Up to $319 million in bonds for city improvements are being voted on in Scottsdale’s upcoming Special Bond Election.

The bond election will be a mail-in ballot, a first for Scottsdale, which includes three bond questions encompassing issues throughout the city. Ballots were mailed out Oct. 8.

The city hopes to approve the bonds to three different areas with outstanding issues: Parks, Recreation, and Senior Services; Community Spaces and Infrastructure; and Public Safety and Technology. These issues were carefully decided on by the Steering Committee, a group of citizens chosen by the city to decide which issues were to be funded.

Carolyn Jagger, the city clerk of Scottsdale, is familiar with the process that the city took in preparing for the election. City officials curated this group of citizens from different backgrounds in order to accurately represent the varying opinions of Scottsdale as a whole.

“[This] committee [worked] on this for over a year,” Jagger said. “So [the issues] were all treated with equal time and consideration.”

Sonnie Kirtley, a member of the Steering Committee, worked with fellow citizens to make sure that this bond election would go through successfully.

“If the city wants to pass the bond issue, which we have not passed for 20 years, something has to be good in there for everybody in the city,” Kirtley said.

Kirtley expressed how there are many differing opinions and cultures across the city. The main issue that had previously delayed the bonds from being approved was the varying interests across Scottsdale.

“You [have to] get the south people to vote for what north wants and the north to vote for what the south wants,” Kirtley said.

While Scottsdale is a relatively small town, the needs of each part of town vary greatly. The southern part of town has their concerns and the northern has theirs. According to Kirtley, the north is in need of a sports field.

“One of the big things that we really need for the kids in the city are these soccer fields out north. Our fields are just overloaded and over-scheduled,” Kirtley said.

This election is not just about providing extra funding for the city and its planned projects. Kirtley also brought up the fact that the infrastructure in Scottsdale is suffering greatly due to a lack of city funding.

“The current City Council has not taken advantage of what they could approve (an automatic 2% budget increase each year), instead they have not taken that money which means we are $800 million dollars behind in infrastructure,” Kirtley said.

In recent years, the city’s crumbling infrastructure has become more evident.

The two major issues that have brought about the most buzz are the bridge on 68th Street and the Civic Center Mall because of damages that have arisen.

Those issues have directly affected the way that citizens live their day to day lives.

“The Drinkwater couplet that drops down underneath the Civic Center [Mall] was closed for a major part of our important season because water beat down and [the bridge] was crumbling so they can visually see that there’s a problem,” Kirtley said.

Scottsdale relies on tourism as a major form of revenue and the bond election aims to increase tourism. With infrastructure failing, it then becomes an issue for those who rely on tourists to help keep their businesses afloat.

Infrastructure is definitely a major concern for the city of Scottsdale, however, some citizens disagree in the way that these projects are being funded.

John Washington, a long-time Scottsdale resident, thinks that the city should not be turning to bonds as a way to pay for all of the projects being voted on.

“I don’t believe that bonding, which is in essence borrowing, is an appropriate way to fund infrastructure maintenance,” Washington said. “Those things really should be funded out of tax revenue.”

Washington agrees that there are major problems regarding public infrastructure, but he takes issue with the way that City Council has decided to get the funding. Instead of budgeting in a way that allows more funding towards fixing these major problems, they waited until a bond election was necessary to secure these funds.

“Trying to borrow your way out of infrastructure problems [could be done] in [the] short term, but Scottsdale has the highest municipal debt per capita of any city in the Valley Metro Area,” Washington said.

While Washington represents the opposing voices in this bond election, it appears that there is more support for the bonds to be approved.

“There is no political committee in opposition,” Jagger said. “There is a political committee in support but not one in opposition to it.”

While there is no official committee against the bond election, a few citizens like Washington, have written in protest of the bonds. On the official election pamphlet that was sent out along with the ballots, Washington and a few others expressed their distaste and concerns with the bonds.

“[Mayor] Lane and cronies have assembled a committee of simpletons, sycophants, and swampers to promote the notion that adding to Scottsdale’s billion-plus dollars in debt is a better idea than fiscal responsibility,” Washington said in the pamphlet.

Citizens like Washington are hopeful that the bond election won’t pass; however, many, like Kirtley, are hopeful that this election will finally approve these bonds in order to help fix the city.

“This bond isn’t just blowing smoke to get fancy stuff,” Kirtley said. “It really truly is needed.”

Editor’s Note: Caroline Yu is a student reporter at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.