Audio By Carbonatix
Zev Bufman’s amphitheatre may be yesterday’s news, but fallout from the nuking it suffered in north Phoenix is still raining on Councilman Bill Parks.
Come next election day, Parks likely will face opposition from at least one candidate from the ranks of people he angered by supporting the project. Amphitheatre opponents also say they are continuing their push for a kneecapping ballot initiative first dreamed up as a weapon against City Hall.
Parks, to do a quick recap, was one of two city people whose early support fueled the plan to build an amphitheatre and lease it to the Miami-based impresario. The other was Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard. Parks says he thought the project had the support of district residents as well.
“I thought I had made contact with the community on this,” he recalls. “As you know, it had the support of several community groups, such as the community council and the Paradise Valley Village Committee.”
In fact, Parks liked the amphitheatre so much that he continued lobbying hard in its favor long after his constituents near the proposed site started roaring in opposition. In the waning days before the council capitulated and unanimously withdrew the project, City Hall insiders say, Parks scurried among fellow councilmembers twisting arms and calling in favors in a vain attempt to shore up support.
Other councilmembers, however, sense blood in the water and are reluctant to talk about Parks’ role. “That fight is over as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t want to start another one,” says Duane Pell, who represents northwest Phoenix. “Bill got a couple of opponents for his council seat out of the amphitheatre fight, and I’m reluctant to feed that.”
Parks declines to comment on his conversations with his colleagues but admits he spent the weekend before the fatal vote trying to work out a compromise that would calm amphitheatre opponents. “It’s not really appropriate to talk about relationships between councilmembers on a case,” Parks demurs. “I did meet with people over the weekend trying to work out an amended proposal based on complaints I felt were justified, such as the size being too large.”
Parks explains: “I was a supporter of the project, but I was also being critical of it. But he says he quickly realized that no compromise would satisfy amphitheatre opponents. “Others had tried to work with them and gave me to understand that they wouldn’t compromise,” he says.
Parks is referring to last-minute efforts by Goddard to meet opponents for a cozy sit-down, a personal initiative that other councilmembers say they didn’t know about until after it happened. By then, however, the opposition was breathing more fire than St. George’s dragon, and councilmembers all over the city were feeling the heat.
While Goddard eased away from the doomed project, Parks remained in the spotlight. Now that the battle is over, he’s becoming a target for the still-bubbling discontent.
Several of the big neighborhood and parent-teacher organizations, the centers of grassroots political power in Parks’ district, are talking about fielding candidates for his council seat. Kathleen Eaton, president of the Neighborhood Coalition, says she’s been approached but won’t be a candidate. Penny Howe, long the area’s champion of mountain preserves, also admits she’s been urged to run but won’t say whether she’s considering it.
At least one contender, amphitheatre foe Frances Barwood, already has formally declared–she filed candidacy papers late last week.
Barwood, a neighborhood and Republican Party activist in the district since 1980, says she thinks the amphitheatre fight isn’t Parks’ only problem. “He’s been out of touch with his district for a long time,” she claims. “He was damaged by the fight over where to build the Squaw Peak Parkway extension, with which I was personally involved, and there’ve been a number of zoning cases as well.”
Parks says he “hasn’t made a judgment” about whether he has suffered permanent damage by his support for the amphitheatre. “There’s going to be disappointment among voters with every difficult case,” he philosophizes. “It seems to me the fact the project was withdrawn is an indication that the people opposed to it were listened to.”
