City Council - Regular Meeting

Call to order the Apache Junction work session of May 18th, 2026 to order and ask everyone to put their cell phones on silence. Roll call.

Mayor Wilson?

Yes. Here.

Vice Mayor Schroeder?

Present.

Council Member Cross?

Here.

Council Member Heck?

Here.

Council Member Johnson?

Here.

Council Member Nesser?

Present.

Council Member Soler?

Here.

You have a quorum, Your Honor.

Thank you. Presentation and discussion on Resolution 26-05. Raquel. Okay, there we go.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council, Raquel Schatz, Public Works Department, here to discuss a Resolution 26-05, a roadway extinguishment easement. Resolution 26-05, this is a roadway easement extinguishment of Roosevelt Street alignment. The reason why I say it's an alignment is because it's not a Formal street, it has not been used as a street. It's just simply point A to point B. And this will be from the segment of WikiUp to Chaparral Road. A quick background, because I know we haven't been through quite a few of these in quite a while. I think the last one I did was probably like a little over a year ago. So back in the 50s, Congress developed all these easements for purposes to give the city to make streets, grids, so you'd say, because they're just basically point A to point B straight lines everywhere. So we've got these rights of ways that the city... OWNS. WE DON'T MAINTAIN THEM ALL, BUT WE OWN FOR PURPOSES FOR FUTURE ROADWAY. SO THIS ONE HERE, WE GOT A COMPLETED APPLICATION ON JANUARY 28th. THE APPLICATION IN is the actual application. We do ask for Proposition 207 forms of all the abutted residences. We do have a support petition that is also required, and this is required for amongst 300 feet on both sides of the segment, and that needs to be full support from everybody in the area there, and also a non-refundable $300.50 fee. in which the city public works we did contacted all the emergency respondents and other departments in the city in which we received no opposition of this extinguishment. So like I mentioned before the alignment is not maintained by the city and what I mean by that is that it's not a paved roadway. So in the smaller picture on the left you can see like the the green shaded and you see the red outline. The red outline is what PREVIOUS DIRECTORS FROM BOTH DSD AND PUBLIC WORKS HAVE GONE THROUGH THIS WHOLE ENTIRE AREA TO DETERMINE WHICH OF THESE EASEMENTS THE CITY WOULD BE ABLE TO EXTINGUISH. THAT THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE LANDLOCKING PEOPLE AND THAT WE'RE NOT CREATING ANY FURTHER ISSUES IN REGARDS TO NONCOMPLIANT LOTS. IN THIS CASE, HOWEVER, YOU CAN SEE HOW TINY THESE LOTS ARE AND IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE WHY WE'RE DOING IT TO THIS ONE HERE. You can see here that the easement is pretty much right smack in the middle of the one structure on the lot. The owner is the one on the top. So just the differences between the two pictures is this one shows the easements in the shaded color and the other ones are without any of the shades on there. So, I mean, So Public Works' recommendation is that for approval, and this will be on consent agenda on June 2nd. Are there any questions?

Yes. How is a building allowed to be built in that easement? How did it get permitted?

You know, that was probably like way early when things like this weren't happening. I mean, it could have been a lot split that happened that WE WEREN'T AWARE OF, OR I MEAN, THIS WOULD BE ANOTHER QUESTION THAT WE WOULD HAVE TO DISCUSS AMONGST WHAT DEVELOPMENT SERVICES WHO DOES.

DO WE WANT RUDY TO COME UP? RUDY, CAN YOU GIVE SOME EXAMPLES OF HOW THAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED?

A LOT OF THESE OLDER HOMES WERE BUILT PRIOR TO CITY INCORPORATION. A LOT OF THESE HOMES WERE BUILT WITH INACCURATE SITE PLANS. It could have been a variety of reasons. The current applicant, I believe, wants to do a building expansion. That's why we need to go through this process. We would need to look up the county data to figure out exactly when both of these homes were built on these substandard lots. I do know that the lots don't meet the minimum lot size for their zoning district, and they were created before the city became a city. Thank you.

Anyone else? Okay. Oh, there's no motion to be required. Okay. So we're going to be doing this at their next consent agenda?

Correct. June 2nd. Okay.

All right.

One more because I like to be more than one of these at a time.

Okay, the resolution 2610, continue on.

All right, resolution 2610, roadway easement extinguishment. This one is for Solana Road. Again, it's an alignment. It's not a maintained roadway because there's no pavement there. This one's from 14th Avenue to 13th Avenue. I'm going to skip through the background since we just previously spoke about this, but this is where we talk about where Congress had created these easements. This application was received two weeks after the previous one on February 19th. We received the application items, the support petition, and the Proposition 207 forms. We also did receive the non-refundable fee. And this applicant in particular has been working with development services for quite some time now with building permits. So emergency respondents and public utility providers had no opposition with this one as well. So this roadway easement here, it is for Solana Road. And it's between 14th Avenue and 13th Avenue. And in this case, like I mentioned, that the applicant has been working with development services. There's a house on their lot that they are trying to demo, in which case they are going to use a house to put on there so they can still live on the lot while they fix up the other house. So this one, for the purposes for future development, is the reason why they want to do this extinguishment. So all four parcels were thrilled with this application. So I was just pleased that I was able to do both of these ones coincidentally at the same time. This one also will be for approval on consent agenda on June 2nd. Is there any questions?

No questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Presentation discussion in the first amendment to community maintenance agreement Liz Good evening mayor and City Council Liz Langenbach Parks and Recreation director

We are bringing this back just as a reminder. I was here a couple of weeks ago just to give you an intro of it to help understand and that way you'd have a chance to ask any questions. So it is just that time of year that we're getting ready to update some of the newly constructed or newly constructing parcels as well as roadways, public park spaces. In our original agreement that was done in 2023 with Blossom Rock, it identified the areas that the association Designated as private and that they would be paying for on their own to both construct as well as maintain it also designated the open space parks and roadways that are public that either aid that they would be continuing to maintain but are classified as public easements or Those that are classified as public parks, which the city would then be paying for maintenance operations they paid for the development of those items and the construction and So that first agreement put all that into place. All we are doing is coming back and adding. We will come back every time there's a new road that's, new roadways that are built, new parts of the parks that end up coming into fruition, they have to be added to the agreement. And so we will be, in this First Amendment, all we are doing is updating Exhibit B, which lists all the newly expanded added parcels. And then exhibit C actually shows the maps that will designate what's public versus what's private and what's also public easement. Everything else about the agreement stays the same. Our agreement of costs and who does what, all of the parameters within that. The timeline, the term stays the same. There's nothing changing except for these two exhibits. We're recommending approval of the First Amendment to the Community Maintenance Agreement. Based on council discussion today, we would bring it back for consent in two weeks. And I'm happy to open up any of the maps if you had any other questions or if you have other questions from last time I presented.

Yes. Liz, question. You say that Community Alliance maintains the public parks and open space and shares the cost with the city. Is it like a 50-50?

So we pay up to our, up to a max price per acre. And that is identified in the original agreement. At the time, we worked with our finance director, our park superintendent. We went through all of our costs that it costs for us to maintain all of our parks. We took an average per acre cost for like amenities. And we basically said to them, this is the max that we're willing to pay for maintenance of amenities. And anything above and beyond that, the association would have to pay. So if they want something at a higher quality, for example, than what we might do ourselves, then they'd have to pay for that. Right now, we have not met that in any way, shape, or form. We're still doing pretty well, being well below that budgeted amount. There's also a clause in there that states that if the city were to ever go through tough times and we had to cut the budget or cut maintenance to any of our other parks, for example, let's say that we were cutting costs and we were not going to overseed any of our parks because it was too costly in that year, then we would be doing the same to these other locations. So it's treating these parks. at the same rate that we treat all of our other parks throughout the city.

So can the community alliance, can they decide, we just want to build a public park over there. Can they just arbitrarily do that?

No, so they're part of the, in our original, and actually let me go back real quick. Let's see here if I can figure out how to do this in a sensible, oh, it's at the bottom, isn't it?

Hold on, let me get to this.

Can you see it's like not very oh I see it never mind I found it so this was the The plan that was proposed long ago whenever this section of blossom rock was Developed and we have been using this as our guide to what will be original This is in the master plan document the DA the development agreement that the city agreed to so ahead of time We agreed to what we would be having as future parks They have to talk with us about what's going to be in these locations. Right now, we are working on design of Central District Park. But we would only take those on if those are meeting needs that we have in our community. We have agreed that these are going to have lakes at them. They do help with the whole one water concept. And they will help to both irrigate. These lakes help to keep water for reclaim purposes for all of our irrigation needs as well as the community needs. So they can't just do it on their own. It all had to be part of the master plan of what's going on there. And then we work closely with development services to approve all of those items.

Thank you.

Question I just got a question I was down at radiance and I saw a lake a very nice lake What are they gonna open that up to everybody?

So that one is their lake that is a private lake It was not approved by us as far as a public space. It doesn't have parking and some other amenities They are using that as again their ability to have reclaimed water that that'll be a storage pond that then they will irrigate a lot of their areas with that and I think they are planning on opening up fairly, I don't know if Rudy knows better than I do, but I think they're opening up fairly soon, that new section. We will have a lake at our expansion, city expansion project down south. There will be a lake in the Radiant side, along with the police substation, the library branch, and the rest of the park.

All right.

I know what's that? Yeah, they're paying for that one both to construct as well as to maintain it's not a it's not a public facility Okay, no other questions, thank you, thank you Okay presentation discussion on livestock feed this is something that

Daryl has come to me and talked to me about it as well as something that I had been trying to say work on for over the past few years And I'm going to turn it over to Daryl's for a discussion So this came up from some constituents reaching out and we're This happened probably a little over a year or so ago that They came out and said hey, you know, why is AJ charging sales tax on livestock feed. And I really hadn't paid much attention to it. But sure enough, went to shoppers and found out that they hadn't been charging sales tax. And the city came to them and said, you guys are messing up. You owe X amount of back taxes. And so we started questioning it because the state has a rule that allows cities to not charge that tax. And it turns out that a lot of our other cities around us do not charge a sales tax on livestock feed. And that's hay, supplements, pellets, chicken feed, anything that deals with livestock. It doesn't include wild bird seed or parakeet seed, things like that. just livestock feed. And in fact, I just sent Matt, is there a way you can put that on the overhead? I went to Mesa Feed Barn today and went ahead and purchased. That's the receipt on the left side.

We'll zoom it up a little here.

Yeah. The receipt on the left side, I bought two bags of bulk feed. And as you can see, there's no tax. And then next to it, just a recent purchase that I did at Shopper Supply. And you can see that there's a tax of 89 cents on the two bales of feed. And when you do the math, that's 2.4%. So we're charging a food tax on something that's not human consumption, it's horse consumption in this case. Basically a lot of the community goes to other cities to buy feed to avoid paying a sales tax and I look at it this way if a Lot of people are similar to me when it comes to equine I go into the store Purposefully looking to buy some kind of feed whether it be pellets whether it be hay or And there's always something new and shiny that I have to buy, whether it be fly spray, whether it be some hardware and whatnot. But if I'm going to another city to make a purchase and I see those same shiny things, that tax revenue is going to that city versus to our city. And I think as little as we're charging for a sales tax, if we can keep people shopping here in AJ, buying the other things that go along with livestock, not just the feed, that we will more than offset that small loss of revenue. 89 cents on two bales of feed doesn't seem like very much. But if I had walked in there and bought a couple hundred dollars like I did a few weeks ago, Actually, well, a lot more than that, but it generated a bunch of sales tax for our community. So that's where this came about. And talking with Mayor Wilson, you know, it was something that we've had not just one constituent come up and ask us about. We've had several. And so we're open for discussion.

I would like to bring up I went in and researched a lot of this back in 2016 is when they made that sales tax exemption. They made it for the purpose of people that were farmers and ranchers. People that were raising animals for food consumption. It was not for people, it was not let's have this big thing and save people money on taking care of their individual pets. Because what we're talking about here is basically the few people who actually have horses or chickens, people that are raising chickens are usually in their backyard for their own egg consumption. So when I'm looking at this, I mean, we're talking about, I'm just afraid that you're thinking about opening up Pandora's box. Because there is a very, very small amount of people in our total population that have a horse or have chickens as compared to all of the people in this entire area. When you look at people in the downtown area, look at along the south corridor, the only people that this could ever really benefit is the rural. And that worries me that we're taking a special interest group saying we're gonna do this tax break off the city stuff and I guarantee you that there are people all across our population that say you know what you want to give a break on feeding an animal why don't you give us a break on milk or bread or something that our families or humans eat and I am and the fact that this cannot even be measured by the city staff, they have no way of knowing what this number would be to affect us at all. Nor did anybody bring in all of the cities in a list which tells us which cities do charge and which have the exemptions. So I don't feel like there was enough information brought for this and I cannot get behind something that is only regarding This was written, I'm read all through this in the state legislature. I spoke, I saw the things that the different senators and representatives put up. This was for the farmers and ranchers that were raising animals for consumption. And we are talking mostly, when we talk in this town, we're talking about people who may own horses. which is a small percentage when you add up all the population of this city. I'd just like to put that on record.

Mayor? Yes. I got three questions. I'm an absolute no unless I have a number on how this is going to affect our budget. I need a hard number. That's number one. Number two, I agree with Bambi. It sounds like a very small minority of our residents would be affected by this. And number three, I have a point of order question. If this does go to a vote, we have three members on this board that will personally be able to take advantage of this. Is that a conflict of interest?

Mr. Mayor, members of council, I don't see a conflict of interest because there's There's an exemption to conflict of interest if there's more than 10 in a class. So I don't know how many people buy feed in the city, but I'm sure it's more than 10. So I don't see a conflict of interest. No, I do not.

OK.

But can we get a number of what this is going to be? So maybe Matt can tackle that, but we cannot. The state law is very clear about staff understanding specific business interests on

Sales tax revenue. So maybe Matt or Joel can... All collections go straight to the state, and this is lumped into a general retail number, just as we explained in the memo. And there's no way... I mean, we could ask DOR, I guess, if they'd be willing to, but then it gets into tax confidentiality of those who do remit it to the state, and we don't expect they would be willing to give us any specifics.

I can't vote yes on something that I don't know how it's going to affect us. I want to know what the bottom line is. Is it $10,000 a year, $100,000 a year? We make a decision, and then all of a sudden we find out it hurts us. That's not good.

Matt, could we at least reach out to find out if we can get a range or some number? I don't know what your take is, Joel, but we can ask.

Could we at least get... THE LEAGUE OF CITIES, CONTACT SOMEBODY AT THE LEAGUE OF CITIES TO FIND OUT, OUT OF ALL THE CITIES THAT ARE IN THE LEAGUE, WHICH ONES DID AN EXEMPTION AND WHICH ONES DID NOT.

I THINK THAT, YOU CAN FIND THAT OUT, AND I THINK THAT MIGHT BE ON THE WEBSITE, THE MODEL TAX CODE. THERE'S SOMETHING CALLED A MODEL TAX CODE, CITY AND TOWN TAX CODE, AND THAT IS WHAT ALLOWED THE OPTION BACK WHEN THE STATE CREATED THE OPTIONS. THIS WAS OPTION P. or option O, I forget which one, in the city at the time when the city got formed, did take that option, that they will charge. So I think Rob has more information on that option 10.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Rob Whistler, Managing Analyst for City Manager's Office. So model option 10 is the actual livestock and poultry feed item, which is a separate one from option 10. which is wholesale, which is a different category, but they sort of, they're both related to livestock feed, but option 10 is sort of the main one in this. 63 cities out of the 91 in the state have option 10, including us, and 17 have option P, which we also have as well, out of the 91. Thank you, Rob.

Okay, so coincidentally, and it's kind of weird, I Googled, you know, does Mesa charge tax on livestock feed? And Google spit right back and said, yep, it does. I thought, well, then why is everybody telling me that they don't? So I contacted the Mesa feed barn and then specifically asked that question, do you charge tax on livestock feed? Guy said no. So to prove my point, you can see the time stamp and date. I went down there today, right after work, and bought two bags of feed just to prove to myself yes or no. And the answer was no. They do not charge the tax. I don't know. I mean, that's why we're having the discussion. It's not a vote tonight. This is simply to bring it out. And if we want to push it forward, we can. And if we don't want to push it forward, it dies today.

Can we look in to see if Mesa does or does not? Because we have a store that did not charge the tax, and eventually somebody went down and told them they needed to start charging the tax. Is that not correct? That's correct. That is correct, and we definitely can find out. Let's reach out to the city of Mesa and see what they do and other municipalities around here. Was Mesa one of the ones that charged the tax?

So I can tell you from the Arizona Department of Revenue website, Mesa does not apply option 10.

What does that mean? They either charge or they do not.

They do not charge it. And they also, they do not charge option P either, which is the other livestock feed item.

Excuse me. So you're saying they do or they do not have Model 10?

They do not have either 10 or B. Okay.

Yes. So do we, I'm assuming that, I mean, my knowledge, if I'm wrong, I think we have three providers really that do provide livestock ship. shoppers stock shop and So it's two Okay, I'm assuming that the stock shop.

I think it's two.

Okay. Yeah, I believe that's correct You know, I'm one of these I'm one of the ones that buys this, you know the feed and stuff I guess my take on this from my position is I This city lives and dies on its sales tax. And I feel like we need to maximize that whenever we can. And I don't feel that we should be taking this and exempting it. I think we need to be consistent and make certain that we're maximizing our sales tax revenue.

Just a curiosity. So what's the receipt below five minutes later at 52?

On the left there? Yeah. Because that was the printout from the... So one's a credit card.

That was my debit card charge.

The other one He handed that to me and we loaded up the food and I says wait a minute This doesn't even say what I bought Can you give me a receipt that at least says what I bought and that's what the little one is at the top?

Right It didn't make sense, but that's what he pulled out of the top of the register. So I'm assuming he charged me 50 cents for

Running a debit card.

No.

Doesn't say it. I'd be a little worried about buying any. It's kind of on the hinky side. You know, at least the receipt over here on AJ, it actually adds up.

I'd be a little worried about shopping in Mesa here if I were you.

No, that was just strictly the top one was senior equine. And the second one down for $21 was a 50-pound bag of alfalfa pellets.

So is a bale of alfalfa the same price in Mesa as it is?

No, actually, well, as of today, the price for a bale of alfalfa in Mesa was $21.95. I don't know what shoppers would be today. I assume it's probably similar.

Well, I bought some just this past weekend, and it was... 1999. Yeah. Everybody's been jacking up the prices because of fuel costs.

Does the economy fluctuate like that in a matter of a couple weeks? Oh, yeah.

AJ is lower than Mesa? Yeah. That much?

Well, this was two weeks ago. Yeah. Today isn't. Yeah. I mean, today. Add another dollar to that. Yeah.

If not more. Right now, basically, feed prices are going up anywhere from $4 to $5 a bale because of fuel costs.

I still need a number. I do not like voting on things that I don't know what the facts are.

Well, I'm going to make a quick little comment concerning here a little bit in the aspect on it. It is something that for the people that have horses and have livestock, because there are some people that actually have cattle in this area as well, and they buy feed as well for their animals. They go to other communities to purchase their feed, their hay, their supplements. And it is something that, you know, it's something I've faced for many years now since I've lived here. But Again, the reason why I shop locally when I can is because it benefits our community. It does not benefit anyone else. Where I've talked to other people who refuse to buy any horse-related items in the city of Apache Junction because of this one little charge that they do. Mind you, you buy a bridle and a bit, I don't care where you buy it, you're gonna pay a sales tax on it, no matter where you buy it. It's not exempt in any other city. It's over the feed side. And kind of like what Darrell said, is when you go and buy feed, if I go by myself, I purchase the feed and I'm out the door I am and that's it. If I go with my wife, she sees something over here and says, oh, wait a minute, we need to get this as well. We need to get this as well. And that if we're going out of the city to save $0.89, most likely I'm going to be ending up spending more money over there because of the fact that she's going to buy other things. And that sales tax now goes to whatever community we're buying that in. not in our community. So I think the idea of possibly looking at the funds that we would be losing in the aspect on it is something that we could possibly look at and bring back to us so we can go through and come up with some general numbers in the aspect of how it impacts our community. And one of the things that you have to remember is The rest of everything that you buy in that store is a proper sales tax that the city receives. It's only over the feed. It's not over everything else.

Under that philosophy, why would anybody buy food here? Why would you go to Fry's and buy food here? You can go to Fry's and Mason. Mason, I'm a food tech.

And I know people that do that.

And they can. And they're right. But the bottom line is most people aren't going to waste the gas money to go buy that. They're going to buy locally, you would hope. Because the drive over to Mesa is costing you gas, and gas is not cheap. So I don't like the philosophy of giving a small group a big break. Okay. Not even a big break, 89-cent break. I mean, that's not even big. But we need to know what the total –

Okay, so you don't want to bring this back and get more investigation?

Yeah, I just need to know how much is this going to cost the city?

So you want to do an investigation to figure out what it is? Yes. Okay, that's what I'm asking.

We can look into that.

Okay, because that's what I'm looking for is do we want to look at it.

We'll look at it further and have another work session on it is what I would like to see.

Another work session.

Council Member O'Brien. Can you say that again for us? I would like us to investigate and come up with some numbers to answer Brian's concerns. Yes, sir. And bring it back to a work session. Yes, sir.

I would also like to know what percentage of our populace actually owns the animals that we're talking about feeding compared to the grand total.

Okay.

Because I kind of work on an 80-20 plan. I feel like we should be looking out for the majority of the people, not maybe 5% to 8%.

Any other data? We'll get those and bring it back. Okay. Okay. All right. I will adjourn this meeting.