We don’t typically commend things Littlefield. After all it’s been some 330 days sense Classless Bob Littlefield has failed to call and congratulate Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane on the latter’s landslide win last November. Humility following political humiliation might have even been cathartic.
But the sins of the husband should not flow to Bob’s wife Kathy, a Scottsdale City Councilmember.
This past week she launched an effective broadside against the Desert Discovery Center, properly pushing it even further to the edge. According to Littlefield’s guest column that ran in the Scottsdale Independent (here is a link) she even spent her own money to commission a public opinion survey on the project. The results were in line with other private polling that’s been done. Bottom line: The Desert Discovery Center is a dead project walking. Interestingly, Littlefield didn’t query whether citizens feel there should be a public vote on the project, a notion that is shared by some 90% of the electorate.
Proponents of the Desert Discovery Center when not ignoring public sentiment resort to their best James Madison suggesting that the rulers of the Scottsdale’s republic know best, and a public vote such a nuisance as to be unnecessary.
But isn’t a public vote how the spectacular McDowell Sonoran Preserve came to be in the first place? Wasn’t its substantial margin of victory critical to solidifying the many difficult steps that were needed to make the vision a reality? Indeed. And a public vote should and must be utilized now as project proponents want to divert tens of millions of dollars from preserve maintenance and land acquisition to the Duplicative Desert (Botanical) Center.
Waxing philosophic about the providence of public votes is a mere shroud for the real reason. Proponents are scared of one. And Kathy Littlefield demonstrated why this week.
The silver lining?
Even the most ardent of Desert Discovery Center supporters know the end is near, although it should have been understood the epilogue was written long ago. And that’s why, behind the scenes, momentum continues to build for a solution involving Taliesin West. It’s the ultimate win-win and an ace for all sides if city leadership can pull it off.