MAYOR MONTHLY REPORT
NOVEMBER 2025
FIRST 48 HOURS: Looking back to the evening of September 26th, when the disastrous flooding struck our community, it still feels unreal. I remember leaving my home the moment I heard what was happening. The highway was already closed with traffic backed up. I was allowed to go through after the water receded.
Driving towards downtown, the damage became obvious reaching the area near the Chamber of Commerce. Vehicles, tanks, debris, everything that didn’t stand a chance against the water, was scattered along the highway like broken pieces of a life we had all taken for granted just hours earlier. I’ll never forget the sight of the cars from Courtesy Ford, swept completely out of their lot.
Turning onto the entrance into downtown, the destruction along N. Broad St. hit me the hardest. Businesses that had stood strong for decades, some for generations, were now ripped open, their contents spilled onto Broad Street. All the investments, the long hours, the family histories built into those storefronts seemed to be washed away in a single night. I remember wondering how we could possibly recover from this, how a community built over so many years could rebuild after losing so much, so quickly.
The fire station was already active in search and rescue operations as I arrived. Fire and Police personnel moved with urgency and purpose, their focus cutting through the chaos. I met up with City Manager Paul Jepson, who was already at the station. We immediately began discussing what needed to happen next, what steps we could take in the middle of this rapidly unfolding disaster.
Before long, we made our way to City Hall to draft a social media post to help calm the community’s growing concerns online. From there, we began working on plans for a morning council meeting and preparing the documents needed to declare a local state of emergency.
We spent the rest of the night walking through the downtown area, assessing the damage until around three in the morning. Just a few hours later, by 7am, we were back out at Judy’s Cookhouse parking lot, which had become the staging area for incoming resources. Search and rescue efforts continued nonstop throughout the night by our local first responders along with support of teams from Maricopa and Pima, as well as a DPS helicopter. As conditions became clearer, the decision was made to bring in a Type 3 Incident Management Team to take over the coordination of search and rescue operations moving forward.
A council meeting was held at noon, where our emergency declaration was formally approved and signed. The Town of Miami and Gila County both issued their own declarations immediately after. All of them were forwarded to the Governor, who signed the state-level declaration without hesitation.
The secondary objective that morning was to get the highway and Broad Street cleared and stabilized enough to allow traffic to move again. Once the affected downtown area was officially opened, the response from the community was immediate and overwhelming. Volunteers poured in—arriving with shovels, wheelbarrows, heavy equipment, and whatever tools they could find. People who had lost so much themselves were standing shoulder to shoulder, ready to help begin the enormous task of cleaning up.
ON GOING RECOVERY: The work to stabilize our city to recovery has continued every single day since the flood. Your council has remained fully engaged, focused on the priorities that matter most to our community. Our city staff has been all hands-on deck - working tirelessly for weeks, with no days off and working extended hours every day.
The process has been challenging and, at times, deeply frustrating as we have been pushed to meet the deadlines, thresholds, guidelines, and requirements needed to ensure full reimbursement from DEMA and FEMA. City funds must be spent first in order to qualify for reimbursement. The state’s 75% reimbursement covers disaster related costs to public infrastructure damaged by the flood. If a FEMA declaration is approved, reimbursement could rise to 90%.
What happened in our community has forever changed how we plan for the future. We have witnessed the true potential of flooding from mother nature in our region and the serious risks it presents to our residents, infrastructure, and economy. Moving forward, we must take a comprehensive approach that considers every contributing factor—our changing climate, depth of our creeks, alterations to our waterways, and the impacts of the burn scars. Each of these elements influences how water flows through our community, and each must be addressed to strengthen our resilience and reduce the threat of future disasters. We want to assure our residents that council is fully committed to seeking the federal funds and support needed to protect and strengthen our city. We are actively working with our state and federal legislators—on a bipartisan basis—as well as partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.