No items on rail or other hot-button issues were on the agenda, but that did not stop residents from criticizing Gilbert Town Council on Tuesday, leading to verbal sparring and some spectators being removed.
Residents came out to speak on two topics: a rezoning of some land along Power Road into light industrial and a looming land annexation as the town prepares to complete Ocotillo Road between Greenfield and Higley roads.
Though only 11 people spoke during the “communications from citizens” period, the Atlas Auditorium at the Gilbert Public Safety Training Facility, site of council meetings, was nearly filled with people interested in one or both issues.
Many of those people applauded comments or displayed signs that had been distributed outside the meeting that said, “Stop Lying.”
Before the public comment period started, Vice Mayor Aimee Yentes told the crowd that applause or waving the signs was inappropriate as the council tried to maintain decorum at its meetings.
After a second instance of audience applause, Yentes paused the meeting to remind the audience that it should not applaud as they were trying to maintain decorum, allow everyone who had requested time to speak to do so and establish an environment where everyone could freely express their views.
Mayor Brigette Peterson added a request for one woman’s sign to be removed as she was waving it.
A later speaker, Ryan Handelsman, prefaced his remarks on issue with a challenge of the council’s decorum rules, saying he knew of no law prohibiting applause or sign-waving and saying council wanted to stifle First Amendment expression. Audience members resumed light applause and some sign waving thereafter.
Later still, Peterson asked police to remove some audience members standing in the back holding up signs and threatened to end the public comment period.
That stirred the audience, who openly challenged the mayor’s actions, with one person saying loudly that fascism had come to Gilbert. But police did remove the people in back, and public comment finished without further incident.
The rezoning drew most of the comments. The project, called the Ranch, is proposed as a light industrial development on 292 acres on Power Road between Warner and Elliot roads, land that is right now being used for agriculture but is zoned primarily for business park and general commercial uses.
Though some of the land is zoned for light industrial, the developer, IndiCap, would have to get a major General Plan amendment to go forward.
Residents speaking at the meeting urged council to stick to the voter-approved General Plan and not approve an amendment.
Daniel Peyton said residents see it as the last good piece of land to develop business park and general commercial spaces.
“We desperately, desperately need on the east side of town places to spend our money,” he said. “This is our last chance, and it feels like if we approve this, we might be picking up a penny today to step over literally hundreds of dollars of bills in the future.”
One resident, Tom Smith, questioned why council would have approved such a plan, but at present, council has not approved that change, and the project has not yet been heard at Planning Commission.
While the opposition to the Ocotillo Road widening was fewer in number, that group has been protesting to council for longer.
The residents, many of whom live on county islands rather than Gilbert land, have expressed concern about so much of their land being taken for the project and the project’s elaborate uses on the land, including bike and horse paths.
Rich Robertson, a county island resident, said the town was lacking transparency on the project, including holding individual briefings to avoid having a public meeting on the issue. Residents also questioned why council was meeting about the project in executive session behind closed doors.
“It’s the secrecy, the duplicity, the window dressing, the patronizing doublespeak on the website that generates the kind of ill will that has come out of this particular project,” Robertson said. “You don’t really want citizen involvement, it feels, because that just makes your job harder. But that is the cost of open government.”
The town indicated on its agenda that council would receive legal advice on the right-of-way acquisitions related to the project at the executive session. Legal advice is one of the allowable uses of executive session under Arizona law.
Later in the meeting, council voted 6-1 to acquire some property related to the project with Yentes dissenting. The affected properties were not owned by the speakers.
In other actions:
Council voted 5-2 to accept a grant originating from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of $328,525 for use in the Secure Our Cities program. Yentes and Laurin Hendrix voted in dissent.
Council voted 6-1 to award $138,560 to nonprofit AZCEND to run the Gilbert Senior Center meal delivery services and programming. Yentes voted in dissent, saying it is an excellent service for the community but philosophically she could not support town expenditures on nonprofits.
Council voted 6-1 to authorize spending $1.2 million for new mobile data computers for police officers. A citizen during public comment questioned the amount being above the invoice. Staff said the money would be used not just for equipment but implementation and a small amount for a buffer on unforeseen expenses associated with it. Hendrix voted in dissent.
Note: This story has been corrected to reflect how the people ejected from the council meeting were handling their signs.
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
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).
By 
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here