Arizona News Round-Up

Now that you’re done marking your calendars for Gila Bend’s Desert Scorpion Shrimp Festival, lets take another trip down the unbeaten path to see what’s going on in the Grand Canyon State.

Lake Havasu City – Mecca of Jet Skis, Boating, and…Rusty Buses

The double-decker bus in the English Village has hit the road.

Not that the bus could make it anywhere on its own. The bus was pulled Thursday from its base with a crane and then towed off the property through a donation by Steve Getter, owner of Steve’s Towing service.

Today’s News-Herald

I’m pretty sure that thing puts the Death in Death Ride. Anywho, heading up the highway towards Laughlin Kingman, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors grasp with the effects of Proposition 101 on rural areas.

The focus of Tuesday’s budget workshop for the Board of Supervisors seemed less about what the different county departments were asking for and more about what funds were being taken away from the county. The effects of Proposition 101 on the county’s coffers was repeatedly brought up by not only the Board but various department heads as well.

Proposition 101 was passed by voters in November. It limits the amount the county can increase the property tax rate to 2 percent each year plus new development.

Kingman Daily Miner

Heading east, the town of Williams is facing an emergency that will probably become an inevitability for the entire Southwest region – water woes

“We are finding ourselves, currently, in what I would term a water crisis. Williams has had water crises in the past,” said Wells. “This last winter created virtually no rainfall or snow of any amount and we are looking forward, as we always do, and we came to realize that, within a year, this town could be totally out of water. To compound things, our Dogtown I Well recently went down. The electric motor has burned out and we plan, at some point this summer, to replace the motor and get Dogtown I back up, so we currently only have one producing water well that is available for usage and our reservoirs are precariously low. June is the month of the year that tends to reduce the levels of our reservoirs rather dramatically. It is what I would term a crisis, because we know if the drought continues, and it is expected to continue, then within one year this community is out of water.”

Williams-Grand Canyon News

Continuing down I-40 to Flagstaff, the newest Democratic candidate for Congressional District 1 announced her bid.

Mary Kim Titla hopes to become the first Native American woman in Congress. She has announced her candidacy and plans to unseat Rick Renzi from Arizona’s Congressional District One.

Titla took her campaign race onto the winding woodland trail above Flagstaff’s Thorpe Park that has served as the route for the Native Americans for Community Action (NACA) Sacred Mountain Prayer Run for several years now.

Navajo Hopi Observer

Here is her campaign website to get more info on her candidacy. I recall her stint with Channel 12 in Phoenix, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Dipping south now towards Camp Verde, some residents will finally reap the rewards of the town getting their crap together.

In 1993 an election was held in Camp Verde to annex a large tract of the town into the sanitary district.

The landowners that were taken in have been paying taxes just like everyone else in the district. Only they haven’t been hooked up to anything. In many instances they have had to pay additional fees to have their septic systems repeatedly pumped.

That is going to change.

On Wednesday, sanitary district Chairman Rob Witt took a trip to Phoenix to the offices of the district bond council Fred Rosenfeld. There he signed the paperwork that finalized the last $11 million needed to finish the expansion project.

Camp Verde Bugle

Speaking of sewage – two vigilantes in Prescott are facing charges for harassment

A Prescott Police investigation has revealed that two members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps had provoked the alleged attack by a man they photographed picking up the day labor at the corner of Lincoln and Grove avenues on May 18.

Lt. Ken Morley said that David Hunter and Bentley Bremmon could face misdemeanor harassment charges.

“They were harassing him to the point where Scott Blair got out of his truck and went after these two guys,” Morley said.

Prescott Daily Courier

And not really news, but definitely intriguing (at least to me), an excerpt from historical and creative writing out of the former mining hamlet of Jerome.

Lillie watched as the driver turned and started running down the rocky canyon road toward Jeome. She knew that he would probably run all the way to town. She wiped the handkerchief around her lace collar. It was hot. One of those spring days in Arizona that reminded you of just how hot it could be by the time summer came around. She knew that she should have waited for Jack to arrive from San Francisco, but she just couldn’t resist the idea of coming over the mountain in a stagecoach. She realized that soon there would be no more stagecoaches, and since it was only a day trip from Prescott to Jerome . . . well . . . She just hoped that the booming mining camp was all that it professed to be – the luxurious Hotel Montana, the spectacular view, the Opera House.

Lillie leaned her head out of the coach and surveyed her surroundings. They had just come down from the pass where they had been surrounded by pine woods and meadows. Then abruptly the terrain had changed. She was now in a small rocky canyon. Instead of pine forest, it was highland desert – red rock, manzanita, cactus, and desert flowers. Her eyes ran down the canyon to where it opened into the valley a couple of thousand feet below. She could see all the way across the valley to the massive red rock cliffs on the other side. Lazy white clouds drifted across the blue sky. The sun was growing hotter in the canyon.

Jerome Times

What’s going on in your part of the world?

 

Arizona News Round-Up

Here are some headlines around the Grand Canyon State.

Starting in Kingman, at the northwest corner of Arizona, the politics of water resources and development are on the mind of local politicos.

The provisions of the bill, as put forth in the Senate fact sheet, allow “county Board of Supervisors, by unanimous vote, to adopt an ordinance requiring a proposed subdivision located outside of an AMA (active management area) to demonstrate an adequate water supply before the final plat can be approved.”

Trekking down the Colorado River to the Yuma-San Luis area, funding has been secured for the infrastructure to build a new Port of Entry at the U.S./Mexico Border

The bonds will finance infrastructure projects such as cable conduits, lift stations and electrical, telephone and sewer lines for the port, known as San Luis II.

The new $42 million facility will be built by the federal government five miles east of San Luis, Ariz. While the project itself was funded in the last federal budget, Chessum said the GYPA needed to prepare the infrastructure before it could go forward.

“We agreed to give 80 acres to the federal government for the port of entry. It was agreed that it would be a construction-ready site,” Chessum said. “That means there have to be utilities there they can hook into.”

Moving to the middle of the state where it’s hotter than the face of the sun right now, Casa Grande residents are combating the problem of illegal garbage dumps in the desert.

Illegal dumping, desert dumping, wildcat dumping – they all mean the same thing: “a huge problem for rural Arizona,” said Rick Gibson, director of the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension in Pinal County. Gibson was speaking at an Illegal Dumping Seminar last week at Central Arizona College.

Dumpers think no one will notice the old tires, cars, TVs, appliances, computers, furniture, yard waste, household waste, dirty diapers and toxic chemicals left in the desert, he said.

But a rancher notices when his $6,000 bull swallows a plastic bag and dies, said rancher Gerardo “Gerry” Gonzalez.

Speaking of environmental disasters, the Globe Silver Belt is highlighting efforts to clean up the copper tailings from various area mines – using cattle.

Patterned after a holistic land management system developed by Rhodesian ecologist, Allan Savory, the process takes the land through a life cycle. The whole eco-system is considered, and grazing cattle on the land is an important part of the cycle.

Heading north, over the Roosevelt Dam, to Payson we’re met with preparations for una fiesta grande that will happen this fall.

As Payson’s 125th anniversary celebration draws near, organizers are adding more features to make the occasion a memorable one.

New developments include a time capsule to be opened on the 200th anniversary, a golf tournament, a historic quilt display and performances by a miniature horse drill team.

The celebration begins on Tuesday, Oct. 2, and spans six days of activities designed to honor the town’s wild Western heritage.

And last, but certainly not least on the dust-devil trek through AZ, the Arizona Range News reminds valley residents around Willcox that Tuesday is National Hunger Awareness Day.

Food in Arizona is abundant and affordable for most of us, thanks to the work of productive farmers and ranchers. The Arizona Farm Bureau encourages individuals and communities across the state to donate to their local food bank in honor of National Hunger Awareness Day on June 5th.

[Editorial Blurb] I’m thinking about making this a weekly post – drawing from different town papers across the state. Whatdoyathinkaboutthat?