Pinal Today

Coolidge Mayor Jon Thompson and three city council members were sworn in for their new terms at a ceremony on Nov. 28, Thompson's third term as mayor.

Adriana Saavedra unseated incumbent Tina Kaufman by a 245-vote margin in November, and Thomas Bagnall won a seat by defeating five other candidates in August. Thompson ran unopposed, and council member Tatiana Murrieta earned her third seat on the council by winning a majority in August. During the ceremony, plaques were given to Kaufman and Benjamin Navarro, who resigned from council in May to lead the city’s Public Works Department.

“Thank you for your years of service, Mr. Navarro; you did an excellent job on council — as did Tina,” Thompson said, according to the Coolidge Examiner. “The council that you were on accomplished a number of things. A lot of it was the infrastructure around the city: The sewer, the intersections, the paving, just so many things that the council has done in the last four years.”

Thompson gave the new members a word of warning about the demands -- and consequences -- of public service.

“You’re going to find out the same way that we all did that’s there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. It’s not all glamour like you think," he told the Coolidge Examiner. "You know, you’re going to go to the store and everybody wants to buy you stuff and be your friend, it’s not going to happen. As a matter of fact, you’ll have less friends."

Navarro called his time on the council "eye-opening" and added that the council's dedication should never be doubted.

“Saying that nobody up there does anything? Absolutely untrue,” he said, according to the Coolidge Examiner. “I can say that every person up there absolutely cares what goes on in this town and does their very best for this town.”

In other business, Coolidge Transit Manager Erik Heet presented a route optimization study to the council for the Central Arizona Regional Transit system (CART). Heet submitted the final draft for approval after roughly a month of input by the council and the CART Board.

Thompson asked Heet if the city would receive backlash for an approval that went against the wishes of the CART board. City finance director Gabe Garcia said the final draft had already gone through approval with CART’s stakeholders.

“We wouldn’t bring anything to you, unless it had full support,” Garcia told Thompson, according to the Coolidge Examiner.