Vice Mayor Betty Janik finally came to [Scottsdale Planning, Economic Development and Tourism Director Randy] Grant’s aid. “I’ve read quite a bit on does economic development pay for itself,” she said. “You can go and check all the literature and you can get six experts say it does and six equal expert people that say […]
Leasing public school property to a private soccer business
Mark Liebner on SUSD’s Tonalea campus lease to Phoenix Rising Football Club [I attended the first part of this meeting, and I can vouch that there was outright hostility from some of the neighbors toward Phoenix Rising’s proposal, and toward SUSD administrators’ poor handling of it. Mr. Liebner does a good job of covering most […]
Scottsdale’s Election
If you are visiting ScottsdaleCitizen for the first time because you received my letter, welcome! The information below is all in the letter, but forwarding this article to your Scottsdale friends is a great way to leverage it out to a larger audience of voters. And I’ve included convenient hyperlinks to the websites of the […]
Norton’s Big Lies
Mike Norton just can’t help himself. Setting aside the Scottsdale Unified School District budget override for a later discussion, Norton could have just silently savored the Scottsdale city bond election ‘victory,’ and parlayed his big success into the relevance he desperately craves. Instead, he continues to lie, to inflate his own role, and to celebrate […]
Balanced coverage?
Just like with the Scottsdale Independent a few years ago, I had high hopes for the renewed Scottsdale Progress newspaper. The original Scottsdale Progress, under editor and publisher Jonathan Marshall, did great things for our community. In fact, Marshall and his crew had significant impact on state law affecting, among other things, government open meeting […]
“A city government exists only for the purpose of…”
During a refreshing, unplanned visit to the Phoenix North Mountain Visitor Center, I saw on display this letter to the residents of the Sunnyslope area, sent to them upon annexation of the area into the City of Phoenix. It says, in part, A city government exists only for the purpose of performing necessary municipal services for […]
I “DESERVE” Affordable Housing in Scottsdale; Why Rent Control Doesn’t Work
I was scanning stations while driving today and stumbled across the most recent, and timely (given the uproar created by my post yesterday regarding millennial whining about high cost of housing in Scottsdale) episode of Freakonomics. The ultimate extreme of “affordable housing” is rent control. Maybe we should do THAT in Scottsdale? There are decades’ […]
AG probing SUSD Governing Board AGAIN | scottsdale.org
…the attorney general received a complaint alleging that open meeting law violations took place during [Scottsdale Unified School District governing board] executive sessions held by the SUSD Governing Board on Dec. 14, 2017 and Feb. 21, 2018. The complaint alleged that the board discussed topics that were not posted on the meeting agenda made available […]
The completely obvious problem with no-bid contracting
Later, it was revealed in a draft audit that the company had overcharged the government for fuel purchases by $61 million. Whistleblower exposes $7 billion no-bid Defense Department contract
Bond Grifters
In a recent comment appended to an article in the Scottsdale Trough Feeders newsletter (aka the Scottsdale Independent), village idiot (and muni bond huckster) Mike Norton claimed (among other things) that the assertion that Scottsdale has the “Most Debt Per Capita” is a lie. I’m the only guy who’s been saying that, so I guess […]