Mac n cheese eatery / P. 20
School football a go / P. 18
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An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
This Week
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Mammoth Mesa sports complex no pipedream, developer promises BY JIM WALSH Tribune Staff Writer
NEWS ........................ 6 Mesa Realtor's UFO Congress goes virtual.
COMMUNITY ......... 12 MCC Child Care lab pivots to success.
R
andy and Chad Miller have a big sports and entertainment dream for southeast Mesa near Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. At 320 acres, that dream is expansive – but Chad Miller insists it’s not fanciful. It includes two stadiums, 23 soccer �ields, eight baseball and softball �ields, and an indoor sports building with 16 basketball courts and 62 volleyball courts. With potential for sports tourism, almost limitless recreational opportunities and even image building, Mesa of�icials are hoping the father-son duo’s vision turns into a Legacy Sports Park. But with such an ambitious project, it’s pre-
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BUSINESS ............. 14 Mesa tour packages aim to lure visitors.
OPINION ................ 16 Reimagining 50s TV shows in 2020. COMMUNITY ............................... 12 BUSINESS ..................................... 14 OPINION ....................................... 16 SPORTS ........................................ 18 PUZZLES ...................................... 22 CLASSIFIED ................................. 22 Zone 1
The proposed Legacy Sports Park in southeast Mesa would have plenty of room for plenty of sports, say developers Randy and Chad Miller, who already are making moves to make it a reality. (Courtesy of Chad Miller)
Tight Census deadline catches cities by surprise BY GARY NELSON Tribune Contributor
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ith millions of dollars and equitable political representation at stake, Chandler and other East Valley cities are rushing to complete their 2020 census efforts in the face of a suddenly tight deadline imposed by the Trump administration. Tens of thousands of East Valley households already had responded to the census by mid-August, answering either online, by phone or by mail to the constitutionally mandated head count. But many more remain to be counted. By city, response rates ranged from 74.6 percent in Gilbert to 61.1 percent in Tempe – with widely varying rates from neighborhood
to neighborhood. Chandler also had a strong showing, with a 70.4 percent response rate. Scottsdale came in at 63.9 percent, and Mesa at 62.5 percent. The great majority of those responses were �iled online, a new option this year. The �inal numbers will have a big impact on civic life for the next decade. Hundreds of billions of dollars �low from the federal government to the states each year, divvied up by population. That money undergirds vital services such as airports, public transportation, schools and hospitals. An undercounted city will get less per resident than one with a better census response rate. More than that, census data actually helps cities make decisions with a deep impact on
individual neighborhoods. Scottsdale uses it, for example, to determine where new �ire stations, parks and other facilities are needed. Political representation also is at stake. Each state’s number of representatives in the U.S. House is allotted by population, and fast-growing Arizona could add a 10th congressional district based on this year’s count. Congressional and legislative district boundaries are redrawn every 10 years based on census data, and Mesa does the same with its six City Council districts. “The census does touch every single person,” said Leah Powell, who oversees Chandler’s census outreach efforts. This year’s count is taking place against the
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