By Ronald Sampson
Most cities of a certain size have some kind of a loud activist minority (minority referring to their size, not any immutable traits). You know the types; they don’t have too much to hang their hat on when it comes to their personal or professional lives, so they throw everything into some political causes, consistently raise the biggest stinks, claim to speak for a larger audience when in reality they are usually speaking for their own ego.
In Scottsdale, a city that has an unusually large percentage of retirees as well as wealth (i.e. very few people are working second jobs to get by), this Semi-Pro Protestor Class is a robust one, and with relatively few concerns inherent in living in such a relatively wealthy and well-run city, the screeds of this class often become silly. That’s not to say that people who speak up have nothing of value to say, often they do, but just as often they seem to invent problems as a reason to justify misplaced angst.
Enter Propositions 490 and 491, the Protect and Preserve initiative to designate funding for parks maintenance, and the proposition to lift the state-imposed spending cap and allow for more local control. While this will actually lead to decreased taxes, with a drop from the current 0.2% sales tax to 0.15%, along with a significant increase in services, that hasn’t stopped the Semi-Pro league of Organized Malcontent to come out loudly against these propositions.
While everyone is entitled to their opinion, the dishonest gaslighting from this crowd has been particularly troubling. They are calling it a “sales hike” when in reality it is quite the opposite, but when you’re a rebel without a cause (and with far too much free time), there aren’t apparently any lows you won’t stoop to to generate purpose in life.
So instead of listening to this loud activist minority, I suggest you listen to people with true skin in the game: Scottsdale’s firefighters, who are coming out in strong support of these initiatives. They understand the need for flexibility in funding and what it takes to keep us safe and keep our quality of life high.
Some people just love to talk, because talking is easier than doing, let alone doing a difficult job where you put your life on the line every day. When the people who are doing the actual work tell you what they need, we should listen. When the people who jump from cause to cause to feign importance talk even more loudly, we owe it to the people doing the actual work to tune them out.