It's been more than 5 years since Mesa Mayor John Giles first staged his opening act for a bogus public relations campaign in his first State-Of-The-City Speech in a charade with the ASU Mascot 'Sparky'.
We knew at that time that The Devil is always in the details.
Time has proven that suspicion that correct.
First when Mesa taxpayers REJECTED it in 2016, then got tricked in 2018 to approve $64,000,000 to finance Debt Bond Obligations for a smaller scaled-down version of the original $200M proposition for the construction of three new buildings.
City Manager Chris Brady stated -no matter what - that he still planned to push for original plan any way he could.
Few people saw that coming, although many had their suspicions after it became public knowledge that 'a certain group of investors' had snatched-up titles to more than eight commercial properties on Main Street - gambling on rampant real estate speculation - for their own private wealth-creation.
It would only work out for if public taxpayer money paid for a satellite ASU campus sited in an area for a public plaza next to City Hall in effect blurring the line between ASU and city government to benefit a closely-connected network of "friends-and-family" who have controlled this city for generations.
They swore u-and-down and all-over-the-place all the time that that $64M was the budget, trying to justify it all by using data and crunching-the-numbers from a study done by ASU. That's a conflict of interest from the start when ASU would clearly benefit from the proposition and that fact brought up that if ASU wanted to expand into Downtown Mesa they were than able to pay for itself. As late as April 2019 in a Community Workshop, Jeff McVay swore in public, when questioned, that $64M is the amount.
At least one Mesa City Council member questioned the original numbers that were cooked-up by city officials to state his opposition:
$100 million handout to ASU by Mesa Mayor on middle class is just wrong
There’s a ton of misinformation going around regarding the new downtown ASU project that I wanted to take the time to address. Everyone is entitled to their opinion on this issue but not to their own facts . . .
It was against his principles. One of the core problems with this ASU campus is how it is funded.
To correct some of that mis-information out there he posed this question
Wasn’t the ASU campus idea organic from ImagineMesa.com campaign?
"No, creatively Mayor Giles and downtown cohorts tried to pretend that this idea organically sprouted through the “Imagine Mesa” campaign and that we could “bring an ASU campus to Downtown Mesa – without a tax increase in Mesa”, reference – https://neighborland.com/ideas/mesa-az-to-bring-an-asu-campus-to
However, this idea was not organic or unique at all. Sean Huntington the author of this post was also the same person who did the original video when “Question 1” was on the ballot in 2016 and failed. This was merely a ploy to make people think this was a community inspired idea to further the Mayor’s agenda . . .
READ MORE > Click or Tap on this underlined link
__________________________________________________________________________
Let's move on to November 4, 2019 to this item on the City Council's Agenda
> 19-1181 Mesa City Center - First Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP No. 1) - City Infrastructure Improvements (District 4)
GMP No. 1 includes improvements to the City’s infrastructure necessary to support the ASU building, the Plaza, the Studios, as well as future development and improvements in the area.
The infrastructure work includes water, sewer, electric, gas, and communications facilities, as well as vehicular and pedestrian access improvements, street repair, and street repaving.
Staff recommends awarding a contract for this project to the selected Construction Manager at Risk, DPR Construction, in the amount of $4,896.762 (GMP) and authorizing a change order allowance in the amount of $489,676 (10%),
for a total amount of $5,386,438.
This project is funded by
