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Our View: Council should hold off on payday loan store quest
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After even Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross decided recently that off-track horse-race betting at a downtown bar was worth voting for, we thought that perhaps she had abandoned - or at least let up on - her trying to make city government play moral police officer.
Alas, after failing to rein in the city's two strip clubs, all the mayor has done is turn to a new dragon to try to slay. And she had the entire City Council go along with her, including her opponent in the Nov. 4 mayoral runoff, Councilman Jim Lane.
The new demon? Check-cashing stores, or payday-loan stores.
City staff was directed by unanimous council vote Tuesday to draft an amendment to Scottsdale's zoning code creating yet another zoning classification, "Non-Chartered Financial Institutions." If the city Planning Commission and the council agree to such an amendment, it could mean such businesses might not be able to operate within a certain distance of one another or near "sensitive uses," according to a city staff memo.
Blight isn't the issue here; in fact some payday-loan operations in south Scottsdale are among its most tidy commercial properties.
Nor is it crime. As it was shown during the city's voter-rejected attempt to crack down on strip clubs in 2005, strip clubs are no more of a venue - actually less - for criminal activity than many other bars in Scottsdale. Neither is there evidence that check-cashing stores are.
In a sense, the council's mulling over such regulations is the same kind of nonsense that undergirded the failed attack on strip clubs: A knee-jerk response to a loud few who don't like these uses on property they don't own.
Also on the November ballot is the statewide Proposition 200 that may well decide the fate of check-cashing stores in Arizona. It would be wise for City Council members to abandon their windmill chase altogether, but at the very least they should see how Proposition 200 turns out before holding forth on payday-loan stores locally.
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