Gilbert town councilwoman Linda Abbott has a vision, a cause and a gift for selling both.

She came to my office the other day on what sales people might characterize as a cold call, and I ended up buying.

Her cause is to leverage Gilbert’s growing reputation as a destination for the people who buy $1,800 Zeiss binoculars, thousands of dollars in camera equipment and go looking for birds to add to their lists.

If you’ve ever walked along the ponds at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve near Greenfield and Guadalupe roads and watched an assortment of birders train their glass on a Belted Kingfisher, you understand what I’m talking about. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Arizona’s manager for watchable wildlife, bird-watching brings $1 billion into Arizona economy each year.

And that’s easy money because I sure don’t see the state or big city tourism agency’s working to attract those dollars.

Gilbert Town Councilwoman Linda Abbott and Gilbert Riparian Institute Director Scott Anderson have a plan for Gilbert to attract a bigger share of a growing hobby among boomers.

Check this blog on Saturday and I’ll tell you what the plan is and why there are more than four and 20 blackbirds in this pie.

Or look for my column on Sunday’s Tribune Perspective cover.

If Scott Smith’s visit to the Tribune on Wednesday is any indication, the campaign for mayor of Mesa is about to heat up.

Said Smith, “Light rail was staring in his face and he did nothing.”

The “he” is opponent Rex Griswold who until a few months was on Mesa’s City Council.

Smith ticked off several issue areas where he faulted city leadership as he continued to position himself as the outsider and his opponent as the insider.

“Rex will talk about zoning code (but) they did nothing for five years,” Smith said, repeating the “did nothing” line.

I’m betting we’ll hear that line again.

Mesa Mayor Keno Hawker was missing in action earlier this week while the rest of City Council as well as three councilmen-elect struggled with how to carve $16 million out of the city’s budget—a casualty of our faltering economy. 

Well, he wasn’t really missing.  He was in Costa Rica on vacation, had made the plans months ago and had made no secret of his whereabouts.

So the question was, should we thump him, metaphorically of course, on our editorial pages?

We could have and maybe should have, but in the end this is why we decided not to say a word:

Hawker has served the city honorably for eight years and in June will step down and a new mayor will take over his office.

In the meantime, smart, capable people are in place in the city’s administration.  You put good people in place and you let them do their jobs. 

And let’s not forget the mayor is just one vote out of seven on the Council.  The city’s direction does not rest on a single Council vote nor on a single week.

 A new group of elected leaders are being phased in as they should be

 The budget crisis is their problem and will be their problem, because there’s no simple short-term fix. 

 Navigating the shoals of the current economy will take months, maybe longer. 

 It’s OK for the outgoing mayor to take a week off.  Godspeed. 

On Dec. 14, Armando Rodriguez Morales from Hermosillo, Mexico, was stopped by Gilbert police Officer Chad Wright on a Mesa street.

Wright cited Morales for backing illegally, having a false driver’s license and insurance information. Wright confiscated Morales’ car, his driver’s license, insurance information and left Morales and his family and their suitcases on the sidewalk.

On Dec. 20, Gilbert authorities released Morales’ car saying it has been wrongly impounded.

On Jan. 8 the town of Gilbert dropped the charges over the driver’s license and insurance after the Mexican Embassy validated them.

On Jan. 22, the Gilbert Police Department found that Wright didn’t report facts properly or accurately and that he abused and lost Morales’ driver’s license, but they dismissed a claim of racial profiling. But they didn’t drop the final charge against Morales

But that wasn’t the end of it. The police did not drop the illegal backing charge and prosecutors even tried to talk Morales into pleading out.

On Tuesday March 18, a justice court judge found Morales, 60, not guilty of the backing charge.

And so ends a sorry chapter in Gilbert law enforcement.