Everything the decade had been arguing about condensed into a single parcel and a single ballot. The council approved Axon’s vastly expanded headquarters campus near Loop 101 — the Scottsdale-grown Taser and police-tech company, the Airpark’s marquee employer — including nearly 2,000 apartments and a hotel. Neighbors who read the area’s plans as promising exactly-not-that organized fast: by season’s end, more than 20,000 signatures had forced a referendum, and the question of who actually governs Scottsdale growth — council, citizens, or the Capitol — was suddenly live.
The same argument decided the mayor’s office. On November 5, attorney and former councilwoman Lisa Borowsky unseated one-term incumbent David Ortega with about 54%, campaigning squarely against high-density apartment development and city spending — the second consecutive mayoral turnover fought on growth-versus-character ground. The day page has the election story.
Neither fight resolved by New Year’s. The referendum hung over the Axon site, the mayor-elect prepared a slow-growth agenda, and the state legislature was about to write an ending nobody in the city had voted for. That collision belongs to 2025.