If you have been following the local papers lately you have undoubtedly read about how those of us who oppose the recent “surge” in requests to the Scottsdale City Council for increases in height and density are nostalgic reactionaries trying to prevent growth, change and progress.

Don’t be fooled by this self-serving special-interest rhetoric. The real choice facing Scottsdale is not between stagnation and growth, it is between smart, managed, citizen-friendly growth on the one hand and unmanaged, special-interest friendly growth that overtaxes our infrastructure and strains city services on the other.

We neither can nor should try to prevent Scottsdale from growing. But we owe it to both current and future residents to manage that growth to insure that Scottsdale continues to enjoy the quality of life that caused all of us to want to live here.

Take traffic for example. In every survey we conduct Scottsdale residents tell us that traffic congestion is their number one concern. We profess to be so concerned about this problem that we are seriously talking about tossing people out of their homes to widen Chaparral road, uprooting established neighborhoods to put more traffic on Thunderbird and Camelback Roads and tearing up Downtown Scottsdale to accommodate light rail.

Yet even while we struggle to devise solutions to Scottsdale’s current level of traffic congestion, we are approving increases in densities that are guaranteed to make the problem even worse. The same is true of other city services such as police, where we are still scrambling to meet the hiring goals for officers we set when you, the voters, approved a dedicated public safety tax in 2004.

The excuse we are given every time we are asked to approve some big variance is “just this one time, this is a special case because (fill in the blank).” But if we give a big variance to developer A, how can we say no to developers B, C and D? The answer is we cannot and do not. So each so-called “special case, just this once project” becomes the justification for the next master plan-busting variance.

And just how exactly does it qualify as “progress” when the City Council approves a project that even its supporters on the Council agree is mediocre or even ugly?

Those of us who oppose unchecked growth and loosening Scottsdale’s design standards are often accused of being anti-business. This is more special-interest hogwash. The vast majority of developers who do business in Scottsdale understand that our high standards are good for business because they make projects in our city more desirable and thus more valuable. These developers propose good projects that meet our citizen-inspired design standards without asking for variances or subsidies. You never read about their projects in the newspaper because they generate no controversy, but they represent good growth and true progress. You see them going up all over town, proving that you can do business in Scottsdale and make excellent profits without compromising our standards or threatening Scottsdale’s quality of life. That is why there is no shortage of developers who are anxious to do business in our city.

Throwing out the rule book anytime a developer wants a bigger profit margin on a mediocre project is not “progress,” its bad government. Good government is managing the growth that is bound to occur so that it happens without overtaxing our infrastructure, straining city services and eroding Scottsdale’s quality of life. Scottsdale residents should expect no less from their City Council.