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 Arizona constitution provides for challenging decisions by government, we have collected over 12,000 signatures from Scottsdale residents! The enthusiasm for our petitions is off the charts and growing.

Of course this is despite your abhorrent tactics of paying blockers to discourage city voters from signing our petitions at various places in the city.  As a publicly traded company has your general counsel signed off on these tactics?  Is your Board of Directors aware of them?  They range from some of our circulators needing to call the police to protect themselves, to ongoing harassment to even one incident, documented by a circulator, in which they were spat upon and slugged.  Is this the Axon way?  Are you proud of the company and consultants you are paying to conduct such an abuse of democracy?

While you are answering those questions I hope you will answer a few others too . . .

*How and why did your President call the employer of Scottsdale Planning Commissioner Christian Serena after he opposed your application earlier this year?  Was it to encourage his firing as was reported in the media earlier this year? If so, and I believe that did take place, then it was just a precursor to the behavior we are seeing now.

*This is your own rendering of your 1,900 unit apartment complex.  You are really going to have a barracks and prison motif for the largest apartment project in city history?

*Why are so many apartments needed in this area when about 5,000 are already approved or under construction within 3 miles of this site?

*Isn’t the real reason you are asking for so many apartments is because the cost overruns on your new “Star Wars” corporate headquarters require such an extraordinary entitlement to help pay for it?

*Why don’t you just build your corporate headquarters as you promised to do in 2020?  As conveyed above there are and will be plenty of housing options for your employees.

*Why are you threatening to leave to Atlanta or Seattle if you don’t get your 1,900 apartments? Is that all Scottsdale is worth to you?  A source for enrichment rather than appreciation?  If you really love Scottsdale, drop the ridiculous amount of apartments this community does not want or need.

*Why do you threaten neighbors with an industrial use if you don’t get your way?  Only you can cause that to happen.  And by the way, your threats of selling your property to such a user are specious since those uses will almost certainly require new zoning approvals which the newly elected and resident-friendly city council will not be inclined to approve.

*When are you going to pay the Arizona State Land Department approximately $150 million that are entitled to since you either misled or lied to them when you bought state land several years ago WITHOUT apartments as part of the mix?  As you may know apartments in north Phoenix and north Scottsdale are selling for about $80,000 per unit.  By failing to do so you are shortchanging students of our public schools who are the beneficiaries when state lands is sold.

Besides your company’s abhorrent and unsuccessful efforts to thwart our democratic rights you owe this community many more answers. There are just too many troubling actions and questions right now.

Despite your recent surge in your stock price there are just some things you can’t buy.  We are one of them.

After we qualify this matter for the ballot we will wage a campaign as equally as spirited.  And you do know that when you challenge our signatures – good luck with that – there is a strong legal chance and opinion that we only need less than half the amount the city is currently telling us we need, don’t you?  But that’s likely to be irrelevant because we are going to post a number that blows away any requirement and underscores how upset the citizenry is with the absurd approval of your massive apartment scheme by a lame duck council.

Thank you for your attention to these matters.  You will be hearing more from us prior to our signature deadline of December 21st.

Sincerely,

Bob Littlefield

 

 

Sincerely,