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Landmark day • Tuesday, May 18, 2004

May 18, 2004: Voters Double Down on the Preserve

Nine years after taxing themselves to buy the mountains, Scottsdale's voters vote to tax themselves again — to buy the rest before the market does.

Illustration of hikers on a McDowell Sonoran Preserve trail beneath saguaros, with the McDowell Mountains behind
The McDowell Sonoran Preserve: the city bought its own mountains, one sales-tax penny fraction at a time. Illustration: Scottsdale.tips.

What happened

Question 1 on the May 18, 2004 ballot asked for a 0.15 percent sales-tax increase dedicated to McDowell Sonoran Preserve land and improvements for thirty years, on top of the 0.2 percent approved in 1995, for a total Preserve tax of 0.35 percent. Question 2 authorized up to $500 million in bonds against that future revenue so the city could buy land immediately rather than wait for the tax to accumulate. Both passed. The goal was a 36,400-acre preserve — roughly a third of the city — with some 19,000 acres still to acquire.

Why it matters

The 2004 vote is why the Preserve reached its planned size. Land prices in north Scottsdale were climbing toward the peak of the housing boom; buying with bonds ahead of the tax let the city close on State Trust sections and ranch parcels before they went to developers. Prop 420 locked the result in 2018.

The math had changed

The first Preserve tax, approved on May 23, 1995, had done what it promised: a fifth of a cent on every dollar spent in Scottsdale, running thirty years, had bought the city thousands of acres of the McDowell Mountains through real-estate transactions and State Trust auctions. But the city had also grown around the mountains. By 2004 the housing boom was pushing north Scottsdale land prices up faster than the tax could accumulate, and the Preserve’s planners could see the endgame: the remaining 19,000 acres needed to reach the goal of 36,400 — a third of the city, more land than Tempe and Paradise Valley combined — would go to developers at State Trust auction before Scottsdale could afford to bid.

The answer was to borrow against the future. Question 1 on the May 18, 2004 ballot raised the Preserve tax by 0.15 percent, to 0.35 percent in all, for thirty years, restricted to land acquisition and the trailheads and parking that went with it. Question 2 authorized $500 million in bonds secured by that revenue, so that the city could buy now and repay later. The campaign was not unanimous — opponents argued the tax was regressive and the goal too ambitious — but the result was decisive. Both questions passed.

What it bought

The bond authority let Scottsdale move quickly through the last boom years, closing on ranch land, failed subdivisions, and State Trust sections in the northern desert that would otherwise have been graded for golf lots. The Preserve pushed past 20,000 acres, then 30,000, ultimately more than 30,500 — the largest urban preserve in the United States, managed with the volunteer stewards who had founded the movement in 1991. The Gateway Trailhead opened in 2009 as its front door. In November 2018, Prop 420 locked it, requiring a public vote for any non-preservation use of Preserve land.

The 2004 vote is the middle act of that story: the 1994 resolution created the vessel, 1995 began filling it, and 2004 made sure it would be full. The rest of the year sits at 2004, and the decade in the 2000s chapter.