Or at the very least it is a naive perspective on what ails Scottsdale politics.
In an AZCentral article a few weeks ago after the city council primary election, Beth Duckett proposed that
A Nov. 4 runoff election in Scottsdale will pit three candidates who have defended downtown as a vibrant economic driver, against three candidates who have voiced concerns about excessive drinking and other disturbances.
This is only a slightly more nuanced version of the same old assertion, with “excessive drinking and other disturbances” being mere symptoms of poor city planning practices.
Today, Duckett doubled down with this partially-recycled lead:
Scottsdale voters made it clear in this week’s election there is support for two political camps that hold starkly different views about how the city should grow or not as well as manage its downtown.
As I was quick to comment on her article, the fracturing in Scottsdale is not about growth vs. no-growth. It’s about whether to
- Follow the rules for growth which have guided our economic success and sustainability since the 2001 General Plan was ratified by the voters as the organic law (along with the City Charter) of Scottsdale…Or to,
- Bend and break the rules for the benefit of political friends in the liquor/development cartel; for some illusory short-term boost in tax revenue; and for campaign contributions.
Read what Linda Milhaven said in Duckett’s article today. Every word about transportation distills down to two: “Light rail.” And as former mayor Mary Manross foolishly admitted in a moment of anger a few years ago,
Light rail isn’t about transportation. It’s about development.
If you don’t understand the purpose of planning and zoning (which is not to extract campaign contributions), then you should not write about these issues.
5 Comments
If I was a woman I would be embarrassed to be lumped together with the likes of Manross and Milhaven, both cum laude graduates of the school of no common sense. While I’m at it, I may as well throw Korte under the bus too (no pun intended.)
Light rail is an expensive boondoggle and a business killer.
Beth is usually a little more perceptive than this, but she just doesn’t understand that Milhave, Korte, Robbins and Klapp are puppets for the light rail developers.
I see the candidates as either – Follow the General Plan or Ignore the General Plan. Why do certain people have a huge issue with our General Plan? Maybe they don’t understand what it is? Well let me see what it is. OK, Google do you stuff.
Per the legal definition:
9-461.05. General plans; authority; scope
A. Each planning agency shall prepare and the governing body of each municipality shall adopt a comprehensive, long-range general plan for the development of the municipality. The planning agency shall coordinate the production of its general plan with the creation of the state land department conceptual land use plans under title 37, chapter 2, article 5.1 and shall cooperate with the state land department regarding integrating the conceptual state land use plans into the municipality’s general land use plan. The general plan shall include provisions that identify changes or modifications to the plan that constitute amendments and major amendments. The plan shall be adopted and readopted in the manner prescribed by section 9-461.06.
OK, I will stop that right there. I dislike copy and pasting entire blocks of ARS verbiage. But let me expand on the important part for the citizens:
Each planning agency shall prepare and the governing body of each municipality shall adopt a comprehensive, long-range general plan for the development of the municipality. There we go the first sentence, makes sense. Not that hard to understand. A long range plan for how things are going to be developed in our city. Makes sense, sounds important.
Now on to the city of Scottsdale’s take on this:
The General Plan is the primary tool for guiding future development and character of the city over the next 20 years. State law requires the city to update its General Plan every 10 years.
Well, they keep it short and to the point. We can see it has a defined purpose: a tool for guiding the development of the city and its character.
Now, why is our local paper – the Arizona Republic – is missing the HUGE point, that some candidates are NOT reading or using the General Plan? It is clear as the Sun in the sky! Dark Money Darlings are voting and campaigned AGAINST the General Plan, because they are puppets of the Dark Masters. Those Dark Money Darlings don’t like residents or the city that is guided by the General Plan. The other candidates ran on platforms that supported the General Plan.
WE, the citizens of Scottsdale, vote for this General Plan! How could anyone run against it? That is saying you are running against what the people want. When you have people on the council that discard it, or seem to ignore the General Plans existence, that is also mind boggling! The General Plan is what guides the development of our city, we didn’t put our time into it for nothing.
I am going to copy and paste something from Wikipedia. I am going to do that because it shows what a General Plan means in other words – Comprehensive planning is a term used in the United States by land use planners to describe a process that determines community goals and aspirations in terms of community development. The outcome of comprehensive planning is the Comprehensive Plan which dictates public policy in terms of transportation, utilities, land use, recreation, and housing. Comprehensive plans typically encompass large geographical areas, a broad range of topics, and cover a long-term time horizon.
So can we please stop with this nonsense of Growth or No-Growth (since it is really follow the General Plan or ignore it) and hold our elected officials accountable to the General Plan? Our city needs to be guided by it! Otherwise we will not be just a Generic City, but one that is going to suffer from a lack of infrastructure, ridden with crime, and is going to really be unpleasant to live in. I don’t want to live in that Scottsdale, and I will NOT allow that to happen. So expect to hear more from this very UNHAPPY Scottsdale resident, who reads and understands the General Plan, along with other things.
Thank you for exposing the growth vs no growth lie. The ONLY growth and development projects that are opposed are the ones that are gross violations of our written development standards and/or written General Plan. I have never seen the resident advocacy group ever oppose a project that was in within our standards. In fact, the ones that are not gross violations are often ignored. There is nothing anti-growth about that position.