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Fireworks crackdown worked/ P. 2
An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
Saving the pups/ P. 19
Farewell to longtime Mesa public servant.
BUSINESS .................. 22 Mesa restaurant shells out the tacos.
GETOUT ...................... 29 Mesa metal band rocking on stage.
COMMUNITY .............................. 19 BUSINESS ................................... 22 OPINION ..................................... 25 SPORTS ...................................... 28 GET OUT ...................................... 29 CLASSIFIED ............................... 32 ZONE 2
Sunday, August 7, 2022
FREE ($1 OUTSIDE THE EAST VALLEY) | TheMesaTribune.com
One Mesa race resolved, other may continue BY SCOTT SHUMAKER Tribune Staff Writer
NEWS ............................. 16
1
F
ormer Mesa City Council member Scott Somers will be able to remove “former” from his title in January but Vice Mayor Jenn Duff is preparing for a November run-off contest with one of her two challengers. Somers’ 58%-42% lead was sufficient for businesswoman Darla Trendler to concede in the hotly contested southeast Mesa Council
District 6 election. But there was no such concession in the downtown District 4 race, where Duff maintained the lead she started with Tuesday night’s release of tallies from early voting but appeared to fall short of the 50%-plus-1 majority she needed to win outright. Duff garnered 48% of the vote over new mother Trista Guzman Glover’s 28% and Arizona State University undergraduate student Nathaniel Ross’ 24%.
If those margins hold by the time all the ballots are counted this week, Ross will be eliminated and Duff and Guzman Glover will face off Nov. 8. "While we’ll be watching the final counts closely, it’s clear that we still have more work ahead of us," Duff said. "Close elections are not a new thing for me and I’m ready to earn every last vote for November’s win.”
Cities bite big The plane is on the way into public safety pension debt
see ELECTIONS page 8
BY PAUL MARYNIAK Tribune Executive Editor
E
ast Valley municipalities in the last fiscal year took advantage of unanticipated general fund revenue increases to make big additional payments on their debt to pensions earned by thousands of retired police officers and firefighters. But Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler and Scottsdale still have a long way to go before they erase their huge unfunded liabilities. Those five municipalities still owe a total $1.4 billion for pensions covering 955 retired firefighters, 1,471 retired cops and hundreds more firefighters and officers who are covered by Arizona’s Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, records show.
see PENSIONS page 12
A jet engine may seem a bit of an unusual sight at a high school, but a plane may soon be on the way at the new American Leadership Academy campus in east Mesa. The sprawling 223,000-square-foot charter school is taking a new approach to vocational education, as you’ll read on page 6. (Enrique Garcia/Tribune Contributor)
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