But for the affability, tenacity, and standing of Sam Campana, a former Mayor of Scottsdale and early supporter of the city’s spectacular McDowell Sonoran Preserve, the Desert Discovery Center, Desert Edge, or whatever one wants to call it would still be known as the DDC but instead stand for Dead, Dead Center. Despite the Preserve itself being established by public … Read More

We have already weighed in on the repackaged Desert Discovery Center now known as Desert Edge.  It calls to mind a name more reminiscent of a bad country band than a worthwhile expenditure of taxpayer dollars. Our purpose now is not to regurgitate our most recent opinion (here is a link.)  It’s to raise a worthwhile question:  opportunity cost. Proponents suggest … Read More

Few municipal projects have conjured as much controversy and consternation in recent years than the Desert Discovery Center (DDC), proposed as a Valyrian Steel-like Visitor Center at the Gateway of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. Opponents have ransacked the purported rationale, even though form often gets in the way of their substance. Supporters, largely the inheritors of the idea’s inertia, often … Read More

As many head to the beach this holiday weekend, put the novel or Kindle down.  We’re more interesting.  For example: *Scottsdale’s aggressive and effective anti-Desert Discovery Center grassroots group may spawn a 2018 Scottsdale City Council candidate:  Jason Alexander.  Downtown businessman Bill Crawford is also likely to challenge the incumbent line-up of Kathy Littlefield, David Smith and Linda Milhaven. *The … Read More

Yesterday one of Arizona’s great self-congratulators, Zach Rawlings, announced a purported solution to the rancor he has caused in the Arcadia area.  There he remarkably transformed a noble effort to save and preserve the David Wright House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, into an exercise in noblesse oblige. So worthy was he that he should be entitled to run over … Read More

Since it’s never too early to pontificate and prognosticate about politics, we thought we’d get a jump on a way too early look at possible successors to popular Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane.  Due to the city’s three term limit for mayors Lane, who won in a landslide over Bob Littlefield in November, 2016, is ineligible to run again. The odds … Read More

When first elected to the Scottsdale City Council in 2012, Guy Phillips did so as a Tea Party, pissing vinegar, rage against City Hall voice. And throughout much of his first term he did little to dissuade the notion, twice leading opposition to the city’s bond requests for community infrastructure improvements and routinely voting against business and developers. There were … Read More

The old saying that politics makes strange bedfellows is becoming less relevant these days as conflict replaces consensus. There is a notable exception in Scottsdale. Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane’s call for a hybrid district system has found an unlikely ally in John Greco, a frequent Lane critic. For months Lane has been advocating for reform in the way Scottsdale elects … Read More

Yesterday was Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane’s birthday.  It was also his annual State of the City address, attended by a record 460 people. That’s a testament to his leadership, and the landslide election victory he had in November.   But the most surprising part of his speech wasn’t his dedicatory remarks about the “best city in America,” it was in … Read More

There are gadflies at City Halls.  Every town or city has one, two or more. And then there are gadflies.  Like big gad, horse flies.  They don’t come any uglier or smellier than Mark Stuart in Scottsdale. It’s not that he’s anti-establishment.  Nothing much wrong with that.   It’s that he’s in La La Land.  But his music isn’t pretty.  And … Read More