By Larry Heath | Point of View
I read a post recently on “X” (formerly Twitter) where (paraphrasing) the author was glowing about the recent election flipping the Scottsdale City Council majority to finally become inline with public opinion.
I assume the author did not realize the configuration of this year’s council is nearly identical to the one elected in 2022 — immediately after the horrible fight over the Desert Discovery Museum (which undoubtedly would have been a homerun for our tourist sector and city coffers). What changed the council members who were involved in that fight to become more open-minded afterwards? Reality has a way of reshaping preconceived notions.
What strikes me most about the configuration of the new council are the members who proudly highlighted their conservative credentials when they successfully ran for office. I don’t understand how a “conservative” could be against protecting private property rights. Like oil and water, those two things generally don’t mix.
Worse, essentially pledging to thwart approval of additional apartments in Scottsdale is a potential landmine for the city, because it could easily be deemed to be a premeditated obstruction to the transferability and value of commercial properties.
There are 235,000 residents in Scottsdale. The City Council represents all of us, and preferably not by vote via the “Nextdoor Neighbor” app.
The Goldwater Institute has already threatened litigation against Scottsdale twice. From a Zoom call I recently sat in on, the Multifamily Homebuilders’ Association appears to be itching to pull the legal trigger too.
Hindering a robust mix of urban uses always has a downside. Case in point — north Scottsdale is covered with a ‘Rural Residential Overlay,’ and yet traffic gets backed up near Loop 101. Why?
Because the Scottsdale Airpark is the second largest employment node in metro Phoenix, and 150,000 commuters drive to and from Scottsdale every workday.
That’s because those nurses, teachers, etc. cannot afford to live in Scottsdale where housing prices are twice the Valley average per square foot. Those commuters also include nearly 90% of city of Scottsdale staff.
Equally problematic is the western flank of North Scottsdale Road, which is the eastern border of the city of Phoenix. When that vacant desert is developed, Phoenix will gladly fill unmet supply and demand with everything the city of Scottsdale is artificially hindering. This will not only generate additional traffic on Scottsdale Road, but it will expose Scottsdale’s leaders for unwisely surrendering all the accompanying sales taxes and rental taxes to Phoenix.
Frankly, giving away sales taxes to neighboring municipalities is something Scottsdale appears to specialize in. Note: Kierland Commons is in Phoenix, etc.
That said, here’s a quandary on which the new council might focus. Less than 10% of Scottsdale’s sales taxes (which pay for most of our municipal services) come from north Scottsdale. If you do not believe this, I challenge you to count the number of retail centers north of Loop 101 and compare that number to the approximate total south of Loop 101. Rather than trying to save 75-year-old south Scottsdale from robustly gentrifying, it would be better if our leaders could come up with a plan to balance this blaring inequitable municipal tax structure. Council districts? Privilege tax? I don’t know…
Back to the election.
I translate the signs posted around Scottsdale shaming Tom Durham for voting for apartments as saying, “we don’t want those kinds of people here.” The election is over, and it is clearly past time to take those offensive signs down.
