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![[The Skinny]](../images/skinny.gif)
RISKY BUSINESS: Several months ago The Skinny pointed out Pima County Stupidvisor Mikey Boyd's new job with Title Guarantee was a ticking time bomb loaded with conflict-of-interest shrapnel. Last week the bomb exploded when Mikey voted along with fellow Republican stupes to approve a zoning variance for a hillside development requested by Rick Engineering Company on behalf of Sabino Springs Properties.
The request itself was benign. Mikey's vote for the variance was not. It turns out his employer, Title Guarantee, provided professional services on behalf of the requesting company--which makes Mikey's vote a conflict of interest.
Mikey claims that at the time of his vote he was unaware Title Guarantee researched the title for SSP. For what it's worth, we believe him.
To avoid further conflicts, Boyd quit his job with the title company the moment he learned his vote was tainted; then he asked his fellow supervisors to place the item on this week's agenda for "reconsideration." But to do so, the board must suspend the rules. Hey, that shouldn't be hard for these guys.
When Mikey first took the job with Title Guarantee he was asked how he'd know he was in a conflict situation. He said he would "just have to be careful." Now he says he made a mistake and he's "learned from it."
Yeah, right. Mikey says he's going to keep Title Guarantee as a potential conflict for "about two months." We asked him why two months--why not the rest of his term?
Boyd's response: "It would be to hard on the company."
Excuse us, Mikey, but now that you've resigned from Title Guarantee, take a peek at your paycheck. Do you see the words "Pima County" up at the top of the check? That means your job is to represent the people in your district. To hell with Title Guarantee. You're required by law to avoid conflicts of interest, and two months just doesn't cut it.
SOCIALIZED BASEBALL: Phoenix is about to get a major league baseball franchise team called the Arizona Diamondbacks. And they'll conduct spring training in Tucson--if we taxpayers will spring for about $26 million worth of stadium for them. Pardon us, but aren't we already springing for a big success called the Colorado Rockies spring training program...Now we get to do it twice? All this because of some total bullshit cooked up by consultants in suits called "the multiplier factor." They tell us thousands of eager baseball fans will come here from all over the world to watch these teams play. And we'll make out because they'll spend so much money in our community that we'll get all that tax money back and show a profit.
If you believe that crap, please call Fast Eddy at The Skinny's switchboard. He's got a helluva deal for you on a bridge back East. Only problem is, the folks who keep buying into this multiplier BS are some of our dumber politicians. If the state bird is the cactus wren, the official Pima County bird should be the pigeon.
Tucson has always been the town of the hustle. Building these guys a new stadium makes about as much sense as investing county funds in derivatives. Call your favorite local pols and tell them to just say no to baseball socialism.
TODAY ELOY, TOMORROW THE WORLD: In a textbook case of massive delusions of adequacy, last week the Marana Town Council sat down and told the rest of the world what they thought Marana's ultimate borders should be. On the east they'd be bordered by the Urals. On the north, the Gulf of Finland, with the Caspian Sea on the south and the plain of Poland to the west. This is easily the most incredible clot of bozos ever to sit on a governing body. Suffice that the leaders of Dogpatch called for a town of 160 square miles (it's currently bloated to about 70) with a projected population of 75,000 or so in 25 years (which exceeds where places like Prescott and Yuma are right now). Naturally the dummies had no clue nor even a discussion concerning how all the necessary roads, sewers and schools would get paid for. In their rush to embrace any developer or land speculator wearing a polyester suit with a map under his arm, these rubes have yet to figure out that maybe impact fees would be in order. What they're doing not only to the people of Marana but to the entire county is giving us a game plan for massive tax increases to pay for large profits now by a few, mostly out-of-town, out-of-state and even out-of-country, builders.
BROWN'S LATEST POWER GRAB: The Arizona Daily Star ran about 30 column inches on Friday, March 10, concerning the city's emergency plan for possible water shortages next summer.
Decreeing an emergency big enough to mandate curtailed water usage by citizens is about as clear a policy decision as you can get, and hence a job for the mayor and council. But City Manager Mike "The Spike" Brown and his gang want Brown to have the power to make that decision on his own and without even consulting the council--a clear violation of the spirit and intent of the city charter. This was either ignored or glossed over by the establishment media.
The Star story had the following paragraph peripherally addressing the issue: "But Councilman Bruce Wheeler said the proposed ordinance should grant the council the authority to declare an emergency, not the manager."
That's it--the only reference to the real damn issue, another blatant power grab by Brown.
At least now we get to see how many members of the city council, otherwise known as the Seven Dwarfs, are willing to commit malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance by voting to give away another policy-making choice to an unelected bureaucrat.
DELORES TAKES A DIVE: The dog ate her homework. The cat stole her gym shorts. Pima County elections director Delores Johnston took 40 minutes to read her resignation before the Board of Supes last week. In a rambling discourse that lost her whatever class she had left, Johnston blamed the media, the Pima County Recorder, and a variety of poitical enemies for her woes.
The Skinny has repeatedly pointed out the lady's shortcomings in office. If her ineptitude hadn't cost more than 600 voters in one precinct their fundamental rights when their ballots were lost, we might have some compassion for her plight. We don't.
Some months ago, when we pointed out she was the creature of political expediency, having come from the county recorder's office during the Mikey Boyd regime there, and she claimed she was chosen by then-County Manager Manoj Vyas through a competitive process.
Yeah, right. Delores, people chosen by competitive process by management don't submit their resignations to the Board of Supes, nor do they get 40 minutes of public whining when they quit.
And in a related matter, there was a near brawl outside the same Board of Supes meeting between Joe Carter, husband of Board Clerk Jane Williams, and Joe Burchell of The Arizona Daily Star. Carter accosted Burchell with words to the effect of "You've been on my ass and now I'm going to be on yours." Carter is no doubt incensed by his wife's pay cut. Nor can he be happy that his name keeps popping up in the paper in connection with all those jobs his wife and Johnston kept handing him.
We've already told you how Williams skated on the criminal investigation. Besides milking his wife's position, it's pretty obvious that a guy who goes after a reporter in this fashion lacks even a modicum of class.
MAYBE THEY JUST WANNA MAKE SURE THEY DROWN THE GOPHERS: There's a false impression in this valley that new golf courses won't be using groundwater. Wrong. The Town of Oro Valley is regularly waiving that requirement for developers as long as they produce the usual expert witnesses to claim they've got a 100-year water supply. In fact, the great geniuses who run Caddyshack just let another golf course use ground water at this past week's town council meeting.
Why would they do this? It appears the majority of the Caddyshack Council--Vice Mayor Cheryl Skalsky excepted--live in pathological fear of the town being sued by a developer. You can read it in the recall literature distributed for the incumbents, Mayor Richard Parker and Councilwoman Valerie Hoyt. These turkeys consider fiscal responsibility to consist of staying out of court. Which means they spook every time they get threatened by any builder--and let the developers clear-cut over whatever they want.
Using our limited groundwater to take care of new golf courses is not only environmentally obscene, but will destroy long-term growth for everybody. For any governmental entity to continue to allow this practice borders on suicide. Maybe the Caddyshack Council should hire a new consultant--Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
A "PERMANENT" BASE: The hustlers never quit. Here's the latest Davis-Monthan Air Force Base runway story, delivered with a straight face by KVOA-TV, Channel 4's Eyewitless News:
Seems the ace consulting firm we hired saved DM by the following process. They pointed out to the base-closure folks that DM would be one of the most expensive bases to close because they'd have to move the massive airplane boneyard, which would cost millions.
Wow! said the Air Force, we never thought of that! Of course we can't afford to close it!
Wait a minute. Nobody ever said closing DM would mean shutting down the aviation junkyards. We thought the problem was about how many military functions would remain. We find it hard to believe the Air Force didn't plan to leave the boneyard here anyway.
So after our ace consultant tells us he's saved our ass, what's his next piece of advice? Deliver on the proposal for us locals to pay for the extension of the runway!
You see, the name of the game now is to make DM a "permanent" base. Permanent? Hey, excuse us, but we're also federal taxpayers facing a mammoth deficit and a federal government that owns too damn much land around here anyway
We say kill the damn base. The sooner it's gone, the sooner we won't have to worry about jets dropping out of the skies and killing our children.
WIRED: We do so look forward to those positive school articles The Arizona Daily Star runs as a regular feature in their fluffernutter Women's, er Accent, section. With so much wrong with our schools it's much easier to run a puff piece than to actually find out what's going on. We did, however, wonder about a positively positive March 6 copyrighted Houston Chronicle article on Tucson's Maxwell Middle School by Dwight Silverman, discussing how computers in the classroom have supposedly turned the school around. (By the way, if that's true, street chat from neighborhood folks doesn't support it. If there was ever a school in need of magnet status, we're told, it's this one.)
Things must be tough on the education beat if the Star needs stories about local schools phoned in from Houston. Maybe it was just that all the upbeat Star education reporters were covering PTA meetings in Houston; either that or they had trouble finding the school. After all, the article says Maxwell is "on the southwest side of Tucson." We think the school's 2802 W. Anklam Road address puts them squarely on the west side of town. But heck, maybe the Star copy editors actually work in Galveston and phone in their editing, too. Nothing like a hometown newspaper to call your own.
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