The census takers arrived and confirmed what the traffic already knew: 202,705 residents, more than 55 percent growth in a single decade — once again among the fastest rates of any large American city. Scottsdale had spent the 1990s buying mountains, building Fashion Square into a retail giant, and watching Los Arcos die; now it entered the new century as a genuine mid-sized city with a small town’s self-image still stubbornly attached.
The number was less a milestone than a starting gun. The decade ahead would give the city things it had never had — a completed freeway, a skyline, waterfront property in the Sonoran Desert — and the growth machine that produced 202,705 was about to shift into a higher, more leveraged gear. Condos, canals, and eventually a crash: the whole arc is in the 2000s chapter.
The year’s politics turned over City Hall. Mayor Sam Campana did not run, and on May 16 Mary Manross, on the council since 1992, beat former councilman Ross Dean in a runoff, 17,964 to 14,298; David Ortega and Ned O’Hearn won the runoff council seats. Jan Dolan, Menlo Park’s former city manager, became Scottsdale’s city manager in August, by the city’s budget books. In September voters approved six of nine bond questions, $358.2 million in all. The decade’s politics are in the 2000s politics chapter.