A Prescott Mayor for All Seasons (and Reasons)

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The next Republican Prescott Mayor will be chosen in the August 3, 2021 primary. The two candidates are Phil Goode and the incumbent, Greg Mengarelli. Early voting began on July 7th.

When people ask me why Prescott is so special and what does it mean to me, I always respond that Prescott is traditional America with the values and the culture that Americans have always loved and sought.

Many of us are fed up with the political class in Washington, D.C. and throughout state and local governments that holds its citizens in low regard and favors itself rather than the citizens it supposedly represents. Such a culture appears to be raising its head locally in this election.

Let’s look at the two candidates seeking victory on August 3rd. Which of these two candidates can best represent American values and protect Prescott culture, its small town feel, and critically, its future, with governance of water policy and development that is competent, honest, transparent and without even the perception of self-interest?

The key question is who will best “serve” the citizens of Prescott as Mayor? A generic description of the individual who will best “serve” the citizens of Prescott is the candidate who has a history of service for fellow citizens and community organizations and proven leadership roles in the real world not conflated with personal gain and profit.

The individual elected must be focused on the critical issues of water policy and carefully planned growth in the Prescott area, not allowing commercial and developers’ profits to drive poorly planned and damaging expansion, especially when tangled with self-interest or gain. The next Mayor and those around him should be free of any and all conflicts of interest, legal, perceived or otherwise.

Phil Goode has served America, his communities and his pre-retirement career positions and responsibilities with honor and commitment. He is a decorated combat Vietnam veteran, continuing to serve veterans in many leadership roles to the present day. He has served and led in many community organizations throughout his adult life and has been an active member in multiple Republican state and national election cycles.

He is a true constitutional conservative understanding the essence and uniqueness of the American experiment and the critical role of honest and transparent governance. He has served on the Prescott Zoning and Planning Commission and has been on the Prescott City Council since 2017. He knows well the trend of poorly planned growth, congestion and very real threat to our most precious resource, water, and recognizes the inaccurate projections for its use and maintenance currently occurring and facilitating huge increases in residential and commercial development.

His many service roles in Yavapai County and Prescott demonstrate his commitment to this community and his intention to “serve” as Mayor, not work and gain from the role but to apply a lifetime of experience in the practical affairs of organizations and industry to further the vision of preserving the culture, protecting the area’s critical water supply and managing Prescott’s growth, the city’s fiscal integrity, its small businesses and the way of life we enjoy and treasure in Prescott.

Phil Goode demonstrates fully the generic description of the person most qualified to lead Prescott as Mayor. His entire life has been about service. He is retired from a successful career in health care management at high levels. He knows from experience and intellectual depth the skills of management and leadership. He serves the city and the county at many levels as a committed but volunteering citizen.

The current Mayor, Greg Mengarelli was first elected in 2017. He is not retired and has recently negotiated with the Rodeo Board a position with Prescott Frontier Days which leases the rodeo grounds from the city for the annual Rodeo event. Will a Mayor Greg Mengarelli negotiate business arrangements with Rodeo Business Development Manager Greg Mengarelli? Will the Mayor, as Rodeo Business Development Manager receive bonuses or incentive payments for new business and events brought to the rodeo grounds, the grounds of which are owned by the City of Prescott? The Rodeo Board President is Chris Graff who also heads up an asphalt company (involving some of the rapid growth of projects throughout the Prescott area) doing tens of millions of dollars of business with the City of Prescott, the city whose mayor is Greg Mengarelli. The mayor’s wife, coincidentally, is a realtor having done residential sales previously, but is now active in commercial sales in the Prescott area.

None of this is necessarily illegal but does it reek of conflicts of interest? Does it seem “swampish” to use a deep state, Washington, D.C. description of the deal-making and abuse of position and power by those in governance? It isn’t just impropriety that makes politicians less than servants for their fellow citizens and generates disdain and distrust by voters. Just as importantly, it is the perception of impropriety that we as citizens should reject when we vote, granting the “consent of the governed”.

America is at a crossroads as is Prescott. The future of our nation and the future of this very special City of Prescott are at a critical junction hinging on the quality of leadership at the national and local level. It is a season of decision, a season of choices and with critical reasons for the right choices. Phil Goode is the clear Mayoral choice for all the reasons listed above. Phil Goode is A Prescott Mayor for All Seasons (and Reasons).

Vote in the 2021 Mayoral primary for this and future seasons of Prescott’s special nature and for the right reasons.

A Letter to Prescott’s Daily Courier Editor about HR-1 and the Cloward Piven Plan

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Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

Editor,

The Democrat Party is opposed to strict voter registration and voting laws, especially Voter ID. This includes one of the foundational organizations that make up the Democrat Party, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Yet, when I was a member of the NAACP, I was required to present a photo ID to vote in the internal elections of the organization. And one needs a valid ID to attend Democrat Party conventions. Both organizations are not going to let fraud determine THEIR election outcomes.

So why are Democrats passing HR-1? It is the fulfillment of a Democratic Party dream since the 1960s, when Marxists and Democratic Party activists Richard Cloward and Frances Piven established a plan to overthrow the U.S. government. Their plan included:

1.) Implementation of “Motor Voter” laws, same day voter registration, ballot harvesting, and mail in voting without voter ID. All are in HR-1, as are other anti-democratic components, eliminating the integrity and security of our elections.

2.) Pit races against each other causing hatred and chaos. Today we have Critical Race Theory and “systemic racism” taught in our schools, government agencies, and even major corporations.

3.) Implement welfare programs that bankrupt the government, enhancing chaos and hatred among various identity groups. Our federal deficit is now approximately $30 Trillion and growing and the Biden administration is preparing another $3 Trillion spending plan.

Democrats have added control of the media, “cancel culture”, and unrestricted illegal immigration adding millions of people, eventually diluting the votes of legal citizens to this toxic mix.

Bringing all this together, Democrats believe “The Transformation of America” is at hand.

A Woke Student is a Safe Student

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Prescott Unified School District Superintendent Joe Howard: “We can’t keep heaping society’s issues on schools. It can’t all be the school’s job….”

In November 2020 the Arizona Department of Education released its report School Safety Task Force Final Report. Shortly afterwards, Prescott’s The Daily Courier carried an editorial on the report’s release entitled Schools Were Never Meant to Raise Our Kids.

My interest piqued, I read the report.

It turns out the report is not some pragmatic, measurable, implementable School Safety Task Force report/plan. Instead, it is a “woke” suggestion to create a plan, a grab-bag of vague ideas for mental health and cultural indoctrination. It equates to a recommendation for social engineering within Arizona’s schools. In this plan safety is another word for “woke”. “A Woke Child is a Safe Child” could be the subtitle of the report.

The ultimate and UNSTATED vision of the document is a Social Justice utopia causing safe schools to blossom in Arizona. On its journey to this hidden vision, the report manages to miss all of its stated goals.

The missed goals include:
1. Identify a unifying, research-based approach to school safety.
2. Create a model school safety plan for use by schools and districts.
3. Develop a clearinghouse of resources.
4. Research the value and impact of a tip line and additional evidence-based, best practices for the state.
5. Create an outline of recommended legislative changes.

Following the logic of this “plan”, parent teacher conferences would center on the quality of muffins at breakfast, education would focus on how to put condoms on bananas at puberty, details of the abortion schedule in high school, how to dress for class with a fluid gender, and the best mental health counseling and drugs to facilitate “transition therapy”, all making Arizona schools safer. What about learning and test scores? Reading? Writing? Math? Critical Thinking? And what about boys and girls showering in their respective locker rooms – that’s all so capitalist, so cis-gendered, so racist!

A vague statement of the intent of the project is found in the second line of the Executive Summary: “This report, therefore, may be different from what many expect. It is less focused on threat assessment, physical safety and crisis intervention. It is more focused on school climate, prevention, mental health and relationship building”. In other words, our children will not be able to read or write or add 2 plus 2 to get the correct answer (is there a correct answer in this proposed culture?) but will have pleasant relationships with others, a nice, gender fluid wardrobe, tasty condoms and live comfortably in a world without consequences for their behavior or expectations for higher performances.

Want a clue to the report’s content? The report is written by a gaggle of social justice warriors, including Maya Zukerburg, the political director (read this again, the POLITICAL DIRECTOR) of “March for our Lives AZ”, which is closely aligned with the Puente Youth Movement, a “youth empowerment hub that centers the development of young people through culture, politics and leadership and community organizing development for the purpose of long-term political change”. Their activities focus on “Cops outta campus”, “History of our people’s resistance (the history not usually taught in school)” and “workshop activities around social justice issues”.

In the authors’ world view school safety is achieved when all our children spout woke platitudes, see mental health counselors rather than reading or math tutors, all school police are removed from all campuses and they have broken the ‘school to prison pipeline’.

In reality, this report is a derivative of the “Defund the Police” movement, which itself appears to have evolved from the Restorative Justice programs in schools over the past decade. This writer became aware of the Restorative Justice movement as a member of the NAACP several years ago when the movement began in California. Beginning in predominately black school districts such as Oakland, this orthodoxy spread across California like wildfire and saw the then Governor of California, Jerry Brown sign legislation banning “willful belligerence” as a reason to remove a student from a classroom or be suspended or expelled from school.

The result has been, not a rise in achievement or the closing of the “achievement gap” between students of color verses white and Asian students, but a decline in classroom behavior, a rise in school violence affecting all students and teachers and the acceleration of a teacher shortage throughout the California as teachers throw in the towel when they feel threatened and unable to teach.

The Arizona School Safety Task Force report is right about one thing: it is time to re-evaluate what our schools are responsible for achieving. Prescott Unified School District Superintendent Joe Howard is quoted in the Courier article, saying, “We can’t keep heaping society’s issues on schools. There is a lot of finger pointing about school responsibility. It can’t all be the school’s job. We could use some support…. We could use some resources”.

Let’s not turn Arizona schools from places of learning into the underperforming societal quagmires of California. The L.A. Unified School District, for example, is renowned, not for its educational prowess, but for being the largest food service operation in the state, if not the country, serving 688,000 meals PER DAY. The district also provides preschool, day care, and after school services and is busy upgrading school nurses into full scale health clinics with doctors, dentists, nurses, and mental health care. Meanwhile, it is in the bottom of academic performance in the country.

One last thought. My wife taught elementary school in a Northern California district where one elementary school, whose children tested at 9% proficient (at grade level), attempted to fix the low performance by hiring a yoga/meditation instructor so everyone, teachers and students, could relax and not worry about the results.

Not in Arizona.