Jason Rose, who basically lies for a living, has put out a press release in which he claims, “Substantial and Deep Voter Support for November Bond Measures.” That presser bounces through many more hyperbolic adjectives and adverbs like, “strong” (several times), “sweeping,” “substantial” (again), and “diverse.” Hey, the more, the merrier, right? Reminds me of […]
Before you vote to raise your taxes…
Until the last election, Scottsdale had a 100% “Republican” city council and mayor. I put “Republican” in quotes, because I always thought the party platform’s primary plank was fiscal responsibility. During the last decade, our elected officials (including Mayor Jim Lane, Virginia Korte, Suzanne Klapp, and even some who are supposedly populist politicians who are […]
City’s apartment boom raises residents’ concerns | City News | scottsdale.org
City planning double-speak: Scottsdale Senior Planner Jeff Barnes said. “Although the land use is not in direct review as part of that process, there is focus on how the allowed land uses are applied to a site and conformance of that application with established code and policy parameters.” — Read on www.scottsdale.org/content/tncms/live/
The Great Spring Training Hoax
Neil deMause (http://www.FieldOfSchemes.com) comments this morning: A study by Arizona State University found that spring-training baseball was worth $373 million to the Arizona economy in 2018. I can’t find the actual report itself, but it looks like they came up with this number by interviewing a sample of out-of-town visitors at spring training games about […]
The Value of Education
It’s bizarre to me that we in the US and especially in AZ are so twisted up in knots over adequately funding our public schools and adequately paying our educators and school employees. Do the citizens and voters really not recognize the value of public education? Sure, who cares if the other kid doesn’t have […]
Public Education: Don’t forget the taxpayers
The scandal-plagued Scottsdale Unified School District just hired an interim superintendent, Dr. John Kriekard. Dr. Kriekard was a longtime educator, principal, and assistant superintendent within our district, and served as superintendent of the Paradise Valley Unified School District. Kriekard sent out an encouraging communication today: May 16, 2018 Good Afternoon, SUSD Family, Today marks my […]
Accounting is Complicated, Accountability is Not
Former SUSD CFO Laura Smith The latest shoe to drop in the ongoing Scottsdale Unified School District fraud carnival is the criminal indictment of former CFO Laura Smith. As the person most directly responsible for the financial health of the 23,000-student district and its $170+ million budget, Smith was simultaneously on the payroll of a […]
The Bird is not Well
Because it’s been widely broadcast by the mainstream media, you may have already heard that Scottsdale Unified School District superintendent Denise Birdwell was placed on administrative leave last night by the SUSD governing board. This action comes after a tumultuous two-year tenure, which has seen almost complete turnover in senior-level district staff, wholesale replacement of […]
The most important government
SRP’s Trish Moeck posted a well-written article (which I’ve copied below) yesterday on the Scottsdale Leadership website, and I’d like to use as a jumping-off point for an expanded look at some of the topics Trish discussed. As you may know, Scottsdale Leadership is at its core a training program run by the Scottsdale Area […]
Conflict of Interest: What’s the Big Deal?
A number of folks who I know to be educated (and presumably intelligent) have been astonishingly dismissive of recent findings that Laura Smith, the chief financial officer of our Scottsdale Unified School District lied about the degree of a conflict of interest between her role as steward of taxpayer money budgeted for schools, and her […]