Guest Editorial: Axon Apartment Update

By Bob Littlefield

Dear Friends:

The Axon apartment proposal has not been in the news much lately but a lot has happened behind the scenes in our efforts to prevent this from becoming a reality.

To recap, here is a partial list of the outrages Axon has perpetrated so far in their effort to force the biggest apartment project (1875 units) ever in Arizona on the residents of Scottsdale:

• Knowing full well the vast majority of Scottsdale residents do not want more apartments, Axon still slipped their approval through a lame-duck session of the City Council where it was approved by five Councilmembers, three of whom had been rejected by the voters just a month earlier.
• After we at TAAAZE organized our petition drive to reverse this bad decision Axon paid blockers to discourage city voters from signing our petitions at various places in the city.

When these tactics didn’t work Axon came up with their biggest outrage of all; they managed to persuade a majority of state legislators from outside Scottsdale to pass legislation that would negate our successful referendum and silence the voices of the 27,000 Scottsdale citizens who signed our petitions! So now this isn’t just about the apartments, it is about preventing Axon’s blatant assault on the right of Arizona citizens to hold their municipal governments accountable now and in the future!

If you want to know how low Axon sank to get their evil legislation passed check out this radio interview with State Representative Joseph Chaplik. Joseph is a legislator himself, so he has a front-row seat to all of the dubious goings-on at the state capital. But, unlike the majority of his legislative colleagues Chaplik fought hard to protect the rights of Scottsdale voters by opposing Axon’s bad legislation.

Bottom line, too much is now at stake for us to give up the fight against this outrageous proposal. We at TAAAZE have filed the paperwork for a possible statewide referendum against this bill. Also, our legal team is convinced this bill is clearly unconstitutional and is preparing legal action against it. And the Scottsdale City Council recently allocated $100K to retain a top-notch lawyer to craft a legal strategy for the City to overturn this bad bill.

What can you do to help? The most important thing you can do is to contact Scottsdale’s Mayor and City Councilmembers at citycouncil@scottsdaleaz.gov and insist they stay strong and focused to vigorously oppose this bad bill in the courts. Don’t let them get cold feet and give up the fight to prevent Axon from forcing the biggest apartment project (1875 units) ever in Arizona on the residents of Scottsdale. Even more important, don’t let them sit idly by while Axon destroys the right of Scottsdale citizens to challenge bad decisions of their city government!As columnist Laurie Roberts sarcastically but accurately noted in her recent column exposing this Axon outrage “After all, how dare Scottsdale’s residents think their constitutional right to have the final say on a massive rezoning project should trump the right of a well-connected developer to build the state’s largest apartment complex? This, in a city that already is being overrun with apartments?”

On this issue she is 100% correct!