I thought the bond election was over until I saw the Republic dredged it up again today. Some notable quotes from today’s article:
Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane said,
“The efforts to discredit the process and discredit the city in its effort to fund capital projects is one [reason for election defeat of the bonds] for sure.”
Scottsdale Vice-Mayor Virginia Korte said,
“There was a lot of misinformation around these bond projects. And so the important thing for the next one is to have broad spectrum of support for it. That includes some individuals on the council.”
And my favorite Scottsdale City Council woman Linda Milhaven said,
The “no” campaign was “based on misrepresentation, hyperbole and fearmongering” and “influenced some voters.”
No matter how much the Scottsdale Republic and the spend-and-tax caucus on the City Council want you to believe it, the main reasons this was defeated are:
- Staff, the mayor, and the council weren’t honest in their assertions about the need for the bond and how that need arose (their own neglect of good governance).
- They weren’t honest about the way the items were presented for approval.
- They weren’t honest about the restrictions on the way the bonds funds would be spent.
- They weren’t very nice about it.
All the no-bond campaign tried to do was bring these facts to light. Whatever little success we had at that probably was only a small part of why the bonds were defeated.
3 Comments
I have to laugh when I hear my Council Comrades Korte and Milhaven complain about the supposed “misinformation” about the bonds that lead to their defeat. The pro-bond-tax campaigns spent (according to the latest reports filed with the City Clerk) $225,915.18 promoting the bonds as opposed to the $4,641.70 we spent opposing them. The bottom line is that the pro-bond-tax campaigns got their message out, the voters simply rejected that message!
One interesting fact, the pro-bond-tax campaigns spent almost three times as much in fines to settle campaign finance violations than we did in our entire campaign! And that was even after being given a huge break by our City Attorney!
Bad losers and the Scottsdale Republic keeps it alive. The next council meeting should be very interesting. Hope for more civility from the losers..
My favorite Republic piece was yesterday when they showed the breakdown of the votes by district. It was a poor attempt to discredit the north Scottsdale area by blaming most of it on them. They may as well have said it was those damn rich people who are negative on helping those more in need. Never mind that district one voted it down by a huge margin too.
Bob was 100% right when he mentioned that the council (minus him and Guy) was telling people to just get out of the way and vote for it. Sorry, Milhaven, Klapp, Robbins, and Korte. Maybe they have learned a lesson from this. In actuality, probably not.