Queen Creek council passes $75M bond issuance

The Queen Creek Town Council has approved a $75 million bond issuance to finance new public safety and road infrastructure.

At its Wednesday meeting, the council voted 6-0 to approve the issuance. Council Member Dawn Oliphant was not present at the meeting. The bond recommendation was presented to the town council on Oct. 16.

"We know this is a really big decision and a lot of work and time has gone into it," Vice Mayor Leah Martineau said. "So thanks ... for taking what we are needing in our town and what we want as a council and trying to figure out how to make that happen."

The $75 million will be used to build a joint police and fire support facility, design a police headquarters with parking garage, a fleet facility, as well as new roads. The sale of the bonds will begin on Dec. 10.

The debt will be paid through impact and capacity fees, the operating budget, the 2% sales tax dedicated to transportation, and water and wastewater rates.

Annual payments on the debt are expected to range from $3 million to $7.5 million over the 30-year life of the debt, assuming an interest rate of 4.75%, according to a staff report.

“The primary objective is to spread these costs over multiple generations of taxpayers,” Scott McCarty, deputy town manager and chief financial officer for the town, told council members during the Oct. 16 meeting. “Everything (being built) is going to serve residents and businesses today and residents and businesses literally over the next 20 or 30 years. We want everybody paying their fair share.”

Over the next five years, the town plans to build an estimated $215 million worth of infrastructure, with $150 million of that financed through bonds. The issuance of those bonds has been broken into two portions — the $75 million approved on Wednesday and a second $75 million issuance set for 2026, the staff report stated.

“It’s really going to be your next wave of projects over the next two or three years,” McCarty said at the Oct. 16 meeting. “Over the next 10 years we’re going to spend over $800 million building projects and of those the most important right now … are the joint training facility and then just continuing the building of our major roads.”

In 2023, the council adopted a police master plan that identified “the major infrastructure the police department needs to meet the town council’s adopted level of service,” the staff report stated.

“From the day we started (we had) 64 officers and nine professional staff,” Queen Creek Police Chief Randy Brice told the council at the Oct. 16 meeting. “Today, we’re authorized at 158, but then you start looking ahead, and the projection for the next three years, we’re looking at about a 25 increase (in personnel) a year which comes up to another 75 individuals between the sworn and professional staff. So, you’re talking about 233 people that we’ll have in just a few years, and we are out of space right now.”

In August, the council approved leasing more than 9,600 square feet at a local industrial spot to provide additional space for the police department.

The department’s current operations are also conducted primarily out of the Community Chambers/Law Enforcement Facility, 20727 E. Civic Parkway, and the upper floor of Communiversity, 21740 S.s Ellsworth Road.

In 2016, the town council adopted a transportation master plan “and has been building the new roads identified in that document at a very aggressive pace ever since,” the staff report stated.

“The reward for doing the good job at building good roads is you have more roads to build and right now, we actually are conducting the third update for the transportation master plan that should conclude summer of 2025,” Mohamed Youssef, public works director, told the council on Oct. 16.

The bonds will be used to complete two major street projects. Hawes Road from Ocotillo to Rittenhouse roads will widened to five lanes and will include a roundabout, pavement, sidewalks, drainage management, traffic signal, roadway lighting, markings and signs.

The second major road project — Ryan Road from Crismon to Signal Butte roads — will have three lanes and include an off-street bike lane.

We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org.