Food Fight!
There are few things more abhorrent than a truly regressive tax. Wikipedia: In terms of individual income and wealth, a regressive tax imposes a greater burden (relative to resources) on the poor than on the rich — there is an inverse relationship between the tax rate and the taxpayer’s ability to pay as measured by >> Read More…
Celebrating Our Identity
What makes a great city? There are lots of ways to address this question. At this time, the My Plan Phoenix Leadership Committee is grappling with this question and its variants. The committee is working on the General Plan for the entire City of Phoenix. This process will take quite a while. We have had >> Read More…
It’s Election Time: Do You Care?
There is no escaping it: District 8 is in an election. The candidates are sending out emails, Facebooking and Tweeting. They are showing up in places where they have never been before and saying things they might never have said just a few months ago. The door knocking has started and the grand announcements about >> Read More…
Lessons From Parking
You can learn a lot about life from studying how we park our cars. I have had the opportunity in the last few months of working for my charming and resourceful wife, Pat Christofolo, or as I affectionately call her, Princess of the Groves, or simply, the Boss. She owns The Farm at South Mountain. >> Read More…
The Farm’s SM Legacy
Before coming to Phoenix I lived in a place in Western New York called Caneadea. The township of Caneadea is about 36 square miles and only about 3,000 residents lived in that area. There are very few paved roads. In winter, the ditch was only a blink away and in summer the dust rose up >> Read More…
Autumn in Southside
Even though summer keeps trying to fight back, autumn has come to the Southside. Gardens are already showing rows of green seedlings. Citrus and Pecan trees are laden with fruit. Pomegranates are on their way to being red by Christmas. This is the season when municipalities, civic organizations, churches and many of our friends and >> Read More…
There are many seasons in desert gardening. There are two 90-day seasons: hot-to-cold and cold-to-hot versions. A couple of 60-day seasons and even a 45-day season in the dead of winter. From “Desert Gardening” by George Brookbank: “September and October are like a second springtime. Start another crop of corn, beans and squash. Your tomato >> Read More…
Eternal Spring on Broadway Road
It is August in the Southside. The humidity and dust from our annual monsoon season has given us cooler days and stickier nights. Any vegetation that has survived the searing heat of June and July is actually starting to green up and even bloom. My little patch of green I call a lawn, has turned >> Read More…
Accountability Missing From Elected Officials
At one time in my life, I worked for a large homebuilder. They would spend a rather fabulous amount of money on advertising/marketing. They would usually employ a marketing firm to help them spend their money. The sales people would be quizzed to some extent by the marketing people and if our answers agreed with >> Read More…
Don’t Tolerate Division in Community
There is a funny thing about small towns: sometimes they can be the most supportive places you can imagine, giving individuals a sense of identity, deep roots and often plenty of encouragement. And then there is something else that happens in small towns. With a little help from Wikipedia and a bit of creative license >> Read More…
