Keep Scottsdale Special

02/03/2025

Today the Phoenix Business Journal published my opinion column "My View: Here's why Scottsdale residents oppose Axon's apartment project:"

What’s the Axon apartment controversy really about? It isn’t, as some Business Journal readers have suggested, just about money. And it isn’t about Axon’s previously approved plans to build a new corporate headquarters in Scottsdale; we have no problem with that.

It’s about the right of the citizens of Scottsdale to control their own destiny; to keep the formula that made Scottsdale the best place to live and visit in the Valley. What is that formula? Simple: lots of open space, unobstructed views of the stunning landscape nature has given us, low density and Western character. These qualities have made Scottsdale a great place for us to live. And, if you want to talk money, these qualities also attract tourists, who heavily support our local economy.

That formula most certainly does not include tall buildings that block our views and deplete our limited water supply, urban-level density that clogs our streets with traffic and taxes our infrastructure and an oversupply of apartments.

And it most certainly doesn’t include Axon’s 1,900-unit apartment proposal which, if it were to proceed, would likely be the largest apartment project in state history. Scottsdale would then have the unfortunate distinction of being home to the two largest apartment complexes in Arizona; Optima McDowell Mountain Village tips the scales at more than 1,300 units and would fall to second place.

How do we know what Scottsdale residents want? Simple, we know through their votes. In the last election all of the pro-apartment incumbent Councilmembers were resoundingly ousted by the voters. Even more telling; when the Axon proposal was approved by a lame-duck City Council majority, we who oppose this terrible project were able to organize a referendum and collect 26,748 petition signatures in just a few short weeks. Conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between came together to say enough is enough.

We were able to accomplish this feat despite an aggressive effort by Axon to thwart TAAAZE’s petition drive that included “petition blockers” who often harassed signers and stalked circulators. Axon also circulated propaganda touting its plans and attacking TAAAZE, and they maintain a website to continue their campaign.

Axon is believed to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, in a failed attempt to stop our petition drive that will put its controversial and unpopular apartment proposal to a public vote.

Despite these expenditures, Axon couldn’t be bothered with filing a campaign finance report as required by law. TAAAZE followed the law and filed a campaign finance report in January disclosing our spending. A complaint against Axon has now been filed for failing to do the same. Axon certainly has the right to campaign, but they must follow the law. The rules must apply to everyone, whether you are a billion-dollar company or a group of residents trying to protect what makes Scottsdale special.

My wife, Scottsdale Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield, and I have devoted much of our adult lives to keeping Scottsdale special. That’s why she voted against approving this bad project and why I volunteered to chair the committee to oppose it. Bottom line: Axon’s apartment proposal does not represent the future Scottsdale residents want for our city, and it must be defeated.

12/06/2024

AN OPEN LETTER TO AXON CEO RICK SMITH FROM FORMER SCOTTSDALE CITY COUNCILMAN BOB LITTLEFIELD

CHAIRMAN, Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions (TAAAZE)

Dear Mr. Smith:

As you are no doubt aware thousands of Scottsdale residents from conservatives to liberals have come together to put the recent Scottsdale City Council approval, awarding Axon the largest apartment complex in Scottsdale history, to a public vote. What you may not be aware is that as of today, the halfway point of the 30 day period the Arizona constitution provides for challenging decisions by government, we have collected over 12,000 signatures from Scottsdale residents! The enthusiasm for our petitions is off the charts and growing.

Of course this is despite your abhorrent tactics of paying blockers to discourage city voters from signing our petitions at various places in the city. As a publicly traded company has your general counsel signed off on these tactics? Is your Board of Directors aware of them? They range from some of our circulators needing to call the police to protect themselves, to ongoing harassment to even one incident, documented by a circulator, in which they were spat upon and slugged. Is this the Axon way? Are you proud of the company and consultants you are paying to conduct such an abuse of democracy?

While you are answering those questions I hope you will answer a few others too . . .

*How and why did your President call the employer of Scottsdale Planning Commissioner Christian Serena after he opposed your application earlier this year? Was it to encourage his firing as was reported in the media earlier this year? If so, and I believe that did take place, then it was just a precursor to the behavior we are seeing now.

*This is your own rendering of your 1,900 unit apartment complex. You are really going to have a barracks and prison motif for the largest apartment project in city history?

*Why are so many apartments needed in this area when about 5,000 are already approved or under construction within 3 miles of this site?

*Isn’t the real reason you are asking for so many apartments is because the cost overruns on your new “Star Wars” corporate headquarters require such an extraordinary entitlement to help pay for it?

*Why don’t you just build your corporate headquarters as you promised to do in 2020? As conveyed above there are and will be plenty of housing options for your employees.

*Why are you threatening to leave to Atlanta or Seattle if you don’t get your 1,900 apartments? Is that all Scottsdale is worth to you? A source for enrichment rather than appreciation? If you really love Scottsdale, drop the ridiculous amount of apartments this community does not want or need.

*Why do you threaten neighbors with an industrial use if you don’t get your way? Only you can cause that to happen. And by the way, your threats of selling your property to such a user are specious since those uses will almost certainly require new zoning approvals which the newly elected and resident-friendly city council will not be inclined to approve.

*When are you going to pay the Arizona State Land Department approximately $150 million that are entitled to since you either misled or lied to them when you bought state land several years ago WITHOUT apartments as part of the mix? As you may know apartments in north Phoenix and north Scottsdale are selling for about $80,000 per unit. By failing to do so you are shortchanging students of our public schools who are the beneficiaries when state lands is sold.

Besides your company’s abhorrent and unsuccessful efforts to thwart our democratic rights you owe this community many more answers. There are just too many troubling actions and questions right now.

Despite your recent surge in your stock price there are just some things you can’t buy. We are one of them.

After we qualify this matter for the ballot we will wage a campaign as equally as spirited. And you do know that when you challenge our signatures – good luck with that – there is a strong legal chance and opinion that we only need less than half the amount the city is currently telling us we need, don’t you? But that’s likely to be irrelevant because we are going to post a number that blows away any requirement and underscores how upset the citizenry is with the abusrd approval of your massive apartment scheme by a lame duck council.

Thank you for your attention to these matters. You will be hearing more from us prior to our signature deadline of December 21st.

Paid for by Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions, with 0% from out-of-state contributors. Not affiliated with any candidate or candidate’s agent.

10/14/2024

Why Do Adam Kwasman's Opponents Hate Him So?

Scottsdale elections have always been contentious affairs. But this year the vitriol directed at Council candidate Adam Kwasman has been exceptionally nasty, even personal!

What's odd about this is Adam is just the kind of guy you want on Council - smart (he runs his own law firm), experienced (former Legislator), family man (wife and four small children) and involved in his community. So what gives with the hatred?

Well, it isn't really hatred, it's fear - fear that if Adam is elected the overdevelopment, overspending and over-taxation gravy train the current Council majority has been riding for the last few years will be bought to a screeching halt! That's why the special interests and their shills are attacking Kwasman so hard.

And I am happy to say their fear is justified - Scottsdale voters have awakened to the outrages going on down at City Hall, as evidenced by the first-place finish and outright victory of resident-friendly Council candidate Jan Dubauskas in the primary election. We need to help Adam join Jan in the winner's circle!

One bizarre aspect to this campaign is that the charge to trash Adam is being led by the two worst Councilmembers in recent memory, Tom Durham and Betty Janik. Below is a link to a video of Councilmembers Durham and Janik on the campaign trail promising to stop upzonings. But once they were in office, they voted exactly the opposite, approving every bad project that came before them. Their credibility is so low their opposition to Adam is actually an endorsement for Scottsdale citizens who want to protect our beautiful city's special character and high quality of life to vote FOR him!

Councilwoman Kathy, Councilman Barry Graham and I are asking voters to vote ONLY for Adam Kwasman in the upcoming general election. There is no good 2nd candidate for Council - all three of Adam's opponents are enthusiastic supporters of overdevelopment, overspending and over-taxing. The best thing you can do is to vote only for Adam and no one else. This will maximize his chances of winning and giving us a resident-friendly City Council majority.

Please pass this info on to your friends and neighbors who are Scottsdale voters.

Don't you hate It When Politicians Lie - Campaign promises broken by Scottsdale Council candidates

08/27/2024

Dear Friends:

In the 20+ years I have been involved in Scottsdale politics I have seen many outrages come out of City Hall. But last week's political maneuverings by the City Council majority to put a deceptive sales tax hike on the November ballot may have been the most shocking of all.

Imagine if you were about to make the last payment on your home mortgage and your mortgage company informed you they were extending your mortgage by 30 years! But not to worry, they offer to lower your monthly payment by 25% to gaslight you into believing your mortgage is being reduced.

Of course, you would be outraged at this attempt to grossly increase the amount you would pay on your mortgage. And you certainly wouldn’t be fooled by the small decrease in your monthly mortgage payment into thinking you would somehow be paying less for your mortgage!

And yet, this is exactly what the City Council majority was trying to get you to believe when on April 2nd they voted 5-2 (Councilmembers Littlefield and Graham opposed) to place a new sales tax, Prop 490, on the November ballot. Contrary to the claims of the proponents, this would be a tax hike, and a big one at that. While the proposed 0.15% sales tax is a lower rate than the current 0.20% sales tax it is higher than the 0% Scottsdale citizens would pay if the current tax were allowed to expire next year. Bottom line, Scottsdale citizens will pay more – as much as $1.5B more - in sales taxes if this proposal passes.

Another problem with this proposal is it lacks transparency. The sales taxes used to purchase land for the Preserve were tightly locked down to ensure future City Councils could not divert those revenues to other uses. Prop 490, the new sales tax, is written so that a vote of only five Councilmembers can change where these monies are spent, for uses citizens may not have intended or would not approve. That makes this new sales tax a staff and Council majority slush fund.

This controversy led to a lawsuit where the Arizona Court of Appeals determined the City’s original ballot language was misleading, citing the City for failing to “disclose the proposition’s principal provision – that it creates a new tax…with a new purpose.” The Court’s finding was clear: this new tax has nothing whatsoever to do with the expiring tax.

The city hastily created new language which, while improved, is still worded to mislead you to believe the new 0.15% tax is somehow related to the expiring 0.20% tax. And the new language still allows a vote of only five Councilmembers to change where these monies are spent, for uses citizens may not have intended or would not approve. That is the language that will be on the ballot in November.

So please join Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield, Councilman Barry Graham and me in voting NO on Prop 490, the new sales tax, on the November ballot. And please pass this info on to your friends and neighbors who are Scottsdale voters.

P.S. Adam Kwasman was the only one of the four candidates running for City Council in the November election to oppose this sales tax increase from the very beginning. This fact, along with his being the only candidate in the race to oppose overdevelopment, is why we who are concerned about preserving Scottsdale's special character and high quality of life should vote for Kwasman - and only for Kwasman - in the upcoming November election!

07/08/2024

Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield, Councilman Barry Graham and I are endorsing two new Council candidates, Jan Dubauskas and Adam Kwasman, in the upcoming city primary election. Here's why:

Scottsdale's special character and high quality of life are threatened by three bad trends coming out of City Hall: overdevelopment, overspending and over-taxation. If they are not halted these "three O's" will turn Scottsdale into just another dense, urban jungle in the not too distant future!

The only way to bring a halt to these bad trends is to elect a truly resident-friendly City Council majority. Every Council candidate claims to be resident-friendly while they are campaigning, but their voting records once they get in office (see chart below) often tell a different story.

As the chart shows the two worst offenders are current Councilmembers Durham and Caputi who voted against the residents 100% of the time! Fortunately, both are running for re-election, which gives voters an opportunity to vote them off the City Council and replace them with newcomers Jan Dubauskas and Adam Kwasman who are committed to protecting our city's special character and high quality of life from the "three O's." Voting for them in the upcoming primary election is literally an investment in Scottsdale's future!

Please pass this info on to your friends and neighbors who are Scottsdale voters.

05/31/2024

Politicians love to try to sneak bad ideas past the public by giving those ideas nice-sounding names, and our current Scottsdale City Council majority is no exception. On May 21st they considered approving a grossly-misnamed "Sustainability Plan" that, if implemented, would have imposed unnecessary higher costs and burdensome mandates on Scottsdale residents. This plan wasn't about true sustainability at all, it was about bureaucracy, ideology and increased government revenue.

Fortunately Scottsdale residents saw through the the shiny wrapping and, realizing this was a deeply flawed plan, proceeded to inundate the Councilmembers with literally hundreds of emails and public comments opposing it. The proponents feared (correctly) approving the plan would jeopardize the re-election prospects of the plan supporters running for re-election (Ortega, Caputi and Durham) so they kicked the can down the road and voted to "send the plan back to the drawing board for more public input."

But sustainability is important, so let's look at what a realistic, comprehensive, non-ideological sustainability plan for Scottsdale would contain.

The first criteria would be fiscal sustainability. You cannot survive as a government, business or family unless you are fiscally sustainable. Is Scottsdale city government fiscally sustainable? I would say no because, despite high revenues the City Council majority is asking you (once again) to increase your taxes. To add insult to injury they are claiming they need this increase because we have aging (some over 50 years old) parks that need maintenance. Ask yourself, why are we just getting around to this now? Maintenance costs for the Parks and the Preserve should have been coming out of the city’s operating budget all along, but we are now being told there is only “limited funding from the general fund.” Why is that? Are we overspending on other pet projects? Should not maintaining our parks and Preserve have always been a top priority for general fund spending?

To achieve true and permanent fiscal sustainability we should appoint a task force of citizens with financial expertise and no axe to grind and give them wide-ranging authority to examine the city's budget with a fine tooth comb and to make recommendations as to how to allocate the billions of your taxpayer dollars the city takes in every year.

The next criteria for true sustainability would be services sustainability - providing top-notch public safety, water and sewer and amenities such as parks and libraries. Scottsdale does a good job of this, except for the above-mentioned failure to keep pace with the maintenance and upkeep all of these amenities require. Again, this is an issue the citizen's budget task force should examine closely.

The last criteria for true sustainability would be environmental sustainability. While this was the area that the failed plan from May 21st was supposed to address, is is exactly the area where it tanked the worst! We live in a desert in the middle of a drought. The heat island effect from overbuilding has raised summer temperatures not just in Scottsdale but in our neighboring communities. Our traffic is a mess. And our air quality is deteriorating.

What is the solution to these problems? A good start would be to stop overdevelopment! It is hypocritical and counterproductive for the Council majority to claim to be concerned about environmental sustainability while they are busily approving literally thousands of new tall, dense, ugly, traffic-snarling, water-guzzling view-blocking apartment projects (see chart below).

Bottom line, you won't get true sustainability in Scottsdale until you elect a City Council majority whose priorities reflect the real needs of our residents. That means reforming the budget process and halting unsustainable overdevelopment. Remember that when you vote in the primary election on July 30th.

05/28/2024

Dear Friends:

Last week the Scottsdale City Council considered approving a grossly-misnamed "Sustainability Plan" that, if implemented, would have imposed unnecessary higher costs and burdensome mandates on Scottsdale residents. Five Councilmembers (Ortega, Whitehead, Caputi, Durham and Janik) were eager to approve this plan with Councilmembers Littlefield and Graham opposed. But instead of approving the plan the Council ended up voting to "send the plan back to the drawing board for more public input."

How did this happen? Scottsdale residents recognized immediately the hypocrisy of the Council majority claiming to be concerned about sustainability while they are busily approving literally thousands of new tall, dense, ugly, traffic-snarling, water-guzzling view-blocking apartment projects (see chart below). So they inundated the Councilmembers with literally hundreds of emails and public comments opposing the plan, and the proponents feared (correctly) approving the plan would jeopardize the re-election prospects of the plan supporters running for re-election (Ortega, Caputi and Durham)! So the plan supporters kicked the can down the road.

Bottom line, voters saw the supporters of this "Sustainability Plan" were exactly the same Councilmembers who are madly in love with approving more overdevelopment. And voters also saw these same development-loving Councilmembers were trying to use this plan to make Scottsdale residents pay for development they don't even want. Talk about adding insult to injury!

So last week Scottsdale residents won a small victory when this plan was continued. But make no mistake, if Ortega, Caputi and Durham are re-elected this bad plan will be back faster than greased lightning, probably even worse than before! Remember that when you vote in the primary election on July 30th.

Former Councilman Bob Littlefield

04/05/2024

This has been a busy week in Scottsdale politics. On Monday nine candidates filed paperwork to run for City Council and three candidates filed paperwork to run for Mayor. While there are rumors there may be some signature challenges it is almost certain we will have a city primary election this year. More about the candidates and their stands on the issues in next week's newsletter.

But the biggest news in Scottsdale politics this week is, on Tuesday the City Council majority voted to put a $1+ billion generational tax proposal on the November ballot. Only two Councilmembers, Kathy Littlefield and Barry Graham, voted against the tax. Here is what Councilmember Littlefield had to say about this proposal:

I have spent several days at my desk at home in deliberation of this meeting. After much thought, review, and consideration, I cannot support the motion to put a sales tax increase on the ballot to pay for these projects. And yes, it is an increase. While the proposed 0.15% sales tax is a lower rate than the current 0.20% sales tax it is higher than the 0% Scottsdale citizens would pay if the current tax were allowed to expire next year. Bottom line, Scottsdale citizens will pay more in sales tax if this proposal passes and trying to tell them otherwise is disingenuous at best. Not to mention our voters are smart enough to see through this dodge.

I do not have an issue with these projects; Nor do I believe they should not be done. However, the capital asset renewal and replacements should be funded by bonds – long-term debt - not a sales tax.

Another problem I have with this proposal is it lacks transparency. The uses of bond money are more tightly limited than the uses of sales tax money, which can be changed by a simple vote of the City Council. That gives the Council and staff too much flexibility to move sales tax money around to projects the citizens may not have intended or approve of. For instance, a big cut of this sales tax revenue will go to WestWorld, but that is not mentioned in the ballot language.

I don’t think there’s anyone more supportive of WestWorld than I am. I believe it adds a very unique venue to our city to display not only our Western heritage, and also offers the ability to host many other types of shows and displays for all to enjoy. So I don’t have an issue with improving the drainage there, or with paving the parking. But I do have an issue with paying for WestWorld improvements in this manner. These improvements should be bought and paid for out of the revenues from WestWorld itself and, if those are insufficient, then taken to the voters on a Bond Election and, if approved, financed with General Obligation bonds.

One of the justifications put forth for this project is that we have aging (some over 50 years old) parks that need maintenance. Ask yourself, why are we just getting around to this now? Maintenance costs for the Parks and the Preserve should come out of the city’s operating budget, but we are told there is only “limited funding from the general fund.” Why is that? Are we overspending on other pet projects? Should not maintaining our parks and Preserve have always been a top priority for general fund spending?

Bottom line, this proposal is funding good projects in a bad way, and I cannot support putting it on the ballot.

Councilmember Kathy Littlefield

04/11/2023

In the 30 years I have been involved in Scottsdale politics I have never seen the level of outrage on any issue that I am seeing on the issue of the city's plan to reduce the carrying capacity of our already clogged streets by applying "road diets" to many of them. Citizens are complaining to the City Council in droves, organizing neighborhoods in opposition, and even starting petition drives to put a stake through the heart of this bad idea.

There are two reasons "road diets" are a bad idea in Scottsdale:

Ever since I was first elected to the City Council over two decades ago the #1 complaint of Scottsdale citizens has been clogged traffic. Scottsdale residents don't want less traffic-carrying capacity, they want more!

The more than 10,000 apartments already approved by the previous City Council majority but yet to be built will make traffic in Scottsdale even worse over the next few years and will increase the need for more road capacity.

Most Scottsdale citizens believe city government should be spending our transit money to maintain and repair our deteriorating roads to improve traffic flow for our current residents, as well as, adding traffic lanes to accommodate the new residents who will occupy all of the new apartments that will soon be built. They see clearly that "road diets" are a plan driven by ideology, not by practicality, and are directly opposite of what the vast majority of Scottsdale residents want.

But there is another reason "road diets" have generated so much outrage among Scottsdale citizens - the distrust created by the lack of transparency on the part of city government on this issue. The 68th St Project Notification Process Failed to Follow Requirements in the Transportation Action Plan. And, contrary to comments by some Councilmembers, there are 18 Road Diets included in Scottsdale's Transportation Action Plan. This lack of transparency outrages citizens even more than the "road diet" plan itself. No surprise then that, in a recent survey the Scottsdale city government gets poor marks from residents for overall confidence, acting in city's best interest, being open/transparent, and informing residents of upcoming issues. Not to mention low marks for traffic flow, public parking and air quality.

If you agree road diets are a bad idea for Scottsdale, please contact the Mayor and Councilmembers at [email protected] to encourage them to put a stop to "road diets" and do what their constituents want, which is make it easier to drive around Scottsdale, not more difficult.

04/06/2023

Don't believe it when you are told road diets are not coming to your neighborhood:

There are 18 Road Diets included in Scottsdale's Transportation Action Plan. Contrary to comments by some Council members, this is Not a conspiracy.Sign up a...

03/16/2023

Dear Friends:

At their March 21st meeting the City Council will consider putting a one-mile stretch of 68th Street from Indian School Road to Thomas Road on a "road diet." The project would reduce the four-lane roadway to two lanes and add bike lanes. And while next Tuesday's item will only apply to 68th Street, it will, if approved, set a precedent for eliminating car-lanes and narrowing roads across all of Scottsdale.

There are two reasons "road diets" are a bad idea in Scottsdale:
1. Ever since I was first elected to the City Council over two decades ago the #1 complaint of Scottsdale citizens has been clogged traffic. Scottsdale residents don't want less traffic-carrying capacity, they want more!
2. The more than 10,000 apartments already approved by the previous City Council majority but yet to be built will make traffic in Scottsdale even worse over the next few years and will increase the need for more road capacity.
Bottom line, the City should be spending our transit money to maintain and repair our deteriorating roads to improve traffic flow for our current residents, as well as, adding traffic lanes to accommodate the new residents who will occupy all of the new apartments that will soon be built.

The proponents of "road diets" at City Hall are trying to sell this as a pro-bicycle and pedestrian plan, but in reality, it is an anti-automobile plan. It is purposefully designed to make driving in Scottsdale more difficult and unpleasant -- not as a side-effect but as a means of achieving their ultimate goal of forcing you out of your car. "Road diets" are a plan driven by ideology, not by practicality, and are directly opposite of what the vast majority of Scottsdale residents want.

If you agree road diets are a bad idea for Scottsdale, please contact the Mayor and Councilmembers at [email protected] to encourage them to put a stake through the heart of "road diets" and do what their constituents want, which is make it easier to drive around Scottsdale, not more difficult.

Bob Littlefield
Keep Scottsdale Special

Click on the video below for more details about "road diets" and how they would lower your quality of life: Road Diet For 68th Street.

The 68th St Road Diet & Bike Lane Project is on the City Council agenda on March 21st at City Hall

02/09/2023

2022 ended on some high notes for residents who care about preserving Scottsdale's special character and high quality of life; resident-friendly candidate Barry Graham was easily elected to join resident-friendly incumbent Kathy Littlefield on the City Council, the outrageous Mercado Courtyards (92nd Street and Shea) apartment proposal was defeated and, no doubt as a result of that defeat the equally outrageous 94 Hundred Shea apartment proposal was postponed indefinitely.

Unfortunately, the threats to our quality of life did not go away, they just took a break for the holidays and are already beginning to resurface. The developers of the tall, dense, traffic-clogging and water-guzzling apartment projects are already at work trying to figure out new and creative ways to get around citizen opposition in order to get their upzonings approved.

But the most immediate threat to our quality of life is a proposal by City staff to start putting Scottsdale streets on a "road diet!" Simply put, this idea would lower the number of lanes available to cars on our streets. Ever since I was first elected to the City Council over two decades ago the #1 complaint of Scottsdale citizens has been clogged traffic, and the thousands of traffic-clogging apartments approved over the last decade have made this problem even worse! Check out this video for more details:

Road Diets Will Be Coming to Scottsdale If WE don't stop them. To keep informed, sign up at: https://protectscottsdale.com