Your View
I enjoyed My View and the MATS stories you shared with us. It was also nice not to read another of Ed Schneider’s rants.
In response to Nedda Shafir's editorial last week: I would like to know if the same business partners she referenced in her response regarding the district administrative retreat also financed the administrator's 4-5 day trip to California earlier this year. It's amazing how CCUSD always seems to find money for these trips (Tacy Ashby enjoyed an additional trip to San Francisco last year!), yet the needs of the staff and the school facilities continue to be overlooked. When will this insanity end?
Let’s see, Larry’s Buffalo Chip figured out how to make a buck here in town. Wonder how long it will be before Anna Marsolo or some other kook starts bitching or complaining. Right on, Larry!
Carefree Town Council voted to accept the "Carefree Transportation Plan." The plan includes (a) expanding Carefree Highway to four lanes between Cave Creek Road and Tom Darlington and (b) placing a traffic light at the intersection of Pima and Stagecoach Pass. However, both locations are solely under the jurisdiction of the City of Scottsdale. Is the Carefree Council aware of that?
Ward Connerly is a man I would like to see on the Presidential campaign trail. My guess is he’s too smart to run for the office, but we need someone with his intelligence and his perspective to lead the country.
Cave Creek will decide by June 16 whether or not to fight a ruling that prohibits the town from enforcing an anti-solicitation law aimed at day laborers. The town has essentially no chance of prevailing in an appeal to the liberal U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Rather than passing an unconstitutional law, Cave Creek could have followed Carefree's "vamoose" approach that ignores constitutional etiquette and has the town marshal simply tell folks to move on.
Interesting comparison by Ward Connerly … being required to tip for less than adequate service and being taxed by the government for less than adequate service. The government would operate more effectively if the budget and the taxes to support it were performance based.
CCUSD will ask voters to approve a $1 million K-3 override in November. One board member voted against placing the override on the ballot. I thought all the board members were out to suck cash from the public. At least one seems to be getting the idea that the public deserves consideration.
Democrat chairman Howard Dean has muddied up the water with all this “super delegate” junk. Maybe he will resign right after Obama loses in November.
In its recent opinion reversing the Superior Court decision in favor of GP Properties Carefree Cave Creek L.L.C., division one of the Court of Appeals wrote, in part, "We also review an order...whether an act relating to zoning is legislative [favoring the town's position] or administrative [favoring GP's position] because such an order hinges on mixed questions of fact and law and pure questions of law, including statutory interpretation." I didn't make up that quotation. I guess that goofy analysis gave the court leeway to decide pretty much whatever they wished and the town got lucky.
Obama is way too young and inexperienced to be in the White House now. Let him be re-elected to the Senate a couple more times. Then he MIGHT be ready.
In its opinion in the GP Properties case, the Court of Appeals offered the following in a footnote. "Whether the town acted arbitrarily and capriciously [in denying the Special Use Permit] is an issue which ... can be determined ... in the pending federal court action." It sounds to me that it ain't over until the fat lady (i.e., the federal courts) sings.
If we even out the trade imbalances, export all illegal immigrants, secure the border and convert to solar power everywhere possible, and stay out of the religious wars around the globe, most of the rest of our problems could be solved by, well, maybe almost anyone with half a brain. Does anyone really think Obama/Clinton can and will do those things? Will John McCain? We need a new plan.
First Cave Creek has dust control shoved down from above by the Feds and the state, threatening to withhold funds if we don’t knuckle under. Now we have a judge weighing in against the town in the ACLU lawsuit that challenged the solicitation ordinance, that cleaned up the streets, parking lots and store fronts. What’s next?
Three Arizona firms, Russ Lyon Realty (along with Russ Lyon Realty of Flagstaff) and Equitable Sotheby's International Realty, announced a merger effective May 19. Subject to court approval, the U.S. Justice Department on May 27 forced new real estate industry policies to give Internet-based agents access to home listings they were previously denied. One of the top executives of Russ Lyon Sotheby's has been quoted recently as saying he expects the firm to grow in part by being aggressive with technology. I expect real estate commissions to fall as Internet-based information erodes the value of increasingly unnecessary real estate agents.