El Mirage voters said no to City Hall, police expansion. Elected officials are moving ahead anyway

Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this article gave an incorrect date for when the El Mirage City Council approved the city's budget.

El Mirage is forging ahead with projects to add more space to City Hall and its police station despite widespread objections from voters.

They were asked last year whether the city could take out a $41.5 million bond and raise property taxes.

The funds would have expedited the city's plans of expanding its existing City Hall and police station, neither more than 10 years old, and building a new city courthouse and fire station. That meant the city wouldn't have to wait years to complete the projects until it had budgeted enough money.

The projects, city officials said, were meant to accommodate El Mirage’s anticipated growth.

Voters, however, overwhelmingly rejected the measure, with more than 81% of them saying no.

It sent a “loud and clear message,” said Councilmember Anita Norton-McDaniel.

“It wasn’t just that (voters) didn’t want to pay more taxes … they just didn’t want to see (their taxes) spent on those types of projects,” she said. “They couldn’t understand it.”

Months after that decisive vote, the city is proceeding with the two expansion projects.

City leaders had asked that those projects be added to El Mirage’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget as part of the capital improvement plan — the slate of projects to construct, maintain, or update public facilities and infrastructure in the coming years.

They approved the budget last week in a 6-1 decision, with Norton-McDaniel casting the dissenting vote.

For the next five fiscal years, the city is budgeting over $61.6 million for capital improvement projects, nearly $9 million of which will be spent on the expansions. Cities have a general fund for annual operations and services and a separate capital projects fund for facility improvements.

First, the city is earmarking $773,00 in the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1, for the projects' design. Nearly $8.2 million in construction costs will be set aside in Fiscal Year 2026.

The need for public safety and city facility improvements were outlined in recent studies and included in the previous fiscal year budget, city spokesperson Kari Silva said.

The reports showed that the police department had outgrown its existing building, while the city’s aging courthouse was too small to handle personnel and visitors.

Another study found that a second fire station would improve the department’s response times in the southern part of the city.

El Mirage Fire Department, at El Mirage and Thunderbird roads, meets the National Fire Protection Association standards of responding to most calls within four minutes in the northern part of the city.

While there wasn’t a “serious gap in service” when covering the city’s south and east ends, there was a gap nonetheless. A second fire station in south El Mirage, the study suggested, would allow the department to maintain the four-minute response time in both halves of the city.

And like the police station, space at City Hall has gotten tighter over the years with a growing staff, Silva said.

“It was constructed to allow for 10% expansion,” she said. “But we’ve hit that.”

Mayor Alexis Hermosillo did not respond to numerous requests for comment this week. Other council members didn’t immediately answer calls.

What projects would the bond money have funded?

The four projects the city had hoped to complete with the $41.5 million bond measure included:

• The construction of a 17,000-square-foot fire station on 2.5 acres of land in the southern part of the city, costing $18.5 million.

• Expansion of the city’s police station by 5,000 square feet at a $3 million cost.

• Construction of a new 18,000-square-foot courthouse next to the new fire station, costing $14 million.

• Expansion of city hall by 8,500 square feet for $6 million.

To pay for the debt incurred from the bond, the city would have also raised secondary property taxes, with rates varying based on property values.

The total cost of the bonds, including interest, was estimated to be about $75.13 million.

Why did the city want the projects?

The projects were intended to accommodate the city’s growth and the increasing staff at City Hall and the police station.

El Mirage had 35,805 residents tallied in the 2020 Census. According to the Maricopa Association of Government’s estimates for 2023, it grew to 36,536, a 2% increase.

MAG projects El Mirage’s population to grow another 3.5% by 2030, reaching 37,825.

El Mirage City Hall, a 22,000-square-foot facility at El Mirage and Mountain View roads, was completed in late 2016 for $7.6 million. It represented a considerable improvement from the city’s previous digs, a strip mall building.

When the new headquarters opened in early 2017, it accommodated 30 employees.

As of 2023, 40 employees worked there, according to Silva. By 2043, she said, the city anticipates its staff to grow to 60.

Adapting to the staff increases, the city converted storage areas and conference rooms into office space. During elections, when City Hall serves as a vote center, council meetings are moved over to the police department’s community room.

“When you consider the fact that moving those kinds of meetings involves not just rearranging chairs, but audio-visual, those kinds of things, it becomes more labor intensive and complicated and technical,” Silva said this week.

Similarly, she said, the police station saw its staff grow since 2013 when the department started using its station. At that time, the department had 57 employees and two volunteers. Last year, it had 82 employees and three volunteers.

But, the study continued, the 20,000-square-foot facility was “already surpassing its useful capacity,” and should be expanded by 5,000 square feet, or 25%.

“These (projects) are based on where we anticipate the needs in services expanding,” Silva said.

Why did voters reject these projects?

El Mirage Citizens Against Bond 2023 was the opposition group, encouraging residents to vote no.

The group argued that the “proposed projects represent wasteful, runaway, and unnecessary spending of our tax dollars.”

Regarding the police station and City Hall, the group noted that both buildings were relatively new after being built in 2013 and 2016, respectively. Both were also completed with anticipated growth already in mind, the group added.

“These new buildings and expansions of existing buildings would be frivolous spending of our tax dollars, and put an even greater burden on us for the next 30 years,” the group said in the bond’s informational materials.

El Mirage resident Scottie Gentry was the treasurer of the group. She’s now among the seven candidates vying for one of the three open council seats in the July 30 election.

Three incumbents, Vice Mayor David Shapera and Councilmembers Roy Delgado and Bob Jones are seeking reelection.

Gentry did not respond to requests seeking comment.

How did the projects get added to the budget?

The council met for a workshop session in late January to discuss the proposed projects in the capital improvement plan.

Initially, Norton-McDaniel recalled, the plan presented to the council members didn’t include the projects from the failed bond. It had projects for city departments to maintain or improve services.

“I supported those, I agreed with those projects,” she said.

Near the end of the meeting, she said, some of her colleagues asked to see the two expansion projects included.

“During that meeting, I did not give my stamp of approval on it,” Norton-McDaniel said.

“I was actually shocked and not really happy when I was hearing this,” she added. “I was surprised that they would even be discussing this in light of less than two months prior to this there was a very strong voice from the citizens.”

How is the city paying for these projects without bond money?

Without the bond money, the city will dip into its coffers to pay for the two expansion projects.

The city had already planned to do so, as the capital improvement plan for the current fiscal year included the four bond projects. The council had approved the slate of projects after calling for the special bond election.

Getting the voters’ approval for the bond meant the city would have had the funds to pay for the projects “now” and “pay for it over time,” rather than waiting until the money became available, Silva explained.

“The more time that passes, then those needs continue, the need does not go away,” she said. “So those needs continue to grow as the city grows.”

Shawn Raymundo covers the West Valley cities of Glendale, Peoria and Surprise. Reach him at [email protected] or follow him on X @ShawnzyTsunami.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: El Mirage leaders pass budget to fund failed bond measure projects