Two measurements bracket 1975. A special census counted 78,000 people — up ten thousand from the start of the decade — and the city limits jumped again as Scottsdale annexed the “East Shea” corridor stretching toward Fountain Hills. The annexation reflex was by now well practiced: ever since the 1960s land race with Phoenix, Scottsdale had answered growth by getting bigger first and sorting out the services after.
The year’s other opening pointed inward. The Center for the Arts opened on the Civic Center Mall on October 23, with a Roger Miller concert — the day has its own page — extending the civic campus Bennie Gonzales had designed in the 1960s and giving the year-old Scottsdale Symphony — and every other ambition of the town’s cultural boosters — a purpose-built stage. The West’s Most Western Town was now also a town with an orchestra, an arts center, and a working preservation society, a portfolio the 1950s boosters never sketched but would probably have approved of anyway.
Growth still had a shape to it. The Greenbelt was rising section by section along Indian Bend Wash, McCormick Ranch was selling, and the resort corridor was thickening along Scottsdale Road. On the far side of the decade waited a city of 88,412 — see the 1970s chapter for the whole arc.
In government, the year was quieter after the mid-1974 change of mayors. Reason magazine reported that the council had renewed Rural/Metro’s fire contract for five more years, and the city’s reports show Frank Aleshire as city manager. The politics of the decade are in the 1970s politics chapter.