The stories that defined Mesa in 2021

During 2021, the Mesa Independent covered the city of Mesa and the adjacent unincorporated Maricopa County area, offering reporting of local issues.

They included:

• A Maricopa County agency working to hold back the floodwaters when it rains having several projects in the works in Mesa, including one that stretches east into Pinal County;
• The city paying out more than $5 million on 509 claims and out-of-court settlements during the past five years, according to a review of its records;
• The results of public records requests made seeking a five-year examination of out-of-court settlements in school districts that have Mesa students;
• Mesa board discussions on recreational marijuana dispensaries and other zoning regulations;
• The top funding priorities for the $2.1 billion budget for fiscal year 2021-22 approved for the city and how it compared to the previous year;
• The dollars and cents fueling Mesa’s three community facilities districts — Cadence and Eastmark No. 1 and No. 2;
• A records request showing Mesa’s top 25 highest-paid workers, with four city employees being paid more than $200,000 a year and three of them among the top 25 highest paid government workers in the Phoenix metro area;
• •Survey results being used to spend $20 million to enhance Mesa’s bicycle and pedestrian network;
• Mesa city code changes made to stop businesses that fraudulently present themselves to be massage establishments but are fronts for prostitution, human trafficking and other unlawful activities;
• The 14 crimes reported in 2020 — up from nine in 2019 and six in 2018 — at two Mesa Community College campuses and a downtown center in the Maricopa County Community College District, according to a federally mandated campus-security report.