Gilbert considers sales-tax increase, bond for high priority projects

By Tom Blodgett
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Gilbert will consider putting a sales-tax increase and a general-obligation bond before voters to fund more than $1 billion in projects for the police, fire and parks departments. 

But, first, staff will look at any alternative means of getting some funding and ways to pare down project costs. Gilbert Town Council may also ask the staff to limit that project list before coming back to council for approval. 

That was the direction set Dec. 11 at the town’s University Building after council and staff went through a full-day workshop that examined the three departments’ priority projects and funding options available. 

The far-flung project list includes such high-profile items as completing Gilbert Regional and Desert Sky parks, building a victims’ advocacy center and a crime lab, and renovating and expanding the Fire Administration building along with several fire stations. 

The projects would be phased in over five to 10 years with a cost of $1.07 billion with a compounding 3% inflation costs factored in. The parks and recreation projects total $723 million, police $289.4 million and fire $99.8 million. The police total includes $42 million already set aside for the advocacy center. 

Town Manager Patrick Banger cautioned town officials about the importance of what they would be deciding. 

“The decisions we make will create the future of this community,” Banger said. “Our (town) tagline, ‘Shaping a new tomorrow, today,’ really sums that up. Decisions we make today are going to shape our tomorrow. And decisions that have been made … by previous administrations and elected bodies have really helped put us where we are today and the quality of life we enjoy.” 

Banger said inflation has been a challenge to the town as it has increased the costs of the projects the town had previously identified as important to do, making timely decision-making even more needed to avoid further increased costs.  

He also highlighted the importance of infrastructure and the potential consequences of not making timely and informed decisions. But he concluded by emphasizing the need for proper revenue management and planning for future needs. 

Budget Director Kelly Pfost told officials the levers the town has to raise revenue are limited. It cannot control what it gets from state-shared income and sales tax or other revenues from the state. Its only options under its control are local sales tax and primary and secondary property taxes. 

Gilbert does not have a primary property tax, and its secondary property tax rate of $0.98 per $100 assessed valuation is second lowest in the area behind Mesa, which is at $0.86. 

Additionally, the town’s sales tax is lowest in the area at 1.5% on retail sales, where it is matched only by Chandler, and also 1.5% on phone bills, utilities and wastewater utility service. Gilbert does not use any of its utility bill collection to help fund other services as some municipalities do.  

Pfost said the town is heavily reliant on sales tax, which makes up 68% of its revenue. But that is a volatile source of income, and the town is becoming more dependent on it over time, she said. 

Nonetheless, after a thorough review of the projects and funding scenarios, council agreed that a combination of funding sources would be the most effective approach, but with sales tax shouldering the greater burden. 

Council members liked the idea that with a sales tax, visitors to Gilbert also would shoulder some of the burden and that those who spend more would pay more of the projects’ bills. 

They also questioned the public’s appetite to approve a bond that would require a secondary property tax increase. 

Mayor Brigette Peterson noted the town barely passed its last bond in 2021, a $515 million streets, transportation and infrastructure bond, and that Higley Unified School District had bond issues fail in 2021 and 2022 while Gilbert Public Schools had one fail last month. 

“I know that when I ran for mayor in 2020, people said to me, ‘just keep Gilbert, Gilbert; we'll pay. We love living here, and we'll pay,’” Peterson said. “I think people have changed over the past three years coming out of the pandemic with inflation, with everything that we've seen over the past couple of years. People are not in the same mind space that they were in.” 

Council expressed some sticker shock at project costs, particularly for the crime lab and parts of the victims advocacy center. Councilmember Jim Torgeson noted the costs had escalated to as much as $2,300 per square foot in some cases. 

“You could buy an empty office building, you could put a 10-foot wall that's electrified with gun turrets around it for less than half of that, easily less than half of that,” he said. “If this is what's coming back to us as cost, we need to look at different construction companies, period. I don't care who's been doing business for how long. Coming in with numbers this high on land we own is not acceptable.” 

Other council members agreed that the projects would need to go through value engineering to bring costs down or the scope of projects could possibly be reduced. 

Councilmember Scott Anderson said town staff should come back with a list that is only absolute priorities for the town then to take to the public. He also said he did not believe the community would accept much more tax burden. 

“I'd like to get to a point where we have a bottom line that we feel that can have a reasonable chance with the community, get to that bottom line number,” he said. “Turn to these presentations we have today and say, ‘OK, looks like this may fund the top two or three on your list.’ Pick 'em out and that's what we're going to do. And then when we go to the voters, we say we are very specific in the projects that are going to be funded by that money.” 

We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X. 

Tom Blodgett
Senior News Editor | Gilbert

tblodgett@iniusa.org

Meet Tom
Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.

Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.

Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism. 

Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.  

Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).