Monday, July 20, 2020

Illya Riske, Former State of Arizona Budget/Finance Administrator, Succeeds The Retiring Robert Schultz as Deputy Director of Mesa Arts Center and Department of Arts and Culture


Blogger Note: Last Thursday. Related content farther down
PRESS RELEASE City of Mesa Newsroom
Robert Schultz retires after 26 years with Mesa's Arts and Culture Department
By Casey Blake July 16, 2020 at 7:30
Assistant Director of Mesa Arts Center and Mesa's Department of Arts and Culture, Robert Schultz, retires July 17 after over 26 years of service, including playing a key role in managing the conception of and transition to Mesa Arts Center in its current facility on One East Main Street in 2005.
Schultz began with the City of Mesa as Visual Arts Supervisor in 1993 and retires from the position of Assistant Director of Mesa Arts Center and the Department of Arts & Culture.
 
He oversaw the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, Arizona Museum of Natural History and i.d.e.a. Museum as well as the Engagement, Art Studios, Festivals and Volunteer programs at Mesa Arts Center.
Schultz also helped establish the City of Mesas public art program in 1998 and was the primary administrator. 
Schultz holds four degrees in art and art management and has held various leadership roles and board positions in the arts and culture field, including serving as president of the Museum Association of Arizona. He also served on the National Arts Education Council of Americans for the Arts 2010-2016.
"Were proud of Rob's accomplishments and contribution to the City of Mesa. Rob played a pivotal part in Mesa Arts Centers programmatic growth and expansion to the incredible City facility we have today, and his leadership and commitment to arts and culture in the City leave a lasting impact. We congratulate him on his remarkable career,"
Mesa City Manager Chris Brady said.
"Were incredibly proud of the vibrancy that Mesas Arts and Culture Department brings to our city, and grateful for Robs many contributions toward sharing arts education, arts engagement and cultural experiences with everyone in our city and beyond,"
Mesa Mayor John Giles said.
Schultz is succeeded by Deputy Director of Mesa Arts Center and Department of Arts and Culture, Illya Riske, who began in the new position on February 18.
Riske previously served as
> Reimbursement Administrator for Arizona Health Care Cost Containment Systems (AHCCCS),
> Business Operations Manager for Arizona Department of Transportation,
> Finance Manager/Legislative Liaison for the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS)
> Senior Budget Analyst for the Arizona Governors Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting.
Riske is also an accomplished musician and invested contributor to the arts and culture community of the greater Phoenix-metro area.
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Mesa's arts and cultural organizations including Arizona Museum of Natural History, i.d.e.a. Museum and Mesa Arts Center, remain temporarily closed to slow the spread of COVID-19.
[END]
ABOUT CITY OF MESA ARTS & CULTURE
Mesa's Department of Arts and Culture includes the Arizona Museum of Natural History, i.d.e.a. Museum and Mesa Arts Center, all located in downtown Mesa, Arizona.
Pandemic a health and economic crisis for Mesa arts
The mission of the department is to strengthen, for all, the creative, social and economic fabric of our community and region through inspiring, relevant, engaging and transformational cultural experiences and cross-sector collaborations.
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RELATED CONTENT
Pandemic: A Health and Economic Crisis For Mesa Arts
By Srianthi PereraTribune Contributor
Mesa Tribune
Pandemic a health and economic crisis for Mesa arts
"With the pandemic showing no signs of retreating in Arizona, the arts have taken a backseat in Mesa.
That’s not to say that the city’s arts groups are being complacent; they are working behind the scenes to resume operations as soon as it’s safe.
“We are very committed to bringing programming back as soon as we can do it safely and as soon as we have all our ducks in a row to make sure we can enact the new protocol,” said Cindy Ornstein, executive director of Mesa Arts Center and the director of Mesa Arts and Culture Department.
“We are very hopeful that we will at least have a very good array of programs available to the community sometime this fall.”
Closed since March, the arts center is working toward a plan to reopen in October. However, because of the situation’s changeability, the time of reopening isn’t definite . . .
Ornstein said that the arts center closed initially because of the health crisis – which, in turn, created financial pressures.
“Being closed, from a financial perspective, is detrimental, not helpful, because we cannot produce revenue,” she said. “Now, because we have this health crisis, there are extra factors beyond the health crisis that are created by the health crisis that affect the finances.”
Mesa Art Center laid off 12 full-time and 27 part-time employees.
Across the department, 14 full-time and 50 part-time staffers were eliminated.
“I call it a big, complex puzzle,” Ornstein said.
“We are neck-deep in that puzzle right now.”

The same broad issues caused by the pandemic are hampering the city’s private arts outfits.
> Mesa Encore Theatre, which canceled two mainstage shows and other events, is minimizing projected fall shows.
> Southwest Shakespeare also cancelled its spring and summer offerings and furloughed a few of its staff members.
> Mesa-based Showtunes Productions brings live professional productions, such as tribute and variety shows, throughout the country. . . Showtunes had to cancel its shows since mid-March and is awaiting the outcomes of the various venues.
At the Mesa Arts Center, while reopening shows are dependent on health safety, a cost benefit analysis is also important.
Backstage, front-of-house, bathrooms, concessions and other areas have to be configured differently. Social distancing inside theaters will mean lesser revenues.
The cost of opening must be weighed against the benefit to the public, Ornstein said
 
 
 
 
 



 

 
 
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Saturday, July 18, 2020

Historian Benjamin E. Park's New Book: "Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier"

 
       
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Wall Street Journal
‘The King of Confidence’ Review: Visionary or
Opportunist?
It was also a time when apprehensive Americans embraced new fringe ... New York, the same region that nurtured Joseph Smith, the founder, ... and the book persuasively argues that Strang's community, eventually known as ...
5 days ago
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This week in Mormon Land: Reconciling on race, the masked apostle, an outlaw ‘member’
A Mormon historian argues that the LDS Church could and should be a leading voice against racism, not because it never practiced it but rather because it did.
“Rather than be hobbled by our past racism, what if we owned it and used our shared history to stand in places of empathy?” W. Paul Reeve, head of Mormon studies at the University of Utah, asks in an
article for the Faith Matters website. “...What if we were willing to speak up and stand up against systemic racism because we engaged in it ourselves and have come to understand its consequences?”
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Joseph Smith
A new book, “Kingdom of Nauvoo,” examines Joseph Smith’s theocratic visions.Illustration by Paul Rogers
It was an unlikely candidacy: a thirty-eight-year-old mayor from the heartland who pitched himself as the solution to partisan gridlock, played up his military experience, talked often about his faith, and promised to end the country’s moral decline. He was fond of quoting the Founding Fathers, had an army of grassroots supporters, and came from a swing state. But the year was 1844, the state was Illinois, the parties were the Whigs and the Democrats, and the candidate was Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Whether or not the country would have been with Joe, we’ll never know: on June 27th, a few months after announcing his candidacy, the first Mormon to run for President became the first Presidential candidate to be assassinated. Smith’s death marked the end of a decisive period in Mormon history, one that is less familiar to most outsiders than the Church’s founding, in New York State, or its eventual move to Utah, where, against considerable odds, its members came to flourish. But the chaotic months of Smith’s Presidential campaign and his effort to establish a theocracy in Illinois are the subject of the historian Benjamin E. Park’s new book, “Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier” (Liveright).
An experiment in religious Utopia?
"An extraordinary story of faith and violence in nineteenth-century America, based on previously confidential documents from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Park’s access to these minutes is part of what makes “Kingdom of Nauvoo” so illuminating. The documents offer new insights into Smith’s decision to run for President, a campaign that exasperated authorities in Illinois and in Missouri and drew criticism of the Mormons from around the country. It was the Council of Fifty that appointed Smith “Prophet, Priest & King,” helping him shape a political platform while also making plans for what would happen if he lost the election and the Mormons needed to leave Nauvoo. The Council sent missionaries south and west, to see about resettlement, and Smith, in his Presidential platform, called for the annexation of Texas from Mexico, . .
Smith’s First Counselor and Vice-Presidential running mate, Sidney Rigdon, tried to take control of the Mormon Church; then Brigham Young, a former carpenter who’d been ordained to an advisory council called the Quorum of the Twelve, made the more politic suggestion that the whole Quorum should oversee the Church, with Young as its president; the congregation agreed. (The Council eventually excommunicated Rigdon, who later established a competing church, which condemned polygamy, in Pittsburgh.) Young was a forceful figure—“a man of much courage and superb equipment,” per the weathered stone that marks his birthplace, in Whitingham, Vermont. Ignoring the criticisms of the surrounding secular authorities, he began to “marry for eternity” more than a dozen women, seven of whom had also been “M.E.” to Smith, while also organizing the Mormon vote for county elections. The state retaliated by revoking Nauvoo’s charter, and the antagonism between the theocratic city and its surrounding democratic neighbors intensified until, finally, the Mormons were forced out of Nauvoo. . .
When the faithful settled in the Salt Lake Valley, more than twelve hundred miles from Nauvoo, they were pleased to find themselves outside American territory, then displeased to discover, after the Mexican-American War, that their foreign soil was suddenly domestic. In yet another example of their continually complicated relationship to the United States, the Mormons almost immediately petitioned for statehood, trying to get federal recognition for the State of Deseret.  . .
Nearly half a century later, Utah finally became a state, and the Mormons rejoined the Union—but not before they had mounted an armed resistance against the National Guard, in response to the American military entering the territory, in 1857. Five previous applications for statehood had been denied, on the ground that the Mormon Church’s political theology clashed with the country’s democratic values: the same conflict that had forced the Mormons out of Nauvoo was now playing out, over and over again, in their new home . . .
Blogger Note: Excepts taken from
How Joseph Smith and the Early Mormons Challenged American Democracy
In Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith established a theocracy, ran for President, and tested the limits of religious freedom.
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"Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, treated as fringe cultists at best or marginalized as polygamists unworthy of serious examination at worst. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, the historian Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief life of a lost Mormon city, and in the process demonstrates that the Mormons are, in fact, essential to understanding American history writ large.
Drawing on newly available sources from the LDS Church―sources that had been kept unseen in Church archives for 150 years―Park recreates one of the most dramatic episodes of the 19th century frontier. Founded in Western Illinois in 1839 by the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his followers, Nauvoo initially served as a haven from mob attacks the Mormons had endured in neighboring Missouri, where, in one incident, seventeen men, women, and children were massacred, and where the governor declared that all Mormons should be exterminated. In the relative safety of Nauvoo, situated on a hill and protected on three sides by the Mississippi River, the industrious Mormons quickly built a religious empire; at its peak, the city surpassed Chicago in population, with more than 12,000 inhabitants. The Mormons founded their own army, with Smith as its general; established their own courts; and went so far as to write their own constitution, in which they declared that there could be no separation of church and state, and that the world was to be ruled by Mormon priests. . .
A raucous, violent, character-driven story, Kingdom of Nauvoo raises many of the central questions of American history, and even serves as a parable for the American present. How far does religious freedom extend? Can religious and other minority groups survive in a democracy where the majority dictates the law of the land?
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Another Qwik One! 6-Minute Planning & Zoning Board Meeting Wed 07.15.2020

Another Zoom Virtual Platform Public Hearing, with the City of Mesa Planning Director Kusi Appiah sitting in The Lower Chambers in the City Council Building in First Street while the other members (minus Board member Shelly Allen) are seen on the multi-screen in their remote locations.
What you see in only the public hearing at 4:00 PM that was preceded by a Study Session at 3:00 that is not recorded or televised.
Vice Chair Dana Astle, who was appointed years ago is now serving his second and last term, gets the screen-grab to conduct the meeting - and appears to blunder in the proper procedures to follow for making motions and doing the roll calls, only to be corrected by the planning director whose language is sometimes hard to understand.
Planning and Zoning Board - Public HearingCity of Mesa
Meeting Agenda - Final
Council Chambers 57 E. First Street
Call meeting to order
1 Take action on all consent agenda items.
Items on the Consent Agenda
2 Approval of minutes from previous meetings (2)
PZ 20093 Minutes from the June 24, 2020 study session and regular hearing.*2-a
INSERT:
File #: PZ 20093   

Type: PZ Minutes Status: Agenda Ready


In control: Planning and Zoning Board - Public Hearing
On agenda: 6/24/2020

Title: Minutes from the June 24, 2020 study session and regular hearing.
Attachments: 1. June 24, 2020 Study Session,
2. June 24, 2020 Meeting Minutes

Page 1 City of Mesa Printed on 7/9/2020
July 15, 2020Planning and Zoning Board - Public Hearing Meeting Agenda - Final

3 Take action on the following zoning cases: PZ 20094 ZON20-00051 District 2.
3547 East Southern Avenue. Located at the southwest corner of Southern Avenue and Val Vista Drive. (1.75± acres). Site Plan Review; and Special Use Permit.
This request will allow for the development of a convenience market and associated service station. Jon Naut, Quik Trip Corporation, applicant
Val Vista Furniture, LLC, owner.
Planner: Wahid Alam
Staff Recommendation: Approval with conditions
*3-a

PZ 20095 ZON20-00246   District 2. 
Within the 5500 block of East Baseline Road (north side). Located east of Higley Road on the north side of Baseline Road. (2± acres). Site plan Review.
This request will allow for the development of medical offices. 
Vince Di Bella, Adaptive Architects, Inc., applicant
Kelly, Kevin, Kemp, and Judith Morris, owners.
Planner: Kellie Rorex
Staff Recommendation: Approval with conditions
*3-b
PZ 20096 ZON20-00250 District 6.
Within the 4900 to 5200 blocks of South Ellsworth Road (east side) and within the 9300 to 9500 blocks of East Ray Road (north side). Located east of Ellsworth Road and north of Ray Road.
(14± acres). 
Site Plan Review.
This request will allow for a multi-residential development within the Eastmark Community.
   Drew Olson, PCS Development, applicant
   DMB Mesa Proving Grounds, LLC, owner.
Planner: Ryan McCann
Staff Recommendation: Continuance to the July 29, 2020 meeting
*3-c

Page 2 City of Mesa Printed on 7/9/2020
July 15, 2020Planning and Zoning Board - Public Hearing Meeting Agenda - Final

4 Discuss and make a recommendation to the City Council on the following zoning case: PZ 20097 ZON20-00207 District 6.
Within the 11200 block of East Ray Road (south side) and within the 5200 block of South Mountain Road (east side). Located west of Meridian Road on the south side of Ray Road.
(3.9± acres).
Rezone from RS-43 to NC.
This request will establish commercial zoning for future development.  
   Rod Jarbo, applicant
   SRF Holding, LLC, owner
Continued from the June 24, 2020 meeting. 
Planner: Evan Balmer
Staff Recommendation: Continuance to the July 29, 2020 meeting
*4-a

Items not on the Consent Agenda
6 Adjournment.
_______________________________________________________________________
STUDY SESSION
3:00 PM Virtual Platform Wednesday, July 15, 2020
1 Call meeting to order.
2 Introduction of new Planning and Zoning Board member Ben Ayers.
3 Election of Planning and Zoning Board Officers:
                 a. Chair
                 b. Vice-Chair
4 Review items on the agenda for the July 15, 2020 regular Planning and Zoning Board Hearing.



5 Planning Director's Updates >>
 5a.
July 1 and July 8 City Council's land use cases and decisions
 
 
5b
Status of staff on-going work on text amendments to the Mesa Zoning Ordinance and General  Plan
 
 
 
 
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New Dirt On The Donald + A New MAGA Hat

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Zelensky Calls for a European Army as He Slams EU Leaders’ Response

      Jan 23, 2026 During the EU Summit yesterday, the EU leaders ...