Why he matters
If Bill Clayton’s council wrote Scottsdale’s to-do list, Bud Tims’s councils built it. He became mayor in January 1966 with the STEP report on the table and a city of more than 50,000 people that had few of the civic buildings or parks it needed, and in eight and a half years the airport, the first community park, City Hall, the library and the first stretch of the Greenbelt all went from paper to ground.
He was also one of the more visible mayors the young city had. He won the job the first time as a write-in, went to Wrigley Field to welcome the Cubs, argued for a City Hall without doors, and left mid-term for statewide office. His successor, by contrast, was known for his quiet manner.
Where to find his era today
The Scottsdale Civic Center. Bennie Gonzales’s City Hall and library opened in 1968, and the open plan inside City Hall was the mayor’s idea.
Thunderbird Field II. The city bought the old training field in 1966, and Tims broke ground for the municipal airport there that September.
Eldorado Park and McCormick Ranch. The first community park and the great master-planned suburb both date from 1967, his second year.
The STEP list, built
Much of the 1965 STEP list was built while Tims was mayor. The city took title to the Thunderbird field in July 1966 for $750,000, money supplied by the developers planning the industrial park around it, and business jets were landing by August 1967. Eldorado opened in 1967, the same year the city annexed McCormick Ranch and adopted its first General Plan. City Hall and the library followed in 1968. Scottsdale Community College, another STEP idea, opened its campus in 1970; Tims is said to have sounded out local business owners about it in the spring of 1966.
Then came the flood. Read September 5, 1970, when Indian Bend Wash ran a mile wide through the city, and the 1973 page, when construction began on the grass-and-lakes floodway instead of a concrete channel.
The full story
B.L. “Bud” Tims, usually called Dr. Tims in the council record, was elected to the council on April 7, 1964. When Mayor Bill Clayton died in office on December 21, 1965, the council elected Tims mayor on January 6, 1966. At that same meeting he withdrew as a candidate for another council term and announced he would run for mayor as a write-in in the February 15 primary. It worked. He won a two-year term and then two four-year terms.
His first year set the tone. With money from Landel Inc., the developer planning the Thunderbird Industrial Airpark, the city took title to the old Thunderbird Field II in July 1966, and in September Tims broke ground for the municipal airport. In 1967 he went to Wrigley Field with the Scottsdale Charros to welcome the Chicago Cubs, the next team to train at Scottsdale Stadium, and the city annexed McCormick Ranch, adopted its first General Plan and opened Eldorado Park.
The building he is most associated with opened in 1968. Tims wanted government done in the open, with no partitions or doors between officials and the public, and Bennie Gonzales agreed. “I believe my job is to express architecturally what Scottsdale means to all of us, a city of open friendliness,” the architect told the Scottsdale Daily Progress in 1967. Not everyone liked it, and when the first phase of City Hall opened, only the mayor’s office had a door.
In 1969 Tims and the mayors of Phoenix and Mesa formed the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association to coordinate water planning across the Valley, and Los Arcos Mall opened in south Scottsdale. The 1970 census counted 67,841 residents. That Labor Day the flood proved STEP’s call for flood control on Indian Bend Wash right, and the city spent the next few years persuading the Army Corps of Engineers to build a greenbelt instead of a concrete ditch. Construction began in 1973, the year after McCormick Ranch opened for sales in 1972.
Tims resigned at the July 11, 1974, council meeting, partway through his second four-year term, to take a seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission. The council appointed Bill Jenkins mayor a week later. Tims died in 1983, and the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce named him to its History Hall of Fame in 1995. The decades he spanned are in the 1960s and 1970s chapters.