8 candidates seek 3 Fountain Hills Town Council seats. What to know
Fountain Hills voters will decide who fills three open Town Council seats this election, a choice that will likely determine the makeup of the town’s governing majority and steer policy on key issues from funding services to growth and development to civil discourse over the next four years.
Fountain Hills’s Town Council race is crowded this year, with eight candidates vying for the three open seats. Specifically, they include:
Peggy McMahon, 73, was elected to Fountain Hills City Council in 2020 and is the only incumbent on the ballot. She worked for 35 years as a paralegal in the estate planning and taxation areas of law, including stints at the Snell & Wilmer law firm and JPMorgan.
Clayton Corey, 39, is currently a member of the Fountain Hills Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Directors of the Fountain Hills Sanitary District. Professionally, he works at CVS Health in managing IT support operations and infrastructure platform engineering.
Mathew Corrigan, 71, spent his career in sales, working as a small business owner and district sales manager. Following his retirement, Corrigan and his wife moved to Arizona.
Gayle Earle, 65, is a small business owner, having owned and operated a pool service business for more than 30 years. She has been a Fountain Hills resident for 17 years.
Henry Male, 67, is employed with Penske Automotive Scottsdale BMW and is currently the President of the Fountain Hills Theater Board of Directors. He has been a resident of Fountain Hills since 2003.
Art Tolis, 53, is a former Fountain Hills Council Member who was first elected in 2016. He is the president of Tolis Mortgage Financial Group.
Robert Wallace, 39, is a real estate agent with experience in IT desktop support and systems administration. He is also the Arizona State chapter lead for Gays Against Groomers, secretary of the Log Cabin Republicans of Phoenix, and an Arizona District 3 Republican Committeeman.
Rick Watts, 73, is currently on the Fountain Hills Planning and Zoning Commission, a member of the Neighborhood Property Owners Association and the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers. He has been a resident of Fountain Hills since the late '80s.
This year’s race is the first in Fountain Hills since 2022, an election that raised eyebrows across the Valley because of the "vitriolic" and heavily partisan rhetoric, which was largely driven by a group called Reclaim Our Town, or ROT, which sought to establish a more hardline Republican majority on council.
ROT succeeded on that front when all three of its Town Council candidates won. They included Brenda Kalivianakis, Allen Skillicorn and Hannah Toth.
Town leadership was chaotic. ROT unsuccessfully sued the town to oppose a controversial apartment development, sparking a year on council that involved numerous ethics complaints and accusations of corruption by and against leaders of the tiny town.
And Skillicorn was recently found responsible for multiple ethics violations and was sanctioned.
Despite the mess, ROT is still in the mix. The group has not officially endorsed any candidates, but its leader Crystal Cavanaugh has backed Earle, Corrigan and Watts for Town Council. She also endorsed Council Member Jerry Friedel for mayor. All four candidates have appeared together on campaign pamphlets.
None of the members of that ROT-aligned block provided answers for The Arizona Republic’s candidate questionnaire, with Corrigan and Watts declining and Earle simply not responding.
The 2024 election could prove to be a referendum on how the sitting ROT-aligned officials have governed.
Arizona election: Read our full coverage of the Fountain Hills council race
Residents will also be choosing what direction the town takes on key issues ranging from development, economic growth, funding for core services like public safety, and what each candidate’s potential impact will be on the fraught state of civil discourse in Fountain Hills.
Early voting began July 3. Voters can check on the status of their mailed-in ballot on Maricopa County’s website at https://elections.maricopa.gov/voting/voter-dashboard-login. Those who choose to vote by mail are advised to mail their ballot by July 23 or drop it off at a ballot drop-off location or voting location by July 30.
Key issues: housing and development
The question of whether Fountain Hill should allow at least some more development for economic growth or preserve the town as it currently is has been one of the most controversial issues over the past few years.
It reached a fever pitch earlier this year when the council considered rezoning at Four Peaks Plaza, also known as the Target center, to allow for a four-story, 316-unit apartment complex to crop up on the site. The council approved it with a split 4-3 vote in January.
Opponents viewed the multi-family housing as a burden and safety concern because of the potential tenants who might rent there, rather than buying a home in town. Others favored adding apartments to attract younger residents and enhance economic activity.
The rezoning decision prompted an attempt by ROT to get it put on the ballot, a lawsuit from the group when its petition was deemed invalid, and the slew of ethics complaints and corruption allegations.
McMahon was one of the council members who voted for the rezoning. She sees growing Fountain Hills’ housing stock as necessary for economic growth.
“Innovative and balanced growth that fits the needs of our community is essential in order to achieve needed economic vitality and support our community so that it thrives,” she wrote for The Fountain Hills Independent’s candidate questionnaire.
“This includes reasonably priced rents and a diversity of housing choices that will attract young professionals and families to Fountain Hills, providing our community with a stronger workforce and better financial support for our businesses.”
Tolis, Male, Corey and Wallace agree, seeing development as a necessity for both economic reasons and for community stability given Fountain Hills’ aging population.
Some, like Tolis, also mentioned using creative zoning and tweaking town development processes as ways to boost the housing stock.
“Incentivizing mixed-use projects, streamlining the approval process, and partnering with developers for housing options is an essential step,” he told The Independent.
Earle didn’t signal she was open to increasing the town’s housing stock by boosting density inside Fountain Hills, but she signaled openness to the construction of smaller single-family homes on some land owned by the local school district and the Arizona State Land Trust.
The state land, specifically, comprises about 1,300 acres just north of Fountain Hills. In the late 2010s, officials struck a deal that would allow it to be incorporated into the town once it’s developed, but no company has been able to successfully make that development happen.
“The school district has three properties that could be sold and zoned for single family homes. With a smaller home on a smaller lot there could be homes available like the first home many of us started with,” Earle told The Independent.
“The (state) land could be built out too. One of the issues has been who would pay for the utilities that need to be bought into this area. One option is to make it a ‘Community Facilities District’ the same as Eagle Mountain.”
Corrigan and Watts haven’t indicated any support for increasing the housing stock. They instead value the preservation of Fountain Hills’s current higher-end suburban character over the possible economic growth opportunities that more housing might provide.
“Everyone who ‘wishes’ to live here may live here if they can pay the market price,” Corrigan told The Independent. “Like everything in life, ‘available’ is determined by market price and whether our income allows our wishes and desires to afford them. Many who live here now, worked all their lives to afford to live here.”
He ended his statement by advising prospective future residents to “work with a Fountain Hills realtor.
Watts shared a similar sentiment, saying that adherence to existing zoning rules is “what makes Fountain Hills a beautiful community and adherence will ensure that we retain that beauty into the future. Our housing market is driven the same as any other market or commodity, supply and demand.”
He added in his response to The Independent that “my family and I worked hard, planned, saved and ultimately were able to achieve our goal of moving to Fountain Hills. I intend to protect what we all love about Fountain Hills to the best of my ability.”
Fountain Hills hopefuls agree on bond funding for roads, new property tax
Fountain Hills has long struggled to fully fund its needed road repair and maintenance.
In 2022, the ROT candidates said it was just an issue of poor financial management. They said they would cut waste to find the funds for road repair, rather than take on bond debt that residents would pay off through a property tax over a period of years.
They never found that money and the prospects of funding the town’s roadwork with existing cash have dimmed.
None of the candidates said they were outright opposed to using a bond in order to fund the needed roadwork. They all essentially said they might grudgingly approve such a bond and levy the related property tax on residents if necessary.
Male, Tolis, Corey, Watts and McMahon are all more accepting of a bond program being a likely necessity.
“We should look at alternative funding options, such as pursuing a bond proposal to finance necessary road improvements. Our streets are vital for daily commutes, public safety, and the overall appeal of Fountain Hills,” Corey told The Republic.
Wallace, Corrigan, and Earle all signaled they may support a bond program as a “last resort,” after seeking federal or state grants to find more money in the existing budget.
“Infrastructure spending should be a priority for reserves over time, not a last minute emergency bond bail out,” Corrigan told The Independent.
He was the most averse to bond funding of the candidates, adding later in his answer that “I prefer no bonds, only as a last resort from poor choices in priorities, planning and mayoral leadership in the past.”
Reporter Sam Kmack covers Tempe, Scottsdale and Chandler. Follow him on X @KmackSam or reach him at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Fountain Hills Town Council election 2024: Meet the 8 candidates