It’s been a long and winding road for Axon in its attempts to force its 1,900 apartment megacomplex (the biggest in state history) onto Scottsdale against its will. Once the people banded together, said “enough is enough”, and got enough signatures to put it to a public vote, Axon knew that it would lose (read our full coverage here). So it decided to take a new route: bypass the city altogether and lobby the State Capitol.
Its new plan? Wining and dining legislators for a bill that will take away the rights of voters in many cities in the state to speak out against any number of different awful developments or zoning end-arounds. It’s not bad enough that it wants to subvert the will of one city, now it’s trying to do it statewide to bail out its one project.
While we’re not in the room for those conversations with legislators, for such a controversial bill that doesn’t help anyone’s constituents but simply steals away their rights, we have to believe that promises of campaign funding are being tossed around the dinner tables at the nicest steakhouses in the Valley.
And to their infinite credit, Scottsdale’s leaders have stepped up to the plate in opposition to this bill and in support of their constituents. Representative Joseph Chaplik was one of the first to ring the alarm bills, but in a recent press conference led by Mayor Lisa Borowsky, Representative Alex Kolodin joined in, saying “It is carefully tailored to give Axon and only Axon the right to build almost 2,000 multifamily units in north Scottsdale without any regard to what the public infrastructure can support our city’s water needs and the wishes and desires of our residents.”
At the time of writing, the bill had passed its committee vote and will go to a vote in both the State House and Senate. If it passes both, it would still have to be signed by Governor Katie Hobbs. While the campaign contribution prowess of Axon may be significant, we hope that enough legislators are considering the chilling effect on the rights and voice of the voter this would have across the state.
In the meantime, the efforts to block Axon’s efforts, Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions, have since formed a statewide PAC in order to raise funds and push back against Axon’s bullying at the state level. If you don’t want your rights taken away and you don’t want nearly 2,000 apartments placed in our city against your wishes, you can vote with a donation at www.protectourscottsdale.com.