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Inside: The Best of Ahwatukee Across EV, high school students plead for help BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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Wednesday, March 6, 2019
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ast Valley high school students are pleading for help. From Scottsdale to Gilbert and Mesa to Ahwatukee, students in the past three months have appeared before governing boards to plead for more social workers and counselors to protect their classmates – not only from a teen who may be a walking time bomb but also from themselves.
Restoring Lakes course ‘a pipe dream,’ lawyer says
“Make this issue treated as the epidemic it is,” implored Gilbert High senior Evan Wood at a recent Gilbert Public Schools Governing Board meeting. In response to those concerns, the GPS school board last week endorsed a resolution calling on the State Legislature to allocate more money for social workers and counselors. Tempe Union High School District and Mesa Public Schools have adopted resolutions supporting the need for giving students mental
Living history
and emotional health services, but their governing boards made no specific demands on legislators and said such services are a shared responsibility among all levels of government. Tempe Union went one step further than Mesa by recommending the creation of “student peer safety review committees” at each of its seven schools to work with administrators and “examine the social/emotional and physical safety needs of students and through
see COUNSELORS page 10
BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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econstructing the Ahwatukee Lakes Golf Course without new houses “is nothing but a pipe dream,” attorneys for The True Life Companies last week told the Arizona Court of Appeals. The brief filed by attorney Chris R. Baniszewski on behalf of True Life marks the end of the first phase of the appeal that the company is taking from Superior Court Judge John Hannah’s January 2018 ruling that the covenants, conditions and restrictions governing the 101-acre site mandate the reconstruction of the course, which owner Wilson Gee closed in 2013. Filing of the brief sets the stage for a possible legal argument later this year, although it is unclear when that might occur. It also comes as Save the Lakes prepares for a town hall on
see LAKES page 12
More than 200 people turned out Saturday to hear stories about Ahwatukee’s early years. Put together by local historian Marty Gibson, the event featured presentations by some of the people in his new book, “Historic Tales from Ahwatukee Foothills.” Among the speakers were, from left, Mountainside Martial Arts Center owner Rick Savagian, Realtor Chad Chadderton, and Bill Garner, whose grandparents owned a farm that included a cow path that became 48th Street. At the far left of the row are AFN founder Clay Schad and his wife Jackie. Gibson will be holding a book signing at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 9, at Changing Hands Bookstore, southwest corner of McClintock Drive and Guadalupe Road, Tempe. (Kimberly Carrillo/AFN Staff Photographer)
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