Mayor W.J. “Jim” Lane
A few excerpts from Mayor Lane’s profile:
Mayor W. J. “Jim” Lane served for four years on the Scottsdale City Council beginning in June 2004, and began his first term as Mayor in January 2009. Mayor Lane served on the 2002 Scottsdale Fire & EMS Advisory Committee, which was convened to evaluate and make recommendations to the city regarding the desired level of fire and emergency medical services relative to cost.
He came to Scottsdale from New Jersey in 1973 to take a position with KPMG (Peat Marwick), an international CPA firm. He worked as an Arizona CPA for twenty years with five of those years in public accounting as a financial statement auditor. He has since retired from his CPA career.
John’s take on Mayor Lane:
Jim is a former CPA and a serial entrepreneur. I believe he thinks of himself as a Libertarian…but he can’t seem to connect the dots between rhetoric and practical application. He won a very close race against the only incumbent mayor to ever lose the seat: Mary Manross. It was indeed more of a loss for her than a win for Lane. He is raising money for his re-election campaign, but his popularity began to slide from his first day in office. I recall that Lane’s biggest campaign soundbites were about fiscal responsibility and government transparency. After two years in office, the only improvement in transparency I have seen is the attitude that the residents’ perspective simply doesn’t matter to him. If he gets re-elected it will be because no one else is running…which may in fact be what happens.
Our next Council Member scheduled for this series: Lisa Borowsky.