January 29, 2020 • Vol. 18, No. 8
POSTAL PATRON CAVE CREEK
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Anthem | Black Canyon City | Carefree | Cave Creek | Desert Hills | New River| North Phoenix | Tramonto | Peoria
UP & AWAY...
Hot air balloons prepare for takeoff near Carefree Highway and 32nd Street.
Cave Creek Town Council passes revisions to sign ordinances
Photo by Tracy Demetropolis
CAVE CREEK – After much discussion, public input, revision and legal advice, the Cave Creek Town Council passed updates to the Town’s sign regulations on January 21. The new regulations won’t go into effect until February 20. The revisions to the sign ordinance were prompted by the Supreme Court Case “Reed vs. the Town of Gilbert,” which ruled that regulating signs based on the content was a violation of free speech. In the wake of this ruling, municipalities across the United States were obliged to take a comprehensive look at their sign ordinances to ensure they were compliant, including Cave Creek.
The Cave Creek Planning Department and Commission along with council members worked on the sign ordinance revisions for approximately 18 months; trying to strike a balance between creating legally sound revisions that also appeased residents and businesses. The Cave Creek Planning Department will be reaching out to businesses to discuss the updated sign regulations before they go into effect next month. Here is the breakdown for what the code revisions mean for Cave Creek merchants.
ORDINANCES continued on page 17
Advocates: EPA’s new clean-water rules hit Arizona, Southwest hardest BY JESSICA MYERS CRONKITE NEWS
WASHINGTON – Cleanwater rules unveiled Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency could remove the vast majority of Arizona’s waterways from federal oversight, a change environmentalists call bad news in a region where water is “super precious.” But Trump administration officials hailed the “common sense” changes to the Clean Water Act that they say will no longer cover the intermittent streams and wetlands that meant “constant litigation and uncertainty” for landowners. The new rule
will apply only to linked, freeflowing waterways. “Thanks to our new rule, our nation’s farmers, ranchers, developers, manufacturers and other landowners can finally refocus on providing the food, shelter and other commodities that Americans rely on every day,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Thursday. “Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys and consultants to determine whether waters on their own land fall under the control of the federal government,” he said during a conference call to unveil the new rules.
While farmers may save legal fees under the new Navigable Waters Protection Rule, the government likely will not. “We’ll absolutely be fighting it in court,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, who said the new rule will be one of President Donald Trump’s “ugliest legacies.” “This sickening gift to polluters will allow wetlands, streams and rivers across a vast stretch of America to be obliterated with pollution,” Hartl said in a prepared statement. Critics said the impact will be particularly strong in states
MARICOPA COUNTY:
ARIZONA:
Message from Supervisor Bill Gates
The state ranks low on highway safety
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The San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona is one of the waterways in the state that environmental groups fear will no longer be protected by the federal Clean Water Act if a Trump administration proposed change to the rule is allowed to go through. Photo by Eric Vondy/Creative Commons
like Arizona, where a 2008 EPA study said 94% of the waterways are ephemeral and intermittent – exactly the sort of waterways
FINANCE:
that will be exempt from federal regulation under the new rule.
CLEAN WATER continued on page 14
OTHER :
Key changes to 2019 tax returns
• Bluhm Column
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• Pet of the Week
• Arts Column
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