A trail marked for obliteration on the City's own engineering drawings, with no public vote behind it, is a land-use decision made without a public process. Three weeks after the Phoenix City Council approved a 22-story tower at Central and Glenrosa over neighborhood opposition, a resident asked the City for the communications that shaped that decision — and waited seventeen months for an answer. Whether a development decision gets made and explained, or gets made and then buried, matters as much to the neighborhood living with the result as what actually got built.
At the Ocotillo Trailhead, the City built a steel-and-concrete footbridge on Phoenix Mountains Preserve land in summer 2025 without the Council vote City Charter Section 3 requires, without a disclosed permit, and without the environmental assessment the Charter also requires. The City's own 2024 engineering drawings, released to the public on April 11, 2025, carry a notation reading "EXISTING TRAIL TO BE OBLITERATED" pointing directly at the Piestewa Nature Trail. Parks and Recreation Director Cynthia Aguilar acknowledged by email that the bridge — unlike everything else at the site — fell outside the Council-approved 2016 Master Plan.
Thacker v. Phoenix & Pastor tests the other half of the same problem: whether the record of a land-use decision can be obtained at all. On September 30, 2023, three weeks after the Council approved the Central and Glenrosa rezoning, Jeremy Thacker filed two public-records requests for communications between Council District 4, the developer's attorneys, and City planning staff. The City acknowledged both requests the same day, then produced nothing substantive for roughly seventeen months. Thacker sued under A.R.S. § 39-121.02 on February 28, 2025; two days after service, the City produced "no responsive records" on the first request and about 152 pages on the second. An internal email surfaced in the case shows a City communications manager circulated a "high-profile PRRs" list in March 2025 naming Thacker alongside reporters and asking staff to flag requests from those names. Oral argument on the plaintiff's motion for limited discovery was held May 5, 2026; trial is set for June 10, 2026.
On the footbridge, GOOD|GOAT joined the citizens' coalition that filed an Arizona Attorney General complaint on August 11, 2025. Thacker v. Phoenix & Pastor is Jeremy Thacker's individual lawsuit, filed before GOOD|GOAT existed; GOOD|GOAT supports it by tracking the docket, publishing the filings, and explaining what a seventeen-month silence and a watchlist email mean for anyone who has ever filed a records request and heard nothing back.
Follow either matter for docket updates, or read the filings yourself — the AG complaint and the PRR pleadings are both public.
2 Matters
Citizens’ coalition AG complaint over a steel-and-concrete footbridge built on protected Phoenix Mountains Preserve land — without Council approval, without a disclosed permit, and without the environmental assessment required by the City Charter.
A statutory special action under A.R.S. § 39-121.02. Two records requests sat for roughly seventeen months without substantive response. Internal email later showed the requester was added to a "high-profile PRR" watchlist. Discovery motion argued May 5, 2026.
