A lot has changed since Linda Milhaven joined the Scottsdale City Council 12 years ago.
“McDowell Road was empty car dealerships that we knew weren’t going to come back,” she recalled. “SkySong was just one building and mostly a dirt lot. There was still a lot of controversy about whether or not that was a good investment. There were parts of downtown that were designated slum and blight.
“Sales tax revenue in the downtown had been declining for years. We were in the middle of the Great Recession. We hadn’t hit bottom yet and didn’t know how bad it was going to get. There were a lot of challenges in 2011, when I got elected.”
As she steps down from her seat because of term limits, Milhaven has seen those challenges melt away.
“We came through the Great Recession pretty strong,” she said. “We were able to maintain city services and make cuts so the citizens didn’t feel the impact. We got lots of new people living down on McDowell Road, so no more empty car dealerships.”
She ticks off other changes: “SkySong is almost complete now … We’ve seen a lot of investment in our downtown. …Some of the downtown businesses are saying that they are having some of their best years ever because of the new residents that are here.”
Milhaven can’t help but feel a pang of regret that her ride in City Hall has come to an end.
“I’m going to miss it,” she said.
She was a banker for 40 years before retiring with Wells Fargo and chuckles at the changes she saw in her career.
“I started working for a bank and with all the mergers and acquisitions, I sat in the same chair and they kept changing the sign on the door,” she said.
Stepping on the council dais 12 years ago was a smooth transition, she said.
“I had been pretty active in the community,” she said. “I had been the chair of the chamber of commerce. I was the chair of what’s now Scottsdale Arts. I had been on the Scottsdale Industrial Development Authority, which is one of the city boards, for 12 years.
“I was on lots of different committees and things, so over the years I would come down to city council to advocate for the issues that were important to me.”
She advocated on behalf of the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce on local business concerns, then for the arts.
“I also did Scottsdale Leadership – gosh it’s almost 30 years ago now,” she recalled. “I felt pretty well informed about what was going on and how things worked but I think no matter how involved you are, there’s always more to learn.”
Some of those lessons where pleasant surprises.
“When I first got elected I expected disagreements to be contentious but what I found was, folks were pretty respectful and we could agree to disagree,” she said. “Some may have argued more passionately than others but we had pretty healthy discussions.”
Some of that has changed, though.
“Folks have weaponized Nextdoor and social media platforms to disseminate misinformation and launch personal attacks,” she said. “I think that is a really sad thing to see over the last 12 years.”
The trick is to keep things in perspective, Milhaven said.
“One of the first candidate forums I went to when I ran the first time was a group that clearly was not very friendly toward the chamber or the business community. They asked a question and were like, ‘You were involved with the chamber?!’ as if they were accusing me of something nefarious.
“I said yes, I was very proud. This is what I did and how long I served. But it was clear it wasn’t a crowd that saw value in that so afterward I turned to one of the other candidates that he and I typically agreed on stuff and I said, ‘Well, I guess they’re not going to vote for us,” and he said, ‘Well you don’t need everyone, you just need most everyone.’”
Once in office, she found keeping campaign promises challenging at times.
“You run and say ‘here’s what I want to do for our community’ and then you show up at a meeting and people fill the Kiva and they go to the podium and ask you not to do what you said you were going to do when you ran for office.
“You want to listen to people but then what do you do? That’s not what I campaigned on and that wasn’t what my vision was. At the end of the day you have to do what you promised in the campaign.”
She recalled what onetime council member Dennis Robbins told her: “You have to remember, Linda, there are 240,000 people sitting at home having dinner trusting that we’re going to make the right decision.
“You have to realize as an elected official, we’re never going to agree on everything. People are passionate about their homes, their neighborhood and their community and at the end of the day you have to be true to what you said you wanted to do.”
There’s another side to that too.
“Sometimes people come down and talk at the podium and they’ll be very angry and one of things I remind myself is we need to be grateful that we live in a country where someone can come down here and stand here and tell their government exactly what they think without fear of retribution,” she said.
During her first two terms, most other council members were business-minded people interested in diversifying and strengthening the economy, Milhaven said.
“We have the lowest tax rates in the region because we have a robust economy here because over the years we’ve worked really hard to diversify our economy,” she said.
She particularly enjoyed working with former council members Virginia Korte, Suzanne Klapp and David Smith as well as former Mayor Jim Lane.
“It wasn’t that we sat around and conferred with each other,” Milhaven said. “It was just because we were all business-minded people, we all came to the same decisions. It wasn’t like we were in lock step.”
Development has been one of the biggest issues since Milhaven has been on council.
“I think it’s been an issue for the history of our community,” she said. “People tell me stories about when McCormick Ranch was zoned in the early 70s. Folks were concerned that McCormick Ranch was going to ruin the Western character of our community and now it’s considered a gem of a neighborhood.”
She’s proud of the development that has gone up during her tenure.
The Broadstone Apartments, development along McDowell Road, and the Scottsdale Quarter were all important projects that brought vibrancy and vitality to those areas, she said. And she can’t wait to see what Museum Square will look like when it’s built out.
But she understands that not everybody feels that way.
“I think there’s always been people who say, ‘I like everything just as it is, don’t change anything,’ and then there’s other people who understand if you do nothing, the world changes around you and you don’t have the opportunity to influence what that change looks like.”
There have other accomplishments by council over the past 12 years: passing the city’s non-discrimination ordinance, renegotiating the contract with the Giants to keep Spring Training in Scottsdale, renovating the TPC golf course, renegotiating the city’s contract with the PGA.
Milhaven said she’s not going away.
One thing she would like to work on is building an education center for the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. She thinks the issue may not have been entirely settled with the passage of proposition 420, which precludes construction in the Preserve.
“Maybe it can be built someplace else but be close enough that it can still serve to help … educate people about the Preserve. I still think it’s a good idea.”
But just how far her activism will take her is still a mystery.
She won’t confirm or deny rumors that she is going to make a run for mayor in 2024 – except to say, “I would consider it.”
