Rogue Columnist

The Friday saloon

• So the first round of Phoenix City Council elections attracted 21 percent of registered voters compared with less than 16 percent four years ago. Turnout was lowest in central Phoenix's District 4 — shocking considering the stakes there. Only 15 percent turned out this year to elect the mayor of Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city. What does this say about the state of democracy in America? It's not as if there aren't important issues to be decided (even if the Phoenix candidates mostly didn't talk about them. Maybe it's just me, but aside from the Sky Train, the city seems to be treading water.

• Low turnout in Phoenix gives disproportionate power to a small minority. But the Firefighters union lost big; along with firefighters unions from around the state, it spent some $400,000 to defeat Sal DiCiccio in District 6. Sal is very close to being a Kook and is also, of course, in real estate. No disrespect, but does he bring anything constructive to Council? Just being against everything in the name of "the taxpayer" is not an answer. His showing is a sign that at least a big part of his district could be spun off to Tempe and Scottsdale (but keep the pretty parts of Arcadia).

• The rush to United States involvement in the war in Syria seems to have slowed a bit. But only a bit. Tell me what I'm missing in saying this is such a mistake. It's a sectarian civil war involving age-old enmities; once again, we're ignorant of the country, issues and potential consequences; again, thinking of striking a Muslim country; Syria's patron, Russia, holds some 10,000 nuclear warheads; a "limited" action will either be ineffective or not limited; desposing Assad might bring a worse — from the standpoint of our national interests — regime, and we're not the world police.Wonkblog offers a guide to the basics.

Now the Saloon is yours...

The dam problem

A photo hangs in my study showing my mother at Glen Canyon Dam, posing with officials of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Interior Department and Arizona State Senate. She is the only woman in the group and represents the Arizona Interstate Stream Commission, the quiet but powerful state agency fighting for the Central Arizona Project. The year is 1965 and the 710-foot-tall stark white (at the time) arched structure that impounds Colorado River water in Lake Powell will begin full operations a year later.

She has the satisfied expression of a woman who never met a dam she didn't like (that would change later, as it would for many involved, when they realized the unintended consequences of what they had wrought). But she and some of her colleagues also knew they were pulling a kind of confidence game on California and the Upper Basin states. More about that later.

I've been studying that photo as Phoenicians who are paying attention read about how persistent drought is reducing the water released from Lake Powell. A Bureau of Reclamation study says the drought is the worst in a century (it is actually worse than that, but such is the record keeping), and less water will be sent downstream to Arizona, Nevada and California than at any time since when Powell filled — when that photo was taken.

It is a big deal.

 

The Friday saloon

First, some business: I am going to take an actual vacation until August 26th. Rogue will not be updated, but feel free to browse the archives and special topic pages. My intention is to go completely without the Internet, but I will try to check the spam filter once a day. I need to recharge.

The Chapter 11 filing of Rural/Metro is a sad bookend of Arizona. Before it was a 21-state emergency services company, it was the Rural Fire Department of little Scottsdale. Lou Witzeman founded it in 1948 and for many years served as the chief of Scottsdale's privately owned fire agency. For years, conservatives burnished RFD (and later RMFD) as an example of what privatization could achieve. But in reality, Scottsdale benefited from mostly new constructions (except for the worrisome common attics downtown). Whenever a big fire erupted, RFD invariably needed Phoenix Fire's assistance, lacking manpower, apparatus and (some critics said) enough training. In 2005, Scottsdale established a city fire department — a year after Witzeman passed away. Bought by the private equity outfit Warburg Pincus in a leveraged buyout, the fate of Rural/Metro sounds like the common outcome of vulture capitalism.

Meanwhile, James Simmons died at age 88. Although a member of the Phoenix 40, he was never among the biggest of the big dogs. Still, he is a reminder of an era when the city was the home base to significant companies and chief executives who were also civic stewards. Simmons was head of United Bank, whose headquarters was located in a tower at Central and Lexington within a block of two other financial institution headquarters. Now all gone. Only the buildings are left. Quoted in the obit: Bill Shover, Gene Pulliam's community affairs vizier, one of the last of the old guard left.

Another topic is the Phoenix City Council elections. The candidates seem underwhelming, most promising trash collection and public safety, supporting "neighborhoods" (whatever the hell that means) or blathering about what a "great city" Phoenix is. Vision? Practical sense of the city's serious problems? Austin Head at least promises to expand light rail (We Built It, You Bastards). To be fair, I am a prisoner of the very limited AzCentral bios. Phoenicians need to pay close attention: The Kooks have long wanted to get control of the city government. If they do so, it will be a disaster. Council is already tilting into paralysis. Voters need to stop this.

Salud! And see you in two weeks.

Solar dreams II

After I wrote the first column on this topic, the Arizona Republic rolled out a creditable series on solar energy in the state. Among other things, it examined the recent setbacks solar has faced; did a close-up on what will be one of the nation's largest solar arrays on three square miles near Gila Bend, the $2 billion Solana Generating Station, and the forces that will challenge solar, such as cheap natural gas. It properly points out that Phoenix's two utilities get a small fraction of their energy from solar, and the "action" is on rooftop installations for relatively well-off house-owners — and even here the numbers are small. One is left to wonder who is running a hustle, a la the alt-fuels scandal from the early 2000s...

In any event, my intention has always been to dig deeper. The alpha tragedy is that the solar power movement was born in Arizona and the state let it get away. The International Solar Energy Society, one of the premier organizations in the field, was founded in 1954 in Phoenix. The original name was the Association for Applied Solar Energy. Among the founders were executives of Arizona Public Service. More than 1,000 scientists, engineers and government officials from 36 different countries attended the first two meetings in Phoenix and Tucson. The organization went on to become accredited by the United Nations and was based at ASU until 1970, when the headquarters moved to Melbourne and finally to Freiburg, Germany. The early research gathered by the organization is still in the ASU library collections. But the headquarters, brainpower and influence is long gone.

Neither fact is surprising. Old Phoenix had a progressive streak and an ambitious nature. This was before changes in the economy and a zombie-like focus on adding population and housing took over everything. Yet solar energy was very primitive and a gallon of gasoline cost 21 cents ($1.85 in today's money). There was no way solar could compete. It's still difficult. And the leaders of the state were primarily focused on winning the Central Arizona Project. But when people wonder why sunny Arizona isn't the center of the world's solar power efforts, the answer is simple and sad: It once was.

The Friday saloon

The big, big Phoenix story is the resignation of City Manager David Cavazos, who is leaving to accept the same position in Santa Ana, Calif. Everyone is pleading surprise. This is almost certainly not true. Cavazos put out a prepared statement that was both graciously restrained and yet also appeared to be highly lawyered. There may prove to be much more to this than meets the eye.

With the local paper continuing to lay off people and institutional knowledge fading, here are a few pieces of important background. The council/manager form of government is one of Phoenix's proudest achievements, having done away with the corruption not only of cities "back East" but also old Phoenix. The council sets policy and the manager implements it, running the city from day-to-day. The mayor is a relatively weak position and one vote on council. Once a person assumes the purple of the city manager, he is expected to serve for many years. Frank Fairbanks, who Cavazos succeeded in 2009, served for two decades. One simply doesn't walk away, and certainly not to little Santa Ana (pop. 329,427). So this is a bombshell even if there's nothing more to it. If there is, it's explosive, including for Mayor Greg Stanton.

There was a stupidly nasty fight over giving Cavazos a raise to bring his pay up to $315,000. The next largest city with a council/manager form, San Antonio, pays a base $355,000 to Sheryl Sculley, the capable former deputy city manager in Phoenix who was shown the glass ceiling by Phil Gordon and the firefighters union (over an old grudge). The council is more divided and kooky now, more small ball. A sense of stagnation is felt, although the light rail extension is happening (WBIYB). The Legislature has made life even more difficult for cities. Phoenix is struggling relative to the prosperous suburbs. The Phoenix polity is much more limited compared with the other most populous cities. Any of these — or the blowback from previous controversies — could have driven Cavazos to leave at the prime of his professional life. Also, he was caught up in the minor expense-account scandal in the mid-2000s. I always wondered if Cavazos had the chops for the job, not to mention the quiet, genial ruthlessness of Frank Fairbanks.