What Listening Looks Like — and What It Doesn’t

Your Council majority listens to you, and as a result Scottsdale is doing more with less. We are lowering tax rates, catching up on deferred maintenance, ending cost overruns, accelerating capital projects, and fully funding public safety. We are getting back to core services.

Our majority also stopped asking residents to fund ideological pet programs, stopped approving thousands of resident-opposed apartment rezonings, and stopped putting special interests first.

That is what listening looks like.

These issues matter to residents, and that’s why it’s disappointing to see Councilwoman Solange Whitehead oppose them and deliberately misstate the record of her colleagues who reversed the political course she led from 2020 to 2024.

Ms. Whitehead chose to misrepresent a supermajority decision to hear speakers on scheduled items first. The charge is striking from a Councilmember who ignored residents pleading with her not to vote for more apartments — then took a certified referendum, signed by 26,000 residents, off the ballot.

Then she mischaracterized a unanimous vote to review political-sign rules. It’s no coincidence- she never spoke up about sign clutter that attacked her opponents during the Primary Election, or about her own campaign’s noncompliance with rules.

When Councilwoman Whitehead led the majority from 2020 to 2024, Scottsdale endured over $150 million in cost overruns, thousands of apartment approvals, and programs that were not core city services. Residents remember what it’s like not to be heard. They don’t want to go backwards.

Let’s listen to residents. Vote Barry Graham and Michelle Ugenti-Rita in November.