For months, Surprise residents and concerned members of neighboring communities have stood at city council meetings and asked the same questions. What happens to emergency response when a federal detention facility opens across the street from a chemical warehouse? What happens to detainees if there is a release at that warehouse? How does a detention facility impact local hospitals, a water supply that is already stretched, a police and fire system that already runs thin? For months, the answer to several of these issues from the dais was silence, deflection, or a shrug. Residents raising these alarms were dismissed as outside agitators, and the public was told most of Surprise was fine with the facility.
Then we found out what these same officials say when the public is not in the room.
On Monday, June 29, Mayor Kevin Sartor and the Surprise City Council met privately with Senator Ruben Gallego and staff from his office and Senator Mark Kelly’s. Northwest Valley Indivisible spoke directly with someone who was there. Separately, Councilmember Chris Judd shared much of the same account with one of our members.
Behind those closed doors, they agreed with us. Point for point. The Rinchem chemical hazard. The strain a detention facility puts on emergency response. The impossibility of evacuating detainees if there is a release next door. They also brought up the added pressure on local hospitals. The water supply. Even the challenge of managing protests. The city is now gathering data on all of it for Senator Gallego, and the council backed a plan of action: Gallego will carry that information along with our concerns to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and press him to reconsider opening the facility.
Think about that. The entire council has spent months ignoring our most serious concerns, Rinchem, evacuation, public safety. Those are the exact concerns they walked into a private meeting and validated, one by one, to a United States senator.
No one should grasp the danger we’ve brought up better than Mayor Sartor. His full-time job is Safety Coordinator for Dysart Schools. Dysart High School sits about six-tenths of a mile from this site. In public, the mayor has stayed carefully neutral. In that private meeting, according to Councilmember Judd, he did not merely go along. He championed closing the facility. The man paid to keep children safe next door knows exactly how real the danger is. But he refused to acknowledge it to the parents in the district.
Here is the question Surprise residents deserve answered. If the mayor and the council believe these concerns are serious enough to carry to a United States senator, why have they spent months refusing to address many of them in public? Why has the city never once put the chemical warehouse concerns on an agenda and said out loud what it said behind closed doors?
For months, the people raising these alarms were dismissed as outside agitators. Then, the moment the doors closed, the mayor and council adopted their entire argument. You cannot tell your base the city is fine with this detention facility while you quietly work to shut it down. That is not leadership. It is trying to win both sides of the same bet.
We are glad the council is finally taking action. Now do it in the open.
Here is what concerned community members can do right now. Call Mayor Sartor and every member of the city council, and ask them for one specific thing: put the June 29 meeting on the agenda at the next public council meeting, as a discussion and action item, with time for public comment. Residents have a right to hear, in public, what city officials told a United States senator behind closed doors.
- Mayor Kevin Sartor: 623-222-1313
- District 1, Nick Haney: 623-222-1321
- District 2, Earle Greenberg: 623-222-1322
- District 3, Patrick Duffy: 623-222-1323
- District 4, Johnny Melton: 623-222-1324
- District 5, Jack Hastings: 623-222-1325
- District 6, Chris Judd: 623-222-1326
Keep it short. You can say: “I am a Surprise resident [or concerned member of a neighboring community]. I am asking the mayor and council to put the June 29 meeting with Senator Gallego on the next council agenda, with public comment. We have a right to hear in public what you said in private.”
The families near this facility have waited long enough. Officials who take these concerns seriously only when no one is watching owe this city a meeting where everyone can watch.
A correction on two earlier statements. We have previously said the city requested this meeting and asked for help closing the facility. To keep the record straight: we were told that the meeting was requested by Senator Kelly’s and Senator Gallego’s offices, and the city did not, in those words, ask for help shutting the facility down. What it did do is agree with our concerns and back the action item described above.
Photo Credit: City of Surprise