Cathy Carlat was elected to the Peoria City Council in 2005. Ten years later she became the first female mayor of the city.

Carlat is “committed to cutting-edge public safety, attracting quality employment that embraces the workforce of tomorrow and leadership to strategically plan for a lasting economy.”��

She is involved with the Maricopa Association of Governments, Greater Phoenix Economic Council, Central Arizona Conservation Alliance and Flinn Foundation. She also serves as Secretary/Treasurer on the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association Board of Directors and Vice President of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns Executive Committee.

In 2018, Carlat was named one of the most influential women in Arizona by AZ Big Media.��

�鶹��ýӳ�� talked to Carlat about her time as mayor and where she hopes to see Peoria go in the future.��

Question: Why did you originally decide to run for mayor?
Answer: That’s just a great question, I ran for mayor for my kids. For the benefit of my children. I have two kids and at the time they were eight and 15 and I wanted to make sure that they could grow up in a city that was going to allow them to stay here. I wanted my kids to stay here. I wanted them to raise their families here and keep my grandkids here. Truthfully, cities are communities that are just all about families and I wanted my family close and I’m sure everybody else wants their family close, so we need to build a city that has places for them to work, places for them to go to school, places for them to take their kids to play ball and all of the things that are safe and warm about a community and I wanted those things for my kids.

Q: How have you worked to make Peoria a family community?
A: Oh, so many ways. You know, seriously, the first thing that you have to do to make sure that your city is benefiting families is to make sure it’s safe and that has always been a top priority of mine. You know, we’re a really, really fast-growing city and so when you’ve got all of this new growth and all these new roads and homes and all of those things, you really have to try to maintain that small-town feel that made people move here in the first place, that makes people love Peoria. So the way that you do that is by making sure that people can feel safe walking their dogs on the streets at night, that there’s a low crime rate and the perception of fear is just not there when you’re at home in Peoria.��

Q: What unique qualities do you think you bring to the office of mayor?
A: I’m Peoria’s first full-time mayor and of course, I bring big dreams and vision for the future, but I also bring a lot of experience. I have lived in communities before and I have seen the transformation that happens when a community is at its best and that is a complete city, what I call a complete city. It offers places for people to have gainful employment, it offers amenities where people can go outside and have a healthy lifestyle, so a complete community is what we are building and I have seen that happen in other places. You bring in corporations and they not only employ people but they contribute to the community, they donate to the schools and they support little league teams and they support arts and culture and they bring about the unique qualities. They help to bring about the unique qualities that are already existent in our residents.��

Q: Currently, what are your biggest priorities?
A: Economic development is a huge one for me, and so we spend a lot of time working to make sure that areas of our city have the correct infrastructure or expanded infrastructure so that we can attract employers and attract the kind of places that are going to perpetuate our families and give our families strength. That’s a big one for me is economic development. Also, the safety of communities is a really big deal. Making sure that we maintain the heritage that brought us to where we are right now. Our city started with one tiny square mile, and we’re sitting in that square mile right now, but we are currently 178 square miles. So with all of that geography, we need to remember what our roots are and retain that depth of what it means to be a Peoria resident, no matter how much we grow. So that’s a really big deal, making sure that we retain our unique character.��

So we’ve got economic development, we’ve got our heritage and we’ve of course got the safety that we need to have in our streets. I want to make sure that we do government right. That is an option for all of us in politics, for all of us in government. That we bring transparency and ethics to this job. It does not have to be government as usual, it does not have to be politics as usual. It can be about who we want the personality of our city to be. Cities take on personalities and I want this city to have an honest and ethical and straightforward background in representation of our citizens, it’s the way government should be done and that’s one of the things that I’m very passionate about.��

Q: Where do you see Peoria in the next five years?
A: Peoria is continuing to be a fast-growing city. So we have lots of home builders, lots of development that is coming to us. Five years is a very short period of time when it comes to the history of cities, but for us, one of the main things that I want to make sure that we do is not allow that growth to impede the beauty of our Sonoran desert. That it doesn’t overtake us, we have to preserve and conserve the things that matter most to us and will matter in the future. So if we need to change our general plan so that we are providing more open space, more parks and more trails for the future, that’s what I want to make sure that we do in the near term.��

Q: What accomplishments have you been most proud of so far?
A: I’m really most proud of the things that enhance the quality of life for our residents.��

So I’ll give you an example. We have a retirement community and they had a truck route actually going right down the middle of this retirement community and there’s sand and gravel area near there. So they had at one point up to a thousand trucks a day bisecting their retirement community. They could not enjoy a peaceful, quiet life. So I was able to get the funding to build a haul road that took those trucks in another direction that was not impeding them or any other community. So I’m really, really proud that those people now get to live in an environment that doesn’t have a lot of diesel fuel and doesn’t have a lot of noise and truck brakes and things that are impacting their quiet enjoyment in their community. That’s one of the things I’m really proud of.

We have brought our ambulance service completely in house because the private ambulance services really were sort of getting a monopoly and their profit-driven response times were getting low and there was an instability in that industry. So we brought that in house and we bought our own ambulances and we trained our own people and now we can control that service to make sure that our citizens have an ambulance on time when they need it. It’s just a core service and we need to take care of our citizens when they need it most.

One of my very, very first priorities when I became mayor was to make sure that our firefighters had the correct equipment and things that they need to make sure that are impacted the least amount by the deadly carcinogens that they have to breathe in every day when they go to fires. So we made sure that they have duplicate sets of turnouts these industrial washers in all of the fire stations and we took out all of the carpets in all of the fire stations so that they’re not bringing those things into the fire station where they live 24/7. Bringing it in on their boots and leave it on the carpet, so pull all that carpet out. We’ve done a lot of things to make sure they have the best equipment that they can have to keep them really safe. That’s one of the things I’m really, really proud of. We have to worry a lot about our first responders because they worry a lot about us.��

We’ve also expanded our veteran’s memorial in a large, large degree. We’ve made it so we have a very large granite wall that’s got war events that are sketched on it. So we finished off the wall, we expanded the area so that people can now sit there and quietly reflect in a shaded area on a lake. It’s really nice. We also added an honor wall so that our residents can find the names of the veterans that they know and love and people that are in their family so those can be permanently etched on that wall at our veterans memorial. We have also added a Vietnam veterans memorial and we’re now in the process of expanding that. So we’ve really made a big statement to how much we respect and care for our veterans.����

So those are just a few of things that I can think of off the top of my head.��

Q: How have you seen Peoria change since you were first elected to the city council in 2005?
A: 2005 was a long, long time ago. We have really made a tremendous amount of changes. We are really though transforming ourself from a small town, from a bedroom community into a modern community that will, as I said, [be] a complete city that will employ its own residents, that will offer all of the things that somebody needs right here in the city of Peoria needs to live and work and grow a healthy family, health community. They can go to the parks, there’s plenty of trails for bikes and for hiking and for horseback riding.����

Our playgrounds are now all accessible. So we are retrofitting all of our older playgrounds with accessible playgrounds for all children and we’re building all of our new playgrounds so that every kid can enjoy the fun, not just abled body kids, but everyone.����

We are transforming our water portfolio so that we plan for the future. That’s really what I’m passionate about is the future of the city of Peoria. How are we going to situate ourselves so that we are ready 20 and 40 years from now for the populations that are going to be here then as well as today? So we’ve got a really great, strong water portfolio that’s very diverse, but in a city as large as ours, especially geographically, we have to be cognizant of the infrastructure that we put in, making sure that we can have reused water in every area of our city, not just some of the more populated areas. We want to make sure we squeeze every last drop of water out of every drop of water we have. We have a lot of diversification in our portfolio but we’re also recharging a lot of our own water. We need to make that we have the infrastructure in place to get that to the newer areas as well as the older areas. So that takes a lot of preplanning because those things are very expensive to put in place.��

So those are some of the things that I’m passionate about and some of the things that have transformed our city as we build a complete city.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not being mayor?
A: I’m always being mayor. Truthfully, there is not a time when you’re not a mayor. This is a 24 hour a day job, but it’s my family. It’s just all about my family. I’ve got grandkids now and they’re always a big part of our lives and I like to have fun with my family and my kids. My mother still lives here, my sisters live here, all of their families. I am really, really fortunate to be surrounded by such a great security system.����

Q: What’s a fun fact about you that most people may not know?
A: So my dad’s parents, my grandparents, came over to Ellis Island on a ship from Sicily. My father was the first in his family, the first generation to be born in America. They settled in Pennsylvania and in 1929, he was born in Pennsylvania in a town that was just filled with other immigrants from Europe, almost exclusively from actually from Italy, in Clearfield, Pennsylvania.��

When he grew up, he met my mother in Pittsburgh and her family was 100 percent Irish. Immigrated from Ireland and so my parents had to elope to be able to marry outside of their nationality, their heritage. They did that and it’s really kind of Romeo and Juliet story, except for it’s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania so you have to take out those castles and the princes and all of that and insert brick mills and coal mining instead.����

They did live happily ever after for 50 years. So it’s a good story.

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Warren Petersen is a third-generation Gilbert resident. In 2012, he was elected to the Arizona State House of Representatives in Legislative District 12, where he now serves as the House majority leader.��

Petersen is working on his law degree and has been in the real estate industry for 18 years, mostly in new home construction and as owner of a real estate brokerage company for more than a decade.��

Petersen recently sponsored which allowed anyone with an out-of-state occupational license or certificate in good standing for at least one year to obtain an equivalent license in Arizona without taking an exam, a bill that put Arizona in the national spotlight.��

�鶹��ýӳ�� talked to Petersen about what he does in his free time, his passion for politics and what he has planned for the next session.��

Question: Why did you initially want to get into politics?
Answer: Well, I’m really passionate about freedom and liberty.

My family has always been a political family, I would say, where [we] never missed an election. I’ve never missed an election since I was 18 years old. I’ve voted in every single election, even when I was on a mission for two years. I had my parents mail me my ballot and I sent it back.��

In 2008, 2009 I was getting pretty established with my business and started to look at local government and state government and I wasn’t real happy with a lot of the policies I was seeing. So I got involved in a couple of local town council campaigns and after that, I ended up running for the legislature.

Q: Do you think working in real estate has helped you in your time as an elected official?
A: Absolutely. I think it is really important for all legislators to have business experience.��

[As a realtor,] I’ve had a lot of interaction with government entities. Federal, state, local government entities have all come into play as I’ve worked in my business, and so that kind of interaction has also been a real motivator for me to get involved and to run.

I’ve seen a lot of the red tape that businesses have to deal with and a lot of the things, the burdensome regulations that businesses deal with from day-to-day. It’s definitely helped me connect with businesses and business owners and people, my constituents, who’ve had issues with government. It’s given me a good perspective on how to help them and things I can do to help out.��

Q: Do you think being an Eagle Scout has helped you with your career?
A: Getting an Eagle Scout, I think, is great for anyone and I think the biggest thing that getting your Eagle does is it teaches you how to do a project, put things together, work with other people and accomplish things.��

I think I really noticed this more when my son got his Eagle than when I got my Eagle. I just noticed that before he got his Eagle, he was not able to tackle, he didn’t have the confidence to tackle big projects like he does now.

It’s definitely helped me with everything from public speaking to organizing things to putting projects together, so it definitely, I think, gave me a headstart on business and politics.��

Q: What was your favorite legislation to work on during the last session?
A: I’d definitely have to say that my favorite legislation was the universal licensing bill that I worked on… I think what made that bill different, I’ve been really blessed to be able to pass legislation over the year, but I think something that was really unique about this bill was that it had national repercussions. I had some collaboration nationally and so that was kind of fun and kind of neat to actually interact with people on a national level and see it really affect and have kind of a ripple nationwide.��

Q: What are your biggest priorities for the next session?
A: One thing I’ve been working on for a few years and I’m hoping it will come together this session…is a simplification for education funding.��

Right now education funding is very convoluted and due to the convoluted nature of it, there’s a lot of acrimony that comes out of that. So what I’d like to do is take all the various silos and I would like to stack all those and pretty much you end up with backpack funding where funding follows the student. It would eliminate the whole argument that people have, ‘do charters get more? Do districts get more?’ Everybody would get the same amount of funding.

It would be very transparent, an easy dollar number for the media and for the various interest groups that discuss and talk about it. It would give them all a number that everybody could have a consensus on and I think people would be surprised how significant the number is and the big investments we’ve made in K-12 education.��

I’m hoping I can put that together. I’ve had some good meetings with a lot of stakeholders and we’ll see if that comes together, but I think that would be a lot of fun. I think it would be very meaningful and make a big impact in Arizona if we can get it done.��

Q: What is a fun fact about you that most people might not know?
A: ��A fun fact I think most people do not know that I won the spelling bee in fifth grade.��

Q: What makes you unique as a politician?
A: I think there are a lot of different backgrounds and various backgrounds down at the legislature. I think something unique I bring is kind of a perspective of a business owner, I own my business and I’ve also worked for a business for a long time.��

Father of five, 20 years of real estate experience. Also law school experience. I think I bring a lot of unique experiences that way.��

I wouldn’t say I’m better than any of the legislators. I think that’s what makes the legislature kind of special, you have all these citizens. It’s a citizen dynamic, lots of people, lots of different backgrounds bringing their voices down to the Capitol and trying to put together good policy for Arizona.

Q: What do you like to do in your free time?
A: I love going to the outdoors, spending time in the outdoors.��

Our family goes to the beach, we try to go at least once a year… I saw a saying one time that says, ‘the beach solves all problems,’ and our family likes to go to the beach. Try to get there at least once a year.��

Getting outdoors, I enjoy reading, I enjoy learning. I like to always be learning and learning more things.��

You can follow Rep. Petersen on .��

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Frank Pratt is deeply rooted in his legislative district.��

Born in Florence, Arizona, Pratt is a small businessman living in Casa Grande and representing Arizona’s eighth legislative district in the state Senate.��

Pratt has been an Arizona legislator since 2009 when he was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives and was elected to the state Senate in 2018.��

�鶹��ýӳ�� talked to Pratt about his work in the Senate, what he finds rewarding in public service and his love for scuba diving.

Question: How did you decide to get into politics?
Answer: It’s an extension of public service. You know, we are members of chambers of commerces or we are members of Rotary clubs and you just think that you can help and you get involved.��

I didn’t have an agenda that I was trying to pursue or anything else. It was just trying to make Arizona a better place.��

Q: What was your favorite legislation you have worked on?
A: I did some fun stuff. I did some legislation for electric motorcycles. I did some legislation for some new technology…working with new electric technology and you have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Those are kind of fun.��

They’re just business for the state of Arizona, they’re not necessarily glamorous, they’re just things that you just do because it needs to be done.��

I like to work on business issues. Everything, a lot of business issues that go through the chambers of commerce, technology, things like natural resources, energy, all of those types of issues are my favorites.��

Q: Why are business issues your favorite?
A: I feel like you come here, you are like a blank slate and you have an opportunity to just pick up on types of issues that you feel comfortable with and [those are] the issues I work on mostly. They’re usually business issues and as a businessman growing up and being involved in business, this is just kind of a natural extension.

Q: What are your priorities for next session?
A: I don’t have them yet. We’re still taking a look at what issues are going to be coming in the future. There will probably be some energy issues that will come through my committee. There will be some transportation issues, I think, that will go through another committee of mine. Then the [agriculture] and water issues. We still probably have some work to do as far as water and [agriculture] even though we passed the [Drought Contingency Plan]. I think that we’ve still got some water issues to work on still in Arizona.��

Q: What are you looking forward to for next session?
A: It’s a new world every year. So there will be issues that you don’t expect and you just go to work on them and you just make them happen. That’s probably the more rewarding things we get done.��

Q: What’s your favorite part of being a state legislator?
A: The people. You get an opportunity to work on a lot of issues that you never even knew existed. You can help people in a lot of ways you never even knew existed. Those are the most rewarding things that happen to you.��

Q: What do you do with your free time when you’re not at the Capitol?
A: [There’s] not much of it. Between just taking care of our business and helping out a little bit there and having a few pet projects that I’ll work on and just some home improvement jobs and things like that. There’s always something to do.��

Q: What’s a fun fact about you that most people don’t know?
A: I don’t know, I’m kind of a boring guy but I’ve had a lot of experiences in life. I used to be — although I’m not active in it right now — [a] very active scuba diver and taught a lot of people how to go out and have fun and do it safely as far as scuba is concerned. [I have] been to a lot of interesting places around the world and taught a lot of people to go to a lot of fascinating places.��

Q: What’s your favorite place you’ve been?
A: I like Mexico and I like the Carribean. They’re my favorite places to go, but there are some places that I would still like to try sometime in my life… I’ve never been to the South Pacific and I would love some time to go to Truk Islands…basically where we surprised the Japanese during World War II. [There are] lots of wrecks down in that area, lots of artifacts [that are] kind of dissolving, rusting away and things like that. It’s great to have an opportunity sometimes to see those things while they still exist.��

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: I enjoy what I do. I enjoy working with people a lot. The people are what make working in the legislature, make it rewarding. You never know exactly what’s going to happen. [I] started working on an issue a week ago on some veteran’s issues that I typically don’t work on, but a person walked up to me when I was picking up some things in the grocery store and next thing I know I’m working on veteran’s issues for some veterans that are having problems. There’s always something that you’re not expecting and you just roll up your sleeves and go to work on things.

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