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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Concerned about city center

Editor:

In a recent newspaper, it states Litchfield Park is moving forward with its city center project. It will feature, “400,000 square feet of high-end retail, restaurant, office and residential space.”

My concerns are two of the most recent restaurants built in Litchfield Park are another Denny’s and another Wendy’s. To Mayor Thomas Schoaf, I ask, is there a way the Litchfield Park city planner and city manager be removed from the decision-making process when deciding on the restaurants and the building of the Litchfield Park city center as whole?

They’ve shown poor and unimaginative decision making to date and you and your staff have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the building of the city center. Litchfield Park is one of the most unique cities in Arizona. You can make it resemble more like Scottsdale or Arcadia, or you can make it resemble another Laveen. The decision and opportunity are yours. Please don’t turn it into just another city with high-density condominiums and traffic problems.

The newspaper also states Litchfield Park is going to build three parking decks. Is that 2021 speak for parking garages? And are three parking garages really necessary in such a small area? You’re already putting in 750 ground-level spaces. You’re going to turn Litchfield Park into Litchfield Park-ing spot. Good God, how many condos do you plan on building?

It also states you’re getting ready to sell six parcels to private developers in 2022 and 2023. My guess is you still must approve whether they put in another Walgreens or Walmart. Correct? My hope is you’ll make those decisions with the same ferocity you make when you deny residents from putting a pergola in their own backyard.

Greg Andrews Litchfield Park SHELTON’S OPINION — mikesheltoncartoons.com

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Let’s hope for a championship season

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ

West Valley View Columnist

It has been 53 seasons, and never have the Phoenix Suns won an NBA championship. Maybe that sounds not so awful if you’re a Cardinals football fan and your last title dates to 1947, when the team played in Chicago.

But no NBA team has toiled longer, ever, without winning a single title.

But now comes these 2021 Suns, with a chance to set all that right.

I do hope so — for this Valley’s sake, and for all the Suns fans I call friends. I’m talking about guys like my buddy Louie, a season ticket holder dating back to the Madhouse on McDowell.

If Louie had a choice between missing a Suns game or missing a leg, I’m pretty sure he’d be on Amazon tomorrow searching for “single leg pants” and a prosthetic limb.

Then there’s Troy, a genius with a video camera who these days likes to post a yellowed snapshot from his childhood, him in an ancient Suns jersey and headband, skinny arms held aloft in the classic jump-shooter’s pose.

Each new post contains a caption written in the third person, grown man Troy talking to little boy Troy. The most recent:

“Western Conference Champions!!! Four more to go until that 48-year-old dream comes true, little self. Four more. @suns #suns #rallythevalley”

Is it sweet? Yes. Strange? Not at all once you learn that Troy’s 10-year-old son is named Nash, presumably — with apologies to Chris Paul — after the best point guard ever to wear purple.

This team has always owned a hunk of the Valley’s heart, though Robert Sarver, the head Sun, for years tested the community’s collective patience.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, it was Sarver’s incompetence that led me to fall off the Suns’ bandwagon back around 2012. First, I gave up my season tickets, then I tuned out the great Al McCoy. Even now, my rooting interest in this team is more by proxy: I enjoy seeing my friends full of joy.

Like Stephen, a giant of a man, an elected leader respected for his smarts and heart, who lately has traded in business suits and bolo ties for an assortment of Suns T-shirts, jerseys and Nike high tops.

His statement after the series clincher over the Los Angeles Clippers? An image of Chris Paul in the arms of head coach Monte Williams. The caption: “No words needed!”

Some things words cannot accurately depict, like the emotional bond between a team and its hometown.

Little else explains why 300,000 people — 1 out of 10 residents of the Phoenix metropolitan area — showed up Downtown on Saturday, June 26, 1993, for a parade to celebrate the Suns after their Finals loss in six games to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

Dan Majerle, a beloved member of that Suns squad, nailed it in a 2018 interview celebrating the team’s 50th anniversary.

“We had such a great team,” Thunder Dan explained.

“Honestly, my thought was, this is unbelievable; we’ll be back next year. We’ll be back the next two or three years. … You enjoy it thinking this is unbelievable; we’re gonna do it again.”

The basketball gods are fickle in the extreme. Again took 28 years to arrive.

Now it’s here. Let us hope the next time Phoenix parades, it’s to honor a champion.

David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com

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WEST VALLEY VIEW NEWS | JULY 7, 2021

Border disorder: Political theater of the absurd

BY J.D. HAYWORTH

West Valley View Columnist

Before the invention of motion pictures, television or the internet, there was theater.

Now, courtesy of the aforementioned technological innovations, we are subjected to ceaseless offerings from a 21st century “Theater of the Absurd.” The most ambitious current production costs billions — “Arsenic and Old Lace,” it ain’t. It’s “The Arsenic of Amnesty.”

It’s tempting to outline the plot like a program description from a tattered copy of TV Guide proves overwhelming.

An aging and confused chief executive remains remarkably focused on one final objective: the erasure of America’s southern border. Following the orders of his puppet master and with the encouragement of madam vice, this twisted trio schemes to import millions of illegals, put them on the federal dole and voter rolls, and seize total political control. Will the United States survive?

Chief executive: Joe Biden. Puppet master: Barack Obama. Madam vice: Kamala Harris. Program runs continuously on ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBCPBS.

The only satire above is the parody of the TV Guide program note. Welcome to Reality TV on steroids. By the way, the “acting” is horrendous.

On Kamala’s June 8 visit to Mexico, she said she was there to explore “root causes” of illegal immigration.

Madam vice president, did you forget yourself and your political allies?

The primary “root cause” is the collective ambition of Democrat politicians to “bring in the vote,” by short-circuiting the process of attaining citizenship, adding millions of new voters to the rolls. It would create a huge new underclass dependent on entitlements and inclined to vote for the expansion of those benefits. Simply stated, it would ensure leftist dominance of the political process in the United States for as long as the nation endures. Such a cynical path to power.

But still proving powerful to the veep and her advisers is someone now “out of power.” When Donald Trump said he’d visit the southern border on June 30, Kamala Harris hurriedly announced a trip to El Paso — 92 days after President Biden named the vice president as his “border czar.”

That June 25 journey to Texas was not a pleasant one for Ms. Harris. She was greeted by protestors and criticized by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who said he invited her numerous times to his district, which includes portions of the Rio Grande, where illegals are flooding into the United States. The Lone Star legislator later tried to temper his criticism by calling her visit a “first step.”

Because the steps Harris took were principally around the El Paso International Airport rather than directly at the border, she employed a principle of political theater: It’s easier to attack than explain. Accordingly, she trained her rhetorical fire on Trump.

“It was here in El Paso that the previous administration’s child separation policy was unveiled,” Harris claimed. She added that the “remain in Mexico policy” forced asylum seekers to stay south of the border while their claims were arbitrated.

Left unsaid was the reality of the de facto child separation policies of the Biden administration, where parents see a lack of border enforcement and decide to send their kids northward, “chaperoned” by human traffickers.

Left unanswered was the implication that it is preferable to allow asylum seekers to enter the United States while their status is determined. Doesn’t that simply encourage illegality?

Left undefined was this assertion by Vice President Harris: “There’s still much more work to be done, but we’ve made progress.”

If “progress” is defined by encouraging this foreign invasion, surrendering our national sovereignty, and corrupting our constitutional republic, then Ms. Harris may be right.

And the Hollywood “Creative Class,” now financed by he communist Chinese, can work on a huge production: “Death of a Nation.” In Mandarin, with Spanish subtitles.