Mesa Office of Economic Development > FOURTH QUARTER 2016 Newsletter

Short on info graphics and nonetheless bold with a bravado pitched for publication by head honcho Bill Jabjiniak the last quarter Q4 2016 "newsletter" has been released.
Massive spending by the federal government has paid off for industries long-established here in Mesa after World War II along with newer related high-tech enterprises in cyberwarfare, security, space surveillance, defense, remanufacturing and supply chain logistics.
At the same time one of Mayor John Giles' Pie-In-The-Sky plans to spend over $120M in public monies to locate an ASU satellite campus downtown fizzled in the face of voter rejection to finance it with a transaction/sales tax hike, largely attributable to a bad privately-financed PR campaign that turned out to be a major screw-up by the "special interest groups" behind it even though they raised over $500,000 to sell it to voters. 
Industrial [as well as commercial, vocational/higher education, retail and residential growth] is expanding around two former airfields, now owned by the City of Mesa or regional partners in the southeast and northeast areas where spending on infrastructure has paid off for sprawling suburban developments.
The entire publication can be seen here

Still Clowning Around With Mesa's Future? What's Next for John Giles

A slippery slope or will the mayor gain some traction in his second term in office after a stunning flat-line defeat in a public referendum. Hard act to follow. What turn to take?
What is the Next Next ???
After last year's highly-staged charade [see image to the left with ASU Mascot Sparky] for his #SOTC16 State-of-the-City speech that marked the start of his first full term in public office with a privately-financed PAC bogus public relations campaign that turned into a major screw-up where Mesa voters rejected a sales tax hike that knocked down the key cornerstone of his political platform - an ASU satellite campus that would have radically transformed The New Urban Downtown Mesa.
What was John Giles thinking that turned out all-so-wrong when the public got engaged telling him he's taking the city in the wrong direction for the benefit of his friends, the FOG.

Have Smart Growth Advocates Made Progress Here In Mesa?

Blog post

The Smart Growth Movement: A (Partial) Success

. . . Has the smart growth movement succeeded?

It depends how you measure "success."

Michael Lewyn | December 27, 2016, 9am PST

Another blogger,  Michael Lewyn, recently had an email conversation with someone, arguing about whether the smart growth movement has been successful. 
His correspondent points out that millions of people still are perfectly happy with suburbia, and thus suggests that sprawl is as dominant now as it was in the 1990s.
This discussion made him think: how does one define a movement’s success or failure anyhow?
Obviously, the smart growth movement has not been a success if "success" means turning the clock all the way back to pre-sprawl America (say, 1945).
But that seems to him like a rather utopian objective.
A better question is: have smart growth advocates made progress?
So for example, one smart growth goal might be repopulating older urban cores.
For this goal alone, one could define "success" in a variety of different ways.
For example:
*Are cities gaining population?
*Are neighborhoods closest to downtown gaining population?
*Are city neighborhoods gaining people who can afford to live elsewhere?
*Are cities gaining population as fast as suburbs?

Read what he has to say here
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