Why he matters
Bill Jenkins was the mayor between two big personalities, and he never tried to be one. He came to the job in 1974 because Bud Tims left for state office, and he handed it in 1980 to Herb Drinkwater, by most accounts the city’s best-loved mayor. In between, a Scottsdale High School government teacher ran a city of about 80,000 people through a recession, the middle years of the Greenbelt and a push east along Shea Boulevard.
The obituaries of 2008 described a gentleman who avoided the spotlight. A former councilwoman put it most simply: “His was a calm hand on the rudder.”
Where to find his era today
The Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt. Construction began in 1973, and the chain of parks was built out through his years and after; his obituary counts it among his accomplishments.
Vista del Camino Park. The Greenbelt’s southern anchor, also credited to his tenure.
The Scottsdale Civic Center. The Center for the Arts opened on the mall in 1975, his first full year as mayor.
The 1970s, one quiet term at a time
The best entry to his years is October 23, 1975, when Bennie Gonzales’s Center for the Arts opened with a Roger Miller concert. That same year the city annexed the East Shea corridor toward Fountain Hills. The 1976 and 1977 pages cover the resort buildup on McCormick Ranch, the Scottsdale Conference Center and the Registry, and 1978 records the first Culinary Festival.
He left a city of 88,412, and the 1980 page opens the Drinkwater era he handed off to.
The full story
William Calvin “Bill” Jenkins was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on May 4, 1929. He came west in the summer of 1948 to work at Grand Canyon National Park, then went to Arizona State, earning a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1952 and later a master’s in history. He served four years of active duty in the Navy during and after the Korean War and stayed in the reserve until 1975, retiring as a captain.
In 1958 he started teaching government, civics and economics at Scottsdale High School, and he stayed until 1987. He also taught history at Scottsdale Community College. In 1966 he won a two-year council seat, the first year of Bud Tims’s mayoralty, and voters returned him for four-year terms in 1968 and 1972. The city’s records list his service on the Parks and Recreation Commission, the Charter Review Advisory Committee and the Bicentennial Committee, and he was on the council for the Greenbelt debate that followed the 1970 flood.
When Tims resigned on July 11, 1974, to join the Arizona Corporation Commission, the council made Jenkins mayor pro tem on July 16 and mayor on July 18. Voters gave him a full four-year term in 1976. His years were not the boom of the 1960s: a recession slowed the mid-decade, and his obituary credits him with steering through it. Still, the city grew. It annexed the East Shea corridor in 1975, a special census that year counted 78,000, and the Greenbelt parks such as Vista del Camino took shape. The Scottsdale Conference Center opened on McCormick Ranch in 1976 and the Registry Resort in 1977, and Armour-Dial’s research center brought the Airpark its most prestigious tenant yet. His obituary adds that his council made the first moves toward acquiring land in the McDowell Mountains, two decades before the Preserve.
He left office on April 1, 1980, and Herb Drinkwater succeeded him. Jenkins kept teaching until 1987 and kept volunteering, on the boards of the Scottsdale and Arizona historical societies and the Helios Education Foundation; in 2004 he was still the keeper of the time capsule from the Los Arcos Mall site. He died in early July 2008, at 79, after several years with cancer. The Chamber had named him to its History Hall of Fame in 1996, and Scottsdale Leadership’s youth leadership award carries his name. The decade is told in the 1970s chapter.