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Landmark day • Tuesday, November 6, 2018

November 6, 2018: Prop 420 Locks the Preserve

Seventy-one percent of voters write the Preserve's protection into the charter: its land stays as it is unless the people vote otherwise.

Illustrated plaque for November 6, 2018 in Scottsdale history NOVEMBER 6 2018 THE NEW WEST

What happened

Born from opposition to the proposed Desert Discovery Center at the Gateway Trailhead, a petition drive by Protect Our Preserve and NoDDC filed about 37,600 signatures on July 2, 2018 and put Prop 420 on the ballot. On November 6 it passed 78,946 to 31,847, about 71%, amending the charter to forbid altering the natural state of Preserve land, and to limit the use of Preserve funds, without a public vote. The same ballot passed a 0.10% transportation sales tax, 59,213 to 49,432, and elected Kathy Littlefield, Solange Whitehead and Linda Milhaven to the council.

Why it matters

Voters had funded or backed the Preserve in 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004; in 2018 they wrote its protection into the charter. Five weeks later the council voted 7 to 0 to end the Desert Discovery Center project. Prop 420 is the modern benchmark for how strongly Scottsdale feels about its desert.

The road to the ballot

The strange thing about the Desert Discovery Center fight is that both sides loved the Preserve. The city’s planners saw the Gateway Trailhead as the natural site for a world-class interpretive campus — a place to teach the Sonoran Desert to the visitors already hiking it. But the residents who had spent a quarter century taxing themselves to buy the McDowells heard a different proposal: buildings, parking, and ticketed attractions inside land they had paid to keep exactly as it was. The Preserve had been paid for with taxes and bonds the voters approved in elections from 1995 to 2004, and a project its owners never voted for felt, to many of them, like a breach of contract.

So they went back to the voters. In September 2016 the council had voted 4 to 3 not to act on their petition for a public vote. Protect Our Preserve and NoDDC kept organizing, filed about 37,600 signatures on July 2, 2018, and qualified Proposition 420 for the November ballot: a charter amendment, not an ordinance, so no future council could quietly undo it.

What 71 percent settled

Election night was not close. The city’s pamphlet had printed 51 arguments against Prop 420 and 17 for it, the against side led by Councilwomen Linda Milhaven and Virginia Korte and two former city managers. Voters went the other way, 78,946 to 31,847. The charter now bars altering the natural state of Preserve land, beyond trail and trailhead work, and limits the use of Preserve funds, unless voters approve. Prop 420 did not name the Discovery Center, but it meant the project could be built only with voters’ approval, and it was never brought to them. On December 11 the council voted 7 to 0 to end it. The McDowells had gone from land the city owned to land the city holds in trust for its electorate.

The vote also read as the closing statement of a long argument. Voters funded the Preserve in 1995 and 2004 and backed it in 1996, 1998 and 1999; in 2018 they wrote its protection into the charter. Whatever Scottsdale disagrees about, and it disagrees about plenty, the Preserve is settled law because the people keep making it so. In the growth battles that followed, from Old Town’s tower fights to the referendum wars of the 2020s, Prop 420 stood as the benchmark for what organized residents can do in Scottsdale when they decide something is not for sale. The rest of the year is at 2018, the Desert Discovery Center page tells the whole fight, and the 2010s politics chapter sets it in context.