The more Neale Perl attempts to assure the arts community that things are under control at the Cultural Council --- the worse it gets, along with his ability to manage the obvious mayhem.
How bad is it? Several of those in the arts community have started referring to the Cultural Council, whose headquarters is on the Civic Center Mall, as the "Mess on the Mall."
Truer words were never spoken.
Cory Baker, the Director of the Center for the Performing Arts, was fired Wednesday. The news release announcing Baker's sudden departure wasn't issued until Friday - and principals of the Cultural Council, including the Board of Trustees, didn't receive it until Friday evening.
The official announcement started by saying: "Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts Assistant Director Ally Haynes-Hamblen has been appointed interim director. She begins her new responsibilities immediately, taking over from Director Cory Baker, who left the organization on June 3."
Baker hadn't just "left." She was given the heave-ho.
It was exactly this time last month that Perl was defending his plan for reorganizing the Cultural Council in the face of rumors that people's jobs were in jeopardy. He told the New Times arts reporter: "We're not looking to eliminate any positions."
He didn't, however, say anything about eliminating any people.
According to Cultural Council staff members, the only thing lower than ticket sales at the Center for the Performing Arts, down about $500,000 for the year, is the organization's morale - which they say has returned to the low level of the Bill Banchs' era.
Just as bad is the division that insiders say is plaguing the Board of Trustees. There are apparently two camps on the esteemed advisory board: Those who support Perl, because they think the arts organization should be run like a business - and those who distrust Perl, because they feel the organization should be more focused on art than business.
Even some Perl backers are starting to doubt his management abilities after several months of frequent public relations faux pas. And the absolute worst thing that's beginning to emerge for the Cultural Council is that its support on the City Council is eroding. If that erosion continues at its current rate, the organization runs the risk of putting its relationship with the city in peril.
Personalities and institutional dysfunction aside, some of the most influential members of the Scottsdale arts community have long wondered if the structure of the Cultural Council is the real culprit. Few if any cities in the country have an umbrella organization such as the Cultural Council that's responsible for managing such a diverse array of art entities like the Center for the Performing Arts, Public Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
The Cultural Council has had a public-private partnership with the city for almost 30 years. It started modestly with managing the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Today, it has grown into a full-fledged arts bureaucracy. Its identity is complicated, its image is confusing and its brand is baffling.
The Cultural Council has been operating on institutional inertia for years - perhaps it's time to hit the reset button on how the promotion of arts and culture in our community is managed.
Rural/Metro's Poor Performance Impacting Company's Future.
In the medical transportation business, time is money - which is one of the reasons Rural/Metro is on the verge of going belly-up.
Hospitals, assisted living centers and specialized treatment facilities count on medical transport companies to provide their patients with "non-emergency" transportation. Being on time and staying on schedule are critical - because delivering efficient services impacts health care providers' bottom line and the cost of care for their patients.
For medical transport companies, it boils down to being dependable.
According to administrators at HonorHealth (until recently known as Scottsdale Healthcare), Rural/Metro's subsidiaries that provide non-emergency transportation for HonorHealth's five hospitals and primary service facilities are growing increasingly undependable. One manager close to coordinating non-emergency services for one of Honor's hospitals recently joked about Rural/Metro: "These guys are going to be late for their own funerals."
Sources say that Rural/Metro transport affiliates are often between 30 to 45 minutes late in showing up to transport patients to their appointments. On some occasions it's even worse. That kind of tardiness sets off a chain reaction within the health care system that creates a lot of angst for both health care providers and patients.
"The ripple effect causes unnecessary problems we're forced to manage when we could and should be doing something more productive for our patients," said a veteran nurse.
Many readers are probably familiar with our city's long and politically strained relationship with Rural/Metro that dates back more than 60 years.
Rural/Metro was established by Scottsdale icon Lou Witzeman in 1948 and, because our city didn't have a fire department, Lou sold fire protection services directly to property owners. Eventually the city contracted with Rural/Metro to provide fire service to citizens of Scottsdale. The agreement between the city and Rural/Metro continued until 2005 when the City of Scottsdale started its own fire department.
Rural/Metro got into the ambulance business in 1969, and provided the city with emergency and non-emergency transport services until 2006 when the city awarded a contract to a new company called PMT Ambulance. PMT beat out Rural/Metro's ambulance subsidiary, Southwest Ambulance, for a five-year contract that included options for three two-year contract extensions.
PMT was purchased by Rural/Metro in 2012, along with the rights to provide services to Scottsdale.
Now, back to today ...
Because of their involvement with all types of emergency situations, HonorHealth management is familiar with the responsiveness of Rural/Metro's emergency services provider for Scottsdale, PMT Ambulance ... and it's not good. In fact three months ago, after the City Council approved the final contract extension to PMT through February 2017, things started going to hell.
The same sources say that for three straight months PMT has exceeded the average maximum response time allowed in the contract. Citing penalties clearly outlined in the contract, the city can levy fines against PMT. It's unclear if the city has chosen to do so, or if the city intends to let the company slide.
In addition ... due to the series of their substandard response times, PMT may also be in breach of the contract.
We're witnessing the tragic final chapter in the history of Rural/Metro.
The citizens of Scottsdale will have had a front row seat for the amazing rise and dramatic fall of a great company that our community was once proud to say called Scottsdale home.
Neighbors Help Keep Door Open To Make Tonalea Charter School.
When we left off, readers learned that the neighborhood surrounding the closed Tonalea Elementary School had gotten what they asked for: No Scottsdale Unified School District Resource Center.
And one group is tickled pink about it.
Respect Our Scottsdale Students (ROSS) is a group of education activists whose mission is murky. It's hard to determine if ROSS is actually an education watchdog or just on a witch hunt to unseat Superintendent David Peterson. Or maybe a little bit of both.
Whatever the case ... the group recently posted this bizarre statement on their Face Book page: "Let's be honest - and candid. We're in a Love/Hate relationship with the District. We're the abused partner in the relationship. But part of the reason we are angry is that our abusive partner fails to serve our needs for reasons not completely within its control. Let there be no mistake. We are abused."
This sounds like a cry for help.
Abused or not, the people at ROSS haven't just inserted themselves into the Tonalea turmoil, they've become one of the primary voices in the vitriol.
"If SUSD cannot operate a school on that property successfully, then lease it to a Charter or Private school," the group recently posted. "Many of them are begging for space in Scottsdale. It is more than a bit disingenuous to try to shove something into Tonalea just to block other schools from using the property. MAKE TONALEA A SCHOOL!"
That statement is revealing. In fact some are saying it confirms that ROSS is an advocacy organization for Charter Schools, and, as such, is an adversary of public schools. Hence, their harsh criticism of virtually every decision made by SUSD and each move by Superintendent Peterson.
Earlier this week, ROSS pleaded with people to "Send all parents the link to every Charter (school) in Scottsdale so we can get out of this asylum asap."
ROSS has issues ... and, sadly, not just ones about education.
The group, actually more like a cult, certainly has no issue with what Governor Doug Ducey wants to do to our public education system. In his first State of the State address, the new governor said he wants to create the "Arizona Public School Achievement District" through which Charter Schools could apply to use unoccupied classrooms in our public schools. That could easily mean Tonalea.
Furthermore, Governor Ducey proposes allowing the state to broker and guarantee construction loans for Charter Schools. That move would save Charter Schools millions of dollars in loans, which, he says, could then be invested in private school classrooms.
That's the principal reason why ROSS is so active in assuring nothing is done with Tonalea Elementary School other than keeping it a school - especially if that means converting it into a Charter School.
ROSS has a political crush on SUSD Board member Pam Kirby, who has turned into the organization's go-to gal on the Governing Board. Kirby, the only member of the Board who was reluctant to support the successful override campaign last fall, is calling for a full-scale investigation into the former agreement between SUSD and past Board member Denny Brown to turn Tonalea into a Resource Center. That agreement was dissolved last week.
"The integrity and credibility of SUSD leadership is being questioned and an independent investigation might possibly be the only way to rebuild trust and confidence in SUSD," Kirby said.
A meeting of the Board to consider Kirby's request will take place at 11AM today at the SUSD Education Center.
Meanwhile ... the school sits empty, a former shell of itself. No more laughter or life. Only the quiet decay of a once vibrant place now caught in the middle of an unfortunate political battle.
Tonalea Neighbors Get What They Asked For.
Well, that didn't take long ... only halfway through the first month of the new year and we already have our first "conspiracy" of 2015.
Who would have thought? It's a conspiracy theory that clouds the future of a closed school: The original Tonalea Elementary School at 68th and Oak Streets.
A couple of weeks ago, residents of the South Scottsdale Tonalea neighborhood learned the Scottsdale Unified School District had arranged for Denny Brown, who recently retired from the SUSD Governing Board, to turn part of the shuttered school into a Resource Center. The 56-year-old elementary school was closed last year because it was structurally unsafe and had a shrinking enrollment. So students and teachers were moved down the street across from Coronado High School at Oak and Miller.
The agreement between the School District and Brown was for the facility to be used "temporarily" by some social service agencies until the District figured out what to do with the school. According to Brown, a South Scottsdale resident, several of the organizations that expressed interest in using Tonalea were First Teeth First, Scottsdale Prevention Institute, Women, Infant and Children (WIC) and Scottsdale Training and Rehabilitation Services (STARS). The City of Scottsdale also considered using the school as a satellite location to help deliver services to where and to whom they were needed most.
What initially sounded like a perfect way to repurpose an abandoned school building, at least in the short-term, quickly became a neighborhood melodrama. The political theater is being fueled by confusing stories and contentious scenarios cooked up by some of our community's usual suspects.
People of all ages jammed into the District's Education Center auditorium last week. It felt like traveling in steerage-class on a cut-rate cruise line. Those, and there weren't many, who didn't know any better would have come away thinking that Brown was the biggest scoundrel who ever worked for SUSD or set foot in South Scottsdale.
"Ugly" was one of many four-letter words that described their diatribe.
Those who spoke the loudest and longest identified themselves as living in the Tonalea neighborhood that surrounds the shut down school. Each one of them proudly paraded in front of the five-member Governing Board, proclaiming how long they had lived in the neighborhood before proceeding to dump on Brown. They were 20, 30 even 40-year residents of the neighborhood. And almost everyone of them said they opposed "Denny Brown's food bank."
Food bank?
Yes, in December Brown was guilty of arranging to use Tonalea as a distribution center to make sure down-and-out families got food to get them through the holidays. And he also used the school as a staging area for needy children to receive Christmas presents. But that was it. Brown says he never intended to convert Tonalea into a food bank ... sperm bank or any other kind of bank.
Tonalea residents are holding out hope that students and teachers will return to the school sometime soon. But they shouldn't hold their collective breath - because the District estimates it will take $13 million to totally restore the school. Neighbors are also ignoring that Tonalea was one of three elementary schools in South Scottsdale that was operating at less than 55% capacity before it was closed.
Unfortunately, chronic critics like Edmond Richard cling to the assumption that Tonalea will rise from the ashes. In fact he recently wrote: "During the closure of that location (Tonalea), there was an implied promise to reopen and rebuild the school for the community and children."
An "implied promise," really? Obviously Mr. Richard isn't a product of the Scottsdale education system.
After all the heat from the neighborhood and other conspiracists, the School District and Brown backed away from turning Tonalea into a Resource Center. The two parties tore up their contract that leased a portion of Tonalea to Brown for $1.00. (That's not a typo.) Brown wasn't being paid one red cent. And this entire affair wasn't a conspiracy between SUSD and Brown to run a scam on a South Scottsdale neighborhood as some paranoid people insinuated.
If SUSD and Denny Brown had the opportunity to do it over again, they would probably do it differently. But they're not going to get that chance.
The Tonalea neighbors got what they wanted. They still have an empty school that looks like a docked aircraft carrier sitting in the middle of their neighborhood. For now, they believe it's their spoils of war. Let's see what they say next year and the year after that when they watch the buildings slowly but surely deteriorate and become a poor reflection on their neighborhood ... not to mention their property values.
This hasn't been a conspiracy ... nor a scandal or a scam.
It has been a classic case of "be careful what you wish for."
To Be Continued