One date from 2022 made the town record — November 1, when the city gave notice that it would stop supplying water haulers serving Rio Verde Foothills at year’s end — but the whole year was anything but quiet. This was the crest of the whiplash rebound: resort rates and bed-tax receipts set records, golf and event crowds surged past their 2019 marks, and home prices reached all-time highs. The side-effects compounded just as quickly — a short-term-rental wave in the neighborhoods, constrained by state law and managed with licensing rules, and an affordability squeeze that was new territory for a city built on the resort-town model.
Underneath the boom, the water math was tightening. Colorado River shortages had activated Stage One of Scottsdale’s Drought Management Plan, the November notice followed, and on the first day of 2023 that plan would land on the Rio Verde Foothills — the story that made the city world news. The decade’s full arc is in the 2020s chapter.