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Landmark day • Tuesday, February 23, 1960

February 23, 1960: Scottsdale's First Charter (and Why It Didn't Count)

The town votes itself a charter, elects its first mayor directly, and acts like a city for a year and a half. Then the courts throw the charter out over a three-day calendar slip.

Illustrated plaque for February 23, 1960 in Scottsdale history SALOON TRADING POST MOTEL FEBRUARY 23 1960 BOOMTOWN

What happened

Scottsdale voters approved a proposed city charter at an election on February 23, 1960, and the governor later signed it. The charter had last been published on January 21, so the vote fell on the thirty-third day after publication; the Arizona Constitution set a window of 20 to 30 days. When the state attorney general challenged two Scottsdale annexations, the Maricopa County Superior Court declared the charter void, and the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed on March 9, 1965.

Why it matters

The voided charter explains two puzzles in the record: why Scottsdale is said to have elected its first mayor directly in 1960, and why it adopted a charter again in October 1961. It is also a casualty of the annexation war with Phoenix, since the charter fell in a suit over annexations.

A charter, briefly

By the winter of 1959 the Town of Scottsdale was eight years old and had about ten thousand people. Its council chose the mayor from among its own members, and the town was locked in a race with Phoenix for the surrounding county land (see the annexation war). A home-rule charter would let it write its own rules. The proposed charter was last published on January 21, 1960, and voters approved it on February 23, 1960. According to the city’s historic context, Governor Paul Fannin signed it on March 8.

For about a year and a half the town acted on it. At the municipal election that spring voters chose the mayor directly for the first time, returning Mort Kimsey, and the new council members drew odd one-year terms, the usual mark of a charter staggering its seats. A Scottsdale Progress editorial reprinted that June praised “the forward minded charter council.”

Three days too late

The Arizona Constitution required the charter election to come between 20 and 30 days after the charter’s publication. February 23 was the thirty-third day. Nobody seems to have pressed the point until the state attorney general, Robert W. Pickrell, sued over two Scottsdale annexation ordinances that had been adopted under the state statutes. His office argued that the February vote “was not held as directed by the Arizona Constitution and that, therefore, the claimed Charter of the City of Scottsdale was and is void even though later approved by the Governor.”

The Maricopa County Superior Court agreed. It held “that the Charter of the Town of Scottsdale is invalid and void” because “the election was held on the thirty-third day after publication.” By the time the appeal was argued the town had already started over: a 14-member board of freeholders drafted a new charter, and voters ratified it on October 31, 1961. On March 9, 1965 the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment against the first one. Its opinion still called the city the “Town of Scottsdale.”

The full account of the town’s first decade is in the 1950s politics chapter, and the charter Scottsdale still uses is explained in the charter guide.

Gaps in the record

  • The vote count on February 23, 1960 was not found. The Scottsdale Progress later reported that 269 people voted in a charter election, 260 of them yes, but did not say which of the two elections.
  • Who drafted the 1960 charter, and what form of government it set up, were not found.
  • The date of the Superior Court judgment, and whether anyone besides the attorney general raised the timing defect, are not in the appellate opinion.