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An edition of the East Valley Tribune
Inside This Week
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Bickering council passes Gilbert’s new budget BY CECILIA CHAN GSN Managing Editor
NEWS............................ 6 Higley Unified Superintendent Dr. Dawn Foley calls it quits.
COMMUNITY............ 22 East Valley animal shelter at mall needs new kennels.
BUSINESS.................. 24 Get on board the Slumber Shack. COMMUNITY............................. 22 BUSINESS...................................24 SPORTS.......................................26 GET OUT...................................... 27 CLASSIFIEDS.............................29
Sunday, June 11, 2023
G
ilbert Council last week approved a slightly lower secondary property tax and a $2-billion spending plan with 43 new hires for the fiscal year beginning July 1 – but not without some bickering between the new and veteran members. The budget comprises $1.4 billion in capital projects such as street and water system improvements and barely squeaked by passage due to opposition from the three new council members.
“I’ve struggled with this because this is a $2-billion budget,” Councilwoman Bobbi Buchli said. “I’ve been a council member for about five months now. “I can’t justify in my heart to vote for a budget in this amount that I’ve had no input on and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. It’s probably fine.” Councilmen Jim Torgeson and Chuck Bongiovanni, who also took their seats in January, said they could not support a budget that they had no hand in shaping. Torgeson said the year-long budget process doesn’t lend itself to full participation
for the council. “There’re things where I look, some things that I feel are wrong,” he said. “And as a policy maker I’m still supposed to approve this. My problem with this budget is that I’ve had zero impact and I hate to make it about me but it’s really not about me. “It’s about spending $2.049 billion for the residents of this town and I am not in-depth enough and have had no influence on how they’re represented in this process.” Bongiovanni complimented staff for get-
see COUNCIL page 11
Gilbert woman’s path from surgery room to comic stage BY CECILIA CHAN GSN Managing Editor
D
r. Lynette Charity has gone from putting people to sleep in the operating room to tickling their funny bones while on stage. The 71-year-old Gilbert resident recently bested other amateur comedians in an elimination contest for “Funniest Comic in the Valley” hosted by Cactus Jack’s Bar & Grill in Ahwatukee and now moves on to the final round. That round is at 7 p.m. July 11 at Cactus Jack’s, 4747 E. Elliot Road, Ahwatukee. “Someone asked me, ‘How in the world do you go from that to that?” Charity said. “Honestly, I was feeling
As a retired anesthesiologist, 71-year-old Gilbert resident Dr. Lynette Charity has embraced comedy in her second life. (Special to GSN)
pretty depressed. When I turned 60, I’d been working as an anesthesiologist since I was 27. “It was a long time and it wasn’t giving me the same energy, doing the same thing over and over again – sort of got into a rut.” Charity said in her sixth decade of life, she had an epiphany – she was getting older and needed something but she was not quite sure what it was. “I thought about it for a little bit,” she said, finally recalling that a patient once remarked how funny she was. She said she often used humor on her younger patients who “needed someone who was less stoic.”
see COMIC page 8