Editorial: Stanton’s campaign rhetoric glosses over some hard realities,
Stanton’s State of the City address ignored some hard realities
Mayor Greg Stanton’s State of the City speech Wednesday was an enthusiastic tour de force — perhaps the most energetic of the mayor’s threeplus years in office. It was, largely, a campaign speech. The mayor, who thus far faces no serious challenger to his bid for a second term, clearly is champing at the bit to get on with it, to earn a hearty ratification of his time at the helm at 200 W. Washington.
Stanton’s address was long on happyface, back-patting and ambition — much of it deserved — but short on real-world assessments of the fiscal challenges facing Phoenix. It could have used more of the latter.
Phoenix has come a long way since the depths of the Great Recession, boosted by central-city partnership developments between Phoenix and the state universities and the bioscience group TGen. The city also helped broker a planned 1,000-acre biomedical corridor near Mayo Clinic Hospital in north Phoenix, a true feather in the mayor’s cap and worth noting in a state-of-the-city speech.
The mayor also has grand plans for projects outside the normal purview of municipal governments.
In considerable detail, Stanton recited his record at stimulating trade with Mexico, and his plans to juice the city’s trade numbers. The city plans to launch an “Export Readiness Initiative” that, in Stanton’s words, will help local companies go from “export curious” to “export serious.”
The mayor also noted Phoenix’s various education initiatives, an emphasis since his earliest days in office.
Phoenix’s commitment to its own education centers — the Phoenix Children’s Museum, the Arizona Science Center, the Phoenix Zoo and the city’s new online high school, for example — is a model for other Valley cities. These are seriously underappreciated education tools that would not exist without a lasting commitment from the city.
So long as they do not overstress the city’s resources, such initiatives are fine. Laudable, even.
It is good to make a mission of getting homeless veterans off your city streets. It is great to see Phoenix, cash-strapped as it is, contributing more to the arts. State government could learn a lesson in that regard.
But Phoenix faces hard realities that Stanton barely acknowledged. The gloom of fiscal uncertainty and the grit of hard choices are elements of the “state of the city,” too.
Phoenix has just closed a $37.7 million current-year budget deficit and budget analysts foresee challenges at balancing revenue and spending in coming years as well.
The city recently announced plans to expand certain services and add to its (woefully understaffed) police force next year — which is possible only because Phoenix plans to delay paying off a $40 million, court-ordered payment to the state’s public-service pension fund.
And while Stanton proclaimed the city’s pension system has been fixed, he didn’t mention the drag created by the rising expense of the state pension system for police and firefighters.
The Legislature, meanwhile, is cutting payments to cities, which cost Phoenix another $6.3 million.
Not all of the red ink flowing lately out of city hall is Phoenix’s fault, nor can the City Council fix the state pension system. But it is still the duty of Stanton, et al, to acknowledge those challenges and plug leaks before adding more spending.
The biggest immediate issue facing Phoenix, however, is the transportation-tax vote scheduled for August. It would extend and add to the current 0.4-cent city sales tax.
Stanton extolled the virtues of the transportation plan without once speaking the key element of it: “tax.” But he was correct to identify the plan as the big municipal issue for Phoenix voters in the fall.
As a fair analysis of his city’s progress the past year, Stanton’s address gets a mixed review.
Phoenix has nearly climbed out of the Great Recession hole. But a speech that happy-faces the recession’s lingering fiscal woes isn’t a real summary of the state of the city. It’s just a campaign speech.