Log in

Opinion

Durham & Janik: Further evaluation of Scottsdale’s ‘fork in the road’

Posted

Tammy Caputi has written an important article which appeared in the Independent, entitled Scottsdale’s Fork in the Road.

As competing candidates for the City Council, we don’t always see eye to eye with Tammy, but we agree with her on this: we are at a fork in the road for the future of Scottsdale, which is a watershed moment for our city.

Candidates in the council election are advocating for quite different visions for the future of our wonderful city, and so voters are presented with different choices. Your vote on Nov. 3 will determine how we move forward.

But let’s get one thing out of the way first: all of us running for City Council want the same thing. We want to live in a city that is prosperous, thriving, with great amenities, parks, neighborhoods, low taxes and a great quality of life. We all want a great educational system.

(It may be news to some, but even those of us who no longer have school age children are invested in a first-rate educational system).

Anyone who claims Scottsdale is about to turn into Palm Springs or Sun City East is, to be frank, just being silly.

But we do have differences in how we get to the result we all want. After the vote on Prop. 420, we have talked to hundreds of voters who believe that our city is on the wrong path.

Many citizens of Scottsdale are upset with what they view as rampant over-development and a City Council majority that pays more attention to the developers who fund their campaigns than the citizens who live here.

The citizens we have talked to want a different way forward. When you find yourself on the wrong path, you need to take a different direction — a fork in the road, if you will, from the path you are currently on. From what we have heard, most Scottsdale citizens think we are on the wrong path.

And that’s why Betty and I are running for City Council. For those citizens who think we are on the wrong path, we are offering a different way forward — a fork in the road.

At the City Council candidate forum on Wednesday, Tammy accused us of being divisive. But if the city is on the wrong path, then we need to take the fork which leads to the better way. Taking a different fork is necessarily divisive, but that’s the reason we have elections. It allows us to choose the way forward.

If you think Tammy Caputi, John Little, or some of our other opponents have a better way forward, by all means vote for them. Our feelings won’t be hurt. But if you think our way is the better way — and we think most citizens agree — then we would be honored to have your vote.

What is our way forward? For the two of us, it all began with the Desert Discovery Center (DDC). Scottsdale’s power structure and the City Council majority were emphatically behind the Desert Discovery Center.

The two of us thought it was a terrible, $68 million mistake. It violated the requirements of the Scottsdale City Charter, which prohibits such structures in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. And it was immensely unpopular. When the citizens were given an opportunity to vote, they rejected the DDC by over 70 percent.

While the City Council was on the path to the DDC, Betty and I, along with hundreds of dedicated volunteers, decided to create a fork in the road. We walked down this fork by creating Protect Our Preserve and Protect Our Preserve PAC to get Prop. 420 in the ballot. The overwhelming majority of Scottsdale citizens decided to take that fork, and we are proud we helped to give them the chance.

Tammy, however, decided to stay on the path that led to the construction of the DDC. She was on the Development Review Board (DRB) on Sept. 7, 2017, when the city staff asked the DRB to confirm the location of the DDC in the Preserve. At that meeting the city staff told the DRB they were not voting on the “[a]rchitectural character of the proposed Desert Discovery Center,” which would be considered at a later date.

Instead, in response to questions from the DRB members, the staff made clear that the Board was voting on the site of the DDC in the Preserve. Tammy joined in a 3-2 vote upholding the site of the Desert Discovery Center, stating that she didn’t understand how “you would study the Preserve without being in the Preserve.”

We think Tammy took the wrong fork on that vote, and it led to two years of division over the Discovery Center.

What was the next fork in the road? Last year, the City Council majority voted in favor of the Maquee, a grotesque 150-foot building that the city’s own staff agreed was out of context with Old Town. Many derided the Marquee as resembling a cruise ship parked on Scottsdale Road.

Due to the COVID epidemic, the developer has not started forward with construction. With the trend towards working from home, it may never get built. The two of us, along with many other citizens, spoke up against the Marquee and tried to take the fork in the road leading away from the Marquee, but we were unsuccessful.

The next fork in the road was the Southbridge II project. Once again, the council majority voted for this dense, 150-foot project, even though its own staff agreed that some of its aspects violated city design guidelines.

This time, the citizens bulldozed their own fork in the road. Thousands of citizens signed a successful petition to create a referendum to stop the project, and in view of this opposition the developer canceled his plans for the project.

Tammy and John Little enthusiastically supported this project and have even criticized the citizens’ right to vote to stop Southbridge. We are glad the citizens found a different fork.

One of most important “forks” the two of us have taken is in the financing of our campaigns. Over the last four years, the council majority has voted for virtually every zoning change to come before the council.

In many cases, these variances are supported by lawyers and developers who have given large sums of money to the candidates who will decide their fate.

Our opponents are now taking large contributions from people whose cases they will decide. We have taken a different path and have pledged that we will not take contributions from anyone likely to have business before the council.

This fork in the road has been a lot harder, but it is the right thing to do.

And we won’t take the path of allowing endless variances to anyone who wants one. We need to review and revise the General Plan as needed, and once we do variances should be limited to cases which present a clear and compelling public interest.

There have been other forks in the road where, in our view, Scottsdale has gone down the wrong path. Citizens in the south end of Scottsdale are fed up with being the site of many dense, infill apartment projects. Someone expressed to us recently that neighbors in an apartment building had a clear view into their house.

Some in the south complain that this problem is due to a 2010 vote, taken at lightning speed (as usual) which lacked sufficient community input, which is too often the case at City Hall.

At Wednesday’s City Council candidate forum, we were accused of being the candidates of “gloom and doom.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. We are not afraid of change, but we want to make sure that we retain Scottsdale’s unique character and qualify of life. Scottsdale is the best place in the US to live, and we intend to keep it that way.

It is the No. 1 place in the U.S. for jobs, and it attained that status without the Marquee, Southbridge II, or any other 15 story buildings. We can have strong economic growth and good jobs without the dense development some of the other candidates want. We won’t “blindly oppose economic progress,” as Tammy claims, but we will ask tough questions and demand answers.

And we don’t shun the business community. We have met with and will continue to meet with anyone from the business community who wants to hear from us. But we won’t take their money.

We think the real “doom and gloomers” are the candidates who claim Scottsdale will turn into Palm Springs or Sun Valley East unless we add density, traffic, and high rises.

So, there you have it. Tammy’s right, we are at a crossroads.

In one direction are candidates who will choose the path of the current City Council majority, which has consistently voted to favor developers against the wishes of citizens. We will take the other fork, which leads to a vibrant city where we respect the rights of our citizens to determine their own way of life.

It’s your decision. Choose wisely.

Editor’s Note: Tom Durham and Betty Janik are candidates for Scottsdale City Council in the Nov. 3 general election.