The boisterous greeting the Dobson High student body gave the president today was just the ticket for showing the nation what a warm and vibrant community Mesa is.

Boring?  Not.

The sun shone brightly in the background as CNN’s reporter did her recap, and the campus looked spiffy and inviting as students walked to their classes.

Mayor Scott Smith said in today’s Tribune he would rather welcome the President to Mesa under better circumstances, but there is no question the city gained valuable name and place recognition that is important to attracting future employers and investment.

CNN’s interview of Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon seemed an odd prelude to the news network’s coverage of President Obama’s speech at Dobson High in Mesa, as did CNN’s roll of stats that focused on Phoenix–perhaps those were metro stats.

And perhaps, I’m revealing too much local sensitivity and pride.

While west Mesa is not the heart of conservative Republican Mesa, it still puzzles me why Obama’s team chose the Republican city to announce his mortgage initiative and the congressional district that launched John McCain’s political career.  But, then, why not?

Conservative commentators are working to pigeon-hole Obama as borderline socialist.  (”Borderline” may be generous.)   Yet, his concluding remarks should resonate with heartlanders who don’t make their living by being media conservatives.

“All of us have to learn to live within our means, again,” Obama said, referring to core values of “common sense” and “responsibility.”

Through the years and through both Republican and Democratic administrations, the federal government has hardly been a role model for those values, and the mind-boggling financial scope of Obama’s initiatives run contrary to the message.

Words and deed clash.  But it is the right time for the message.  We can only hope that it takes hold with those who govern as well as those who are governed.

Amid a cluster of dusty World War II-era buildings on a closed Air Force base, Chuck Backus brought to life what until recently was called ASU East.

Now Backus sees the East Valley campus losing its identity and being turned into a pawn in a showdown over legislative plans to cleave as much as $150 million in Arizona State University funding. And he is not happy.

Backus retired in 2004 as the campus’s founding provost after devoting 12 years of his life to forming and nurturing what is now called ASU Polytechnic.

The former engineer is not given to 30-second sound bites. Picture a cattle rancher lean and tall in the saddle with a seasoned face that betrays little of what he really thinks and you’ve pictured
Backus, indeed, owns and runs a cattle ranch in the foothills of the Superstition Wilderness.

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The task ahead for Arizona lawmakers has gotten easier, though some will surely see it as complicating deliberations.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that President-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package includes $80 billion for an “education stabilization fund.”

The money is to be used by states to avoid cut backs in teachers and classroom programs.

Until the package becomes law, Arizona legislators can’t know for sure how it will affect their efforts to balance the budget.

So in that sense it could complicate state budget deliberations–if legislative leaders let it.

Or they can go with the flow, take the money and avoid dreary and repetitious debate over the efficacy of kindergarten programs and whether to eliminate them.

Going with the flow recognizes Obama’s popularity and election mandate to pump life into the nation’s economy.  It is only a matter of a few weeks before a package with substantial funding for education becomes law.

The overarching opportunity is to keep as many teachers working and children in school in Arizona at federal expense as possible.  Whether all-day kindergarten works or not is secondary.

It’s that easy.

(Disclosure:  The columnist’s wife is a teacher in the Mesa School District.)

It must be a bummer being Mesa’s economic development director in the time of cholera.
That was essentially my opening line when I sat down a few days ago with the city’s economic development director, William Jabjiniak. My outlook and line of questioning was unquestionably gloomy.
And why not?
My 401(k) is in the dumps. I had just returned from a Christmas trip to Ohio where I had braved ice storms and a windchill of 40 degree below zero.
I had returned to a home that has likely lost more than 25 percent of its value and to state that is in the bull’s-eye of a national recession and to a city that, according to an Arizona State University study, is more dependent on construction jobs than its neighboring cities.
Just try to find a construction job.
Now, I wasn’t entirely negative.
Maybe the end of the good times is an opportunity to get more respect for diverse economic development efforts in a city that for years feasted off of a one-course meal of residential growth, I offered.
Jabjiniak didn’t take the bait.
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This from a press release that came in Friday evening:

“Rob Haney, immediate past chairman of Legislative District 11, today announced his candidacy for Chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Committee.

Haney says he is responding to the call from grassroots Republicans who are concerned that their voices are being ignored by the office holders representing both major political parties.

‘These office holders seem to want to renew their attempt to grant amnesty with a path to citizenship for those who violate our sovereignty. These office holders oppose grassroots Republicans who favor employer sanctions,’ Haney said”

And not a peep about the economy.

Sheriff Arpaio supporters sent me e-mail after e-mail accusing the Tribune of liberal media bias in its reporting last summer the sheriff’s office and the costs and effectiveness of its illegal immigrant round-ups.

Now comes the Goldwater Institute which today issued a sweeping indictment of Arpaio’s policies pretty much along the same lines as the Tribune’s report.

Has the Goldwater Institute gone liberal? I don’t think so. The author of the study is Clint Bolick, whose credentials as a Goldwater conservative are indisputable. What it does bring into question is the credibility of critics who throw the “liberal media” bomb every time they see a report that is contrary to their beliefs.

Here are just a few sentences from the report’s executive summary:

“The Maricopa County Sheriff ’s Offi ce is responsible for vitally important law-enforcement functions in one of the largest counties in the nation. It defi nes its core missions as law-enforcement services, support services, and detention.

MCSO falls seriously short of fulfilling its mission in all three areas. Although MCSO is adept at self-promotion and is an unquestionably “tough” law-enforcement agency, under its watch violent crime rates recently have soared, both in absolute terms and relative to other jurisdictions. It has diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration and in reducing crime generally, and to extensive trips by MCSO officials to Honduras for purposes that are nebulous at best. Profligate spending on those diversions helped produce a financial crisis in late 2007 that forced MCSO to
curtail or reduce important law-enforcement functions.

In terms of support services, MCSO has allowed a huge backlog of outstanding warrants to accumulate, and has seriously disadvantaged local police departments by closing satellite booking facilities. MCSO’s detention facilities are subject to costly lawsuits for excessive use of force and inadequate medical services. Compounding the substantive problems are chronically poor record-keeping and reporting of statistics, coupled with resistance to public disclosure.”

Arizona’s newest road leads straight to the Obama White House.

Construction began when Gov. Janet Napolitano endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy on Jan. 11.

As most readers know, one fork on this road is likely to lead Napolitano to Obama’s cabinet. Even as the other fork is being mapped, it’s pedal to the metal.

Arizona State University President Michael Crow is among those regional leaders who see that at fork as leading to federal investment in Arizona’s transportation, water, education systems.

Crow told the Tribune’s editorial board last Tuesday that he had scheduled a meeting with Napolitano on Wednesday to ask her to use her influence with Obama to put ASU projects on the new administration’s map.

All the planning work was done. Crow said he just needs money.

Crow’s comments came on the same day that Obama opened the door wide to including state and local infrastructure in his economic stimulus package.

At his third press conference since the election, Obama said this when asked about what he could do for governors and mayors whose budgets are in desperate straits:

“We are going to have to make sure that we are investing in roads, bridges, other infrastructure investments that lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth. A lot of that goes through our states and our local governments….

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Mayor Scott Smith is a rock star and Mesa is hot.

Don’t believe me?

His booking agent is hopping. Smith sat on panels at two heavy duty conferences this week week alone and the audience paid attention.

The first, at ASU in Tempe, brought economists, politicians and business leaders together to talk about what Arizona needs to do to prepare for a population of 10 million in 2030. The focus was on transportation, energy generation and delivery, water and other infrastructure issues.

The second one was in downtown Phoenix on Friday. It was at once more regional and Washington-focused and included Gov. Janet Napolitano, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, Arizona State University President Michael Crow, and representatives of the Washington D.C.-based Brookings Institution.

The Brookings Institution has been studying growth in what it calls the Mountain Megas–Central Arizona (aka the Sun Corridor) and Denver, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas areas. Brookings believes to reach its potential the region needs to join together and assert itself with Washington for federal-funding for infrastructure development.

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Had she achieved anything? I ask Gilbert School board member Elaine Morrison.
“You’re here,” she answers.
She had me. I was here at the Gilbert Historical Museum at 10 S. Gilbert Road and it was because of her that I was here at the museum.
At the school board’s Nov. 4 meeting, the board handed Morrison a defeat and voted to reconsider naming the district’s fifth and newest high school Campo Verde.
“I think a trip to the Gilbert Historical Museum might be in order to get a sense of what it used to be like out here,” Morrison said.
Morrison had championed the name and initially won the board’s support, but that support evaporated as critics mobilized.
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Ah, for the good old days when Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano waged her crusade for state-funded kindergarten and the Republican state legislature led by Russell Pearce waged its campaign against Arizona businesses and illegal immigration.
Arizona was flush with construction and development jobs. Growth was never-ending. Unemployment was low. State leaders could push agendas near and dear.
And jobs wasn’t at the top of the list.
Oh, there was some dabbling with job development in a trendy sort of way. You know, San Diego and Boston have biotech, we should, too.
Then, Google came to town and Napolitano was front and center on the jobs development bandwagon.
And then Google announced it was leaving town. Oops.
What we all know now is that when the marketplace shifts, it’s too late.
Had the state worked harder for job development when it seemed like the whole world wanted to live in Arizona, would our economy have been more diversified and the landing softer?
That’s a rhetorical question. The wistful answer is, “Of course.”
Maybe this recession will serve as a wake-up call. Chandler Mayor Boyd Dunn hopes so.
No Arizona city has had more success in job development than has Chandler. Years ago city leaders developed a plan, knowing that quality jobs, not strip malls were the key to creating a livable and sustainable city. And they stuck to the plan. .
Had they not, the Price Corridor would be lined with houses, because the pressure from developers was that great, said Dunn over lunch in Chandler’s hip and getting hipper downtown.
And it continues. On Tuesday rocket-maker Orbital Sciences announced an expansion that will bring 300 more jobs to Chandler. In October Avnet opened a $26 million technology center that employs 250, and in March a technology products and services company (CDW Inc.) announced it will open a center at the city’s municipal airport that will employ 450 people.
So why don’t we see more of this going on in Arizona?
“The primary driver of job development in Arizona is cities,” said Dunn. “We get little help from the state. The state has to step in. We just need help.”