Log in

Opinion

Heath: Scottsdale needs a smart growth council

Posted

As a longtime resident of Scottsdale who cares deeply about our city, I support Tammy Caputi and John Little for City Council, because of their pedigrees and their open-minded approach to smart growth.

I also plan to vote for Becca Linnig, because we have not had a City Council member from south Scottsdale in over 20 years, and I believe her geographic perspective may serve the city well.

Here’s why.

Arizona became a popular place to live after the invention of the air conditioner, and we have been booming ever since. Everyone who moves here knows — or should know — that you cannot stop people from moving to our state. All you can do is artificially interrupt where it occurs.

Unfortunately, the City of Scottsdale is a test case of what artificial interruption looks like in practice.

Our municipality was founded in 1951 with two square miles of land, and it began annexing land north of Bell Road in 1964. Today our city is 31 miles long and contains 185 square miles, with almost all the city’s landmass residing in north Scottsdale.

In the 1980’s, master planned golf communities appeared in north Scottsdale. Early residents to the area fell in love with the beauty of the Sonoran Desert and organized to restrict its growth.

They called themselves Citizens of Pinnacle Peak (COPP), and to the best of my knowledge they knew nothing about traditional methods of municipal planning.

All they knew, once they moved into their guard-gated communities, was they wanted to disrupt further growth to their area, and that is precisely what they did via a tribalism approach.

One of the first shoes to drop was the shopping center we know today as the Scottsdale Pavilions. The development was originally planned to be located at Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard and Pima Road (now Loop 101). So fierce was the opposition from north Scottsdale anti-growth activists (because they did not want the traffic along their commute), the developer moved it to the Pima Maricopa Reservation, and it is now a prime competitor of businesses in Scottsdale.

That was the first commercial development to go to the Reservation. Dozens of other developments followed because at about that same time Scottsdale remarkably decided to voluntarily relocate Loop 101 from the Scottsdale side of Pima Road to the Reservation itself, and a huge area of former agricultural land adjacent to the city was opened for competitive development.

Who knows how much investment has been lost to the Pima Maricopa Reservation and the Phoenix border since then, but the associated loss in sales tax revenues to the City of Scottsdale must be in the tens of millions of dollars.

We can see and frequent those car dealerships, shopping centers and entertainment venues on our borders, however we do not get the benefit from the sales tax revenues collected by them.

Today there are 18,000 businesses in Scottsdale employing 180,000 employees in the resort, entertainment, health, technology, and automobile industries. However, thanks to unelected anti-growth activists, nearly all those businesses are south of Bell Road.

That said, are you surprised to learn that over 90 cents of every dollar used to purchase north Scottsdale’s McDowell Sonoran Preserve was collected through sales taxes at businesses south of Bell Road? The same thing holds true today for north Scottsdale’s police and fire protection budget.

I cannot think of another city in America that has such a disproportionate method of tax collection and appropriation, given its parasitical nature.

Imagine if the residents of the Bronx or Queens collectively realized they were supplementing the lifestyle of those living in the Hamptons or Manhattan.

Intentional or not, north Scottsdale has become a wealthy bedroom community filled with residents whose essential city services are funded by their neighbors to the south.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a map of Scottsdale’s land annexation history.

And here’s what the city’s land use looks like via an interactive map for the Scottsdale General Plan (which is currently up for revision): https://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/Assets/ScottsdaleAZ/General+Plan/maps/Land+Use+Map.pdf.

Note all the yellow which represents “rural residential” covering nearly every major intersection along north Pima and Scottsdale Roads.

Accordingly, it is mind boggling to me that same political activists who fought vehemently to make north Scottsdale a sea of homes on large acre lots, are driving over 20 miles away to second-guess previously authorized building heights in downtown Scottsdale.

You do not get to retroactively weigh into matters like that from such an absurdly long distance away in cities with council districts. (Hint)

Today Scottsdale is close to residential build-out. Out of 118,000 acres in the city, less than 15,000 remain for residential use, and less than 5,000 acres remain for mixed use and commercial use. For those concerned about “growth,” there is little left to micromanage.

The issue before us is what to do with those precious remaining acres and the redevelopment of functionally obsolete buildings in the older parts of our city.

That is precisely why this City Council election is so import. There are anti-development-at-any-cost candidates on the ballot, and there are smart-growth candidates who realize that our property taxes are low because we are a vibrant business community with a reputation for excellence.

The contrast could not be starker, especially given the impact COVID-19 has had on the city’s budget.

If we continue down the anti-growth path that we have been on since the 1980’s, we will inevitably see higher taxes and higher fees for city services. To avoid further economic damage, it is critically important that we elect smart-growth/pro-business candidates to the City Council in the upcoming election.

If a candidate is endorsed by Citizens of Greater Scottsdale (COGS) that is the same anti-business group that COPP morphed into.

As for the mayoral campaign; may the best candidate win.

I hope this op-ed resonates with those candidates, Lisa Borowsky and David Ortega, because this north/south chasm in tax collection and governance is not going to solve itself.

Editor’s Note: Larry Heath is a longtime Scottsdale resident.