At a glance: Jim Lane was mayor for the whole decade, and for most of it Scottsdale voters said no. They rejected the city’s new General Plan in 2012 on a turnout under one in five. They turned down every bond question in 2010 and 2013 and four of six in 2015. In 2018, after the council had declined to send a public vote on the Preserve to the ballot, residents gathered about 37,600 signatures and wrote one into the charter with 71 percent, over the arguments of two council members, two former city managers and the REALTORS. Then the council changed how it asked. In 2019 it put 58 named projects into three bond questions, every member signed for them, and they passed. The decade closed with a 4 to 3 vote to repeal a canal-front tower project rather than let it go to the voters. The 2000s chapter tells how the city got here.
The council
Jim Lane, who had unseated Mary Manross by 590 votes in 2008, held the mayor’s office all decade. In March 2010 he argued for a charter change that came straight out of that election: under the old rule, “in the 2008 general election, all of the races went to the run-off election because not one candidate for Council or Mayor received a majority of all ballots cast.” Voters agreed, 21,089 to 6,811, to count only votes cast in each race, and passed a companion amendment letting the city skip the August election when no more than two candidates ran per seat. Former Councilman Charlie Smith warned that the new rule was “very favorable to incumbents.” Its first test came in August 2012: Lane won outright with 55 percent, while Virginia Korte, the top council candidate, fell 260 votes short of the threshold.
The council’s makeup turned on small margins. Linda Milhaven, a banker, topped the 2010 vote, and Councilman Wayne Ecton finished last. Guy Phillips, fifth in 2010, won in 2012. Kathy Littlefield took the last seat in 2014 by 54 votes over Councilman Dennis Robbins, and in 2018 she led the field while Councilman David Smith, a former city treasurer, finished last and Solange Whitehead won. In 2016 Lane beat former Councilman Bob Littlefield, 66,582 to 37,716. “If you think Scottsdale is in bad shape and a bad place to live, I’m probably not your choice,” Lane wrote; Littlefield promised “No Desert Discovery Center!” and “a stake through the heart” of light rail on Scottsdale Road. Littlefield carried one precinct of 53, DC Ranch, by 22 votes.
City Hall’s staff turned over faster. David Richert resigned as city manager in July 2012, citing, KJZZ reported, “not enough support from Mayor Jim Lane and the city council.” After an interim year, Fritz Behring took over in 2013, fell ill at a council meeting in June 2015 and did not return; the council ended his contract 7 to 0 on March 1, 2016. Jim Thompson became manager in 2017. Voters made the treasurer an independent chief financial officer in 2010, 51.8 percent to 48.2, over Vice Mayor Suzanne Klapp’s warning that it moved the city “closer to a partisan” government.
The plan voters refused
State law asks cities to put their general plans to voters about once a decade. In October 2011 the council adopted General Plan 2011, and on March 13, 2012 it went to a special election. The Chamber of Commerce pointed out that “70% of Scottsdale’s land is set aside as open space.” Eleven arguments against came from a circle that would shape the rest of the decade: Councilman Bob Littlefield, who said the plan “weakens the General Plan”; Kathy Littlefield and Guy Phillips, both future council members; Howard Myers, who would lead the Preserve initiative six years later (“If you want Scottsdale to become Phoenix east, then vote for it”); and the Coalition of Pinnacle Peak. Turnout was 18.49 percent, and the plan lost by 1,064 votes. The 2001 plan stayed in force until 2021. The General Plan guide explains what the plan does.
The bond decade
Nobody filed an argument against the November 2010 bonds, $63.6 million for streets and the refinancing of public-safety buildings, which Lane called “modest.” Both failed. In 2013 the council asked for $212.1 million for 39 projects in four questions. Milhaven and Klapp put the cost at “$22 per $100,000 of assessed valuation”; the Littlefields answered that Scottsdale “already has the highest per capita debt of any major city in the Valley” and singled out “a parking garage for the bar district!!” Phillips, now a councilman, wrote that the council’s “big spenders” wanted to “feed the pork monsters of our city.” All four lost.
In 2015 Kathy Littlefield, elected after chairing the 2013 opposition, signed for a smaller package: “you gave me a powerful gift: leverage.” Phillips wrote, “Here We Go Again!!” Two of six questions passed, pavement and fire. In 2019 a council subcommittee of Klapp, Phillips and Littlefield began with 67 projects, held six open houses and settled on 58 in three questions, up to $319 million. All seven council members signed arguments for them, Phillips with a written account of why he had changed his mind, and the slow-growth Coalition of Greater Scottsdale signed beside the Chamber and the REALTORS. On November 5, 2019 all three passed with 67 to 73 percent. The year before, voters had also passed a 0.10 percent transportation sales tax for ten years, 54.5 percent to 45.5, with no argument filed against it.
The Preserve and the Discovery Center
A 2010 city study priced a Desert Discovery Center at the Preserve’s Gateway trailhead at up to $74 million; “74 million, I think is a killer,” Kathy Littlefield said later. In January 2016 the council hired a nonprofit run by former Mayor Sam Campana to plan it with $1.7 million in bed-tax money. On September 19, 2016 a citizen petition asked for a public vote on any building in the Preserve; Phillips moved toward one and Lane proposed drafting charter language, but the council voted 4 to 3 to take no action, Klapp, Korte, Milhaven and Smith in the majority. A year later Milhaven told the opponents: “All you need to do is go get the signatures.” They filed about 37,600 in July 2018.
The pamphlet for Proposition 420 printed 51 arguments against and 17 for. Milhaven called the center “no more commercial than a museum or library”; the REALTORS objected that the amendment empowered “a group of individuals who are not duly elected”; Korte, who had chaired the 1993 task force that started the Preserve, argued against it. Myers framed the choice as “four members of the City Council or citizens.” On November 6, 2018 voters chose the citizens, 78,946 to 31,847, and on December 11 the council voted 7 to 0 to end the project. The Desert Discovery Center page tells it in full.
Old Town: height, bars and Southbridge Two
Old Town’s bar blocks, which the city and the public call the Entertainment District though no zoning map draws one, became a standing argument. A 2010 noise ordinance aimed at bars and live-entertainment businesses, the 2013 bond package’s proposed “parking garage for the bar district,” and a 2016 promise by Bob Littlefield to stop “an out-of-control bar district” all came out of it. On July 2, 2018 the council adopted a new Old Town Character Area Plan, 7 to 0, on Phillips’s motion; Smith’s motion to confine the tallest building type to one site died for lack of a second.
On December 4, 2019 the council approved Carter Unger’s Southbridge Two, ten acres along the Arizona Canal with buildings up to 150 feet, 4 to 3: Lane, Klapp, Korte and Milhaven for, Kathy Littlefield, Phillips and Whitehead against. A committee of Old Town property owners filed for a referendum the next day and turned in about 17,000 signatures. After the clerk certified them and a judge rejected Unger’s challenge, he asked the council to undo its vote, and on April 7, 2020 the same four members did. “The idea that the same legislative body can undermine the referendum process is a trampling of voter rights,” Phillips said. The Southbridge Two referendum page has the details.
Who belongs
In August 2014 the council unanimously signed the Unity Pledge, a voluntary statement against discrimination. When advocates asked for an ordinance with legal force, the council split. On March 31, 2015 Korte moved, with Milhaven’s second, to begin public outreach toward one, and Lane moved instead to promote the pledge; no vote was taken on either. On August 31 the council voted 5 to 2, Lane and Phillips against, to have staff draft an ordinance’s elements within 90 days. At a November work study Lane said, “I hope we can come forward with something that will not become a hammer, a sword,” and Kathy Littlefield called it “one of the most contentious things we’ve had to deal with in a long time.” Nothing came to a vote until 2021. The LGBTQ note follows the story.
The state’s hand
The Legislature and the courts narrowed what the council could decide. In 2014 the Court of Appeals held that state law preempted Scottsdale’s public-intoxication ordinance, and in 2015 that a 2014 state law requiring cities to “allow … sign walkers” overrode the city’s ban, despite its charter. In May 2016 Gov. Doug Ducey signed SB 1350, which from 2017 barred cities from prohibiting short-term rentals; the Goldwater Institute, which backed it, named Scottsdale among the cities that had “banned vacation rentals or severely restricted them.” No council action on the bill was found. The preemption guide carries the story into the 2020s.
Schools and the press
In the Scottsdale Unified School District, the governing board placed Superintendent Denise Birdwell on leave and in March 2018 moved to dismiss her over payments from, and an undisclosed interest in, an architecture firm, then agreed to a severance in April, KTAR and KJZZ reported. The city’s own newspaper came back that fall: the Scottsdale Progress resumed publication on September 16, 2018, in time to cover the Preserve vote. The arguments it covered, over height, the Preserve, rentals and who decides, carried straight into the 2020s.