Editorials

A familiar refrain in any government decision-making process is the admonition to “let us vote on it.”

Government pension programs promote an entitlement premise that there are guarantees in life.

Never accuse the elected officials in the Arizona House of Representatives and Senate of not being smart.

It was more than a decade ago when former Yavapai County Supervisor Chip Davis announced the Arizona Department of Transportation had prioritized the State Route 260 section between Cottonwood and Camp Verde for a major four-lane expansion.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, a city of about 600,000 people, bicycles outnumber cars by about 5-to-1. That’s made possible by an infrastructure that actually encourages people to ride bikes instead of drive cars.

The next time you grab your cell phone and go to your favorite app store, you can easily begin a new career as a criminal.

It’s doubtful there will be an Upper Verde school district consolidation election this year, but that sure hasn’t stopped people both pro and con from making claims about the impacts of such a merger.

A year ago, school district consolidation blew through the Upper Verde Valley like a Category 5 hurricane.

“Loneliness is the penalty of leadership.”

We’re nearing the one-year anniversary of the Sedona-Oak Creek School Board’s decision to close Big Park Elementary School. The resulting wounds to the Village of Oak Creek are slow to heal.

For the second time in five days, first-term Cottonwood City Councilman Michael Mathews has come to his own defense over the use of private email to communicate city business.

The right thing for Mathews to do now is provide the city with all city-related emails he has sent from his private account so the city can fulfil its obligation to maintain and store the public records he created.

Just when you think you’ve seen the last possible way the school district consolidation ball could bounce, it takes off in a completely new direction.

Two incidents in the past week prove that if there are policies in place to police those who seek and hold public office, there is a lot of embarrassment and ridicule to avoid in the end.

Now, Republican precinct committeemen in Yavapai County will nominate three people to replace Stringer. The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors will select from those nominees the person to replace Stringer in the Arizona House of Representatives.

The Mingus Union School Board should ask the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for another review and full finding of fact over the Sept. 5, 2017, Open Meeting Law infraction for which the AG previously determined Mingus was at fault.

Gaining a little control over how much is too much when it comes to political signage and the degree to which we want our roadsides to remain uncluttered could become a sign of the times here in the Verde Valley.

For the past year, Jerome appeared -- at long last – to be embracing the idea of allowing for staggered four-year terms for the members of its elected town council.

So much of the 2018 administrative and governance decision-making processes at Mingus Union High School were of the deer-in-the-headlights variety.

Nothing short of Mingus Mountain has ever created a divide between the Verde Valley and the Prescott communities quite like the great water war of the 1990s.

It’s been a consistent message coming out of Jerome for at least 10 years now.

Exercising your rights is not always the same as doing the right thing.

With the Cottonwood City Council deadlocked on making the Rough Cut building the new City Hall, the appointment process for filling the vacancy on the council should prove most interesting.

The Arizona Legislature is on to something in its attempt to prohibit elected city councils from firing the municipal magistrates they hire.

More than 30 years ago, Cottonwood’s Norm Gunderson championed the cause of strength in numbers.