Here's Celebrating Citizen Engagement Here In Mesa

It was the best of times just about a year ago in November 2016 when voters here got smart and overwhelmingly REJECTED a bogus referendum item in the General Election - every single one of all six district members on the Mesa City Council approved it unanimously, cow-towing and bending-over to special interests.

With another State-Of-The-City Speech on the agenda soon for 2018, who can forget this stunt captured in the image to the right at last year's SOTC???
Behind-the-scenes, Mesa Mayor John Giles and his friends - affectionately called The FOG here on this blog (Friends Of Giles) - spearheaded a privately-financed $500,000 Public Relations fiasco that really screwed-up blowing-up in their shamed faces, operating from Yes1Mesa headquarters located in the mayor's private personal injury/accident law practice on 2nd Street.

Lest we forget that the very same FOG has re-grouped, re-organized and re-proposed some more 'Pie-In-The-Sky" plans for over-sized buildings in an historic district plopped-down on a parking lot - here's a reminder. The only difference is that, as far as we know, what they have in mind might be privately-financed

Mesa Voters Nix Funding, New ASU Campus

Posted on November 11, 2016

By Roland Murphy for Arizona Builder’s Exchange
Due to the failure of Mesa’s Question 1 on the Nov. 8 ballot, the city has announced it will not post RFQs for the planned Arizona State University at the Mesa Arts Center project. Question 1 would have increased the city’s sales tax from 1.75 percent to 2.15 percent for public safety and higher education projects.
According to the city’s information page about the measure, revenues raised, “Would pay for a proposed Arizona State University Downtown Mesa campus including new buildings and a 10-12-acre Civic Center Plaza; a buildout of the Benedictine University campus, new parking structures to accommodate the expansions, and additional offsite improvements totaling an estimated $108-127M.”

Link > http://azbex.com