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Landmark day • Tuesday, March 10, 1998

March 10, 1998: Scottsdale Votes on Who May Carry a Petition

After paid out-of-state circulators sank a referendum in court, the council limited petitions to residents, the activists referred the limit to the voters, and the voters kept it.

Illustrated plaque for March 10, 1998 in Scottsdale history MARCH 10 1998 THE RESORT METROPOLIS

What happened

At the city's general election on March 10, 1998, Scottsdale voters decided a citizen referendum on Ordinance 3043, which required circulators of initiative, referendum and nomination petitions to be qualified Scottsdale electors who had lived in the city for at least 29 days. The council had adopted it after the Arizona Supreme Court, in May 1997, disqualified signatures gathered by paid out-of-state circulators against a council rezoning for a Phoenix Coyotes ice rink. Voters kept the ordinance, 10,778 to 6,943. The same day they elected Cynthia Lukas to the council outright and sent four candidates to a May runoff.

Why it matters

The vote was the sharpest test of a decade-long argument over who controls Scottsdale's zoning: the council, or residents who petition its decisions to the ballot. The business community and the council won this round; the activists who lost it went on to elect one of their own, George Zraket, to the council two months later.

The ice rink

On February 18, 1997 the council rezoned land in McDowell Mountain Ranch from residential to commercial, which, the Arizona Supreme Court later wrote, “allowed the Phoenix Coyotes, a National Hockey League team, to build an ice rink for training and public recreation.” A neighborhood group, the McDowell Mountain Ranch Land Coalition, hired a national petition firm and filed 4,898 signatures, nearly twice the number needed to force a referendum. Other residents sued. The trial court threw out 2,593 signatures gathered by eight paid circulators who had no intention of staying in Arizona, and on May 16, 1997 the Supreme Court agreed. Justice Frederick Martone described them as “political vagabonds, going anywhere there is work, and intending to remain nowhere.” The referendum never reached the ballot.

The council answered with Ordinance 3043: anyone circulating an initiative, referendum or nomination petition in Scottsdale had to be a qualified Scottsdale elector and a resident for at least 29 days. Activists gathered signatures against that too, and it went to the voters.

Each side in its own words

The Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce put the question its way: “Should ballot petitioners on Scottsdale issues be Scottsdale residents? We believe the answer must be ‘Yes.’” It added: “We recently experienced non-Arizona residents heavily financing a petition drive that resulted in a controversial ballot initiative.”

The opponents were led by Scottsdale Concerned Citizens, whose members had run the 1996 referendums that overturned two council rezonings. It called the ordinance “a blatant City Council effort to limit citizens ability to exercise their constitutional rights to referendum, initiative, recall and candidate nominations.” The Community Council of Scottsdale asked: “Why should the City Council, who are sworn to represent the citizens, be afraid of having their decisions questioned by those citizens?” The Greater Pinnacle Peak Homeowners Association noted that Arizona voters “have had the freedom to circulate petitions in the incorporated City of Scottsdale for more than 46 years.” The Coalition of Pinnacle Peak said: “The real problem here is our Council’s fundamental mistrust of its own constituents.” And George Zraket, a council candidate that spring, accused the council of “density-increasing zoning ‘deals’ with developers and special interests.”

The result

On March 10, 1998 voters kept the ordinance, 10,778 to 6,943, about 61 percent. Cynthia Lukas won a council seat outright the same day. Two months later, in the May 19 runoff, Zraket finished first and Councilman Don Prior lost his seat. Two years earlier the business groups had backed a charter change renaming the city’s elections, saying openly that it would raise “the number of valid signatures required on a Referendum or Recall petition”; see February 20, 1996. The 1990s politics chapter tells the whole argument over referendums.