Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman

The battle between supporters of Tempe mayoral candidates Mark Mitchell and Michael Monti over whether "your" public employees can endorse people in campaign signs seemed to end with City Manager Charlie Meyer's ruling that it was all pretty much OK.

That question apparently has not been completely answered, thanks to a complaint filed against Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman.

The issue started when Legislative District 17 Republicans chairman A.J. LaFaro, a Monti supporter, filed a complaint over campaign signs saying "your" firefighters support Mitchell for mayor.

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​Judicial Watch, the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think-tank that went after Phoenix to force them to release logs maintained by Mayor Phil Gordon's security detail, is pleased with a recent court decision ordering their disclosure.

"Judicial Watch is excited by the ruling because it creates more transparency within government," says Greg Collins, an attorney with Kercsmar & Feltus, representing the government watch organization. "This is why Judicial Watch gets involved in these sort of cases."


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Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon

​Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who only has about a week left in office, may be forced to release security-detail logs that track two years' worth of his movements.

The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed a ruling by a Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Rea that protected those logs from being made public on the basis they contained confidential and security-related information.

The city has been in and out of court since May 2010 fighting to keep private the logs maintained by Gordon's security detail, a team of four Phoenix police officers.

The documents, created by the security detail, note how Gordon spent his days -- and who he spent them with -- while he was being shadowed by his taxpayer-funded bodyguards.


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Image: Google Street View

The fire hydrant seen here blocking the curb ramp along Bethany Home Road at 3rd Avenue was relocated after Thomas Vickery complained. The scooter-driving disabled man wants the city to address the sidewalk's other problems.

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Thomas Vickery lit a fire under the butts of city officials earlier this year, shaming them into finally moving a fire hydrant that blocked a curb ramp on a sidewalk.

Now he wants the city of Phoenix to move up its schedule to do more improvements along Bethany Home Road that will make it easier for people who, like him, can't walk.

Vickery, a Chicago transplant who has cerebral palsy, takes a scooter nearly everywhere he goes. And he's not one to sit at home every day -- he often rides the scooter from his home near Central and Maryland to Christown Spectrum Mall at 19th Avenue and Bethany Home Road. His "preferred route" is to go up Central to Bethany Home, then take a straight shot to the mall. There are obstacles for his scooter no matter which way he goes, but he's been particularly annoyed with the condition of the sidewalks along Bethany Home.

As the above screen shot from Google Street View shows, a fire hydrant used to sit squarely in the middle of a curb ramp at 3rd Avenue and Bethany Home. The city knew since 2008 that the location of the hydrant was out of compliance with the American Disabilities Act, says an April article in the Arizona Republic, but did nothing to fix it until after Vickery complained.

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AT&T has turned to federal court to make Phoenix approve a cell-phone tower that the company says is needed to fix a dead-air zone on the Piestewa Freeway.

A complaint filed by the company last week in U.S. District Court claims that Phoenix's Board of Adjustment erred by denying a use permit for the planned tower. The board concluded that erecting a 50-foot-tall, fake palm tree on the property of the Paradise Hills Assembly of God Church, 9425 North 26th Street, "would have an adverse visual effect," the claim states.

Last month, the company lost an appeal of the decision.

AT&T Mobility, represented by Tempe lawyers Joel Sannes and J. Gregory Lake, argues in the claim that Phoenix's stubbornness violates part of the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 and denies wireless services to Valley residents.

"AT&T Mobility has a significant gap in its service area, which it must fill by building a tower at the site," says the complaint.

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Image: www.worldofmarble.com

Seamus King and Alexandra Seals

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A pair of Phoenix business owners claim the city screwed them in a railroad deal and ruined their livelihood. Now the husband-and-wife entrepreneurs have locked themselves inside their small compound, threatening to stay until they're forced out.

This plot could have been pulled from the Westerns section at the DVD store, but it's the real thing for King's World of Marble owners Seamus King and Alexandra Seals. They're being forced to move from the site near 44th and Washington streets, where the business has been for 14 years, to make way for a train route under construction that will ferry light-rail users to Sky Harbor airport.

The couple told Channel 15 news (KNXV-TV) in a report last night that "when things happen, we will peacefully leave." But a week ago, King was grousing to Channel 5 (KPHO-TV) that authorities "...will have to drag me off the property."

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