by Robert Rich Anyone traveling through Downtown Tempe may have noticed the developing face-lift spanning from University Drive to Rural Road. While Tempe is no stranger to construction, the Novus Innovation Center promises to completely re-shape the landscape for both residences and businesses close to Arizona State University. The project is dropping its next phase and powering ahead. Amongst the … Read More

By Scottsdale Pinetop It’s been a whirlwind of an election season. After a chaotic Arizona’s U.S. Senate that dominated media headlines, the Phoenix mayoral runoff election is expected to be a quiet finale to the 2018 election season. But that doesn’t make it any less important. In fact, who will lead the nation’s fifth largest city might just be the … Read More

Ding dong the Desert Discovery Center (DDC) is dead.  According to this new article at azcentral.com, that is.   What good news. But is that where the resonance of this chapter of citizen rights and achievement ends? Well, let’s look at some fascinating voter data. Proposition 420, the citizen’s initiative brought by Desert Discovery Center opponents to effectively kill it, passed … Read More

The margin of Kathy Littlefield’s re-election to the Scottsdale City Council on November 6th was notable.  As her husband opines, it just may be the largest number of votes ever received by a City Council candidate. There’s no doubt the salience and organization of Proposition 420 had a lot to with Littlefield’s success.  But there’s another reason, and there’s simply no other way … Read More

By: Robert Rich On October 8, 2018, Governor Susana Martinez & Mayor Tim Keller announced that Netflix has chosen Albuquerque, New Mexico to be the home of its first production studio complex. The deal is projected to bring in $1 billion dollars of revenue, and 1,000 production jobs, per year to New Mexico. While this is a huge step forward … Read More

By: Scottsdale Pinetop They marched, they ran and they won. It has been a historic year for women candidates with a record-breaking number of women now holding federal and state offices. But this isn’t something new for Arizona politics. Even with the momentum of the #MeToo and Year of the Woman movement, Arizona has continued its tradition of leading the … Read More

*2018 definitely proved to be a “Year of the Woman” when it came to state and national politics. Somewhat lost among the results was Kate Gallego’s dismantling of the field in the Phoenix Mayor’s race. She topped former Councilman Danny Valenzuela, the overwhelming favorite of developers, by a whopping 19 point margin. They both now head to a March run-off … Read More

Once upon a time Scottsdale power brokers used to sit around a place called Mag’s Ham Bun and largely decide who was going to rule the city’s roost. How times have changed. Last night a grassroots movement spawned with laptops and shoe leather reinvented Scottsdale’s political landscape.  It was an earthquake. Proposition 420, a determined drumbeat of citizens to defeat … Read More

As Scottsdale voters contemplate Question 1 on the November 6th ballot, a measure that would generate new funds to repair, improve and expand local roadways, we have a question to ask of our readers.  Normally we opine. This time we seek input. We have written previously of the spiteful opposition engineered by local realtor Scott Jarson to a notable and … Read More

It might seem odd for us to opine about the leader of opposition to a Scottsdale measure we enthusiastically support.  But not all opponents are or should be considered untoward, especially if their heritage outflanks most everyone involved in the debate. We speak of Proposition 420, as we have many times.  It deserves support for all the reasons we, and  … Read More