Bien-Willner: Please vote to keep Paradise Valley stable, safe and on top

Friends, your ballots will soon arrive. And you will have an important decision to make about your future: Do you want to continue on our town’s successful and steady path with mayoral leadership that has been tested and proven to preserve our town’s prized residential character, keep our town as safe as ever, and cement our premier status through listening, teamwork, and finding winning solutions together? Or will you choose significant change?

As your mayor for the past four years, I respectfully ask for your vote for re-election. We must continue our success; Paradise Valley residents deserve nothing less. And that requires recommitting to our work in a stable, strong, and collaborative environment with tested, proven, and steady leadership.

Over the last four years, we have faced many challenges — some which we have never seen before, and could barely imagine. It’s been my great privilege to work for you as your mayor, facing the issues and achieving great results with the team while heeding the priorities our residents value.

We have listened and worked together to devise and implement win/win solutions, and avoided a needlessly politicized climate. In a recent public survey, 98% of residents expressed great happiness with our town. Our proven approach works.

In sharp contrast, I hear from residents that my opponent’s campaigning increasingly provokes anxiety and even fear. It remains a fact that my opponent has followed my positions as mayor 99% of the time with her votes, and each time she voted the other way, her votes failed because she could not earn support from colleagues.

However, my opponent presents a narrative of one person singlehandedly saving us against all odds, with a growing list of supposed upcoming calamities that she alone is purportedly able to identify and stop.

When my opponent was asked at the public Mayoral Candidate Forum on June 28, why she is seeking the position of mayor with two years left on her current council term, she responded in a different and revealing way — that even though she is in the middle of her term, this is “her time” to be mayor and that I should depart to attend to my family. And that she welcomes a person being appointed to the council spot she would vacate if elected mayor, rather than council leadership being elected by you, our town residents.

Will you place our town’s future in the hands of my opponent and a mystery addition to council who you would have no role in selecting?

I’m respectfully asking for your vote for re-election to a two-year term so I can continue working for you to help keep our town on top, and to finish important work for our community that is not yet complete. This includes our ongoing efforts to protect our town’s unique and amazing character, finishing the job on dangerous short-term rentals, maintaining excellent public safety, and keeping our town in peak financial condition.

I remain as committed as ever to ensure that our town stays true to its name, Paradise Valley! Thank you for your support — I am deeply honored and humbled to serve you as your mayor, and I am excited by our bright future!