Voters in Fountain Hills spent much of their time in 2018 educating themselves on the issues and running back and forth to the ballot box, or mailbox, depending on whether they voted an early ballot.

There were three major questions for voters in Fountain Hills to address during the past year. It began in May with a proposal to implement a property tax to support town government, followed by the Town Council primary election in August and the midterm General Election in November. All three had local and national consequences to consider.

Property tax

The council asked voters to consider the property tax to help stabilize the revenue stream to address increasing expenses for core services provided by the town government.

The council proposed a tax that would generate an additional $7 million in annual revenue.

However, voters would have none of it. There were 10,176 ballots cast with 6,705 opposed and 3,459 in support. This was the most votes ever cast in a town election, which is 59.27 percent of the town’s 17,168 registered voters; also the highest turnout for a town-only election.

The May election was just a sample of voter interest going forward in the year.

Town Council

By the end of May the field was set for the council primary on Aug. 28. The decisions by Mayor Linda Kavanagh and Councilmen Nick DePorter and Henry Leger not to seek re-election and the decision by Councilman Cecil Yates to run for Kavanagh’s seat as mayor threw the election wide open to new candidates. Only incumbent Councilman Alan Magazine was running for re-election.

Ginny Dickey, a former councilwoman who ran as a write-in for mayor two years earlier, matched up against Yates for the chance to replace Kavanagh, and there were five new faces that stepped forward alongside Magazine in an attempt to fill the three expiring council terms. Those included Marcus Von Bulow Dennewitz, Gerry Friedel, Sharon Grzybowski, Mike Scharnow and David Spelich.

The hot summer campaign took on the tenor of statewide and national partisan campaigns with attack ads flooding social media, the newspaper along with accusing letters to the editor in The Times.

In the end it was Dickey over Yates for mayor, and Magazine won his second term along with Scharnow and Spelich filling the remaining two seats.

The new council was sworn in on Dec. 4.

General Election

In November the election took on a national and partisan flavor with the most competitive race in Arizona being for the U.S. Senate seat that was being vacated by incumbent Jeff Flake, who chose to retire.

The race featured two candidates who would be vying for the honor of being the first woman elected to the Senate from Arizona. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema faced off against Republican Martha McSally. Both had served in the U.S. House of Representatives before running for Senate.

In the end it was Sinema over McSally in a very close statewide race that was not determined until all the votes from Maricopa County had been counted, which took nearly two weeks after Election Day. In Fountain Hills, Republican McSally was the clear favorite.

Fountain Hills remains a Republican stronghold, but a solid Democratic movement nationwide resulted in some surprisingly strong Democrats running for seats to represent the districts that include Fountain Hills. In the end, it was the Republicans returning to office including Congressman David Schweikert, Arizona Representatives John Kavanagh and Jay Lawrence, and Arizona State Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita.

After a long year of political fights, Fountain Hills residents can look forward to 2019, when it appears they will not have to cast a ballot for anyone or anything.