A concerned citizen emailed me yesterday with specific questions on three topics. I always appreciate the opportunity to answer questions, especially in lieu of having folks eblast nonsense to the world without doing even a minimum level of fact checking. Even though I’ve been working on these issues for ten years and my positions are […]
Latest Inquiry From Arizona Republic
In my opinion, our Mayor should primarily serve as the chief representative of and advocate for the citizens. But that’s not really news. I’ve written about that before. The Arizona Republic sent me some questions this week, in addition to those I’ve previously answered here and here. So I thought I’d share their current list […]
The Cost of a Bad Hire
AZCentral posted a story yesterday by Beth Duckett entitled “Exits by officials costly for Scottsdale.” The point of the story is that, “Scottsdale taxpayers have forked over $328,000 in the last four years to settle acrimonious departures by city mangers who differed with a majority of the City Council.” In my opinion, a) that’s a […]
Republic Question, Week 2
Arizona Republic opinion page editor Robert Leger posed four questions to the mayoral candidates. For ease of future reference, I’ll post the questions and the answers here. Here’s my segment of this the series from 12 July: Q: Is Scottsdale on the right track? Why or why not? A: No. The defeat of the General […]
Republic Question, Week 1
Arizona Republic opinion page editor Robert Leger posed four questions to the mayoral candidates. For ease of future reference, I’ll post the questions and the answers here. Here’s my segment of this the series from 5 July: Q: What is the most important function of the mayor? A: The mayor is primarily the chief representative […]
Council Report Card
In response to request from the Scottsdale Republic, Bob Littlefield just sent in and posted his pre-summer-break “Council Report Card.” I got a similar request, listed here with my answers: 1. What is this City Council’s top accomplishment so far in 2012? It has been a lackluster year for the Scottsdale City Council and Mayor […]
Culture, Taxes, and Golf
The Tuesday 5 June City Council meeting was another very long night, over 5 hours, not counting the executive session meeting prior to the regular meeting. You can stream the video from the city’s website. Items on which I commented are at the time indexes listed below. 0:36:30. “Text” amendments to Scottsdale’s General Plan. 2:16:00. […]
An Echo of Good Planning
Yesterday’s Planning Commission meeting was yet another example of the dysfunction of the city planning process; and city boards and commissions. First, efforts by the Scottsdale Airport Advisory Commission members and Airport staff to educate the Planning Commissioners appear to have fallen on deaf ears. They simply do not understand why land use decisions around […]
Developer’s Vision of Scottsdale?
Here’s a scary headline for you: Developer’s vision of downtown Scottsdale coming into focus That was the lead-off for an Edward Gately article on AZCentral this morning on Shawn Yari and “his” entertainment district in downtown Scottsdale. I’ll leave you to read the article for yourself, but here are some observations: [Mayor Jim Lane said] […]