Hey! It's time to turn-on-the-heat here in Arizona: 36 years on it's time again to Fight-The-Good Fight for the ERA equal rights for women. TIMES UP #MeToo
Hey guys! This is all about all of us.
Ducey doesn't favor Arizona ratifying Equal Rights Amendment
A short animation brilliantly breaks down the basics of human rights.
It's our responsibility to fight for and defend the human rights of others.
What are human rights?It's a simple question that can have a somewhat complex answer. It delves into issues of politics, economics, and even sociology.
"Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible."
At their core, human rights are a set of beliefs applicable to all people, ensuring that everyone is treated fairly, justly, and equally.
Wheeeee! Here we go again!Don't know about anyone else, but with all the jammed-up huge number of items piled on the agenda for Monday, June 18th's regular Mesa City Council Meeting that deserve attention from the public, it's a disappointment to say the least that none of the 40++ items up for hearing and discussion on Monday are scheduled for tomorrow's "study session" NOR are there yet any meeting details available to the public in advance of a "study session" before that regular council meeting. It's up to you to hold City Hall responsible and respond-able to the public. You pay their salaries - they are obligated to work for you, not special interests. _________________________________________________________________________________
If the public wants to keep city government accountable, open and transparent, it's suggested that YOU GET ENGAGED to give your input to the people you elected to serve the interests of the public by calling or contacting via email the city manager, the mayor or your city council district representative to request that your concerns and your issues about what the city council is doing or not doing or how they do it are placed on the agenda for Monday's City Council Study Session. _________________________________________________________________________
As promised by Mesa City Manager Chris Brady on June 8th, what he referred to as "GO Bonds" - Brady-shorthand for General Obligation Bonds - is one of five items on the Final Agenda published yesterday.
To be brief and to-the-point General obligation bonds are debt instruments ________________________________________________________________________
Hear a presentation, discuss, and provide direction on general obligation bond items for the 2018 election including:
> funding mechanisms
> operations and maintenance costs for public safety, parks and cultural projects
> the Mesa Plays project
Blogger Note: There is no doubt more objective information about GOBs (Gobs of million$-in-public debt) you can find using any search engine. (You don't have to wait to see what might very one-sided)
HUH? The Mesa Plays Project????
Will we be seeing City Manager Chris Brady explaining all the details and making this presentation to the public himself? . . . or is he planning to put an assistant city manager or Candace Cannistraro, head of the Office of Management & Budget, into the hot seat again??? ________________________________________________________________________ Scroll down farther to view the study session for 14 June 2018 Source: Mesa Legistar/Council, Committee, Board and Research Center
General obligation bondsare debt instruments issued by states and local governments to raise funds for public works. What makesgeneral obligation bonds (or GO bondsfor short) unique is that they are backed by the full faith and credit of the issuing municipality.
Here's an infographic from a recent presentation at a city council meeting that shows Mesa’s net worth is declining year-after-year > According to the data provided by District 2 rep Jeremy Whitakker, the decline started around 2006 when current City Manager Chris Brady first got hired and employed inside City Hall. Source >> click here
OK. . . How's the City of Mesa's credit and how's the Mesa City Manager's Credibility?? In the over 12 years of Chris Brady's high-salaried tenure as the city's chief executive officer, the public debt has risen drastically from less than $40M in 2006 to over $750 today in 2018
Follow-up question: Do you trust and have confidence in city manager Chris Brady?
Hear a presentation, discuss, and provide direction on general obligation bond items for the 2018 election including funding mechanisms, and operations and maintenance costs for public safety, parks and cultural projects, and the Mesa Plays project.
Please take the time to look at the attachments. Look at them closely Seriously Like some people say, "The Devil's in the Details" While you're at it, please take the time to notice that while they are Approved Meeting Minutes now available for two board and one committee meeting, there have been none published for City Council Meetings since 05/21/2018. _________________________________________________________________________ Here are the attachments for the GENERAL OBLIGATION BONDS PRESENTATION:
Hear a presentation, discuss, and provide direction on general obligation bond items for the 2018 election including funding mechanisms, and operations and maintenance costs for public safety, parks and cultural projects, and the Mesa Plays project.
Let's start with a simple statement: Water is the most precious commodity here in the desert. It's a natural resource in the normal cycle of things. Here in the Salt River Valley (Rio Salado in Spanish) going back before recorded "pre-history" when the people who came before managed to engineer with primitive technology a system of open canals to deliver water to the land. One of the problems with open canals is an evaporation rate of 40%. Not very efficient.
Now let's focus on the word "commodity". It's something that's produced, processed and gets sold and bought and traded in the market. It's something we can't live without. Every household uses 7-10,000 gallons in less than one week and industries like data centers consume huge amounts of both water and electricity on top of that adding to the demand. As you can see in the Pie Chart to the right, here in the City of Mesa's FY17/18 Annual Budget, there's an expenditure of over $97,000,000 in that one year alone. That's in addition to the over $350,000,000 to build two new Wastewater Treatment Plants, Greenfield and Signal Butte in the northeast and southeast corners of Mesa's 125,000 acres.
If you want to see more data on water utilities and other open expenditures, go > here . For some reason right from beginning here in Mesa, land fraud seems to run with the territory when A.J. Chandler incorporated The Mesa Water Company (that the City of Mesa now owns) and gained title to lands of over 18,000 acres. Let's put that on the side for now. Ready to deal with climate change?What's seen on the surface runs deep in more ways than one; the aquifers are getting drained and we need to do ________what? How cities bank on future water supply underground "Valley cities rely mostly on dams and reservoirs for their water needs, but the snowpack feeding those reservoirs was near record low this year. That means managers are looking to future water supplies underground. . . Even after Even 35 years of managing the Salt and Verde rivers for the Salt River Project [SRP], Charlie Ester has dealt with more dry years than flood events as the Valley marches into another year of drought. He said this is the 21st year of the drought; other experts say it’s the 18th. Read more >> AZ Big Media Reprint of story from Cronkite News
_________________________________________________________________________________ At the same time stories in the media showing coyotes and bears invading neighborhoods and wild Salt River horses having to get rescued out of canals by the police have a message that doesn't get through- there's a drought no matter what Governor Ducey wants to say about it. Just as well, there are other stories in the media about a bribery case involving schemes about water utilities and dirty politics.
Here in what's now named "The Valley of The Sun" - could it by accident be for the promise of renewable solar energy? - All the dirty politics have risen to the surface before, most recently in a number of articles by Rogue Columnist Jon Talton that dive into some troubled waters across time:
Rogue Columnist: Phoenix 101: Canals
Jun 2, 2018
"Beneath all the concrete, asphalt, and gravel of today's metropolitan Phoenix is some of the richest soil on earth. No wonder early settlers called it the Nile River Valley of the United States, or, with more aching pathos given what's happened, American Eden. Add water and anything will grow here. Getting the water from the Salt River was the challenge — one solved with canals.
The Hohokam (750-1450 AD) built at least 500 miles of canals in the Salt River Valley. The mileage might have been in the thousands. They created the most advanced irrigation civilization in the pre-Columbian Americas. . . The genius of Jack Swilling — Confederate deserter, Indian fighter, prospector, drunk, opium addict, brawler, first town postmaster and justice of the peace, adoptive father of an Apache boy, cherished friend of many — was that he understood the significance of the Hohokam canals, which laid dormant for more than 400 years. They were not mere prehistoric curiosities. They were the means of building a modern empire, . . Talton's story continues > http://www.roguecolumnist.com +
Here's one from last year:
Bill Gates buys Arizona land — hilarity, or tragedy, ensues
> Second, climate change poses a clear and present danger to Arizona now. Summers are significantly hotter and lasting longer than a few decades ago. Massive wildfires are common, another new phenomenon. Whether Phoenix will even be inhabitable by mid-century is an open question. . . More? then go the Source: Seattle Times/Business and The Economy
Some people might say your MesaZona blogger has a nose-for-the news coupled with a sense-of-curiosity to follow the dots merging into lines of inquiry that somehow appear seamlessly out of what most people think is nowhere, even when it takes year to reveal.
Whoever said "Mesa is boring" may have been throwing out a bone-as-bait to take attention off a trail of stories that go untold. Stories take place in-time: back-in-time then or in real-time now. They need action, a plot line and an emerging cast of characters playing out their parts to make the drama unfold. More importantly, someone needs to write their account of the story. AZ Capitol Times reporter Howie Fischer is a seasoned veteran news reporter who's now writing a series of real-life stories published in syndication.
The latest episode here in Maricopa County appeared just this morning in The Daily Miner, trusted local news leader in Kingman, Arizona and Mohave County. No one is "pointing-the-finger" yet in the current Grand Jury case (at least as far as we can tell since these proceedings don't get televised), but in an ongoing series of reports that appear likes episodes in a soap-opera, there are others in the courtroom cast of characters in addition to the original people named and additional witnesses to-be-called to provide testimony:
> ex-Congressman Mesa Mormon Republicans Matt Salmon (hired on by ASU before resigning office as Vice-President for Government Affairs at a salary of over $250,00)
> current U.S. Congressman Andy Biggs
> Nowa former mayor of Mesa(currently the vice-president of a commercial real estate firm active in downtown Mesa sales transactions ) Rex Griswold has been involved in the trial with a new trail-of-clues emerging in an email from December 2011.
More clues in the real-time/real-life court drama of this story
Blogger Note: All these clues leave a trail of how mostly Mesa Mormon Republicans have exercised monopoly control in local, state and national elected office to benefit a closely-held network of undisclosed business associations in second-hand and third-party agreements and/or contracts.
. . . or shall we call it "friends-and-family", or "cousins" or that out-dated phrase "crony capitalists" in politics and government, finance, insurance, and real estate.
This bribery case is just the tip-of-the-iceberg involving schemes in water rights/resources, utilities and water/wastewater treatment (millions in taxpayer debt service obligations- and expanding land acquisitions - in the last few years the City of Mesa has sold 11,000 acres (valued by City Manager Chris Brady at $100M and sold over time to self-finance the construction of Sloan Park) in Pinal County recently to increase the 14,000+ acres acquired by the newly-formed http://saintholdings.com/ . SCROLL DOWN The current $35 or $350,000 bribery case is 'small potatoes' . . .
Critical email could determine corporation commission case
by Howard Fischer, for The Miner Originally Published June 12, 2018 5:53 am
PHOENIX – "Jurors will get to see what could prove a critical email that prosecutors say should help prove that Gary Pierce purposely sought to conceal a land deal at the center of a bribery case.
U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi has rejected arguments by defense attorneys that an email between Kelly Norton and her then-husband Jim is protected by marital privilege. His ruling makes it admissible.
What makes the email significant is it originated with Pierce who at the time was a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission. In that role he voted on several matters involving Johnson Utilities.
Federal prosecutors contend that company owner George Johnson wasgoing to pay for Pierce to buy a 3.5 acre property he wanted in east Mesa for a car dealership. But the plan, according to the government, was to conceal the true buyer.
In a Dec. 29, 2011 email, Pierce tells Jim Norton, who was lobbying for Johnson, he is hoping the bank, which owned the property, would take $300,000 for the property. There is also a “letter of intent’’ to pay that much in cash, a letter signed by both Pierce and Norton. The email, however, shows Pierce did not want to be on the document.
“I am going to have Rex take my name off this LOI and you will be the buyer,’’ Pierce writes to Jim Norton. The “Rex’’ is Rex Griswold, a vice president of a commercial property firm that was handling the offer for the would-be buyers.
That fits into the government’s theory that Johnson was going to be the source of the money – and that Pierce, as a utility regulator voting on matters involving Johnson’s company, sought to hide that information. Defense attorneys have dismissed whatever happened, pointing out the land deal never went through.
Tuchi’s ruling comes as defense attorneys begin their cross-examination of Kelly Norton today. Norton, who is an “unindicted co-conspirator’’ in the case has been granted immunity for her testimony on behalf of the government.
Defense lawyers will seek to undermine her testimony last week about her role in the alleged bribery scheme, including how she said she funneled $31,500 from Johnson to Sherry Pierce and, by extension, her regulator husband. And they already have questioned Kelly Norton’s credibility and whether she has motive to lie because, as she testified, she discovered her husband was having an affair – and it was not his first.
Prosecutors have known about the email from Gary Pierce asking that his name not be on any documents on the land deal for years. But it has taken until now to get Tuchi to let them use it.
What has delayed a ruling on the issue is that Pierce sent the email not directly to Jim Norton but to Kelly. She forwarded it to Jim five days later.
That, according to defense attorneys, made the letter a privileged communication between husband and wife.
The judge did not explain his reason for rejecting that claim. But in their arguments to Tuchi, prosecutors said there were two flaws in the defense argument.
One, they noted, is that there is nothing in the email intended to be a communication between Kelly and Jim.
“The mere forwarding of the Pierce email does not implicate the confidential communications privilege,’’ argued Assistant U.S. Attorney James R. Knapp.
On top of that, Knapp said that the marital privilege “does not apply to communications having to do with present or future crimes in which both spouses are participants.’’ And Kelly Norton, as an “unindicted co-conspirator’’ for her role in the whole bribery scheme, was a participant."
Location: Coolidge, Arizona in Central Pinal County
Size: 11,438+/- Acres
Water Rights: 34,000 Acre Feet +/- Per Year
Access: Interstates I-10 and I-8
Rail: Union Pacific unit train capable
Future home of the proposed high speed train from Los Angeles
Heritage is a multi-generational community with immediate developability that is unmatched in scope. . . . Just 45 minutes from the fifth largest city in the United States Heritage spans over 11,438 acres of prime development land in Pinal County, Arizona. With Arizona’s population set to double by 2030, developable land is quickly becoming a scarce commodity. The Phoenix to Tucson corridor has been and is expected to be one of the fastest growing megaregions in the U.S. in the next decades. More than one million people currently work and reside within 35 minutes of Heritage. It is projected that more than 100,000 jobs will be created in the region in the next decades. Welcome to Heritage. See more > http://www.heritagearizona.com/
MORE SAINTS HOLDING:You can easily see where this starts at the top: Salt Lake City, part of The CanaMex Corridor now called The Sun Corridor
Central Arizona Commerce Park
( this image was updated 5/8/17 )
• Conveniently located along the Canamex corridor and I-10 to California • 45 minutes from Phoenix and Tucson and international airports • Well established multimodal transportation in road, rail and air with direct routes to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach • Plentiful resources and raw materials for agriculture, aviation and aerospace technology, mining and specialized manufacturing • Extremely affordable municipal utilities • Excellent workforce drawhttps://www.cazcp.com/
