Crowd favorite at Toca Madera / P. 42
3 teams vie for the best / P. 35
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An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
This Week
NEWS............................... 8 City bonds, school override pass.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
New PAC promises downtown project �ight BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Progress Managing Editor
A
new Scottsdale political group formed to oppose three high-profile downtown developments, highlighting a growing schism between City Hall and area business owners. The divide could have a significant effect on the local 2020 election cycle, and the viability of upcoming redevelopments – including Southbridge Two and the Sunday Goods dispensary. The new Committee for the Preservation
of Old Town Scottsdale political action committee threatened to pour money into the upcoming city council and mayoral races and is considering a citizen referendum. The group could make good on its threat as an email released by an opposing political action committee showed Old Town PAC members are soliciting contributions of $1,000 or more from area business owners. The Old Town PAC could also push to recall Council members who do not get on board with its agenda, said Lamar Whitmer, a longtime Scottsdale political operative working with the group.
Whitmer is a familiar name to some Scottsdale pols as he was a one-time ally and confidant of Mayor Jim Lane and was involved in some of the higher-profile local political fights in past decades. Whitmer was a political consultant for southern Scottsdale strip clubs that successfully thwarted an attempt by the city to strengthen regulations on the clubs, according to a 2006 East Valley Tribune report. He was also involved in Lane’s first mayoral campaign in 2008, and the Los Arcos Mall
see PAC page 12
Scottsdale veteran studies the brain of soldiers NEIGHBORS ......... 28 Native American art gallery marks 50.
BUSINESS ............... 29 Scottsdale Osborne campus is growing.
NEIGHBORS ........................20 BUSINESS .............................29 OPINION .............................. 32 SPORTS ................................ 35 ARTS .....................................38 FOOD & DRINK...................42 CLASSIFIEDS .......................46
BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Progress Managing Editor
T
hough he now calls Scottsdale home, retired Army Brig. Gen. Peter Palmer spent a good deal of his life on bases, in war zones and training other soldiers during a 32-year military career that sent him as far as Kosovo and Iraq. Palmer, a member of the city’s new Veterans Advisory Commission, now lives in downtown Scottsdale and spends much of his time working with veterans’ groups and tending to what he refers to as his “hobby,” That hobby is not golf, fishing or any other leisurely activity usually associated with the term, though. Palmer’s passion project revolves around neuroscience and how it can be used to help improve soldiers’ decision making. The interest stems from a time near the end of his Army career around 2006, when
see PALMER page 4
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Retired Army Brig. Gen. Peter Palmer accompanies a wounded Iraqi child treated at a U.S. military hospital in the Green Zone during Palmer’s deployment. (Courtesy of Peter Palmer)
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