Complaint Review: City Of Mesa Government

Tenderly written, with way more respect
for the local political hacks than their
corrupt minions deserve, here is a little
reality lesson--and from the local
pro-fascist MESA TRIBUNE, no less, a rag
which has spent a century covering up for
the inbred, degenerate louts who run this
mess--Mesa citizens ought to digest.

It does, of course, ignore the fact that
downtown Mesa is very dangerous, owing
to the cowardice, corruption, and incompetence
of what passes locally for a police department.
It also ignores the fact that the nitwits
in "city government" have tried, in their
vainglorious and moronic ways, to "re-do"
downtown, but without bars or other "centers
of sin", so many times that the ongoing
construction and reconstruction and friendly,
local make-work projects for the families
of various local politicians that the
ripped up streets and ridiculous traffic
patterns have flushed the "downtown"
pattern completely out of the lives of
the local citizens.

Here's the blurb, with accreditation:

Can downtown Mesa be restored?

EastValleyTribune.com


Sunday, June 25, 2006

2006 STREET SCENE: Several attempts
have been made over the years to revitalize downtown Mesa.

Can downtown Mesa be restored?

By Sarah N. Lynch, Tribune

When Barry Bertani
wanted to go somewhere
special for dinner before
catching a show at the Mesa Arts
Center recently, he went to downtown Tempe. Dining in Mesa would
have been more convenient for the 65-year-old Dobson Ranch resident, but, like
many other Mesans,
he feels downtown Mesa
doesn't have much to offer.

I go to downtown Mesa
and I think the clock
has been turned back about
50 years,? he said.

Downtown Tempe, even
when Tempe was not
so commercialized, had
its charm and character and
interest,? he continued. ?But
downtown Mesa? It's just an
embarrassment.

Most people agree that the rows of small shops and restaurants that
comprise Mesa's downtown
square mile just don't
compare to the bustling bars of
Tempe or the swanky art galleries
of Scottsdale. By day, it's
rare to see people carrying shopping
bags, and by night, the streets
are deserted.

People want to compare us to Scottsdale, Tempe or Phoenix, but those are regional downtowns,? said Tom Verploegen, president of the
Downtown Mesa Association.

Scottsdale has its resorts.
Tempe has Arizona State University.
And Phoenix has a lot of public and
private employment. Mesa's demographics
and its sprawling size, by
contrast, cannot compete, he
said, even though it's the most
populous city in the East Valley.

Many people had high hopes that the opening of the $100 million Mesa Arts Center would ignite a renaissance downtown.
Almost a year later, not too much has changed, and what has changed has changed for the worse. Experts say that's because it takes more than an arts center to make a successful downtown.
A truly vibrant downtown should have a mixture of retail, institutional, residential and
offices spaces as well as a supportive community that is willing to invest in all of those
things.

I think it's pretty
boring,? said 18-year-old
Mesa resident Peter Lora, who
shops and works at Fiesta Mall but
rarely goes downtown.

There's nothing to do. With Mesa being such a conservative city, if you're in your teenage years, you have to leave
Mesa to have fun.

Many cities have college
campuses based downtown. The development is vertical and dense, with storefronts and
restaurants on the street level
and offices and condos on higher floors.

?It's like a three-legged stool,? said Patrick Murphy, senior town center development specialist for the city.
?You need residential, office and
commercial for the stool
to stand up straight.?

ATTITUDES AND INCENTIVES

But while there are many factors that contribute to a less than
vibrant downtown Mesa, some say the biggest
problems boil down to two things: Attitudes
and money.

?Downtown Tempe has been institutionalized into the psyche of the citizen,? said Rod Keeling, president
and executive director of Downtown Tempe Community. ?You can't
say that about Mesa.?

That attitude in turn
affects how much money a
community is willing to invest
in its downtown, Keeling added.

Mesa ? like Scottsdale,
Tempe and Chandler ? has invested
public money in its downtown in
recent years. In addition to
the arts center, the city spent about $20 million on an elaborate
streetscape project to improve lighting, landscaping, sidewalks
and public seating, among other things.

But Mesa still differs from these other Valley cities in a major way: It has not been aggressive about digging into
its budget to offer monetary or
infrastructure incentives to
private developers to help
cushion the high cost of investing
in a new downtown business.

Because there are
many large, old buildings, the
cost to tenants for building
improvements is high ? particularly
if someone wants to retrofit a building for a new restaurant, Verploegen said.
That, along with a lack of foot
traffic, can deter someone from
starting a business.

?Mesa is at a point
right now where incentives would
make some sense,? Keeling said.
?Incentives are all about
leverage. How does the city
leverage a few dollars
against huge dollars??

In the past, the
city has offered some incentives
downtown, both on city-owned and
privately owned property. Those have
included selling land for less than
its market value, waiving development fees,
expedited design reviews, property tax abatements and limited-time offers
to receive utility services
at a cut rate, Murphy said.

But with Mesa's tight
budget, offering incentives downtown
has become a rare thing, Murphy said.

Most recently, the city offered roughly $80 million in incentives to
De Rito Partners Development to
construct Mesa Riverview on Dobson
Road and Loop 202 ? an area well
outside the downtown region.

By contrast, Mesa's largest incentive package in a downtown
development was a $1.7 million
investment to revitalize the building
that's now One MacDonald Center,
which is home to US Bank and a
Quizno's restaurant. The developer's contribution was $5.4 million.

Incentives are approved
on a case-by-case basis, and lately
there's not been much money to offer,
Murphy said.

?If you offer people money,
that would help. Yes,? Murphy said. ?Is
that the only solution? I don't
know. It's one of those things where
if you throw money at people, would
they have come anyway? That's
one of the questions our
(City Council) wrestles with.?

Incentives are
generally used in the early
stages of the evolution
of a downtown, Keeling said.
They help plug development gaps,
or the gap between the cost of
a project and breaking even on an
investment. Over time, incentives
are less necessary as the market
takes its course.

Neil Calfee, deputy
development manager for Tempe, said
that's partly how Tempe created a
successful downtown. The 1980s,
he said, were Tempe's ?heyday? of
incentives.

?We used every tool in
the book in the early years,? Calfee
said.

?In some respects, we wrote
the book on how to do it.?

Verploegen agreed that
incentives are a good tool to encourage
someone to take the plunge. A
committee will be presenting a list of
possible ?creative? incentive
programs to the Mesa City Council this
fall that will not require a
large city expense.

?We need to build a
case so strong that economic
reasoning overrides the political uncomfortableness,? he said.

While many different types of development are needed to give Mesa a
boost, most people seem to agree that
condos and apartments should
be the focus for now.

?I think if you see
condos built downtown, you're
going to see that market attract a
different kind of retail downtown,?
said Charlie Deaton, president of
the Mesa Chamber of Commerce.
?But that's got to be in place.
Those (businesses) aren't going
to come here first and hope to
attract the market to them.?

At the same time,
however, visitors to the arts center
complain about a lack of restaurants
open during evening hours. While many
have expressed interest in opening
a more high-end establishment
that stays open later, no one has
done so.

TAKING THE PLUNGE
Among those who are
looking to be the trendsetters for the
restaurant business are Brad Jones,
along with his friends, Aidan
Shanahan and wife Karen Mayo- Shanahan.

The trio hopes to open a
family-friendly Irish pub with live music,
a ?warm woods? atmosphere and a menu
that offers both traditional
Irish fare and a slightly fancier
kind of food.

?We were in South Norwalk
Conn.) and it was a strip of restaurants,
boutiques and independent shops ? and
it was very much a destination,?
Mayo-Shanahan said. ?You went there
to walk. You went to the coffee shop,
the ice cream parlor.?

?When we moved here,
we looked at Main Street and
thought it had potential, but it
was basically antiques and
second-hand clothes.?

One of the few upscale
dining options downtown now is
Bak'd, an eight-month-old restaurant
on Main and Robson that features five- to
seven-course meals and where food
is considered an art. While the
catering side of the business
is booming, the restaurant side is
lacking in customers. The restaurant
had to stop serving lunch, and
dinner is strictly by reservation.

?When you leave, drive
that way and count the empty buildings,?
said co-owner Tim Rogers. ?The thing
is, there is no draw for people to
come to downtown except for the
arts center.?

It can be difficult to
find the right piece of real estate
downtown for such an ambitious
investment, especially for smaller
independent shops.

For starters, much
of the land is owned by the city.
Some of it will be used for the
planned expansion of Mesa Community
College and the new City Court building,
Murphy said. But developers are likely to
hold off on projects until Mesa decides
exactly what it wants to do.


?We continually meet
with developers who are interested in
developing these properties,?
Murphy said. ?We maintain a database
of those interested in developing
downtown. Over the past few years,
this database has grown to well
over 130 companies.?

Entrepreneurs often
come looking for a 2,000-square-foot
space, but many of the buildings
downtown are large, Verploegen said.
While the costs of rent and even
real estate are cheaper than Tempe or
Scottsdale, the buildings are old
and need to be brought up to code.

That's where things can get expensive.

A perfect example of a building
that has had a hard time attracting
investors is 25-29 W. Main Street.
The 15,000-square-foot building
has been sitting vacant now for
roughly a decade.

Such problems have deterred Gary Ong, a restaurant owner and past
president of the Chinese Restaurant
Association, from any immediate
plans to start a Chinese restaurant
downtown.

?You have to convert
(the building) and it's almost like
doing brand new construction,? Ong
said. ?It's expensive.?

The Downtown Mesa
Association is concentrating on
recruiting small, mom-and-pop shops
to the downtown as opposed to
giant corporations such as Starbucks
or anchor stores like the Gap.
Many, including Verploegen, don't
believe there's a market downtown
for the big chains. Bigger companies
also are more likely to seek incentives.

?It doesn't have the
transportation hub that it has to
have,? Deaton said. ?I think the
days of having a Dillard's in a
downtown has passed us by.?

BACK IN THE DAY
It wasn't always this way, of course.

Back in Mesa's early days,
downtown was more of a retail hub with
Main Street being part of U.S. 60.
It had a J.C. Penney and a
Newberry's. And there was the Nile
Theatre where people went for
entertainment.

Then came the birth of
indoor malls and the construction of the
Superstition Freeway in the 1970s
that then became U.S. 60. Anchor
stores began abandoning downtowns
and heading to the malls.

Later, once Mesa
became the first designated Special
Improvement District in the state,
things began to change for the better. It
paved the way for the collection
of funds to help improve the area
and recruit new businesses. Around
the same time, the Downtown Mesa
Association was created to help
with recruiting and to make it a
nice, safe place.

Many buildings have
been redeveloped since then.
As of last summer,
there had been 153 new commercial
constructions and major
renovations in the downtown since
1985, according to the Downtown
Mesa Association.

The downtown went
from having four pawn shops to
one in the past 20 years. Many
homeowners and business owners
have renovated the facades of their
buildings. In fact, most would
agree that Mesa's downtown has
changed dramatically for the better.

?I think we've come a long way,? Murphy said. ?We're getting
compliments on how pretty it looks
downtown.?

For some, the area is
an attraction. Josie Lopez, 21,
of Scottsdale, loves the thrift shops.
She said she hopes new stores
don't take over some of the old ones.

?To be honest, I like
it the way it is,? Lopez said.
?It's really interesting. I like
to explore it.?

When Verploegen first
came to Mesa in 1984, downtown was
two-thirds away from fulfilling its
potential.

Now, he noted, the city
has a third of the way to go. But
that's still about 20 years out of
reach, he said.

By the numbers
7,000 people who work downtown
3,000 people who live downtown
11,000 people who visit downtown every year
$13-$18 range per square foot to rent retail space per year
$10-$19 range per square foot to rent office space per year
$80-$100 range per square foot to buy office space
SOURCE: TRIBUNE RESEARCH
Contact Sarah N. Lynch by email, or phone (480) 898-6535

________________

Not mentioned in the article is the fact
that the main causes of the fiscal sewer in
which Mesa finds itself are the outrageous
cost of the money-losing "art center" and
the bloated budget of the city's bogus
"law enforcement" system...well, that and
the outrageous salaries of the city manager
and the mayor, who are still scurrying like
the rats they are to leave office.

The art center..that's hilarious! What are
these bozos displaying? Ev Mecham's finger
paintings and crayola drawings?

What a filthy dump!

Sure, Mesa is run by a collection of criminals, all inbred and cozy and rotten. And sure, the city's citizenry, that part of it which speaks enough English to understand the robberies they are subject to and victimized by daily, hates Hutchinson and Luster and this new puppet police Chief, Donna (you figure maybe it's an accident he has a female last name and has been on this gutless police force for 30 years or so????) and the other skunks who feed at their trough of penicious rottten stew.

But guess what? Until you get your butts out and vote, nothing will happen. A lot of these people need to be incarcerated, most of them, and a few boast crimes heavy enough they should be executed. But you will NEVER see that happen...not just because the cozy conspiracy that runs this fourt-rate concentration camp won't allow it, but because the eligible voters are too lazy, bewildered, stupid or ignorant to do anything positive.

Face facts: in a county where a disgusting, publicity-seeking windbag like Joe Arpaio is even allowed to walk around free, the bluehairs, the KryptoNazis, and the Mormon Mafia are GOING to control everything, because they control the money AND they vote, and YOU don't. And they mean to keep it that way.

This is the traditional Tammany Hall crap: steal from you, and then steal from you more to finance further thefts. Why do you think fines and fees are so high in a town where the cost of living is outrageous and the wages are very low???? Huh?
You think maybe it isn't planned that way?

I let these people cheat me out of a lot of money once, to the point where I am RIGHT NOW on the brink of homelessness. I will spare you details.

Thing is, I am leaving here tomorrow, for good.
IF you don't vote and fight and rub these scumbags' dirt in their faces every time they open their lying mouthes, this will go on FOREVER. And even if they lose another court battle or two or three or a thousand, even, it won't matter, because, as they always have, they will just rip you off again, in taxes, fines, fees, and other wastes, to finance their own moronic pipe dreams. We would be better off if this down were run by junkies, at least then the agenda would be obvious and benefit someone other than twenty or so inbred, incestuous, vile families of rats.

Most of Mesa's scumbag "leadership" filth
in the product of inbreeding and incest.

They are into theft and major fraud.

That they are not in prison, long ago,
tells you all you need to know about this
sewer.

This town has twice the cops it needs, and
they are cowards who do NOTHING, way too
much in the way of city employees who steal
from everyone, every day, and a city manager
who is the lowest sort of criminal, and his
predecessor was EVEN WORSE.

You get this when you ignore the facts
and do not vote or speak out.

I will be out of here within the month.
But I will never stop fighting this
collecion of revolting garbage.

Isn't it time for the "infidel" or
"gentile" residents of Mesa to start
purging and weeding out this infection?

For the first time since 1947, these scum
are proposing big property taxes, to cover
their ridiculous, corrupt excesses. $30
million debt? It is at least THREE TIMES
that.

Most of them--Stapley, especially--need
to be in prison, where they belong.

How can this city abide these filthy
s - bag rats????

I am filing this through a friend's computer.

Mesa right now is fighting hard for its most
overpaid employees to retain "stability pay"... Among the various boondoggles, flim-flams, and scams visited upon the beleaguered city of Mesa by its cozy compadres of corrupt power, "stability pay"--a perk supposedly given to "longtime employees" to "encourage
stability"--has finally been openly discussed. These people who are stealing MOST of the money are those who steered this Titanic into its $30 million + budget deficity iceberg, and did so INTENTIONALLY, to attempt to build temples to their own moronic vanity--like their downtown "Art Center" and swimming pool and overblown police department.

On a base salary of $166,108 (already more than his entire office is worth), City Manager Mike Hutchinson drawns $16,351. There are citizens in this town who do not make HALF that figure... Wayne Balmer, head of the money-sucking wasteland that is the Williams Gateway Economic Area Project Manager's office, draws $12,590 over his $127,899 salary. Various toadies and flunkies in the city manager's office account for over $10,000 a head, all at salary levels into six digits.

To pay for these niceties, the city is being asked to pay far more property task, endure increased utility prices, close libraries one day a week, eliminate more than 400 jobs (every one of them more important and less corrupt than the criminals who run this city), suspend cost of living increases for EVERYONE else in city government, and shut down many recreational and children's programs.

No city in the area has a semi-secret "spiff" similar to this one. It is not based on performance or efficiency, merely upon the usual glad-handing and corruption upon which the rest of THE MOST CORRUPT CITY IN AMERICA is founded.

One of the supporters of these bribes suggested that the perk is considered an obligatory stipend, and that it was designed to make public employees "commit to Mesa" and "live in Mesa". I have a better suggestion: How about having most of these gutless worms committed, so they can live somewhere ELSE for the rest of their natural lives????

For firemen, maybe. For efficient employees, those who find a way to get rid of graft and criminality in city government, certainly. But for those whose slush funds, kickbacks and stupidity have ruined this town? Get real!!!!

And looking for MORE cops such as the ones
we have now, administered by the same jerks
Luster appointed??? Maybe we could find some
of Saddam Hussein's leftover secret police. They seem to have similar ideas and training, and they might work cheaper.

NO! NO! NO!

Time to cauterize some of the wounds these
rats have inflicted on this area.