Working Hard…

  Thank you for the email that was just sent to us showing this Axon hired gun, trying to block Scottsdale voters from having a say on the largest apartment complex in city history, taking a break to smoke some weed. Perhaps Axon should take a cue from this guy: smoke one, chill the heck out, and leave Scottsdale alone.

Tearing Apart the Data of the Scottsdale Elections: City Council

In our series where we break down the election results from Scottsdale, we have already looked at the mayoral race as well as the ballot propositions. For our third of three pieces, we will take a look at the Scottsdale City Council races, typified by major upheaval as both incumbents on the November ballot were ousted (after newcomer Jan Dubauskas … Read More

The Slipper Fits: Arizona State’s Cinderella Season Becomes Even More Magical

The Valley of the Sun has been a success desert for football recently, best typified by the performance of the Arizona State Sun Devils. Two straight seasons of 3-9 records and sanctions left extremely little reason for hope, and the preseason expectations demonstrated that. Preseason polling had Coach Kenny Dillingham’s Sun Devils at the very bottom of the Big 12 … Read More

Tearing Apart the Data of the Scottsdale Elections: Propositions 490 and 491

Scottsdale’s recent elections were interesting ones, with an incumbent mayor losing and two incumbent councilmembers losing their bids for re-election. And there was one (well, two) very clear winners in this election: Propositions 490 and 491. As a reminder, Proposition 490 served as an extension of the existing 0.2% sales tax which was expiring this year, reducing it to 0.15% … Read More

Guest Editorial: An Open Letter to Axon CEO Rick Smith from Former Scottsdale City Councilman and Chairman of Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions (TAAAZE), Bob Littlefield

Dear Mr. Smith: As you are no doubt aware thousands of Scottsdale residents from conservatives to liberals have come together to put the recent Scottsdale City Council approval, awarding Axon the largest apartment complex in Scottsdale history, to a public vote.  What you may not be aware is that as of today, the halfway point of the 30 day period the … Read More

Tearing Apart the Data of the Scottsdale Elections: the Mayoral Race

It was a truly interesting election season in Scottsdale this year, as incumbent Mayor Dave Ortega was ousted by a significant margin, the city council will welcome three new members, and two propositions won by wide margins. Some of these items are related and some are indicative of wider trends within the city’s electorate. In this three-part series we get … Read More

Stop the Presses: Pro Athlete Stops Trouble Instead of Causing It in Scottsdale

Stop us if you’ve heard it before: a pro athlete encounters a problem in Scottsdale involving too much alcohol and law enforcement intercedes. If you’ve heard it before perhaps it’s because we’ve written about it a few times, and it’s generally the result of said athlete having a few too many drinks. That’s not always the dynamic, however; on a … Read More

A Lesson in How Not to Be Transparent: Glendale Silences Voices of Citizens

Good government covers a number of different disciplines and facets. We all want a government that is responsive to our needs, listens to the citizenry, uses our money efficiently, and is transparent in what it does. Rarely is any particular government perfect in all of these facets, but we expect at least an acceptable effort in all of them. This … Read More