Okay. >> Good afternoon.
Sorry, we we're starting a little late. We didn't have our name tags and
» we don't know who we are. >> We don't know who we are if we don't
have those. >> So, welcome to the Mesa City Council
study session for August 17th, 2026. M uh Mayor Freeman is out of town and
excused and council member Adams is excused. All other council members are
present. Uh item number one is to review the agenda for tonight's meeting. I know
we went through this agenda previously, but there are there any additional
questions or followup.
Wow. Seeing none, item number two is to acknowledge the
receipt of board minutes. Do I have a motion? Motion
from council member Heredia, second me from council member Taylor. All in favor
say I. >> I.
» Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously with the mayor and council member Adams
excused. All right. Well, at our last meeting, I
think we were pressed against time, so we couldn't get through things. But
today, we have a little bit of time. So, con current events and conferences
attended. We have a few minutes. Who would like to start?
» Somebody went to a conference.
» All right, I'll start then. So on uh Wednesday, we I attended an annual
breakfast at Summit at Sunland Springs. They do a celebration of the first
responders. Police and fire comes in attendance there. Uh so they they host a
breakfast for all the first responders. the crews rotate through uh and get to
meet uh uh with the folks who are at the summit and better circumstances than
they would otherwise have to attend. Uh today uh there was a big one today. So
today we met with the fire department, members of the police department. We
have a young lady in our community that we celebrated uh 16-year-old
Leia Jackson. She taught herself CPR at the age of 10,
watching videos and practicing on a teddy bear. Uh, unfortunately, there was
a member of the Wisconsin National Guard who was visiting our community who
collapsed. Leia went immediately into action and began CPR. I got to tell you,
if you saw this young lady, she's this tiny framed young lady and the soldier
is giant and the fact she did effective CPR uh just showed a lot of leadership
and what it means to be in a community to to be safe because I'll tell you this
touches me in a couple ways. One, I'm a veteran of the military myself is is a
tight-knit community. So, the fact that she took action like that, my wife is
also a veteran of the military. She grew up in Wisconsin, so we had that
connection. By the way, my wife outranked me. I'm legally obligated to
tell you all that. It was in our wedding vows. [laughter]
Um, but you know, in addition, as a firefighter and a paramedic, uh, you
know, I've been on many of calls like like this where no one takes action.
Maybe they called 911, but when you show up on a call and somebody's doing CPR,
you look at that and go, we have a shot at this one. And so for her to take
action like that was absolutely 16 years old to teach herself CPR was act
absolutely incredible. Uh, Brigadier General um Brian Anderson and his entire
command staff uh flew out from Wisconsin to present her with an award which was
absolutely fantastic. So, uh, I see Chief Camelly out here. Uh, I know that
I think your social media has posted some photos. If you're interested in
seeing the story, I do recommend it. Uh, but it shows that that first chain in
the in the link of the link in the chain of survival is critical because we we
and we really appreciate our own community uh, investing in our public
safety and we see some of that today. We're going to be voting on some
communications equipment which ties in uh Lucas device which performs CPR for
our people. All of this is an investment in our community, but it starts with
young ladies like uh Miss Johnson. So, now that I've gone way beyond my time,
who else has something? >> I'll No. Are are you ready? Okay. Um
I'll talk about a few things that happened last week, the week before
last. I attended Arizona Forward Water Rising to the challenge. Um some and
council member Taylor was there. Was Adams there? I'm not.
» Yes. And Adams was there. Um and it was a discussion about the impending cut
cuts um on the Colorado River. Um so it was a really um good discussion because
the information had just been released that there's going to be cuts to our
state and our city. Um um that week also we many of us attended the 233 grand
opening on West Maine. East Maine. East Maine. I have to get used to things
opening up on the east side. So we had a big celebration for Crust, which is a
restaurant, Italian restaurant. Yes, they have pizza, but all kinds of pastas
and salads and yummy food. They have a speak easy called Night and Gale. um a a
little shop that sells uh bombolinos that sells coffees, gelato, uh bakery
items, um Italian bakery items. Very good. And unscripted by Hyatt. And so
all of those we just had the cut the ribbon for all of those to officially
open. They've had us off opening in July, so they're officially open now. Um
the Hyatt shared with me that reservations for the first year um were
20% off. So they were telling me even during spring training if there is a
spring training [laughter] that room um will be like under $100 a
night. So like they said but once we fill that quota we'll be done. So, it's
a great way to stay in downtown, be acquainted to these restaurants a short
walking distance of the Mace Arts Center and the rest of downtown. I'm very glad
to have um them on board. So, 233 East Main Street. Um on that Friday, I also
attended the 226-1 paramedic graduation. Trying to remember who was there. Were
you there summers? No, >> no, I was.
» Okay. I think Adams was for a little while. and the mayor was there. So, the
paramedic graduation uh last week on Tuesday, I attended the
um there was a a roundt on the road to housing bill that was passed by Congress
and these are incentives um from the federal government to increase housing
um and ways to for cities to obtain additional CDGB dollars for affordable
housing um in in a competitive way. So there will be information coming out on
that. The cities have not been briefed. I don't think we've received guidelines
directly on exactly how this is going to work. It's just more of an incentive to
build more housing um
and ways that we can encourage the the building of housing. And then, oh, um,
over the end of last week, I went to the ASU summer policy summit. ASU puts on
the, um, Morrison Institute puts on an annual summit and talking about all
kinds of critical issues. We talked about water, housing,
Alicia, that you were there. Um, there was a couple um, data centers. We
talked about air quality. um there might be something else. So, it
was a day and a half of in-depth conversations from experts and
professors and industry professionals on these subjects. And over the weekend,
there's the Mesa Film Festival in downtown at the convention center. Um
all kinds [clears throat] of independent films. This has been coming to our city
annually. I really appreciate all the work that goes into holding this event
in in downtown Mesa. That's it.
Yeah, that was a great um public policy summit at uh that the Morrison Institute
put on for a couple of days. Good discussion on Thursday and then panels
on Friday. And I also attended on Thursday, I believe the cones with a
cop. Just wanted to give a shout out to the Chick-fil-A on Power and Mckelps as
well as Mesa Police Department for always showing up for the the community
we made and gave away free ice cream cones. So that was a big hit. So, thank
you to all the officers and Don Blake for organizing that. Amy Sailor. So,
» Council Member Taylor. >> Yeah,
» thank you. Uh, I'm going to go back a little while. Um, at the end of July,
Council Member Duff and Mayor and I got the opportunity to visit the United Food
Bank because Niagara Bottling Company had donated, I think it was like almost
a million bottles of water for their um, million meals for the summer. So, I just
wanted to say thank you again publicly to Niagara Bottling for being so
generous and shipping in tons of water through the United Food Bank. Also, the
United Food Bank is a local food bank operating operating out of um the
downtown Mesa area and they feed they have fed over a million families this
summer. So, I think that's a pretty big deal. They are a big um community
outreach entity. It's a not for-p profofit and I encourage anybody if you
have some time you want to volunteer, they always need volunteer hands to put
their um their bags together to send out into the communities. And then I
attended the Arizona Forward Water Symposium with Council Member Duff and
Adams. Yep. I'll just mirror what Council Member Duff said. It was very
educational. We had just learned about the cap cuts and I think we're going to
continue to learn more. We haven't officially got the results, but they're
pretty solidified at this point. just what's coming down the pipeline, no pun
intended. Um, and then lastly, I was very excited. I attended a ribbon
cutting for um, Brookfield in my district. It's a senior care facility,
but I thought this was pretty awesome. They've been open for a while, but they
had all of their staff kind of regardless of the position that you're
in um go through essentially a heart health certification so that when some
of the senior citizens that are there might feel like they have some chest
pains, may exhibit symptoms of having a heart issue, instead of them immediately
rushing them to the emergency room and potentially, you know, utilizing beds
that might otherwise need to be used by somebody else, they their staff is more
qualified to understand what are these symptoms, what are the conditions
they're coming from, and address them there on site. So, they kind of had like
a second grand opening for this very celebratory moment that everyone had
been certified at such a kind of a prestigious level. So, that was the
Brookfield in my district and I was just really proud of everybody for all the
work that they had put in to basically offer these individuals exceptional
care. And then I had the pleasure of visiting the Boeing facility which I
thought was pretty amazing and I got to see where the Apache helicopters are
made and I just >> I will not take up this entire session
but I have to say I think my jaw was on the floor and the just the sheer process
in the in the way that it is um articulated so perfectly and it all
happens here in Mesa. They walked me through Howard Hughes acquiring the
land. I mean you guys it's amazing. So anyhow, I was very grateful that Boeing
gave me the time to, you know, tour the facility and learn more about the
incredible manufacturing that's taking place there and how special it is. So
yeah, thank you. >> Absolutely.
All right. My wife just text me that I'm in trouble. Okay. Thank you, Sergeant.
Uh Mr. Butler, future meetings and absolutely. Well, it's hard to follow
that and and I know the Boeing seeing the facility is Yeah. pretty amazing.
We're so honored to have Boeing. >> Flight.
» Oh, I'm sure I'm sure they'll take you up on that.
» Yeah, >> I'm here for you.
» Well, speaking of things that'll keep you busy over the next few days, uh we
uh are cancelling study session this coming Thursday morning because several
of you will be attending along with a thousand plus of your favorite elected
officials from across the state the Arizona legacies and uh towns conference
at the Arizona Builtmore. So, uh, we will not be meeting this Thursday so
that, uh, council can participate in that, but we'll be back here a week from
that Thursday, Thursday, August 27th for a study session that morning at 7:30.
So, thank you, Vice Mayor. All right, that's the end of our agenda.
Is there a motion to adjurnn? Motion by council member Taylor, second by council
member Goforth. All in favor say I. >> I. We are adjourned. See you upstairs.