Phoenix — Convention City in the Sun

Phoenix-the City's Government

It takes a heap of doing to keep a wildly growing city like Phoenix from coming unstuck.

In a period of just six years from 1950 to 1956-the city's population ballooned from 106,000 to 172,000 and its area (via annexation) from 17 square miles to 36. This means not only collecting taxes from a lot of new citizens but providing them with municipal services in return for their money. And as any city employee will tell you, nobody is in a bigger hurry than a newly-annexed property owner wanting police protection, fire protection and sewer connections. He's willing to wait until tomorrow, but if he has to wait until the day after tomorrow, the city manager is liable to get a testy letter.

That Phoenix' city government has been able to measure up to this towering challenge is attested by its winning of no less than 23 different awards from national organizations in the last two years. All these in addition to its designation by the National Municipal League in 1950 as an All-American City for improvement in municipal government.

The fact of being a city in the middle of the desert serves only to complicate the problems that pile up at City Hall.

Take water, for instance. Phoenix laps up more than 45 million gallons of it during an average 24-hour period. In summer, when people begin to understand how a grilled cheese sandwich feels and swimming pools start filling up with water and human beings, consumption jumps to 89 million gallons a day.

Then take streets. The city has to maintain streets not merely for the people living within its limits (and paying city taxes) but also for the people living outside (and not paying city taxes. There's about an equal number of both, or a total of 350,000 living in the Greater Phoenix area. All of them have to get downtown to their jobs, to the movies or to shop for Uncle Willie's birthday present. And so they all use city streets, whether or not they contribute much to their maintenance.

Consider, too, the fact that Phoenix is a city that people like to come to from somewhere else. They pour in during the warm winter months, and, because Phoenix is now nicely air conditioned, they keep coming even in summer. So the parks have to be supervised the year around. There have to be enough cops on hand to keep great quantities of people both citizens and transients from banging up their fenders at street intersections. And there have to be enough firemen around to tidy things up after somebody falls asleep in his motel room with a cigarette in his hand.

Somehow, though, these things get done, and a great many other things besides. As, for example, installing nearly 40 miles of arterial street lighting in only five years. And treating more than 7 billion gallons of sewage every year. And teaching little children to be safe drivers when they grow up, by giving grade-school driver-training courses with miniature cars and simulated traffic conditions.

What all this adds up to is that Phoenix, in just a trifling few years, has grown from a small, cozy, manana-type town to a big and slightly frenetic city. The end of this growth is not in sight. For thousands of people are still being attracted by the magical Phoenix combination of big city plus Western liv-ing plus a climate that seems to be good for what's wrong with them.

Governing a city where this sort of thing goes on is enough to give a mayor and city manager the twitches. But then maybe the climate is good for that, too.