“Every Saturday—free to the public” said the Mesa Arts and Culture Festival brochure.

What better way to spend a Saturday in November than strolling down Main Street, talking with artists and looking at their sidewalk exhibits.

And it’s absolutely free.

With some free time on my hands after a morning meeting last Saturday, I decided to check out the art festival.

I walked the south side of the street from McDonald to Center, talking to a few artists, including one who had once been in the circus. I circled around to the north side of the street when a print caught my eye at one of the exhibits.

It is from a painting of a Roadrunner.

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I don’t think many people at City Hall put much stock into what a Tribune survey found last winter when we asked whether voters would support a property tax for a public safety bond package.

The Trib survey, conducted by Behavior Research Center, not only found support for a dedicated property tax, it found a lot of support.

The poll showed a so-called secondary property tax for police and fire would pass by 64 percent. That’s less than three points away from the 66.9 percent vote that the ballot issue received on Tuesday.

Last winter, even pollster Jim Haynes was surprised by the survey results.

“Typically, people are highly opposed to any tax, especially property tax,” Haynes said at the time.

Here’s a link to that story:

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/110422

Mesa City Councilwoman Dina Higgins was all smiles on the day after the election when we met at Red, White and Brew in East Mesa.

Voters had just handed her and other Mesa Council members a vote of confidence and the means to improve city services by approving a property tax to fund two bond issues. The bond issues will pay for $170 million in public safety and street projects.

Just two and a half years ago, voters shot down big time a ballot measure that would have given the city a property tax to help fund city services. The margin in that election was 3-2 against the property tax.

I dug out the Tribune’s editorial following that defeat, and it suggests we were spot on. Here is an excerpt:

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The tongues were clucking at the 13th annual Gilbert Community Excellence Awards Friday night when Mayor Steve Berman arrived WITH estranged wife Michelle Berman at his side.

We last left the Bermans and their very public break-up with the lifting in late August of a court order of protection that Michelle had sought and received.  While the order was lifted, the two were not to come within 150 feet of each other.

But they were within millimeters of each other when they arrived after the program had already started and wound their way to the front of the room to sit at a VIP table. Read the rest of this entry »

Jesse Parker, with Gilbert’s victory over Highland Friday night, is now the winningest football coach in Arizona prep history.

I had the pleasure of meeting Parker over a decade ago when he was at Mountain View High School in Mesa  The topic was not football.

Parker was my daughter’s advance placement history teacher.

Now an attorney in Baltimore, my daughter was going through a rebellious stage and not doing well in Parker’s class.

I approached Parker braced for an icy blast.  His reputation as a harsh taskmaster with his football players had brought him under  criticism on the Tribune’s pages. Read the rest of this entry »

Russell Pearce and his crusade against illegal immigration at the expense of the local businesses and the free market is the cover story of the October issue of Reason magazine that arrived at my home on Thursday.

The magazine trends libertarian in philosophy and is sub-titled “Free Minds and Free Markets.”

It devotes eight pages to an article on Mesa’s Pearce entitled “The one-man wall. How a single Arizona Legislator’s obsession has changed immigration policy for the worse.”

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It appears that Mesa is aiming for the top of the heap as a Valley convention hotel/resort destination.
That’s not just good news, that’s astonishing news for a city that comes up short too often on the respect scale.
There are “buts,” and we’ll get to those after a little background:
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The caller on Friday said he had asked Pinal County Sheriff Chris Vasquez why the Tribune was publishing so many stories critical of the sheriff.

The sheriff told him it was because the two reporters had made a deal to go to work for his opponent Paul Babeu should his opponent win.

What was i going to do about this? the caller asked.

Well, if it’s true, they would be fired, I said.

Do I believe it’s true? Absolutely not.

Here’s the rest of the story:

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Jeanine L’Ecuyer, the governor’s press aide, saw the previous blog and shot me an email with this warning:

“You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

She urged me to contact Prop 203 deputy campaign manager Katie Hutchinson.

Hutchinson said the campaign is disputing the secretary of state’s assessment of valid signatures.  She said signatures are being rechecked and she expects that there will be enough to qualify the transportation tax initiative for the November ballot.

To do that, the campaign will have to ask superior court to reverse the secretary of state, she said.

In Monday’s edition, the Tribune reported that Arizona ranks 41st out of the 50 states in the amount of their incomes that go to support state and local governments. Good news I thought when I read the story.
Later in the day even more good news. The effort by the governor and development interests to raise the state sales tax 18 percent through the initiative process apparently won’t make the November ballot. Not enough valid signatures, according to the secretary of state.

The proposal was ill-timed and under-handed.

The push to put it on a crowded presidential ballot was timed for a large turnout of uninformed voters. Maybe, just maybe few would notice that there taxes would go up.

In the meantime, “leaders” seemed unmoved by the fact that Arizonans are suffering through a recession that is costing many their homes and tightening budgets in households that stay in tact. The proposal was tax and spend government at its worst.

The initiative was also tarnished by the games played by the governor’s office and backers to raise money for the project. Initially the plan would have required developers to pay a share of the tax tied to future development.

But behind closed doors, developers were left off the hook in exchange for a $100,000 contribution.

You and I would have been the ones left on the hook for paying for transportation infrastructure that ultimately would have benefited developers.

Great deal for them; lousy deal for us.

But it looks like we’re off the hook–for now.