FREE SUBSCRIPTION
Housing market re-set / RE.1
@AhwatukeeFN |
@AhwatukeeFN
INSIDE
This Week
NEWS ............................... 21 Upper Canyon zoning change sails through City Council
COMMUNITY.............. 31 Ahwatukee Community Garden aims to regroup.
GET OUT ....................... 45 Unique Underground Railroad musical coming to EV.
COMMUNITY...................... 30 BUSINESS .......................... 36 OPINION .............................. 41 SPORTS ............................... 43 GETOUT............................... 46 CLASSIFIEDS ...................... 49
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
www.ahwatukee.com
Soaring 911 calls, absences slamming Phoenix Fire BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
W
hether they need firefighters or an ambulance, Phoenix residents and business owners on average are waiting nearly twice the amount of time that national standards set for a response. Hammered by a soaring demand, staffing shortages and an insufficient number of fire stations, the Phoenix Fire Department’s fire engines, ladder trucks and ambulances on av-
erage take almost nine minutes to arrive at the scene 90% of the time. The National Fire Protection Association for acceptable response times to fires is 5 minutes and 20 seconds or less in 90% of calls for service, less than 5 minutes 90% of the time for ambulances. In laying out the crisis in grim detail before City Council on Oct. 12, Fire Chief Mike Duran III and Assistant Fire Chief Tim Kreis didn’t mince words about the seriousness of their department’s plight – or the slim prospects for
a quick or easy solution. “Our biggest challenge associated with our response times is fire companies are just too busy,” Kreis said, explaining fire stations are “running too many calls and because they are running too many calls, they’re running out of service and that’s having a cascading impact on our system.” City Manager Jeff Barton earlier told Council in a memo, “Two key factors in managing re-
Continuing a mission $2M sanction on Lakes course owner sought
see FIRE page 23
BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
T
he Ahwatukee Lakes Golf Course may finally be fully reopened nine years after owner Wilson Gee and his partners closed it, but the two homeowners who waged an eight-year legal battle to have that done want the last word in the fight. And it’s an expensive one. On their behalf, attorney Tim Barnes last week asked a Superior Court judge to order ALCR to pay a $2 million “coercive sanction, to ensure compliance and redress the damage to plaintiffs and their community.” The $2 million sanction was set in November 2020 by Superior Court Judge Theodore Cam-
see LAKES page 8
It’s been 12 years since John and Kay West sold their Ahwatukee home and all their possessions to go to African to minister to poor people in the country once known as Swaziland and now called Eswatini. Since their return after seven years in Africa, they still are continuing that mission, as you can read on page 25. (David Minton/AFN Staff Photographer)
The latest breaking news and top local stories in Ahwatukee!
www.Ahwatukee.com .com
JUST A CLICK AWAY