Tempe advances Mill Avenue redesign with fifth tree species, approves public art underpass project

Tempe Council Advances Streetscape Redesign, Selects Railway Underpass Artist, and Unanimously Backs Source-of-Income Fair-Housing Ordinance

Tempe City Council's October 20 work session tackled three ambitious projects that reflect the city's competing priorities: downtown aesthetic transformation, public art activation, and housing equity. In a series of unanimous consensus decisions (no formal roll-call votes required), the council approved moving the Mill Avenue streetscape project forward with a fifth tree species after state water regulators blocked Ficus trees; advanced a nationally recognized artist's dynamic public art installation beneath the railway bridge; and endorsed—with strong personal testimony—an ordinance to ban source-of-income discrimination in housing rentals, setting it on track for final passage November 30.

The work session drew more than a dozen public speakers on housing, including formerly homeless residents, single mothers on disability, and advocacy organizations, who framed the source-of-income ordinance as a matter of survival in an overheated Arizona rental market. One property owner also spoke, warning against regulations he characterized as limiting landlord autonomy. All council members—including those with personal experience of housing insecurity—signaled strong support for the ordinance, particularly Berdetta Hodge, who disclosed she had lived on Section 8 housing earlier in her life.

Mill Avenue Streetscape: Navigating Water Restrictions and Community Vision

The half-mile Mill Avenue streetscape project (from Rio Salado northward to University Drive) has evolved into a complex design exercise combining infrastructure replacement, shade expansion, stormwater management, and community storytelling. Shelley Syler, interim engineering and transportation director, and Eric Iverson, sustainability and resilience director, led a detailed presentation on the project's progress and its collision with state water policy.

The project team had previously won council approval for a four-tree palette—Tipu, Ghost Gum, Fruitless Olive, and Mastic/Evergreen Pistache—after extensive public outreach that garnered feedback from residents across Tempe. But in late summer, the Arizona Department of Water Resources sent a letter recommending against Ficus trees due to their water consumption during the region's severe drought and heat events. The Ficus, a beloved icon on Mill Avenue for decades, had itself suffered significant losses this summer; staff reported 50+ tree locations currently bare and visible gaps in canopy along the street.

To address the ADWR guidance and replace the Ficus's aesthetic function, the team proposed a fifth species: Pistache Red Push, a hybrid tree described as tall, urban-adapted, and heat-tolerant, with the architectural form and shade-casting properties residents had valued in the Ficus. The team presented existing examples on Fifth Street (in front of the Tempe Police Courts Building) and on Eighth Street near the Valor building—specimens 10–12 years old and beginning to deliver the canopy effect.

"We are advancing and asking for your support for us to work with the species that you see here, it's the Pistache tree, Pistache Red Push, a hybrid tree, and you can see here two examples of it in our city." — Eric Iverson, Sustainability and Resilience Director

Jeff Vasquez, landscape architect at J2 design, elaborated on the below-sidewalk infrastructure: a "silver cell system" of recycled polyethylene designed to enable root growth, stormwater harvesting, and green infrastructure while supporting larger, healthier trees over the long term. The sidewalk treatment itself will feature brick (traditional in character but new in installation) interspersed at intersections with more vibrant colored paving and lithomosaic details—designed to celebrate Tempe's indigenous heritage, music history, and evolving cultural identity.

Councilmember Jennifer Adams, who has championed trees-for-Tempe messaging, voiced enthusiasm:

"I've been hoping for a new look downtown for many years actually, so I'm super excited about this... I really like the red push. I think that's that's really pretty." — Vice Mayor Jennifer Adams

Councilmember Hajj reported an unexpected spillover benefit: the presentation had inspired Tempe Union High School students to organize tree-planting initiatives at Corona High School and other district campuses. She requested that staff provide students with lists of water-efficient, heat-tolerant species suitable for school planting.

Councilmember Devar, while acknowledging the loss of the Ficus with some personal regret, asked about preservation of dedication plaques and band names currently embedded in Mill Avenue's sidewalk. The team responded that corners of the new design are being reserved for lithomosaic or other treatments to continue telling Tempe's cultural story, and that a design showing the tree placement and potential for memorials will be shared before year's end.

Construction is targeted for March 2024. Staff is finalizing 60% design plans and will return with a full tree-placement layout, incorporating all five species in a rhythm designed for visual cohesion.

Mill Avenue Underpass: Dichroic Art and Dynamic Light

Brendan Hart, public art manager (title not fully stated in opening but implied from context), introduced the second major project: a public art installation in the railway underpass spanning Broadway to 14th Street—a stretch Hart called "a little bit tired, lacking in character" despite its gateway role to ASU's iconic Gamage building (Frank Lloyd Wright) and downtown.

The artist selection process drew 94 submissions from across the country. A panel of arts, design, engineering, and community representatives, plus a member of the Tempe Arts and Culture Commission, narrowed the field to four finalists. In August, those artists visited the site and met with Tempe Union High School and neighborhood representatives. In late September, the panel interviewed the finalists and recommended Joseph O'Connell, an Arizona-based artist working with his firm Creative Machines.

Rebecca Bloom Rothman, public art manager, presented O'Connell's concept: a series of linear sculptures fashioned from steel and dichroic plexiglass—a material that shifts color depending on light angle and time of day, similar to a hummingbird's iridescence. The effect means pedestrians and drivers passing through multiple times daily will experience a different visual impression each time, as sunlight drives the color changes. O'Connell brought a full-scale model to the panel interviews and even used a flashlight to demonstrate how color shifts throughout the day.

"Dichroic plexiglass, a Plexi, is similar to a hummingbird wing where it changes color depending on how the light reflects on it, um what time of day it hits, and so what you're looking at are images that are colored pieces but also reflections along the wall." — Rebecca Bloom Rothman, Public Art Manager

Critically for the timeline and budget, O'Connell demonstrated extensive experience with the material and similar projects nationwide, a full existing staff team, and the ability to deliver within the city's schedule and constraints.

Berdetta Hodge asked about the aging underpass wall—its dingy tan with exposed aggregate. Rothman noted that power washing and cleanup would occur as part of the process, and that surrounding landscaping and the vibrant artwork itself would distract from or contextualize the wall. Councilmember Devar pushed further, suggesting an off-white paint treatment might heighten the artwork's impact; Rothman said it's "on the table to be looked at in design development" but acknowledged the wall's material composition (aggregate) complicates color changes.

A proposal to explore nighttime lighting as a potential Phase 2 was embraced by Rothman and Hart, though they cautioned about dark-sky ordinance compliance and railroad coordination. Councilmember Devar floated the possibility of lighting the pavement beneath the bridge or expanding the footprint over time, as long as it doesn't compromise the original design.

The timeline calls for a public meeting with O'Connell during design development, followed by construction. The Tempe Arts and Culture Commission chair noted this was "one of the most robust and insightful processes" she had participated in; the commission gave "wholehearted endorsement."

Construction details, material longevity (dichroic plexiglass carries up to a 10-year warranty), and maintenance were addressed. O'Connell, based in Arizona and familiar with the material in Southwest conditions, can handle repairs if damage occurs. No formal votes were required; council consensus was clear.

Capital Improvement Program Quarterly Update

Julian Dang, city engineer, presented the CIP's quarterly status: 222 active projects in varying stages (study, planning, design, construction), 394 active contracts, and 20 pending projects yet to be assigned. A mix of water, parks, transportation, and general governmental funds support the program.

Highlights included:

• Ranas Recreation Center pool slide: Replacement complete; useful-life end-of-life addressed.
• Optimus Park neighborhood pavement: Before-and-after images showed community street investment.
• North Tempe waterline replacement: Active construction in neighborhoods where water breaks are expected; includes golf course infrastructure work.
• Fire Station 2 (Hardy north of Southern): Two-phase reconstruction to maintain continuity of service; estimated completion May 2025.
• Pedestrian/bicycle signals: Kiarena Canal at Warner and Western Canal at Guadalupe, completing design; construction expected early 2024.
• Western Canal trail connections: Bridges and access improvements linking Grand Canal, Crosscut Canal, and Mill Avenue Light Rail, with ADA access enhancements.
• ADA self-evaluation and transition plan: Phase three nearing completion; public process to identify and remove barriers to community access.

Jennifer Adams asked about pavement quality index improvements; Dang acknowledged the team would follow up but noted that inflation (30–35% cost increases over recent years) has eroded the purchasing power of the CIP budget, though inflation appears to be leveling now at single-digit annual increases going forward.

Councilmember Devar inquired about the Roosevelt stormwater project (North Tempe flooding): Dang confirmed active design in partnership with Scottsdale and the flood control district, and committed to follow up on construction timeline.

Councilmember Devar also raised the distinction between Hawk signals (flashing pedestrian crossing lights) and standard traffic signals at the Western Canal/Guadalupe location, noting that Hawk signals in her neighborhood allow drivers to proceed if no pedestrian is present, whereas a full signal holds traffic longer. Dang agreed to provide the traffic engineering team's decision rationale in writing.

The next quarterly update is scheduled for February 8, 2024.

Source of Income Discrimination: Path to First Reading and Final Vote

The evening's most emotionally charged segment featured testimony from more than a dozen speakers—housing advocates, individuals with lived experience of homelessness and housing insecurity, and one landlord—on a proposed ordinance to add source of income to Tempe's existing fair-housing nondiscrimination provisions.

Annie Masella, Council Aid to Berdetta Hodge, and Sapan Alidad, Council Aid, presented the ordinance framework. "Source of income" is defined as any lawful income source—housing vouchers (Section 8), SSI disability, child support, Social Security retirement, employment income, etc.—that is verifiable as to amount, regularity, and duration. The ordinance would prohibit landlords from refusing to rent based solely on the form of income, though landlords retain the right to screen applicants on credit history, criminal background, eviction record, landlord references, and other standard rental criteria.

The enforcement process is explicitly education-first:

1. Complaint received by Tempe's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) office.
2. DEI contacts the landlord to educate and mediate.
3. If unresolved, a third-party fair-housing organization (Southwest Fair Housing Council or Arizona Housing Coalition) conducts mediation.
4. If still unresolved, the DEI office, in coordination with the city attorney, may levy fines.

Alidad emphasized:

"Education cooperation negotiation mediation are key to what we are proposing as a point of framework." — Sapan Alidad, Council Aid

The city's Housing Services Department has documented that Tempe housing-choice voucher holders struggle to find rental units despite having vouchers—a gap this ordinance aims to close. Phoenix passed a similar ordinance in spring 2023; Tucson enacted one in September 2022. Both cities reference education and mediation as primary enforcement levers, with investigation and penalties as last resort.

Public Comment: Housing Insecurity and Landlord Rights

The public-comment period lasted roughly 40 minutes, with speakers addressing both support and concerns.

Support speakers included:

• Kevin Cargos, ASU student working with homeless-outreach organizations, noted that 363 homeless individuals in Tempe are on fixed income (disability, SSI), rejected by landlords unwilling to rent to fixed-income tenants. The ordinance expands their options "from whoever will take them to whatever they can afford."

• Sebastian Deltio, campaign coordinator for Unemployed Workers United, spoke of the disproportionate risk to Black single mothers and working-class people, and urged council to protect residents as the city builds new developments.

• Arnob Kabir, self-described homeless advocate, framed source-of-income discrimination as illogical—"refusing to eat an apple because the farmer who grew it has a broken leg"—and called out the Rio Salado riverbed clearance as displacing the most vulnerable without adequate follow-up.

• Evelyn Castillo, first-generation organizer and former homeless person, recounted becoming unhoused at age seven, experiencing multiple displacements, and being forced to drop out of college due to unaffordable rent. She credited the ordinance with opening pathways to stability.

• Misha Fish, Social Security recipient and autism-spectrum woman, shared traumatic experiences of street homelessness—exposure to extreme heat and cold, police harassment, false imprisonment for 35 days, theft of her late husband's ashes from her belongings. She described three-and-a-half-year waits for housing-voucher placement and the psychological toll of PTSD.

• Zenia Arona, field director of Rent is Too High campaign, framed source-of-income discrimination as a proxy for racial discrimination, since the majority of voucher recipients are people of color.

• Andrea Cervantes, community organizer with Unemployed Workers United, called housing a fundamental human right and emphasized that the ordinance benefits residents already in Tempe.

• Erica Rees, virtual speaker, a homeowner and junior-enrichment program volunteer, shared stories of a former program graduate (Black single mother) now homeless and seeking to return to Tempe; a retaliation eviction of a Black family after safety complaints; and spoke as a landlord willing to support the ordinance despite having "assumed the risk" of renting to unknown persons.

• Stephanie Gonzalez Espinosa, virtual speaker, noted rent increases from $900 to $1,900 during her ASU tenure and friends sleeping in cars, urging the council to prioritize housing justice.

• Zakaya Johnson read testimony on behalf of Chrissy Stanford, a 49-year-old SSI-disabled widow whose husband was murdered in a Tempe apartment parking lot in 2020, whose 23-year-old daughter serves as her paid caregiver while working a second job, and who is trapped in an inadequate one-bedroom apartment with rent inflated to $1,700 due to landlord neglect and lack of alternatives.

Opposition:

• Todd Green, Tempe resident, expressed sympathy for housing hardship but argued the ordinance infringes on property rights. He warned that landlords with accessory dwelling units might face immediate pressure to rent to voucher holders, and that public opposition to the ordinance—like his own speech—could theoretically be used as evidence of discrimination if a rejected voucher holder later filed a complaint. He urged the council to seek "holistic community solutions" (more housing construction, entrepreneurship) rather than regulation.

Council Response

Councilmember Berdetta Hodge opened with personal disclosure:

"I was on Section 8 into the city of Tempe, so to know to understand where you come from, yes I do. I get it. It is a part of me and it's a part that I'm proud of, because now I sit here today and I can help people that start off like I did... I remember when I've been shut out because I had a Section 8 voucher. So I do understand." — Councilmember Bretta Hodge

Councilmember Kevin King called it "a no-brainer" and credited the staff and speakers for moving the issue forward after months of community input.

Vice Mayor Jennifer Adams praised the phased enforcement approach—education and mediation before penalties—and the extensive stakeholder collaboration.

Councilmember Arlene Chin clarified that the ordinance is not a mandate to rent, but rather a removal of economic discrimination as a barrier, allowing landlords to apply other standard criteria.

Councilmember Randy Keating, who brought the item to the agenda after Phoenix's passage, expressed support and noted he had been campaigning on affordable housing since 2008:

"I've never understood... how you could even have the ability... [you've] got $12 in your wallet... whether that comes in the form of actual like US currency or it comes in the form of a voucher, what is doesn't matter. The person who's renting the home or the place is still getting paid. So why should you be able to discriminate against someone based on what form of payment they actually use? It makes zero sense to me." — Councilmember Randy Keating

Councilmember Juan Navarro asked staff to research Tucson's human relations commission role in enforcement and to clarify whether Tempe might mirror that model (routing final enforcement through an advisory commission rather than the city attorney alone). Staff agreed to research further and report before the first reading.

No formal vote was taken. The council issued unanimous consensus to move the ordinance forward to first reading October 26, 2023, with final vote and passage November 30, 2023.

Other Notable Items

School Tree Initiative: Councilmember Hajj reported that the Mill Avenue streetscape presentation inspired Tempe Union High School students to organize tree-planting at Corona High School and other campuses, with potential involvement from Kyrene High School students. Staff will provide tree-selection guidance to schools.

Future Agenda Items: Councilmember Gardland requested a staff study on whether Tempe Community Council's funding ($1.1 million annually, unchanged for eight years) should be indexed to inflation given rising service costs. The city manager agreed to explore this ahead of a November 2 financial forecast update. Councilmember King requested a presentation on the HOPE (homeless outreach program), having observed recent field work and wishing to brief the full council.

Controversies and Context

ADWR Water Restrictions: The state letter banning Ficus trees from approved species for water-conservation reasons forced a design pivot and raised questions about the city's ability to navigate state environmental policy against community and aesthetic preferences. The project team successfully reframed the constraint as an opportunity to introduce a new, equally-functional species rather than retreat from the streetscape vision.

Source-of-Income Ordinance: Property Rights vs. Housing Justice: While the ordinance passed without dissent, Todd Green's testimony articulated a recurring concern in housing-policy debates: whether nondiscrimination rules constitute an unjust taking of landlord autonomy. The city's education-first enforcement model—including mediation and third-party negotiation before penalties—was designed to address this concern, though ideological disagreement persists about whether economic screening and income-source screening are truly separable or whether the ordinance merely disguises one under the banner of the other.

The testimony from formerly homeless and currently housing-insecure residents underscored the human stakes: SSI recipients, voucher holders, and people of color face systematic exclusion from rental markets; homelessness, in Tempe and regionally, is concentrated among seniors and people with disabilities. The ordinance frames source-of-income protection as a civil-rights issue—a logical extension of existing fair-housing law—rather than as a market intervention.

Rio Salado Riverbed Clearance: Arnob Kabir's mention of the 2016–2017 Rio Salado homeless encampment evacuation and the city's Housing Services outreach efforts raised a longer arc of concern: whether the city has adequately tracked or rehoused displaced persons, or whether clearance without sufficient downstream support merely scattered the most vulnerable into other areas.

Duration and Attendance

The work session lasted approximately 3.5 hours (call to order through adjournment). The council chamber appeared moderately populated during public comment, with standing room and virtual attendance via Microsoft Teams. No formal attendance count was provided in the transcript.

Vote Breakdown

Mill Avenue Streetscape Tree-Species Approval:

• No formal roll-call vote taken.
• Unanimous consensus (all council members present in agreement).

Mill Avenue Underpass Public Art Selection:

• No formal roll-call vote taken.
• Unanimous consensus.

Source of Income Discrimination Ordinance (Move to First Reading):

• No formal roll-call vote taken.
• Unanimous consensus.

Individual council members were named or implied in support (Berdetta Hodge, King, Jennifer Adams, Randy Keating, Arlene Chin, Navarro, Garland); no abstentions or dissents were recorded.

Outcome and Next Steps

1. Mill Avenue Streetscape: Staff authorized to proceed with design incorporating five tree species. Detailed tree-placement layout and streetscape details (including memorial/cultural storytelling opportunities) to be brought back to council before year's end. Construction targeted for March 2024.

2. Mill Avenue Underpass Public Art: Artist Joseph O'Connell advancing to design development. Public meeting with artist planned to refine dichroic plexiglass sculpture placement and explore nighttime lighting as potential Phase 2. No completion timeline stated in transcript, but phasing and coordination with Tempe High and hospital traffic expected.

3. Source of Income Discrimination Ordinance: First reading October 26, 2023. Second reading and formal vote November 30, 2023. If passed, enforcement via DEI office with education, mediation, and third-party fair-housing involvement as primary mechanisms; city attorney and fines as final resort.

4. Capital Improvement Program: Quarterly updates to continue; next scheduled for February 8, 2024. Staff to follow up on Roosevelt stormwater project timeline, traffic signal decision rationale, Tempe Community Council inflation-indexing, and HOPE program briefing.