State of the City

As Phoenix adjusts to being the fifth-largest city in the nation, “public safety” is the main concern, Mayor Phil Gordon says. Growth, of course, will be an issue, too, and so will immigration and water conservation.

But on the day he sat down with PHOENIX magazine to talk about the “state of the city,” the challenges consuming his long days at City Hall – he’s up at 4 a.m. and at his desk by 6 a.m. – were based on two recent propositions.

First, there was Proposition 400, which will extend a half-cent sales tax to provide billions of dollars for more freeways and light rail, among other things. The regional plan, which was handily passed by voters in November, was developed over the course of two-and-a-half years by all of the Valley’s mayors, 80 percent of the Arizona Legislature, the business community, and the Valley’s major nonprofit organizations. In addition, there were 1,158 public meetings on the plan to solicit input from Valley citizens.

Despite the overwhelming support, however, the initiative was challenged by a handful of individuals, including former Governor Fife Symington and Gilbert developer Dave Thompson, who many are convinced has visions of running for governor. Thompson spent $1 million of his own money to defeat Prop. 400, saying he wanted all of the money dedicated to freeways, with none of it going to light rail. (A week or so before the election, Congressmen John Shadegg and Jeff Flake also came out against Prop. 400, claiming – through ignorance or misinformation – that the public was being force-fed the new plan without their input. Somehow, they missed the fact that 1,158 public meetings were held.)

“With all that support, if we wouldn’t pass [Prop. 400], how could we do anything?” Gordon asks. “If it had blown up, it would have set back regional planning a decade – and would have jeopardized plans way beyond transportation.” In the end, the mayor campaigned strongly for Prop. 400, after being dismayed by the “attempt to hijack this issue and mischaracterize it.” He said the “lies” told by the anti-400 group “were like Jell-O – it was hard trying to get your hands around it.”

But he’s proud that it passed “by 60 percent margins all over the Valley,” and that a solid regional plan is now on track. “It will provide good-paying jobs for 20 years,” he says. But the fight taught him something valuable: “There’s a small segment of community leaders who are starting to challenge the rules of the game on how we’re making public policy – they’re effectively trying to buy it.”

Despite the negativity surrounding the campaign, Gordon is planning to sit down with the anti-400 folks over lunch to talk it out – it’s an approach that’s becoming a Phil Gordon trademark. “I sat down with Congressman Shadegg after the election at LUX [an uptown coffee shop],” Gordon says. “I talked to Fife on election night, and I have called and e-mailed Thompson for a meeting.”

But it’s not just this issue. Anyone who’s ever watched Gordon knows he’s a firm believer in getting everyone to the table. “If you don’t, everyone imagines more ghosts than there are, and they become demons,” he says. “My grandpa always taught me to be respectful.”

It’s a lesson he’ll need even more in the aftermath of another proposition, which has led to a spate of hateful e-mails. Gordon says he intends to answer some of the e-mails about Prop. 200, which called itself “Protect Arizona NOW,” but was derided from both sides of the aisle as an anti-immigrant attack.

The measure, which also passed by a large margin, demands proof of identity for anyone voting or getting “public benefits,” and calls for jail time if public employees don’t screen out undocumented workers. The day after the measure passed, the Phoenix City Council began discussing ways to protect its employees, quickly deciding that any employee charged under Prop. 200 would be defended by the city at city expense.

Gordon found himself on CNN and FOX, defending the Council’s position. No, he said, the Council wasn’t trying to undermine the will of the people, but it wasn’t about to abandon employees who are just doing their jobs, “especially when there’s no agreement on what ‘public benefits’ are.”

“I’ve got the two proposition authors differing on what this means,” he says. “We will comply with the law, but we don’t know what the law is.”

One of the sponsors, Kathy McKee, maintains that Prop. 200 only applies to public welfare benefits, while another sponsor, Randy Pullen, declares that it includes everything from welfare and education, to health care and hunting licenses.

The mayor finds the inclusion of hunting licenses an interesting insight into where some sponsors want to go. “Hunting licenses aren’t given away, they’re paid for,” he says, wondering if that means sponsors want to cut off other paid services, like city water and sewers. “Where do you report a crime,” if you can’t use public police officers? he asks.

And who do you call for a fire if you can’t call public firefighters?

“This proposition gives anyone the right to sue public employees and wipe out their assets for doing their jobs. Who’s the victim here?… poor employees just trying to do their jobs,” he says. “That’s the last thing anyone should want.”

(Pullen, by the way, is a frequent critic of City Hall – he also was treasurer of the group fighting against Prop. 400. He has twice been defeated in his quest to be mayor of Phoenix, losing to Mayor “Skip” Rimsza by a count of 36 to 59 percent, and then being crushed by Gordon’s 72 percent win for the seat in 2003.)

When he isn’t putting out fires, Gordon spends much of his time focusing on his long-range goal for Phoenix, which is to expand its employment base and bring in more higher-paying jobs. He also wants to get more and more citizens active in shaping policy.

“I want people to get involved, to know there’s an open door,” he says. “And I’d like everyone to remember that people are coming here because Phoenix is clean and honest, and investments are being made here for the future.”

And nowhere is that more evident than Downtown – the most ambitious downtown redevelopment plan in the nation, which will bring an ASU campus to the heart of Phoenix.

“I am a connect-the-dots kind of guy,” Gordon says, and the dots became obvious as he was running for mayor. He remembers both Governor Janet Napolitano and ASU President Michael Crow talking about the importance of expanding the university, but Tempe had run out of space. “We’ve got lots of space in Downtown Phoenix,” Gordon remembers thinking, “and we’ve got light rail coming that will connect Phoenix and Tempe like never before.”

So, he and Dr. Crow met during the mayoral campaign. “It evolved from him saying he could bring 10,000 to 12,000 students and faculty to Downtown, and I said, ‘How about 15,000?’ Where else in the United States can you get that kind of relocation, where people are going to study, work and live – all within a five-year scope. It doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

It’s a major development for Downtown, but he stresses that the plan isn’t due to just one or two people. “This has been a vision and dream of the Phoenix City Council,” Gordon says.

As a result, the Downtown campus is on track – the first classes will convene in 2006 – and so are expanded facilities of the Maricopa County Community College District (also approved in the November election). In addition, the University of Arizona is building a medical school in the mix. “We’ve got hospitals that want to support the medical school, either by expanding or building new facilities in Downtown,” Gordon says. And beyond all of that, the Phoenix Civic Plaza is under a $600 million expansion, and the city is building another major hotel to service its convention business.

Through it all, the strength of the Downtown plan is that it attracts private investment in droves, which can be seen on dozens of pieces of land where new housing is being built as fast as construction crews can get materials. “The reason the private sector is starting to play here is they don’t want to be left out,” Gordon says.

With such a full plate, it’s no wonder he’s promised his wife and the city manager’s office that he’ll hang back on any more new ideas for a while. But it doesn’t take much to get him to admit he thinks Phoenix is long overdue for a dental school, among other things. All of which leads to a piece of advice: The mayor advises Phoenicians to make sure they don’t “blink,” because things are happening at “the speed of light.”