Breaking: Trucking association behind so-called “scam texts” in Litchfield Park

By Madeline Ackley Salazar
Mail | Twitter: @Mkayackley

Editor's note: This story was updated April 20, 2022 at 11:18 a.m. to include a statement made by Thomas Schoaf, mayor of Litchfield Park.

Around 4 p.m. on Friday, April 11, a number of Litchfield Park residents received text messages from an unknown sender requesting they fill out a survey regarding their opinion of Litchfield Park’s trucking ordinance and the city’s recent annexation of a small section of Camelback Road.

Messages reviewed by The Independent purport to come from someone named Mary, and respondents were prompted to disclose their level of support from 1 to 4: 1 being “fully support” and 4 being “fully oppose” the city's policies.

The survey questions use heavily biased language against the ordinance and the annexation, and make claims the city policies will lead to higher taxes, delayed deliveries and increased costs on essentials like food and medicine.

READ: Truck restrictions coming to Litchfield Park 

The city got wind of the survey almost immediately after it was reported by residents and took to its social media channels to dispel the claims.

Just two hours after the survey was first sent to residents, City Manager Matthew Williams authored a Facebook post calling the messages a “scam” and stating that the claims made are false.

“There is no indication that the prices of groceries, medicine, gasoline, etc. will be rising due to these truck restrictions,” the post read. “In addition, City taxes will not be increasing due to the annexation of Camelback…Again, this is a cell phone scam and is in no way involved with the City of Litchfield Park.”

While the messages don’t explicitly claim to be from a city employee, Williams said he believes that was the intention.

“The City does not have an employee named Mary, nor do we have citizen phone numbers,” he said.

Text messages reviewed by The Independent are depicted below as a graphic for clarity.

Williams told The Independent in a series of emails that the city was unaware who had sent the messages, but called it a “scare tactic” and a “misinformation campaign.”

A little over a week after the messages were first sent, The Independent learned the origin of the mysterious survey — although it wasn’t much of a mystery after all.

When asked about the survey, Tony Bradley, president and CEO of the Arizona Trucking Association, told The Independent flat-out his organization was behind the survey.

“We commissioned a poll to find out what the residents felt about what…(Litchfield Park) city council is doing,” Bradley said in a phone interview with The Independent on Monday.

When asked who Mary was, Bradley stated he was unsure and that the trucking association had hired a third-party company to conduct the poll, though he declined to say which.

“After learning of the potential consequences of what this truck restriction will do, the number of people who support the city council’s actions was not good,” Bradley said.

“The mayor, as I understand it, is going around saying that…everyone in the community supports” the truck restriction, Bradley said. “Our poll results show the opposite.”

When asked why the messages did not disclose who commissioned the survey, Bradley stated, “When you commission a poll you don’t necessarily say who it’s by because you don’t want to interject bias.”

When questioned how this type of disclosure could interject bias, Bradley stated that “it’s not the standard for a poll to say who it’s being paid by.”

Bradley later emailed The Independent a photo he claimed represented the data collected by the April 11 survey based on 335 responses.

A picture of a bar chart titled “final support” shows a little over 45% of residents “strongly oppose” the truck restrictions and a little over 10% “somewhat oppose.” The chart showed that a little more than 32% “strongly support” the truck restrictions and a little over 10% “somewhat support.”

Bradley denied the survey was intended for anything but gathering data on resident opinions. 

“If we were trying to get the residents of Litchfield Park to take action on an issue, we would not use a poll. There are far more effective and less expensive ways to talk to residents,” Bradley said.

 “It is a scientific tool, nothing more. We wanted to know how the voters of Litchfield Park feel about the issue and the potential consequences to their community and the surrounding communities,” Bradley said.

He went on to repudiate William’s statements calling the survey a “scare tactic” and “misinformation campaign.”

“In my limited experience with Mr. Williams, it is clear to me that there are a lot of things he knows nothing about,” Bradley said in an email to The Independent. “Trucking and polling are clearly two of them.”

Litchfield Park Mayor Thomas Schoaf said in a prepared statement on Wednesday that he was “disappointed” that the trucking association was behind the survey and admonished the group for sending it to the phones of private residents. 

“Many of our residents consider it an invasion of their privacy to contact them (through) personal cell phone numbers,” Schoaf said.

“It was a misinformation campaign in an attempt to bias our residents against our truck restrictions,” he said, adding that residents are “overwhelmingly in support” of the trucking restrictions. 

Schoaf’s statement concludes by reiterating that the restrictions apply only to through traffic; “Trucks having deliveries/pickups in the City, or businesses located within the City may continue as always,” he said.

“This ordinance has been in place since 2020 and has simply not had the effect on our citizens that these scare tactics imply."

Madeline Ackley Salazar can be reached at mackley@iniusa.org or found on Twitter @Mkayackley.