Our new mayor and two council members took their oath of office approximately 134 days ago, as of this writing. With two other sitting council members, who are “likeminded” as our newly elected leadership, they hold a majority vote.

Their record of using that majority vote, thus far: (1) Rejected a $850,000 grant because it had DEI language. (2) Banned non-existent DEI practices. (3) Eliminated much of the code of ethics from our town’s bylaws. I will not comment on the political ramifications here. I will comment on future economic and revenue impact to our town due to these pernicious majority votes.

We all know that this town depends on revenue from our local businesses, not property taxes. We have a great economic development team working with GPEC who are searching for new businesses who can call Fountain Hills their new site or office. Small or large companies have highly integrated DEI and codes of ethics into their mission statements. They will not work with nor go to a new site who go against their mission statements and core values. Bidders for design and construction or site selection also have highly integrated DEI and codes of ethics into their culture.

Who or which of these “vision forward” companies will now choose our beautiful town? In 134 days, our new leadership put us at the bottom of the totem pole for site selection. These three decisions are myopic and will do our town a great disservice. Their simple “no” votes just disabled forward-looking revenue for our budget, our schools, our roads and putting aside savings for fire abatement in and around our washes. With that said, our new leadership’s choices are wrong. For what? They failed us all.

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