing or decreasing the total gross filler area of the cumulative square foot footage on a site by 15%.

If you're increasing the residential density that's been approved as part of that site plan, if you're adding a drive-thru, or if you're increasing traffic, and that has to be verified by a traffic engineer through a TIS or a TIA, then what that does is that that answer to that question, you're changing the site plan significantly enough, and yes to that first part of that two-pronged test.

The second part of that two-pronged test, then is are you changing the use?

And you would have to also answer yes to that.

So you're significantly changing your site plan, and by the way, you're also changing your use.

If both of those answers are yes, those are the cases that would come back to council.

So, for example, if we have an industrial building, it's a hundred thousand square feet, they want it, they're going to stay as an industrial building, but they want to add another 20,000 square feet.

That exceeds 15% of the GFA, but they're not answering yes to the second part of that question, which is a change of use.

So that would be administratively approved because the use isn't changing, only that site plan is changing.

And I just want to kind of give that as an example of the kinds of things we're trying to capture administratively that would not come back to council in the future.

But if you're an industrial building and you want to add 20,000 square feet, so you get a yes on that answer, and then you want to change it to an office building, you get a yes on that answer.

That would come back to council.

I think I think we got it.

Okay, that that's clear.

Okay.

Clear as mud.

I just want to make sure because it it it sounds it sounds complicated when I'm saying it in my head, so I want to make sure everybody is is good with that and don't have any questions.

So and then any anything else that's outside of these these um specific situations, those would be administrative.

And and we do a lot of those today anyway.

We do a lot of of site plan modifications that council doesn't see it's really those today they're called major, in the future they'll be called legislative.

And so you're gonna do that.

Do you want to finish your last slide?

Sure.

So the last slide is we wanted to come to council with some options on how they could move forward with these.

Um the first is we could maintain this existing process today.

So if there's that ordinance or stipulation to the uh site plan, those would continue to come back to council.

Um the second option is what staff is recommending, which is that two pronged test.

That is, you've got that condition and you've got that two pronged test about what is a significant change to your site plan and that change of use.

And then there is a third option that council could consider, and that is that all site plan modifications go to the planning director, um, and only the changes of the zoning and things like that would come back to council.

So that is an option that council could consider.

So we wanted to give you kind of the the different spectrums of what council could consider as as it relates to this.

Sorry.

Ms.

Goforth, do you want to sure?

Um well, let me just start off by saying, you know, we talk a lot in this at the city of Mesa, in the city of Mesa, about efficiency and being flexible and streamlining, just for the people out there.

We we on the council talk about it, we we push staff to be more flexible so that people aren't delaying and it's not costing them more money.

Staff talks about it, leadership talks about this is a priority.

I've brought multiple developers in to talk to Nana to talk to you, Mary, to say, hey, these are some obstacles, how do we make our process better?

So just overarching, that's the goal, we do want to see it.

Um this, but let's also remember that this process has to do with really takes into account what the community thinks, right?

So a lot of times when somebody comes in and they ask for a rezone and they want essentially us to change the zoning district, which which changes a use, in that they give us a side plan, and it and a lot of times that evaluation on whether we want to change the use is based on that side plan because what they end up doing is having trade-offs, right?

And we can go back to our constituents and say, this is the reason we we rezoned, this is how it's gonna benefit the community, this is the value that's gonna be added.

So if they are allowed to then come back, right, and perhaps and and significantly change that that site plan, the reasons that we even zoned, re changed that use in the first place may go away.

And now I can't say to my, you know, I can't say to my constituents, this is this is the trade-off, and this is the benefit you're getting.

Um so that that's a big deal.

It goes that site plan, uh not every time, but a lot of times is the reason that we add we allow the the rezone and the change of use, which may be significant.

We might be talking from employment or commercial to residential, and that we allow that.

So my suggestion, I I understand trying to make it an objective, but in knowing that a significant change on the site plan may have may have affected our initial um decision, I would suggest we we make that GFA 10% and not 15% because I have cases where it may it's a significant change, but that it doesn't it won't reach that threat that threshold, but it would certainly would have changed the evaluation of the council at the time had the new site plan been submitted at that time for the rezone.

So that's my and I and I think it's because and I'd like you to comment on this, we get a lot of the recurring to council administrative issues because of that 5,000 cap, not the 10%.

Is that correct?

Mayor, council member go forth.

You that that's a great point.

And so today it is that 10% or that 5,000 square feet, and I don't have the specific number, but I would say the majority of what is coming back to council is being captured because of the 5,000 square feet, not because of the 10%.

And so what staff was doing with the 15% was trying to build in more flexibility, but there is that option to kind of stay at the 10% where we are today, and look at it at some kind of a future evaluation.

And that's something we can do, but it is that 5,000 that is really capturing a lot of those cases that are coming back to council.

The other thing I'd like to say is just for the development community, you know, if we go to a purely technical process, right?

Again, uh where it's they come in for a rezone and which might result in a different use, and we don't want, you know, there's no, you know, um trade-offs, there's no here's the benefit to your community.

Here's the value that's being added by changing the zone.

If we don't do that, it's purely tech, it's purely a technical.

My guess, there'll be a lot of reductions in rezons.

Because if you can't show me so that I can show my constituents why this is a benefit to them, my answer is gonna be no, not gonna rezone.

So that's my prediction.

If that's what if you want it super streamlined and technical only, you're gonna see you're gonna see less rezones approved.

Um and by the way, I understand this is legislature, but for some reason they see us, the city, as this entity that wants to grab power.

We represent the people.

What the people are asking us to do, that's what we are closer to them than the state legislature, by the way.

So by taking away a little bit of our of our voice, takes away our constituents' voice.

And at some point our constituents are not gonna are gonna have enough of it.

Just throwing that out there.

That's what's happening.

You are taking away our constituent voice by taking our representation away.

So those are my comments on that.

I would suggest 10%.

I don't know if any anybody else has comments, but um it's extremely important, not in every case.

As I started out, we are I cannot emphasize enough how the city of Mesa works on our efficiency.

I cannot emphasize it enough.

We talk about it all the time, but this is important.

When you ask us to change a zone and to change a use, the this the site plan goes into it.

We are shown this beautiful thing, and there are there are reasons that go into the evaluation on to why we're gonna do that.

Most of which, as I said, I'm repeating myself, um, add value to our community.

If those go away, and again, this this is what council member Summers has talked about it numerous times, the bait and switch.

Here's this beautiful thing, and two years down the road, or 20, we're gonna just throw it away.

The council wouldn't have voted for that in the first place, so this rollover to Mr.

Butler.

Did you want to Yeah, Mayor?

Um staff definitely I I appreciate what council member go forth is is saying about the 10%, and I think um maintaining at 10% and removing the 5,000 GFA would be a great place to start.

We can always um we we could start there and we we can evaluate this.

All of this is is something that we can see a year down the road, two years down the road.

How's that been working out?

Has it had the impact that it has?

Because the 5,000 was really the arbitrary part of that, because if you had a large warehouse and you were making some changes, adding some offices or something, you may trigger that, even though that's just a small portion of uh what the overall use on that site was, for example.

So I I think the 10% criteria is something that staff could could definitely uh see as a positive and and it is giving more flexibility that that is this today by removing the 5,000 square foot uh or 5,000 um GFA.

But I'll add, because you know, I like want to say amen to everything council member go forth who is was saying all my years at the legislature PTSD on on some of this is that you know it's always those unintended consequences.

We talk about that the power to rezone is one of the most important and powerful legislative acts that this body has.

And when you restrict that, you are restricting that flexibility in the voice that comes along, and in each of you bring that unique perspective too to your districts that you think about as you look at site plans and what a rezoning means.

And so I I definitely caution that when there's too much preemption at the local level on this, there it will backfire and it will have those unintended consequences to the development community that um you know uh they they may regret that there's not the flexibility that this body has because we've shown how to be very reasonable as a as a legislative body in making those decisions.

Well, I'll add to that, but that'll be a later comment.

Uh council member.

Yes, um, there's a couple of uh terms that are being floating around that I just want to differentiate between a rezone and change of use.

So you can be within the same zoning district and have a change of use.

There's a number of uses within the district, especially when it comes to commercial, right?

So when we talk about rezone and change of use, it's kind of a separate issue on that.

I was referring to the original rezone with the original stipulation that a final.

So if it's like L C it stays L C, but it's changing the use of that property.

So it's not a rezon.

So I'm talking about if you go from you know, um, if you go from L commercial to residential, well, that's a response plan stipulated to that rezone.

We're not changing that process, right?

Because that would be a rezone, which is not what this is about.

This is the same thing.

We are changing that process.

So's right, who's wrong?

Yeah, we're gonna pay King Solomon here.

Um mayor council, and I'll I'll have Jim weigh in it on this too.

What we're looking at is again, two things.

There is a site plan that through the rezoning process has been approved, and there is a condition of approval that you have to follow that site plan.

So the first thing that happens is that site plan has to significantly change based on the criteria that staff is proposing.

The second piece of that is that change of use.

So if both of those the answers to those two questions are yes, it would come back to council.

If the answers, so if they're not changing the use, or if they're not changing the site plan significantly, so you have a uh uh use that was approved, they're gonna just change it from a grocery store to a uh retail store, they don't have to change the parking, they don't have to change the circulation.

That is a change of a site plan that would the answer would be yes, but the or the the answer would be no because they're not changing the site plan, even though the use is changing.

So that's why we'd always look at this as a two-pronged test.

And Jim, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

Yeah, mayor and council and uh council member doff, and it gets down to sort of what you mean when you use the word rezone, and I think it can have different definitions and different context.

Use legislative, whatever the new term is to add that term versus rezone, because I think it gets creating some confusion.

And in the code, I think that that we're using the word legislative, and the and the concept is sometimes there are there many times there is a stipulation as to the site plan on a z on a zoning case.

And then when you're going back to modify that stipulation, you are changing the zoning code because that ordinance was becomes part of the zoning code.

That was part of the approval.

You're going back through the rezoning process and you're modifying the approved zone.

You're literally changing the the ordinance that sets your zoning um is part of and embedded into the code itself.

And so you're basically going back and changing that that prior ordinance.

Um and so the ordinances sort of build on each other.

So in that sense, yes, it's a legislative act, you're changing the zoning code when you're doing that.

Many people, when they use the term rezoning, they're intending to mean sort of the specific going from C2 to some other district, going from district to district.

And so sometimes when you hear the word rezone, they mean that.

And so sometimes when you'll hear a conversation, that's what you're talking about versus changing the code, right?

Um, but both of those um are uh both of those are legislative acts.

Um and so um, and that's the that's how we're trying to capture it.

I'll tell you this also though, on on changing the stipulation.

Um, you know, some attorneys will this is part of the debate is there's not a lot of case law on on changing stipulations and changing the uh ordinance conditions and that being a legislative act or not.

Um the city of Mesa got sued a number of years ago, and we prevailed, and the court at Superior Court held that it was, and we prevailed.

It did not go to the Court of Appeals, so it's not binding precedent in legal terms.

And so there was really no binding precedent in Arizona that establishes for certainty for that.

Um but that's then the city's position, it's my position.

Um and in and it is like I said, when you're changing the stipulation, and as council member go forth, that was when when you're approving something and you're stipulating to it in an ordinance, and that ordinance is changing the code itself, and you want to come back and change that ordinance, the city's position is that's a legislative act.

That's how we're drafting the code.

Um, and and that you'll have to go back through the rezoning process, whether you want to call that a rezone or a stipulation modification or a legislative act.

We we've we've killed a lot of brain cells on on how to uh in meetings on on how to capture these to uh precision, and that's why you see even on the PowerPoint and you'll see in the in the code change um that we we make this distinction that it's a legislative um modification.

And I get a lot of pushback because of the term rezone when it's not changing being district zoning district.

So I think in the terms that we use and how we use them, how we speak about them, how we label it, we need to differentiate because there is a lot of upset of zoning district.

Mayor and council member, I I agree, and so that's why we changed and um and we had lost the the the uh prior draft uh that uh the development committee had we are still using some of the older terms, major and minor um amendments, and that created some confusion.

So we went to you're you're right, just the what the term you're using can create the the confusion.

So we've gone away from the older terms, try to create clearer terms.

Um this structure itself is different.

Um we're meeting with the the development community actually uh it might be like in a few minutes now because this meeting's going so long.

Um and and we're and and the this structure hopefully will address many of their concerns.

So we are um staff um and and my office have been working on trying to address that concern and clarifying it, and so that um really what's what's what's gonna happen.

I and I think I'm hopeful that there'll be a positive um response to the the proposal that that's been presented to council this morning.

Okay.

And then the 15%, is that something that is um from the state or is that within our own uh mayor, council member Duff, that was actually a uh staff's initial recommendation again, uh just trying to provide some more flexibility.

Um as I said, today it is 10 percent.

So we were just looking at, you know, can we build in more flexibility?

That's why staff recommended the 15 percent that it's not anything to do with this the state requirements.

Okay, all right.

Um I know the developers and everything for business reasons you want to be as predictable as possible so that you have confidence in the property, but I understand the community input if there is a huge change of use.

Um so if we're going from a florist to a nail shop, we don't have to go through a 60, 90 day process in tens of the thousands of dollars, right?

So mayor, council member, that's a great question.

If there's an existing building that today there's a florist in there and a nail salon wants to move in, that's typically a tenant improvement that just goes directly to permitting.

So those aren't even site plan modifications at that point, unless something drastic is changing again.

There's always the little nuances of that, but but typically they just go directly to permitting through our building department.

So if there's no site plan modification, even though whatever's going in there, that was that's not gonna trip it.

That's correct, right?

That's correct.

And so that's what I want to put some clarity about that because there um anyway, there's a lot of pushback on commercial being able to, you know, tennis movement out, it changes, you know, the TIs, whatever like that.

We that's normal course of business.

Have the confidence that you can run your business, you know, your property management and stuff like that with predictability without you know interruption with the city.

So thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

This is a good conversation.

I'll keep it short.

Um it's good to hear that the particular uses of impacted.

I have a prize that recently closed.

We're trying to uh get a a new user in there and to know that they don't have to go through a whole snopping process is important.

Um 5,000 square feet, anything we could do to move away from having to rubber stamp administrative um approvals uh and just focus on the legislative act of the council I'm in support of uh I also agree with the iterative process.

I think 10 percent works for now, we can always increase that if we find that it would benefit us.

But uh the the only other correction I would have uh is for Mr.

Butler is we're not looking at warehouses, we're looking at advanced manufacturing uh facilities.

Dearly noted, thank you.

That's it, Mayor.

I'd I recommend moving forward with the change recommended by uh council member goes for it.

Thank you, Ms.

Taylor.

Just a couple things to clarify.

So specific to this conversation, we are addressing site plans, not zoning.

So mayor and council, that goes back to that long conversation that I just had.

So no, it it it is it it is zoning.

Um in fact it's it'll be a zoning case, it'll be it.

It'll be it are you talking about necessarily changing districts?

No, but are you changing, are you changing a prior stipulation on a zoning ordinance and thereby in another ordinance changing that stipulation?

Yes.

Okay.

Because I thought there was a difference between the two.

I thought in a zoning district, you could have multiple types of site plans that are approved.

No.

Am I wrong on that?

I'm not aware of that.

Okay.

Just Rachel's gonna I know we met yesterday and I was mulling over this all more than you could ever imagine.

Mayor, council member Taylor.

Um we talked about yesterday kind of distinguished distinguishment that there's this really one site plan, but you'll have an initial one where you kind of have your your virgin ground, nothing has ever been proposed.

That's your initial one.

But what if someone wants to modify that site plan that gets approved?

And so the trigger that we're kind of discussing today is that site plan modification.

But I I think I'm with Jen on this.

What does that have to do with when you modify a site plan?

Do you modify the zoning too?

Is that what we're saying?

Is that what you were saying?

Yeah, that was the conversation that I just had.

It went by real quick.

So by way of example, so when you when you uh in fact this one also, Councilmember Go Forth, when you by way of example, when you adopt a zoning case, many times it's stepped to a specific site plan.

The the the basis for many times why you're willing to approve the the rezoning from a district to another district is because of that site plan.

And if and if you if that site plan had been significantly different, it would have affected the outcome.

Um and also probably affected uh the citizens' response and the need for citizens um to to be involved.

And so the question then is is okay.

So now they come back after getting that approval, and are they ever going to come back before council, or can you wipe out that site plan, put a shack on the property, and do that administratively with no public input, and simple and this is the frustration council member go forth said is that that's where the state legislature seems to be pushing cities to, and and we're saying no, we're gonna still have a process where if you before you wipe out that site plan and make some very significant change, you're gonna go through a public process, and that public process is a legislative one.

I articulated all that aspect of that, um, and the fact that you know that that I know is still potentially in dispute, but we we prevailed in one case a number of years ago on that, and and and then that is changing the prior ordinance.

So they're connected.

That's all I need, they're just they're locked, lock and key.

I mean, and it's probably because I haven't had a lot of development in district two.

Um this is a little new to me.

On any of the gender, do you go in and look at the site plan when there's a a reason?

Have you so far?

I've looked at I have looked at it.

I was looking at the Lincoln project.

That's exactly right.

Well, if that can just be, I mean, that goes into your evaluation.

So we approved that, right?

So well, we haven't yet, but let's say that's an example of one.

I mean, that they made some significant changes to that site plan that are gonna benefit that community.

Right.

It's gonna be a nice, a nice addition, a value add to the community.

Um, that I can go back and say, we're gonna rezone, perhaps, and we're gonna um change this from a commercial employment district to a residential, and here's why, because here's what's benefiting the community.

If you wipe that out, the the answer is no.

We're not gonna if if I can't explain why it benefits the community, then I'm probably gonna vote no on a rezone from employment to residential, because we had a plan, there was a reason the city said this is a great place for employment and commercial.

Um, and I'm not gonna be convinced that we should change it.

And and the and by the way, the community relies on this.

They look at this.

I've had many conversations with residents who say this was what was supposed to be built.

Why is it not?

So this is we're striking a balance.

And my understanding is in a way, we are actually courteously making it a little more flexible for the development community compared to what state legislature is proposing, which would remove some of that flexibility if we just kind of ran with what they're saying.

Uh so mayor, council member Taylor, I'd say what we're doing is we're building in more flexibility than how it exists today while still protecting council's ability to make that legislative decision.

Okay.

But we could wipe out the 5,000.

You said that's just kind of an arbitrary number that we get a lot of rubber stamping on.

So I can't say it's arbitrary because whoever wrote the zoning code and put 5,000 square feet in at that time probably had a reason.

Okay.

So I don't know what the rationale was, but we find that that is what's triggering a lot of these cases coming back to the council.

So if we did remove that, that would streamline it quite a bit.

It would give that flexibility.

And I think it's important to note, and Mary touched on this earlier.

Um House Bill 2447 that's leading to this discussion.

You know, this is kind of the sticking point that we're having with some of the stakeholders.

There's a lot of other streamlining that we that that is not controversial, right?

So this that we're bringing to you kind of the sticking point, but it's you know, it's like don't throw the baby out with the bathwater because there's a lot of good collaborative effort between the development community and the city on many parts of of this um that will allow us to do that.

And this was initially too an opportunity that the League of Cities and President Peterson uh were we're really trying to work through of how can we streamline some of um you know some of the low-hanging fruit.

And there's a lot of low-hanging fruit where there's complete agreement on both sides, or maybe just minor disagreement.

This is the one meaty sticking point, but you see why.

I mean, it really gets to the heart of your your power um on deciding kind of the the look uh, you know, what what the future of a development might be.

Yeah, and I would echo what Alicia said.

I don't want to take away the community's ability to say this is not what we want, and have that validated response manifest into physical reality, but at the same time, I also want those, particularly the local business developers who are taking their own money that they've worked very hard to earn and store, come back and invest in our district.

So it's like a it's a very it's a balancing point.

So I mean, thank you.

I'm just trying to mull through this so I have a great response when we say yes, move forward.

I don't want to cut our conversation short, but there was a lot of women in red out there.

I don't know if there was a picture here shortly.

Are they okay?

Uh I think you have direction here, right?

Are you pretty good with what's been said?

So, Mayor, what I'm hearing, and it just for confirmation is that basically staff's recommendation with that one change um under that first criteria that there's a cumulative increased decrease of GFA over 10% rather than 15%.

I think that's what I'm hearing from council.

I like that idea to start with.

You have direction there with that.

And then I'm just gonna, you know, I wish our legislature would reach out to uh local elected officials and get our feedback.

You know, and that's not being done.

I've said that we're last year, and it frustrates me.

Absolutely.

Mayor, I I will say this though, and I the number number of times in my life I've defended the legislature.

You could you probably count on one hand, but I will I think the intent on a lot of this was was was really on solid footing.

I think what we're having what's happening though, and I I mean I'll just speak to some of our friends in the zoning attorney realm.

They're getting a little greedy, I think, with with the effort here because they're getting more flexibility, and what we're proposing is more flexibility, but uh, you know, they're not settling for a single, they're wanting a home run uh uh over this um because they think then that will make their life a lot a lot easier, and that's not what our job is is to make their life easier.

You're you're looking out for your residents, and so we've made a lot of progress, and I think we've met the legislative intent by what council has talked about.

It will be easier to do business with the city after this text amendment is put into place.

And then we'll evaluate this 10% criteria and the changes that are made, and if we need to make some tweaks or things in the future, that's certainly an um something that this council could consider.

But um, we will be mu uh easier uh in a collaborative manner with the development community because of the changes that council would ultimately approve under this text amendment.

Okay, let us know how your meeting goes and uh report back.

Did you have it for the question?

I I just wanted to say thank you to Mary, uh Rachel, Nana, everybody for being so responsive to the development community and trying to work with all the stakeholders as well as with us.

But you you know, I appreciate that.

They should appreciate that.

So thank you.

As well as your attorney representing there.

She's very quiet.

Okay, with that, I'm gonna move over to item three is to acknowledge receipt of board minutes.

Is there a motion for that?

Sure.

Thank you, Miss Taylor.

Thank you, Miss Duff.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay.

Thank you.

Motion passes unanimously.

I'm gonna bypass the next on current events uh just because I think you ladies want to maybe get a picture.

Mr.

Butler, can you share future meetings?

Are there any?

Yeah, Mayor, we we will look forward to uh being back here on Monday.

Um we'll start council.

We're gonna have a um presentation from uh Scott Conn um about AI uh and some of the things that we're doing in that regard.

So we're gonna start just a few minutes earlier at five o'clock on um on Monday night.

So we'll be back here for study session at five, followed by the council meeting at 545.

So thank you.

Great.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

Thank you, Miss Gilforth.

Ms.

Taylor, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Stay well.

Uh no roller coasters for you.

And uh we're adjourned.