I received a call from a very nice lady today who wanted to let me know

that she thought we erred by not putting the story on the death of a Glendale police

officer on A1 of our Tuesday Tribune.I explained the Tribune’s mission and how that shapes our decisions. But she stuck to her guns, saying the decision should have revolved around a matter of respect for the men and women in uniform who risk their lives for our safety.I respect the caller. She was civil and at least politely allowed me to explain our decision. We could agree to disagree. I also respect law enforcement officers, and I know from a multiple-part series we did last year just how hard that our East Valley departments work to find high caliber people to protect us and our property.That being said, I occasionally receive questions or criticism that indicate to me that some readers and nonreaders don’t understand the Tribune’s mission or want us to be something else.In a nutshell, our primary mission is to cover East Valley news and information and to host news and information about the East Valley. Our Scottsdale edition is focused on stories of particular interest to the north East Valley.When Glendale officer Anthony John Holly was shot, we didn’t send a team of reporters to the West Valley. In fact we relied on an Associated Press report on the shooting and apprehension of the suspect. When we learned that the suspect had had a run-in with Mesa police in 2002, one of our crime reporters hopped on the story, which we published on Thursday.When the shooting story broke early Monday, we immediately put it on the Tribune’s Web site where it was prominently displayed throughout the day. The story, of course, was on TV most of the day also. By the time we were ready to publish, we didn’t have anything that hadn’t already been on Web sites for 24 hours and on TV. We put the story on A5, but we also gave it a place on A1 by making it our third from the top story summary in our "60-second Trib" column. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t missed.So the factors that come to bear on our decisions for where we put a story include: Its geographical setting and timeliness. Is it in or about the East Valley? Can we provide information in the print edition that is current and advances the story or is it mainly a rehash of what we and others reported online or on TV for several hours?A similar situation occurred last week when local radio entertainer Bruce Jacobs went on a rant about our not having a story about a stabbing in Maryvale that resulted in the hospitalization of a former Army Ranger. The suspect is an illegal. (I don’t know these facts for sure, because I never did see anything on the wire, nor did our police reporters have any information on the stabbing.) I’ve lived in the East Valley for nearly 15 years, but I’ve never been to Maryvale. I even had to ask one of my colleagues where it was. I didn’t know where it was because it’s a long way from our coverage area. We have enough work on our hands keeping up with the violence in the East Valley.I think if I had to work Mr. Jacobs’ early hours, I would go to work in a bad mood every day, too. But I don’t think I would shout and carry on as much as he does. If you want to listen, we’ve put the sound track on my blog just before this one. It may require you to download Quicktime to listen. He’s quite an entertainer; it will be worth the effort.I think Mr. Jacobs might have sparked a call from a very angry lady (I ultimately learned she lives in north Phoenix; so I doubt she is a reader) who accused me of coddling illegals. Why, she declared, we are even afraid to use the word "illegal."While she ripped into me, I turned to my computer and pulled up an A1 Tribune story from the Thursday Feb. 15 edition and I read lead-in headline to her:"Arizona taxpayers spend up to $1.2 billion to educate children of illegal immigrants," the headline said. The setting for the story was in the Mesa school system, which is heavily burdened by the influx of the children of illegals, as we reported in a major award-winning series last year. Needless to say, the story would not have been printed if were trying to somehow shelter illegal immigrants. It’s a funny thing about how some people react when their entire thesis has just been blown out of the water. The lady insisted I didn’t get her point. She’s right. I still don’t. Come to think about it, I didn’t get an early morning nod of the head or congratulations from Mr. Jacobs. Maybe he’s hiding the story because it undermines his thesis. Or maybe he’s coddling illegal immigrants, protecting them from bad press??

Whoa, fella, go easy on that coffee.

You can search high and low for vision in Mesa and sometimes you catch a glimpse of it and sometimes you’re just not sure. But there was no doubt in my mind by the time a group of Tribune journalists ended a meeting with members of the Mesa Grande Neighborhood Alliance on Tuesday. This is as determined a group of neighbors as I’ve ever met who weren’t in our office to try to stop something from happening in their backyard. Tanya Collins, Bob Meyer, Dave Richins and Bob Parker are all about making something happen in their backyard of West Mesa. Right now they’re focused on bringing the Waveyard water theme park to the Riverview Park area across the street from where the impresive Bass Pro building is taking shape. They can tell you the exact number of restaurants going in at the Riverview shopping center and name them if you want them to. They’re also keeping a watchful eye (no, make that a hard stare) on what Banner Health System will do with Mesa General Hospital and on developments around the Fiesta Mall where one the owner of one rundown piece of property seems content to let it lay fallow unless the city wants to pitch in $2 million. A light rail stop is coming to West Mesa, the old Motorola plant site is now the bustling Broadway 101 commerce park. It would be outlandish to credit all these developments to the neighborhood alliance. But neighborhood groups can kill progress. This is one grassroots group determined to turn one of the city’s oldest areas into a happening place. They made a believer out of me. Makes you wonder if it’s possible to bundle them up and run them in the coming mayoral election on the can-do ticket.

So Sean Hannity is calling Mesa City Councilman Tom Rawles a liberal. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,247144,00.htmlHow can you call anyone who has been so consistently against government taxation and so consistently for property rights as Rawles a liberal? I guess only if you don’t really understand the distinctions between liberal, conservative, and libertarian or you just don’t care. I think it’s the latter. Hannity’s definition of a liberal is anybody who doesn’t agree with Hannity and President Bush. If Hannity is not about illuminating, then what is he about? You can answer that as well as I. I’m not a fan of Tom Rawles or his decision on the Pledge of Allegiance, but that’s irrelevant. If you are interested in who Tom Rawles is and what drives him, I urge you to read reporter Jason Massad’s profile in Sunday’s Tribune. Here’s a link: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=83480Jim

Smoke and fire: Nothing like sitting down with Chief Harry

Beck of the Mesa Fire Department and finding out that your house is in one of those neighborhoods where timely service is a problem.Specifically, the department’s average response time is over four minutes in my neighborhood. It’s worse in fast growing parts of East Mesa where it is seven minutes.

Because of population growth without fire station and equipment growth, the department’s response time has dropped by 27 seconds in the last two years.

Voters last year defeated a property tax that would have helped, Beck said. Where’s the money to come from?

BTW,

speed bumps may slow traffic for kids whose parents let them play on the street, but they also slow fire trucks, Beck acknowledged. Chalk up one for Ripley and 0 for speed bump advocates.

Insurance and cancer: If you haven’t read Monday’s front page story on a Chandler woman who has cancer and lost her insurance coverage because she failed to report on her insurance application that she had once suffered from depression and also had had a back problems, please, please read it. What happened isn’t right. I don’t like calling for more state regulation; but if the industry isn’t going to respect the spirit of their contracts with their customers, then somebody will step in. Here’s a link to that story:

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=83118

Bicycles: I get a lot of head-shakers in my email in-box. Here is an excerpt from one that came in today:

"Bicycles are LABOR-SAVING DEVICES! They were designed NOT for getting exercise, but SAVING ENERGY. And they DO! A decades-old Scientific American article stated that the bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation in the world, surpassing walking and all other means of transportation. Bicycles only increase exercise when they replace motor vehicle use, which is NOT the case for young children!"

The police will have to confiscate a whole lot of bicycles, if this email writer gets to be king of the world.