Mesa City Council Study Session: June 2, 2026 Budget Review and ASU Partnership Discussion
Mesa City Council Study Session: June 2, 2026
The Mesa City Council held a study session on June 2, 2026, to review the upcoming regular and special council meeting agendas, discuss the city's budget, and hear a report on the police department's partnership with Arizona State University. Council members also addressed constituent questions, acknowledged board minutes, and shared updates on community events.
Consent Calendar
- Council unanimously approved a motion to acknowledge receipt of various board minutes (items 2A, 2B, 2C, and 2D). Item 2E was removed from the agenda to allow additional time for review and will be brought back at a future study session.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No public comments were made directly from the audience. However, Councilmember Goforth and Councilmember Taylor raised constituent questions during the discussion. Councilmember Goforth asked Police Chief Butler about the value and necessity of the partnership with Arizona State University (ASU), given budget constraints. Councilmember Taylor also inquired about the program's funding and whether general funds were being used. Additionally, a resident watching the session asked via email about how the city is ensuring proper funding for the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS) as the liability grows.
Discussion Items
Arizona State University Police Partnership
- Chief Butler outlined the police department's partnership with ASU, which began in 2022. The program brings in paid interns (master's level students) to work as crime analysts, helping the department move from a reactive policing model to a predictive, data-driven approach. The grant-funded program costs up to $224,000 per year, with the grant covering $184,000. The city has rolled over $30,000 from the previous year's grant. To date, no general funds have been used for this program; it was initially funded by public safety sales tax and later by grants. Councilmember Goforth expressed initial concern about using general funds during budget cuts but noted that since the program is grant-funded, she saw no issue. Councilmember Taylor acknowledged the program's value in avoiding additional full-time hires.
Fiscal Year 2026-27 Budget Discussion
- City Manager Mr. Butler reported that the city has cut $56 million from the general fund over three years through efficiencies and belt-tightening. He emphasized that the budget deficit was not due to overspending but to external revenue reductions. The city used reserves responsibly and is on track to return to a balanced budget two years earlier than projected.
- Brian Richel, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, explained the difference between the February forecast (negative $16 million net sources and uses) and the April proposed budget (negative $36 million). The change was due to additions such as the $3 million redevelopment toolkit, $5 million from sworn MOU negotiations, $2.2 million in transit contract costs, and other adjustments including carryover and new positions.
- Councilmember Goforth asked about the reserves, which total $474.5 million. Of that, $300.9 million is carryover from the prior year. The remaining $173 million includes $77 million for contingencies, $40 million for one-time projects, and $20 million for the pension stabilization fund. Mr. Richel and Mr. Butler clarified that the city budgets for a maximum expenditure limit under state law, which requires including all potential expenses even if not all are spent. The reserve policy is 8–10% of the general governmental fund, but the city targets 15%.
- Councilmember Taylor asked about PSPRS funding. Sam (finance staff) explained that the city is on a 25-year plan to reach 100% funded status by 2042, which is more aggressive than the state mandate of 30 years. The city contributes at least $109 million annually, which is above the actuarial required contribution. This year, the unfunded liability was reduced by $60 million, and the city has moved from negative amortization to paying down the liability. Additional contributions may accelerate the timeline.
Key Outcomes
- Council unanimously approved the motion to acknowledge board minutes (2A–2D).
- No final votes were taken on the budget; it will be considered at the special council meeting later that evening.
- Council received information and clarified details on the ASU partnership, budget reserves, and PSPRS funding. The city manager will share the PSPRS presentation with inquiring residents.
- The study session concluded with a moment of respect for Colonel Bruce Crandall, a Medal of Honor recipient and longtime Mesa employee, who passed away at age 93.
Meeting Transcript
Okay, council, we're ready to start our Mesa City Council study session for June 1st, 2026. All of our council members are present. Thank you. As usual, item one is to review the two agendas we have for tonight's council meeting. And that would be our regular council uh meeting, and then we have the special council meeting where we discuss the budget. So with that, if you would go through our first council budget agenda. We'll have a swearing in of the appointment of Jacob Brown as our city magistrate by our chief magistrate, Mr. Umblie. And then the items on the agenda. Any questions for staff? For tonight's agenda. Uh huh. Yeah, I didn't. You do have a question. Um I just have a question for Chief Butler. I I had a constituent ask about um the uh importance and value of sick our our relationship with ASU. So if you could just kind of talk us through what we've done, been doing in the past and why it's necessary going forward. Thank you. Uh sure. Mayor, vice mayor, uh, council member go forth, so good to see you this evening. Um happy to talk about this uh this relationship. So um as many of the many here in this room know, and many people in the community know we are a really effective crime fighting police department. We have a really, really safe community. Um we have wonderful men and women who go out there every single day, and they work super hard to make sure that we have a safe community. Um technology is another key component of that as well. So a lot of the technologies that we utilize help us be way more effective and way more efficient in our crime fighting model. And then just as important is the ability to analyze our data and ensure that we have the appropriate resources in the appropriate areas and times where they need to be. So historically, what we've done as a police department is we were reactive in our policing model, meaning that every 30 days crimes were would occur, we would look at where those are crime crimes occurred, and then we would send officers out to those areas in about a 30-day reactive response to it and try to be in the area where we thought crimes were gonna continue to occur. Uh we got to a point in about 2022 where we realized, hey, we can get better at our policing model by trying to predict and analyze where we think crimes are going to occur before they actually occur. So we started researching nationwide. Well, what could we do to improve on our crime analysis strategy? And what we found is Arizona State University, who is just right down the street, has a really good problem-oriented policing component, and they have master's levels uh academia, master's level training for crime analysts. So we looked into building a relationship with them, and we started doing that. Um and that relationship started in 2022 where we collaborated with ASU and had highly trained individuals come and intern and paid intern positions for the Mesa Police Department. And then in turn, we got a lot of the training that those individuals receive through their studies and getting their master's degree at Arizona State University, and it helped us with our full-time employees elevate their ability to predict where crimes are likely to occur, analyzing the data, create maps that our users can easily understand, and then as it went on, we saw the value in that and we started getting better and better and better. Well, early on, we funded it, uh the police department funded it. Um and after a year, after another year, we figured out that there was an opportunity to utilize grants to fund this program, and that's what we've been doing since 2024 is funding this through grants. This relationship allows us to be effective, it allows officers to be in the areas where we know suspects are likely to be and crimes are likely to occur, and to prevent crimes prior to them occurring and make our community safer. So did they did they bring the methodology to the city to the police department? Or was that a collaboration and and creating it? It's uh mayor, vice mayor, council member go forth. It's a little bit of a little bit of both, right? We we had the foundation of that, but what we needed that to do is grow and build upon that foundation, and that's what they brought to the equation is we were doing a lot of what we needed to be doing, but they helped us get better and improve in the process to make us more effective. And you said there's two, it's it's two at a time. There there is two at a time. They are they are um paid interns through this grant, and they work about 30 to 31 uh hours per week for us. Okay. And and the grant covers the majority of the cost. It does. So if you look at what the the language in the grant, it talks about 224,000 per year, um up to 224.
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