Okay, everybody reset.

Welcome to the Mesa City Council Study Session for February 23rd, 2026.

All of our council members are present.

Item one is to review the agenda for tonight's council meeting.

Let's go through the agenda.

Do you have any questions on any item?

Well, I have one, just a real simple one.

Uh on a 5D, that is a LED-light conversion for our ballparks.

And I saw that the request is for about $880,000 more than what was anticipated.

But then the question is, thank you, Mr.

Hirschberg.

Where do these dollars come from for this?

And was there ever an analysis, the cost savings between the LED versus regular bulbs?

And you may not have that, but we can get that later if you find it.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Um these this is uh general capital dollars that are used for this project.

Uh this is just replacing um these facilities in particular, Ho Cam and Fitch Park, just as we would any of our other park systems, we've been in the process of converting uh the all of our ball field lights from metal halide to LED.

And while we don't have the uh an exact save number to tell you per se, because it changes first based on um runtime and everything else and how often they're used.

Um we can tell you that they are more efficient.

The uh bulbs last longer, the LED lasts longer, so uh from a maintenance standpoint, we're not up there changing and aiming re-aiming bulbs on a regular basis, and then just more energy efficient, so our our electric usage goes down when we're you utilizing the LED versus the metal halide as well.

Mark, can mayor if you don't mind.

Mark and uh if you'd clarify on this, this is also the contract that the rest of the parks department uses for all of our other uh ball field lighting.

So, mayor, to your question about the increase, that wasn't that wasn't because of this project in the well, the increase is because of this project.

But the underlying dollar amount is for the ongoing annual lighting services on all of our ball fields and other things that are that are carried out by the parks department, isn't that the with the increase, it will give us the ability to take care of the existing park system from a maintenance standpoint as well as replace the the five ball field lights, five different fields included in this another question.

Do any of our energy partners like Salt River Project rebate us anything for converting to LED versus what we have?

They do, Mr.

Boucher can kind of highlight how that program has worked and how the city has benefited from the past if you have to call it backup, huh?

Well, I just wonder if there's any costs or rebate savings, that's all it's very simple.

Yeah, um good afternoon, Mayor, Council.

So I believe this one is HohoCom and Fridge and Fitch.

Yeah, so with that, it's gonna be in our electric utility where we don't offer those same incentives, but we did just work with Red Mountain uh in the ball fields out there and uh new lights and replacement lights and getting rebates for those.

Um I don't recall the exact amount, but I could get that information back to you on the exact amounts of the rebates.

But um it'd be nice to have in your council report if you could include that in the future.

I definitely do that for you.

People like to know numbers.

Scott was just admitting SRP is more generous than we are on uh on that.

But we'll we take advantage of that in the SRP service territory.

It's hard to rebate ourselves, isn't it?

Okay.

That's the only question I have, council.

Anything else?

I actually was gonna pull 5D to discuss it, but like really briefly, I did way too much analysis on like what the average costs are for replacing light bulbs for stadiums, just because it kind of shocked me when I looked at that amount.

Um and what I found was it's actually a very modest cost to replace all of these bulbs.

And one thing that I just want people to remember is um LED lighting generally saves or cuts electricity by anywhere from 50 to 70 percent.

So kind of in the long run, it's actually a very large cost savings for us to move over to this type of lighting.

And they they did have a life span.

I mean, everybody's light bulbs have lifespans.

So when I was essentially looking at that, and I'm looking at the tens of thousands of dollars that we will be saving over the years.

I just want the general public, if anyone's listening to understand this has a long-term game gain for a short-term higher expense.

And I the rebates was a really great question.

Thank you for posting posing that.

Okay.

Thank you, Gilman.

I have a good question there.

So the next 5E.

So Mark, this is one that we're required under our agreement.

Can you just kind of briefly that?

Yeah, Mayor, Councilmember go forth.

Uh just as we discussed many months ago and and ongoing throughout the uh early winter parts there with the Cubs, the facility use agreement requires with the A's as well.

That was signed in 2013, requires a certain milestones, in this case the 10-year mark, for the the city and and the team to work together to identify a series of scheduled capital improvement projects.