Complaint Review: City Of Mesa Government - Mesa Arizona

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.