Transparency in our Town
Unwavering Commitment to Transparency:
I believe Gilbert residents should be able to see, in plain English and in an easy to use interface, where their money goes, what we owe, what we pay in interest, and what results we’re getting for it.
Budget Clarity that Matches Real Life:
I will push for a resident-first “Gilbert Checkbook + Budget Map” website that translates our budget, bonds, and capital projects into a simple, searchable dashboard that anyone can understand.
Accountability for Debt and Major Projects:
When we choose cash versus bonds, residents deserve a clear explanation of the tradeoffs, including what interest costs us over time and what projects that debt is actually building. I will push to use our cash budgets as much as possible and stretch our dollars as far as they can possibly go.
Respect for Taxpayers and Utility Customers:
With rising costs tied to water, wastewater, and infrastructure, Gilbert must communicate the “why,” the “how much,” and the “what you get” in a way that is continuous, transparent, and easy to scrutinize.
Gilbert is already managing big, real-dollar decisions that directly hit families and businesses, and the numbers are not small. The Town adopted a Fiscal Year 2026 budget presented as $2.46 billion, including $1.67 billion allocated for capital improvement projects, with major commitments like $652 million for water system improvements and $400 million for street infrastructure. Those figures may be justified, but most residents do not have the time to dig through budget books, PDFs, and meeting packets to understand what’s happening. That gap is exactly where distrust grows, even when people are acting in good faith. Nationally, large majorities say transparency and access to government decisions is essential, and they’re asking for better digital tools that let them see and track what government is doing.
Water and infrastructure are the clearest examples of why this needs to be simpler and more direct in Gilbert. On wastewater alone, Gilbert publicly presented funding options that include either an all-cash approach or a phased cash/bond mix that would use a $110 million bond, explicitly noting that the bond option requires the Town to pay interest on the debt. Separately, the Town has been working through multi-year utility adjustments, including a planned multi-year water rate adjustment that began in 2024 and continued into late 2025 deliberations. Residents should not have to hunt across multiple pages to connect those dots: rates, capital plans, debt, and long-term operating costs belong in one place, presented in one consistent format, with plain-language explanations. If we’re asking households to pay more, we owe them clarity that is immediate and complete.
My proposal is a Gilbert “Where the Money Goes” website designed for normal people, not finance professionals, and built around the questions voters actually ask. Gilbert already has strong building blocks like its budget document library and its performance management dashboards portal, plus an open data initiative; the problem is that these tools are not yet organized around the resident’s mental model of “what am I paying, what are we building, what do we owe, and how are we doing.” The site I’m proposing would translate the budget into snapshots (total budget, general fund vs. utilities, capital plan), a debt page (bond list, debt service, interest paid, payoff timelines), and a project map (each project’s budget, status, timeline, and funding source). It would also include a “Top Drivers” section for the big-ticket areas Gilbert is actively investing in, including water and streets, and it would show progress updates using the same performance-dashboard style the Town is already moving toward. Most importantly, it would make scrutiny normal: if a project is delayed, over budget, or reprioritized, the change should be visible, dated, and explained without spin.
