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EAST VALLEY
Actors tackle a difficult role: Jesus EV Partnership tied to region’s growth over past 35 years
BY PAUL MARYNIAK. Tribune Executive Editor
Community college students go hungry in East Valley
ODD JOBS: 911 call taker handles difficult situations
BUSINESS . ................16 East Valley teens win investments for their proposed businesses
T (Steve Porter/Special to the Tribune)
As he did in this scene from the Resurrection, Tyler Maxson of Mesa played Jesus in the Mormon Tempe Easter Pageant for nine years before becoming an assistant director for the mammoth production. Playing Christ has been a life-changing experience for him and his successor on the stage. See page 21.
Facility drives the engine of recycling in East Valley BY RALPH ZUBIATE Tribune Managing Editor
W
FOOD ......................... 23 Rhema Soul Cuisine brings deep flavors to its barbecue
BUSINESS........................16 OPINION.........................18 SPORTS............................19 FAITH................................21 CLASSIFIED.................... 27
Sunday, April 16, 2017 COVER STORY
NEWS ............................. 4
COMMUNITY.......... 12
PAGE 19
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Gilbert Edition
INSIDE
Basha’s female kicker makes history, commits to college
alking into a recycling processing plant, visitors are greeted with the rattle and hum of machinery and recycled materials, everything from aluminum cans to glass to metal to newspapers. Since they’re intermixed into residents’ blue barrels, they arrive at the facility (Kimberly Carrillo/Tribune Staff Photographer) the same way. A worker sorts through recyclables at the Materials Recovery Facility This is the heartbeat of at the Salt River Landfill. Jerry Hartley, plant manager for the facility, recycling in the East Valley, said “it’s sort of like panning for gold.” which will mark Earth Day on Green waste is the next big thing in recycling ... Page 6 Saturday, April 22. All recyclables are loaded onto a series of The Materials Recovery Facility at the Salt conveyor belts. The materials are then sorted River Landfill handles recycling for Mesa, out, using a series of spinning centrifuges, air Gilbert and Scottsdale. It processes 300-400 jets, magnets and old-fashioned elbow grease tons of materials a day, chugging along 10 hours a day, six days a week. See RECYCLING on page 10
he East Valley in the early 1980s was starkly different from what it is today. The region was the 90-pound weakling to Phoenix. Major traffic arteries beyond County Club Drive were almost nonexistent. Cities fought over scant opportunities for development. The Pentagon was letting Williams Air Force Base die a slow death. Amid this bleak and unpromising scene, a small group of business executives began meeting in 1982 at the Mesa Holiday Inn – then an exciting addition to a region dominated by cut-rate motels. They formed the East Valley Partnership because they saw the region as a land of opportunity unrealized. Some of those executives gathered two weeks ago at the same Holiday Inn to reminisce over the battles and the struggles that helped make the region what it is today. Six men and two women who chaired the East Valley Partnership board at various times over the last 35 years were joined by its two former directors and a legendary former county supervisor and legislator who had worked closely with them all. Segments of their conversation will be aired during the partnership’s 35th anniversary celebration at its annual organizational meeting in June. The executives, many of whom are retired from their jobs but still active in the community, offered an informal timeline of the East Valley’s evolution – and a look at the challenges the region faces if that evolution is to continue over the next 35 years. While they were asked to talk about their one-year terms at the helm, many had been with the partnership since its inception and recalled that challenges over the last 3½ See
PARTNERSHIP on page 8