City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the regular city council meeting of February 5th, 2026. Um, clerk, please take the role. Mayor Hartkey here. Vice Mayor Zenus here. Council member Poston here. Council member Ellis here. Council member Orlando here. Council member Harris is absent. and council member Hawkins here. We have a quorum.

Thank you so much. Our invocation tonight will be delivered by Pastor Tim Clint from Family Bible Church on McQueen and our pledge of allegiance by Council Member Poston. Pastor Lord God, we we just are honored that we have the privilege to come before you and to bring our council before you, Lord. We're we're honored that we can serve you and we we thank you that this uh council has been dedicating this time at the beginning to to recognize you are in charge. You are you are God and we uh we know that you've blessed us. We know that you've given us an awesome city. So I pray for wisdom tonight so that the the decisions that are made would be best for our community and for the people. I pray for protection for our people. I pray for for police officers. And Father, I just pray for our city in general that that you would bless it and that you would bless our country and our state. And Father, we just commit our lives now to you and we pray that you'd bless this meeting in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, pastor. Thank you, council member. Council, on um Monday, we had the opportunity to review and ask questions about the consent agenda. How would you like to proceed,

Mayor? Nice. Council member Orlando. Mayor move to approve the consent agenda February 5th, 2026 regular meeting items 1 through 13. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second by council member I I thought I heard council member Ellis, but I saw council member Poston wave. All right. By council member Ellis. Council any recusals. Anything? None. Please vote. Mayor. Council member Poston.

I jumped the gun. Sorry. Um, I just did want to say that on item number 10, um, in the last time that we voted on this item, I did check with our city attorney who determined that I was not did not need to recuse myself. I just did want to let people know that I did check again with outside council and there is no need to recuse myself. So, I will be voting on that item and all of the items. Thank you. All right, council, please vote.

[snorts]

Motion carries unanimously. Council member Harris absent. Okay. Um council, we did have a public hearing that's been moved to February 23, 2026. Uh we have a few speaker cards for unscheduled public appearances. I'll take these in the order as they're presented to our speakers. This is unscheduled. Therefore, as we cannot engage you, you're welcome to share your thoughts and we can advise and direct staff to uh to get with you and uh each speaker has up to three minutes. When the light turns yellow, please wrap up your comments. Our first speaker is Jenny Vatitali. Please state your name and the city which you call home. Good evening. For the record, my name is Jenny Vitali and I'm a resident of Chandler. I live in the northern portion of Chandler. I'm here tonight to discuss um or to continue discussion on the retention basin project. It has I have been a thorn in staff side and you guys have seen some of the emails. The project um has had its ups and downs and it's had its problems. One of the things that has come to light with this project is sequence of analysis. Staff failed to do some proper analyses of some drainage issues ahead of time in any of these basins. And it's come to light that these basins don't drain like I told you before in the required time and that they haven't cleaned out the dryals or tested them yet. They're working on that for next week. But the problem is all these basins now are rocked and landscaped and so we're doing everything out of sequence as far as sequence of construction. So one of the

lessons that really needs to be learned here on these projects is sequence of analysis before you even begin design is critical because that helps you understand where you're going to need revenue if a problem crops up or if a WARF grant or another grant is kind of pigeon holing you into a myopic uh project viewpoint. The other thing is sequence of construction. Sequence of construction is critical. Whether it's a commercial project or a city project, there has to be better training for the younger staff and the inspectors to understand proper sequence of construction and to better understand what their role is as kind of a pseudo GC. You can't just send the green horns out there and expect them to kind of, you know, have a little, you know, jibber jabber session over the back of the pickup truck. Oh, you guys spreading rock today? Oh, plants look good. Okay, bye. If things aren't done being done in the proper order, if dust control is not being maintained, it's your job to kind of be the heavy and make sure that that gets done right. Aesthetics. Oh, this is the one that has just been frustrating the heck out of me. The rocks that I put down there, I put down there for a reason. The left one is the one that they're putting in all of the basins. And so what you see when you drive by these basins is a halfmile sea of gray that looks like nothing but crushed concrete. It's rock, but it's concrete. It doesn't match the aesthetic. It doesn't match the color scheme. It doesn't match a darn thing in the neighborhoods. The color on the far right is the color that they put back in in the 70s and 80s. It's called a desert gold. You have a responsibility with our tax dollars and you have a responsibility with our projects to make sure that when you're done with a project. It has the proper aesthetic. You should be able to look at a project and say, "Yeah, I'm darn proud of that. That looks good." It shouldn't be, "Oo, that kind of looks like a sea of concrete. I hope nobody notices." Staff, I gave staff some ideas today, and I have to compliment both Dan and Jeremy. They are willing to work

with my ideas and find a way to tone down the gray for you guys. But she got hosed by the rockyard. they mislabeled that and they sold it to you as a product that it was not. And so hopefully you'll hold them accountable and you will push back on staff and make sure that aesthetic is maintained on these projects. Okay. Thank you. Keep rocking. Well, it should have. Our next speaker card is

is Roouth Chuck. I'm sorry if I'm not able to read your name, but if you would please come up and state your name and address or name and city for the record. You have up to three minutes.

Thank you. My name is Rohit Chandra Shaker. I live here in downtown Chandler. Council, thank you for your time today and good evening. Uh, I'm here because I have serious concerns about your use of Flock's Alper technology. Our city has entered an agreement with Flock that I believe is a contradiction to your noble and agreeable statement on immigration. You believe policing and immigration should not cross paths in the way we're seeing in other cities. I commend you and I thank you sincerely for that. But we have to make sure we're fulfilling that promise all the way. Despite my repeated attempts to talk to council directly, I have been given some secondary sources by uh Matthew Berdick, who I do appreciate his correspondence. I want to make that clear. But there's been no clear answer if Chandler opted in or opted out of federal data sharing of flock. Many cities have thought that they are not sharing national data, but they have been and have since suspended or rewritten their template contracts. There's been no copy provided to me of your privacy terms of service that I've asked repeatedly for and the answers that I'm getting from Chandler PD have conveniently skipped over the privacy contract. This privacy contract has been seen by the ACLU and many others to give them cartlash over who they're able to give their your information to our license plates. They can override your opt-in requests and it's been proven. Flock lied about sharing with ICE and DHS over and over again. But in August, they finally admitted, came clean, and said it was a pilot program that we're pausing now. But damage is done. You signed on before this pause happened. Our data is already out there. I pushed again and asked what agencies have access to our data. I was told that it's agencies within Arizona who bought Flock and got the license requested access. That is not true. That

is only half true because FOIA requests submitted in the state of Washington specifically in cities that are sanctuary states have our data. They were releasing our data, Chandler City data in their FOIA requests because they have paused flock usage due to ICE taking data against their will, which means our data was in the pile and you know there hasn't been any sort of acknowledgement of that and that is a fact. Happy to prove that multiple cities are suspending their flock agreements and they're re-evaluating privacy concerns with their community. and I suggest that we follow their footsteps. You have agreements and are sharing outside of the state. That's an undeniable fact. But you're also sharing with 287G cities and that is happening in Arizona. Mesa is a 287G city. They have ICE officers who I can prove are making searches on flock. You have intercity searches done.

Thank you, sir. staff. I would certainly like to get some answers to um his questions and and where we're at with our sharing. I think all of council would as well. So, Council Martinez. Yeah. For city manager, I believe um I have requested um a review of our flock services and stuff. I think we're working on that. If we can get that shared with the rest of council once we have that those results. Yeah, literally Tad and I were just talking about a vice mayor and we will be getting that to you either in the next round of one-on- ones or in a West.

Thank you. We have one more speaker card. Um G EU last name Richie Geo. I'm sorry if I can't uh we'll blame me and not you, but I abbreviated. Yeah. Please state your name and city where you live. For the record, you have up to three minutes to share your thoughts.

So, George Richie, I moved to Aato in 2008 and um I have two topics for you. One of them regards the use of your recycling center for hazardous materials and then the second one is a noise complaint with the Intel factory over there uh at Dobson and Aato roughly. Um so the first thing is I you know I did my um had a wine my first ever wine tasting was in Austria east of Vienna many many years ago when I got back home to Germany at the time in Hanover. Um the announcement was that the Austrian wine makers had uh had spoke spiked their wine with dialin glycol anifreeze basically and it was a big scandal and it stopped the import of reaniti wine into America long ago back then. So, I became very cognizant about how disgusting anifreeze is. And so, I changed my antifreeze recently and tried to take it over to the Chandler Recycling Center and was refused because I didn't have a an appointment. And I think that's just absolutely ridiculous. If you're going to have a recycling program, it should be extremely easy, free, and uh you know, you're you should encourage people to do the right thing and and get rid of their their materials there. These guys were unbelievably entitled, lots of attitude, and there is just no reasonable explanation why I cannot put six jugs of clean um you know, they're clean. The jugs are clean anifreeze on a table and they can pour when they get around to doing it. It's it's green stuff. Everybody knows what it is, etc. It's just ridiculous. Reminds me of the Seinfeld Soup Nazi episode where if you don't do things exactly right, you know, you no soup today for you. And that was just a horrible experience. I really encourage you guys to look into what they're doing over there. They're they're unmanaged. And for the city manager, I mean, you know, if if that's what's going on over there, uh God only knows how many other places in city government in the public sector your your people are are slacking off. Uh and and you know, it was kind of painful to come here a couple days ago and see the

entire meeting basically a self- congratulatory session of the the staff and the council interacting. You guys have a different role. You need to manage them. You need to be critical. You need to put metrics in place to make sure people are achieving what they should achieve and not have this sort of self- congratulatory society. It was kind of kind of gross to see that when I know how badly this this one particular function is operating. The other thing I came to you guys uh by now quite some time ago about the awful condition that the intel plant uh imposes on basically the entire community. I would say from Dobson to Alma school to Aatio, Chandler Heights, it's all full of noise and the noise is so bad that it penetrates the walls into the bedroom and um you know I I worked for years. I have logs about what all I've experienced there. There bursts of high steam noise that that shriek that literally cause you to go, "What the heck is going on?" You know, and and you guys are saying they're in compliance. Let me tell you that is is bogus as an engineer. It's ridiculous. You guys measure them on

on the hottest day with no humidity where sound doesn't travel very far. And sir, I might just say to you, sir, don't make the impression of being approachable. And that is also not something that you as as the city and the sir community ought to do. Shame on you. Shame on you, mayor. You're a showboat, but you don't do real business.

Council member Orlando. Yeah. Staff. Um, yeah, we've asked this question a few times, why a reservation, and I don't know whether it's because staff's only there part-time, full-time, but now that we're coming up to this next budget cycle, let's take a look at that again because I've had other residents ask the same thing. I got a Saturday afternoon, I'm cleaning out my garage. Makes sense. I got a whole bunch of paint, old stuff. I got to wait until Tuesday of next week to get rid of it. Um, so I think there's some viility in that one and I'd like to know um I know Intel's always been a good partner, good uh person if there is some specific things that they can do to miticate potential some of that maybe first of all identify it and then potentially mitigate it. So if we could look into that as well, I appreciate it. Thank you. [snorts]

All right, council. Next is current events. I've got a few. I do want to bring uh just attention to our uh Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. I see another one here. Um please come up. State your name and address for the record. Name and state city. You have up to three minutes.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Um aloha. Uh, my name is Noah James Markham and I come from the great city of Tempi. Um, I have a concern of being downtown Chandler. I feel like we need to up it up a little bit here. I think there needs to be like a a restaurant and like a club where we can go to at night because there's a lot of kids that would like that and adults like me um, Jenzers would love to use that club. Um, so I would like to see it there. Um, in Chandler also, um, I know we're into diversity. Um, so maybe you can celebrate pride more and maybe have a pro pride parade here one day um, in Chandler. And um as a Democrat, I hear you Chandler students standing up against ICE and I stand with you guys, but I don't allow ICE and Chandler and don't allow President Donald Trump here either. Mahalo and thank you for listening to me tonight. All right, current events. [snorts] I do want to give a shout out to our airport team. Last month, we hosted Airport Day and welcomed nearly 15,000 people out to our airport. These were aviation enthusiasts, families, and curious neighbors. It was a phenomenal event with an even better turnout providing attendees with a behind thescenes look at one of our the nation's busiest general airport aviation airports. So, thank you team Chandler for all that you did to put this on. A lot of work and thank you to

all of our residents and surrounding community that had a great day. I'd like to also congratulate U CUSD. They uh and welcome Dr. Dr. Anna Battle as the newly appointed superintendent of Chandler Unified School District. Dr. Battle brings nearly four decades of educational leadership to Chandler and was selected by CUSD governing board following a community engaged search process. We're looking forward to continuing our strong partnership with CUSD and now with Dr. Battle to ensure student success in our city. I do want to invite you all to uh next week, next Thursday, our annual state of the city address. We'll be at the Center for the Arts, highlight our community's accomplishments from the past year, look at our challenges, and look forward into 2026. So, there's going to be a reception at 5:30 p.m. where our guests can mingle, sample food from Chandler restaurants, enjoy a themed lobby experience, and then formal remarks will begin at 6:30. You can find more information and RSVP at chandleraz.govstate of the city. And [snorts] lastly, um, later this month, we recognize Chinese New Year, which begins on February 17th and marks the start of the year of the horse. To all who celebrate, we wish you a year filled with good health, happiness, and prosperity. We're grateful for the many cultures and traditions that call Chandler home, and we wish everybody a wonderful start of the year ahead. Council member Poston.

Thank you, Mayor. So, this last Friday, we had sort of the moment that I feel we've all been waiting for. We all have been talking about um that Chandler needs to grow up and not out and that, you know, we're running out of land. So, we had a downtown developer summit and it was put on by our downtown redevelopment group. And I just felt like this is exactly what we have needed. And I know we as council have been talking about bringing in developers that truly understand redevelopment because it is very different than just building on an open space. And that's exactly what happened. And it was very impressive. It had a it featured a keynote address by Jim Hyde, the author of Building Small. And then we had a panel of our local developers and downtown business owners. It was absolutely excellent. Um the staff has completed the downtown regional area plan which really means that we are now open for business. The z code, our zoning, everything in downtown meets what those developers want to do because it's been it's been a very old plan for a while and now it's been updated and it's going to meet the needs of our community and allow us to grow in a way and redevelop those really special properties that we have in downtown. So, I just uh commend staff for getting that done. I attended and um it was absolutely amazing. It's exactly what we need for a very long time. So, I loved that one. And then another uh little shout out to staff. I think we as a council all got an email. Um we had had a resident talking about stickers that were just all over light poles. And um our neighborhood preservation and street maintenance literally went and walked the streets. uh they just went above and beyond to go and get rid of all of those things. It's just those small things that I think makes Chandler very special in that our staff will take that time to

go above and beyond and do those little things that make our residents happy, keep our community clean and that benefit us as an entire city. So, I just wanted to say thank you. They really represented the Chandler way and did an excellent job on that. So, appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Ellis. Thank you, mayor. Uh same thing here with the economic development department. Uh this evening, I would like to recognize an exciting economic development in our city right now. It it is the CE precision assemblies. They are an aerospace manufacturing company that based right here in Chandler. right now um they are very significantly open um decided that they want to expand their operation here in Chandler and nearly 40,000 square foot facility is going to be right here on the west side of Chandler. So we are very grateful and very proud to support local businesses like them uh who have called Chandler home for over three decades as they have grown created job new jobs here in Chandler and strengthen our position as a hub for advanced manufacturing and really into the aerospace uh space. So we are very grateful for them saying yes to Chandler. Second mayor I have an exciting news. Those of you who like to eat pizza, we have Y police is coming to Chandler, please join us. And the grand opening. It's going to be a celebration on next Monday, February 9th, on National Pizza Day. So, if you love pizza, please come and join us for the ribbon cutting. It's going to be at 3 p.m. Grab a New York slice. I know I'm going to get I love New York's pizza because I grew up in New York. And um welcome you all to join us. We can't wait to see you all there. Please come and celebrate with us because that's the general way. Thank you, Mayor.

Vice Mayor. Awesome. Thank you, Mayor. I don't have any official announcements, but I do just want to give a shout out to our airport um staff and our boards and commission of the airport. They did an amazing job with airport days. It was a spectacular event. We had great attendance and just seeing neighbors from all over the the state. I had talking to people from Glendale, from Santan, from Gilbert, and of course here from Chandler. It was just a great event. Well attended. I feel like it's going to become a staple here in Chandler. uh to have that airport day. So, I just want to thank everyone involved in putting that together. Looking forward to next year. Council member Orlando, Council Member Ellis, it's yo. [laughter]

So, um Saturday the 21st from 10 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at Dr. AJ Chandler Park will be the annual innovation fair. And this is one of the the uh most uh fun family events that we have in Chandler. It's a combination of the city partnership with the school district as well as our business community high-tech industry. Um it's free and you come on down, you explore science, technology, engineering, arts, and math through the hands of our on learning hands-on learning interactive fund across more than 160 exhibits. Um I'm looking forward to see you there. The weather be great. And like I said, there'll be food trucks. This is a great event. It's grown a lot since uh we combined with the Chandler School District as well as some of the other business community. So, I'll see you in a few weeks. Thanks,

Council Member Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. No updates for tonight. All right, City Vander,

Mayor and Council, a point of prod. I had the opportunity to participate in my first point in time count of the home here in Chandler and to go and see that many employees here at 6:00 in the morning was inspiring. But then to watch their connections with the citizens that are most in need in our community, their enthusiasms, their efforts, and their true caring for those who are in need was uh just made a city manager smile. So, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of our employees that showed up at 6:00 a.m. across all of our departments to make sure that we had our point in time contact count correct and that we could get services needed to those most in need. So, thank you, Mayor and Council. All right.

Thank you. That concludes our meeting. Um, see you all later. Going back.