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AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS www.ahwatukee.com
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
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Ahwatukee is in the only city council district with a race AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS A NEW NEIGHBOR
Beating the heat
BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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lection 2017 is underway in Ahwatukee. And apparently the only contest in Phoenix City Council elections this year will involve District 6, which includes Ahwatukee. The filing deadline for candidates passed last week with only incumbent Council District Sal DiCiccio in a competitive race, facing attorney Zafia Rawner and Banner Health executive Kevin Patterson. While DiCiccio lives in Ahwatukee, Rawner, a mother of two boys, lives in the Greater Cheery Lynn neighborhood of Phoenix. Patterson is an Ahwatukee native who now lives in Central Phoenix with his partner and their two daughters. Election Day is Aug. 29 with early voting beginning on Aug. 2. If none of the three candidates gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters will head into a runoff election in November.
District 6 has the largest number of registered voters, according to city records. Its 117,724 voters are among 737,392 registered voters in all of Phoenix. Of that 117,724, about 13,800 are considered “inactive” because they did not vote last year. DiCiccio is seeking his third fouryear term on Council and will be termed out after this. He also served two terms, between 1994 and 2002, before he again sought the seat in 2009. He is expected to focus on the city’s fiscal condition and has already been sounding the alarm about Phoenix’s “structural budget deficit” that, he said, does not focus on prioritizing spending and instead is “revenue focused.” Besides fiscal accountability by city officials, DiCiccio also has listed job creation and protecting neighborhoods as his other top priorities. A native of Youngstown, Ohio, DiCiccio relocated with his family in
AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS FINAL SALE GUYS
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MOVING IN (Dianne Ross/AFN Contributor)
As Adam Martinez and countless other kids found out last Saturday, June 3, at Pecos Pool in Ahwatukee, water goes a long way toward getting some relief as summer begins its assault. Horizon Honors Elementary kids also learned that lesson at their annual Water Day events. For a look at the goings-on at both places, see pages 24-25.
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HEALTHY DEBUT
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ELECTIONS on page 6
Tribal leaders: Freeway planners bulldozed us BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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See
he Gila River Indian Community told a federal appeals court last week that the government highway agencies ignored the health and traditions of Native Americans, especially the poor who live on the reservation, when they planned the South Mountain Freeway. “The agencies largely ignored all of the
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MONTESSORI A Foundation for a Lifetime of Learning
land south and west of the Freeway and the people who live there. Many of those people may be poor, may be Native American, and may work in agriculture, but they count too,” attorneys for the community said in characterizing the actions of the Arizona Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration. The Gila Community’s brief, filed last week before the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, now throws the next
move in the case to the court. The appeals court still must rule on a request by an organization of 21 Southwest tribes to intervene in the case, and set a date for oral arguments. Whether oral arguments will be further delayed by allowing the tribes to intervene is unclear. The Gila Community and Ahwatukeebased Protect Arizona’s Resources and Children are leading the appeal from a See
FREEWAYon page 10
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