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Landmark day • Tuesday, February 20, 1996

February 20, 1996: Voters Overturn the Council on Pima Road

A referendum reverses the council for the first time on the city's record, the charter finally drops its property rule, and the race to succeed Drinkwater goes to a second round.

Illustrated plaque for February 20, 1996 in Scottsdale history FEBRUARY 20 1996 THE RESORT METROPOLIS

What happened

At the city's primary election on February 20, 1996, Scottsdale voters rejected, 14,881 to 9,695, a citizen referendum on the council's rezoning of about 40 acres at the northwest corner of Pima and Black Mountain roads from about one home per four acres to one per acre. They approved all twelve charter amendments the council had placed on the ballot, among them deleting the requirement that the mayor and council own real property, deleting the real-property-taxpayer requirement for bond votes, and renaming the primary election the general and the general the runoff. In the race to succeed Herb Drinkwater, Sam Campana led Diana Smith 12,036 to 10,352, short of a majority, and Mary Manross was re-elected to the council outright with the most votes of any council candidate.

Why it matters

The Pima Road vote showed that north Scottsdale residents could beat the council and the Chamber at the polls on growth, and it opened four years of referendum fights over zoning and over the referendum itself. The charter vote ended the property-ownership rule voters had refused to drop in 1988.

The referendum

The council had rezoned about 40 acres at the northwest corner of Pima and Black Mountain roads from R1-190 to R1-43, roughly from one home per four acres to one per acre, for a project called Black Mountain Estates. Residents petitioned the rezoning to the ballot as Proposition 300.

The Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce and The Scottsdale Partnership defended the council: “While we respect the right to citizen referendums in principle, this particular referendum is ill-conceived. … If our elected officials need not give due diligence to issues, knowing the voters will ultimately decide, we have effectively assigned them to a clerical role.” State Representatives Carolyn Allen and Wesley Marsh noted that the project “preserves over 45% of its 40 acre site as open space.” Former councilwoman Diane Cusack was blunter: “Referenda should not be a hobby for a few disgruntled protesters.”

The Concerned Citizens Network, whose three officers were all council candidates that day, answered that a no vote “will reject the City Council’s rezoning of almost FOUR TIMES THE PRESENT DENSITY” and “prevent the loss of our scenic Pima Road corridor forever,” and warned that “if this REFERENDUM fails, it will open the floodgates of desert destruction.” Voters rejected the rezoning, 14,881 to 9,695. The group called it the first citizen referendum in Scottsdale’s history, which it was not: a 1992 referendum on 64th Street had reached the ballot, and the council won it. It was the first time on the city’s record that voters overturned a council rezoning, and in September they did it again, at Cactus Road and 132nd Street, 10,933 to 5,382.

The charter

All twelve charter amendments passed. Two undid what voters had refused to undo in 1988: the requirement that the mayor and council own real property, which the ballot called “held to be in violation of the United States Constitution,” fell 15,689 to 7,932, and the requirement that only real-property taxpayers vote on bonds fell 16,153 to 6,771. Another repealed the city’s power to remove nonconforming signs, “held to be in conflict with state statutes,” a last echo of the 1978 sign case. And Proposition 110 renamed the elections: the February “primary,” where most races were settled, became the “general,” and the March “general” became the “run-off.”

The business groups that backed the rename explained why it mattered: “This has the practical effect of increasing the number of valid signatures required on a Referendum or Recall petition.” No one filed an argument against it, and it passed 16,759 to 5,991, on the same ballot as the referendum that beat the council.

The race for mayor

Herb Drinkwater, mayor since 1980, did not run. Sam Campana, a council member from 1986 to 1994, led with 12,036 votes to 10,352 for Diana Smith, a former Chamber president, and 2,712 for Gordon Fitzgerald. With no majority, Campana and Smith met again on March 26, and Campana won 13,598 to 11,333, the city’s first woman mayor. Mary Manross was re-elected to the council outright with 13,229 votes. The 1990s politics chapter follows the referendum fights that came next, through the March 10, 1998 vote on who may carry a petition.