Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

City Hall

The first and perhaps only great mayor was Greek. He was Pericles of Athens, and he lived some 2500 years ago, and he said, "All things good on this Earth flow into the City, because of the City's greatness." Well, we were great once. Can we not be great again? — from the 1996 film City Hall.

Something strange is happening inside Phoenix City Hall, and I can't escape the nagging feeling that the ouster of police chief Jack Harris is part of it. Harris was removed as chief, but not as public safety director, after claims that the PPD inflated kidnapping numbers in order to get federal grants. Mayor Phil Gordon supported Harris, while Councilwoman Peggy Neely was a vocal Harris critic. That's the story so far, and the reporting has been disappointing. The back story has yet to fully emerge. (Here's a 3/11/11 update on council bickering; this is reaching Scottsdale levels of childishness).

To understand the modern Phoenix Police Department, you must go back to 1954, when Charlie Thomas was appointed chief. He was a rough equivalent of LA's William Parker, a modernizer and reformer who created a professional police force. PPD was never as corrupt or brutal as the LAPD that Parker inherited; it was a small force (149 officers for a city of 150,000) with a good-ole-boy culture in a mobbed-up town. It was still haunted by the 1944 murder of one its first African-American officers, "Star" Johnson, by detective "Frenchy" Navarre. Johnson and his partner were walking a beat in the Deuce when Frenchy, a notoriously brutal and racist cop, parked in a red zone off-duty and refused to move. He shot Johnson, who later died, and was acquitted by a Southern-culture Phoenix jury. Johnson's partner later came into Police Headquarters (on the first floor of the lovely, still-standing City-County Building) and gunned down Frenchy, who went down firing the two guns he wore. The bullet holes were in the walls for years. There was also the infamous World War II riot in "(racial slur) Town by soldiers, a rich historical event for some future scholar.

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Posted inPhoenix

Decade of delusion

The Information Center formerly known as the Arizona Republic prominently offers up a breezy feature on how the decade now ending "upturned our touchstones, left us suspended in a mixed-up, flip-flopped, name-swapping, upside-down place." Why, even the FBR Open (the huh?) is now sponsored by Waste Management. The feature quotes, yet again, Elliott Pollack and, yet again, declines to mention that he makes his money as a developer, as well as an economist in the service of developers. " 'Every place we were strong,' he says, such as commercial real estate and the semiconductor industry, has crumbled…. Waste management, indeed." So much for what Jacques Brel would term, "Cute, cute, cute, in a stupid ass way."

As someone who was in the heart of the battle in Arizona for most of the decade, I would describe it in more sober terms, for it represents lost opportunities that the state, and particularly the city of Phoenix, may never get again. Call it the Decade of Delusion. Admittedly a strong term for a place built on a history of boosterism, glasses half full and always, like the Roadrunner, seeming to escape disaster at the last second. Those escapes, in reality, were opportunities tossed aside and hard choices pushed into a future that has now arrived. They were decades spent devouring and profaning the last best place, arriving in 2000 with one more chance to get it right. Instead, delusion prevailed. Now state and city are Wile E. Coyote, standing on air, still not realizing it's a long way down.

I arrived back in Arizona literally just in time to attend a debate between Sandy Bahr of the Sierra Club and real-estate lawyer Grady Gammage over Prop 202. It was September of 2000 and the initiative, which would have placed limits on sprawl and leapfrog development, was leading in polls. What happened next was a remarkable turnaround, as the real-estate interests mustered a well-funded scare campaign against 202. I recall Pollack saying the state would collapse into recession if the measure passed. That was my first red flag: 202 was hardly radical, indeed could have been criticized for not going far enough. It would have made infill profitable and left huge swaths to develop elsewhere. But if its passage meant recession, here was a state too dependent on one sector, despite all the boosterism about Arizona's "vibrant, diverse" economy. Prop 202 was crushed. The land barons set about platting everything from Yavapai County to beyond Tucson. The Decade of Delusion had begun.

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Posted inPhoenix

The men who would be Frank

Four finalists have reportedly emerged to replace retiring Phoenix City Manager Frank Fairbanks. All are current City of Phoenix employees. They're good men, and David Krietor and Ed Zuercher especially hold promise. Still, the finalist lineup reinforces the sense of Phoenix's parochialism and inward-looking mindset. It's a problem that extends far beyond City Hall. But it's significant given government's huge footprint in a city with no major corporate headquarters, influential civic stewards or powerful business interests beyond building more sprawl (which apparently extends to self-dealing city council members). There is, simply, no other major American city as limited as Phoenix in its economy or centers of power — or its lack of self-awareness. So something that elsewhere might seem routine, carries big weight and risk here.

This is also a portentous moment for a changing of the guard. When Fairbanks became city manager in 1990, Phoenix was in a nasty real-estate recession but otherwise still on a sunny trajectory it had enjoyed since the end of World War II. City Hall's reputation for clean government and efficiency earned it the Bertelsmann Prize as one of the two best-run cities in the world. In the early '90s, the city still had corporate leaders such as Dial and Valley National Bank. Chastened by the real-estate bust, leaders established the Greater Phoenix Economic Council and worked to diversify the economy. Phoenix was the uncontested regional leader; the suburbs were still relatively small. Its population was much more middle class.

Fairbanks' successor will inherit a far different city, and not merely one that has grown to 1.5 million from 983,000 in 1990.

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Posted inPhoenix

The model modern city manager

One joke around Phoenix involving Frank Fairbanks was that he could never retire as city manager, because then all the scandals would come out. Of course, everybody loves Frank. Except for the ones who don't. Given the lack of curiosity and resources in the local press, we'll never know how true the joke might be. I never ran into evidence that Fairbanks was anything but clean. His problems were more complicated. Since most will be offering rapturous praise as Fairbanks is apparently stepping down, a more serious assessment is necessary.

The zeitgeist of Frank Fairbanks' City Hall was to move across the waters without making waves. He was not a creative thinker or a risk-taker — think of the guy on the Shredded Wheat ad who says, "We put the 'no' in innovation." His career spent with the city led to an unavoidable parochialism, along with perhaps a fatalism that the city's trajectory couldn't be changed, or a willingness to drink the booster Kool-Aid by the gallon. He was in an awkward spot in a systemically dysfunctional city government, mostly trying to keep the peace, even as Phoenix hit a grave turning point. All this would have profound consequences for Phoenix and its future.

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Posted inPolitics: National

A new low in Phoenix’s war on the poor

I supposed it's a small thing in comparison with a region that celebrates a sheriff ordered by a federal judge to stop "depriving jail inmates of adequate medical screening and care, feeding them unhealthy food and housing them in unsanitary conditions." This from the New York Times, another chamber-of-commerce moment for Phoenix. A small thing in a city where 15 percent of the population is below the poverty line, where wages lag far behind competing cities (yet living costs don't), the gap between rich and poor is one of the biggest in the nation and the homeless are left in the deadly heat, on the streets despite "get tough" few-benefits policies. A small thing versus the thuggish persecution of the immigrant population that keeps the economy running and gives the affluent their inexpensive lawn services and housekeeping.

Still, the decision by the Phoenix City Council to eliminate what it considers "late night and early morning" bus service should rank right up there in the Hall of Shame. All trips will be eliminated before 5 a.m. and after — get this — 10 p.m. The "nation's fifth largest city" won't have any bus service after 10 p.m. Dayton, Ohio, has bus service after 10 p.m.!

City council members who drive about Phoenix's 500 square miles in air conditioning and accompanied by their entourages seem to have no idea of how many Phoenicians live: in low-wage jobs — often holding down more than one — working overnight shifts and without cars. Much of this is part of the tourism, construction or retail economy that is about all this "city" has. Have these august solons ever looked out their SUV windows late at night to see a crowded central city bus stop — or are they safely at home in their faux stucco suburban digs.

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Posted inPhoenix

Phoenix diary: Golf, urban Chandler, ‘green leader,’ med-school disaster, the storm

Phoenix and Arizona sleepwalk on. Mesa is giddy about the promise of a big new resort out in the middle of nowhere. It’s fascinating that the metropolitan area and state seem to have no substantial economic development strategy other than to hope that more clones of Scottsdale golf resorts can be birthed. Tourism, of course, brings notoriously low-paying jobs, many part time and lacking benefits. It may be facing structural challenges as American living standards fall and energy prices rise. And considering that golf is a stagnant pastime — as many give it up as take it up every year — well, do the math…

"Chandler shifts to urban focus," the headline proclaims. The story is about studies on what happens when the suburb runs out of greenfield development space. But they know they shoot studies in Arizona. Chandler has been deeply engineered as an automobile suburb, complete with wide highways ("streets"), walled off "communities" and ugly berms to separate land use from highways. It is completely car dependent, without commuter or light-rail links. I doubt there will be much interest by developers in doing anything remotely urban. But it’s rich enough to survive awhile if the growth machine revives and moves elsewhere…

Meanwhile, a "marketing strategy" was launched to tout Phoenix as an "emerging leader" in green and solar technology. Hahahahahahaha. I hope this is better than the "marketing strategy" of Copper Square. I guess anything helps, if the region could lure at least a few California companies. Unfortunately, the Legislature and extreme political climate’s refusal to fund meaningful economic development tools and research will keep metro Phoenix a backwater. A "city" based on endless driving in individual automobile trips while spreading out into the desert without enough water to sustain it can’t be any kind of green leader, emerging or even flaccid…

Then there’s the crackup of the medical school…

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Posted inPhoenix

Phoenix and Arizona — the solutions are out there

Newer readers to Rogue Columnist might wonder about the attention I pay to my native state of Arizona, even though now I live in Seattle. First, because after I chose to leave the Arizona Republic in April 2007, I took with me a cohort of loyal readers who want something other than the usual mendacious Phoenix cheerleading (think of this as a virtual Battlestar Gallactica). But also because the challenges and troubles Arizona faces carry lessons for all of America. Finally, I fear Phoenix’s coming implosion will bring a huge pricetag for American taxpayers, and a human tragedy that shakes our souls.

Some of these readers still tell me they come away from my posts feeling depressed. I want them to realize the facts, get mad as hell and take action. But Phoenicians, even really smart ones, tend to have two emotional gears: blind optimism and suicidal depression. It’s a malady as old as settlement of the West, where promotional posters back east led to a trail of broken dreams. Others realize that the mountain Phoenix and Arizona must climb is so steep that it seems hopeless.

I spent seven years as a columnist in Phoenix offering solutions, as well as pointing out the emperor’s wardrobe malfunction (and believe me, I pulled my punches every time I wrote). But here again are some solutions. Some might apply to towns other than Phoenix.

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