Scottsdale North Pickleball and Dog Park are on the Ballot this Year!

By Scott Gaertner

City of Scottsdale Bond First Mail Only Vote Happens on November 5th

One year ago, the City of Scottsdale had its first open meeting to discuss building a park on a property at Ashler Hills Drive and 74th Street called Sevano Park. About 200 very interested residents showed up at that meeting to make their voices heard, and we thought you would like an update on what’s happening now.

Since that time, the Scottsdale City Council unanimously agreed to seek voter approval to issue bonds for 58 community projects totaling $319 million. Sevano Park is one of those 58 projects, and it was allotted a budget of just over $6 million. The 58 projects will appear on the ballot grouped into three specific questions for voters to approve as initiatives: (1) parks, recreation, and senior services; (2) community spaces and infrastructure; and (3) public safety and technology.

The November 5th bond will be the City of Scottsdale’s first election conducted completely by mail. Every registered voter in Scottsdale will be sent a ballot with prepaid return postage to cast their ballot.

In a phone interview, Bill Murphy, Assistant City Manager, said that if the bond passes that the city will build the park in two phases. Currently, the plan is to build several pickleball courts, some grass areas with playgrounds, bathrooms, and parking. This was the same plan they proposed at a meeting last February.

Murphy mentioned that the city did not believe that there was enough room to build both pickleball courts and a dog park, so the next “off-leash” dog park will be located further south, off Thompson Peak Road. There is a 4.6 million budget for the dog park. For those of you interested in the dog park, Murphy said that nothing is cast in stone right now and that there will be more public meetings to discuss the subject.

As things always seem to work with the government, packed around the pork-barrel projects like Sevano are also a lot of old maintenance items the city hasn’t had the wherewithal to handle with past budgets. Ultimately, if you want the city to participate in creating Scottsdale North’s first park, this bond has to pass. So, even if you don’t want to pay for the other $313 million worth of items earmarked for funding from the bond, please be sure to check your mailbox this month – swallow hard – and then VOTE NOVEMBER 5TH!

About Scott Gaertner

Scott Gaertner

Scott Gaertner

Since 1984 Scott’s real estate career has always been committed to exceptional results and his business philosophy has always been “If you want extraordinary results, find out what the ordinary do – and then don’t do it!” Consequently his career has been a trail of astonishing successes created from ground-breaking methods.

His first year in real estate selling new homes for a large builder, Scott sold 101 homes and became the first recipient of the Arizona Homebuilders Association’s “Most Net Units Sold Award.” The Association created the award that year because they said nobody had ever heard of that many homes being sold in one year before! Later, due to his continued successes, he became the first recipient of the Homebuilder’s Association’s “Lifetime Achievement Award.”

In the resale home business, Scott continued his innovative trends by opening Scottsdale’s first real estate company devoted solely to representing real estate buyers. This pioneering event in 1990 was long before most had ever heard of the term “buyer’s agency” or considered buyer representation. After years of teaching classes and bringing much needed media exposure to the cause, buyer’s agency has become the accepted standard of practice. That cause complete, Scott moved on to a more traditional role with Keller Williams Northeast Realty. But of course, not in an ordinary way . . .

Shunning the conventional wisdom in resale real estate that says “Specialize in everything!” Scott adopted one small corner of the Scottsdale market to call his own. Using typically unconventional marketing methods and strategies, he became the dominant agent in one zip code of Scottsdale North. Dominant not only in numbers of sales, but in pricing successes for his clients.

By 2018, Scott’s techniques have proven so successful that he is now guaranteeing his results, and expanding his business to a much larger market in the North Valley.