by Tim Dickman
I have been privileged to have lived in Paradise Valley for the past 14 years with my wife. Since serving on the Planning Commission and my announced candidacy for Town Council, I am frequently asked what I believe are the biggest risks to our Town. As a retired health care CEO and leader of our short-term rental work group, I thought it might be helpful to share some of my thoughts on those risks and what lessons we have learned.
The “Really Big” Problem
I believe that the biggest threat to our town of Paradise Valley is the constant push from the State of Arizona to restrict, limit or eliminate altogether the Town’s ability to pass and enforce local zoning. A number of recent examples are illustrative. And these are just a few of recent examples.
Four years ago, the State passed the original Short-Term-Rental bill that eliminated the ability of any city or town to regulate Short-Term-Rentals at all!
Every year the Arizona House and Senate attempt to pass a law that would prohibit local towns and cities from having photo radar and that would also ban the license plate readers that are located at the entrances and exits to most of the Town’s roadways. The Town does not have radar for the purpose of collecting revenue from ticketing. Rather the purpose is to allow our world class police department to focus on other activities such as patrolling neighborhoods or responding to calls. The license plate readers allow the Town to more easily solve crimes through monitoring. In short, we would need to hire many more police without the technology deployed. It simply makes our community safer.
Recent bills introduced and thankfully vetoed or were defeated include:
- Eliminating cities and towns from regulating home business. For example, if someone wanted to convert their garage to a commercial welding company, they could do so.
- Ability of anyone to build multiple housing units such as apartment buildings on their property to solve affordable housing.
- Bill to allow construction of Accessory Dwelling Units (separate houses) to be constructed on any property. It would have eliminated any local regulation on setback, exterior finishings, off street parking to name just a few things.
There are many more examples. The push for the state to overrule local ability to control their own city or town with zoning is constant.
The Hopeful Solution
What we learned from our short-term-rental experience is enlightening regarding what our pathway forward may be. When we were faced with the inability to regulate short term rentals at all, the Town formed a Work Group that included local residents that I chaired. That group worked directly with the Mayor and Town Manager. In the early days nearly four years ago, we went down directly to the Arizona House and Senate. Unsurprisingly, the larger House and Senate members were not too concerned about Paradise Valley and we were written off as people of privilege. To make changes we had to quickly pivot. Led by our Mayor, we did outreach to over 30 other cities and towns across the State. Those 33 mayors signed an open letter to the short-term rental platforms. Faced with an uprising from the many local cities and towns, the legislature was forced to pay attention. And this revolution started from us.
Our work group funded and paid directly (not the Town) to hire a well-known consulting firm to publish a document on the negative financial impact to the state and local municipalities. We circulated that document to all elected officials in the House and Senate. This grounded our discussion in facts, rather than emotion.
The key lessons learned were:
- We cannot expect to win at the legislature alone. We must work with other cities and towns who have the same concerns. This goes beyond our participation in the League of Cities and Towns, which is the lobbying group for local government in the State.
- We must base our arguments on facts from the unintended consequences that the legislature seems to not consider. These unintended consequences are typically serious.
- We need to engage with our local House Representative and Senator. These races are often perceived as a lesser importance. But faced with an increasingly aggressive legislature, they are more important than ever. We need our local officials to fight for us to preserve our current Town.
Having the loudest voice at the State legislature is not effective. We need to be both strategic and tactical to be successful. We need leaders who can work effectively across the political continuum and leaders who understand that.
Tim Dickman is a retired health care CEO and is a long-term resident of Paradise Valley. He currently services on the Planning Commission in Paradise Valley and is running for Paradise Valley Town Council.