activeOctober 27, 2026Echo Canyon

Same Questions, Two Governments: Paradise Valley vs. Phoenix on Echo Canyon Records

Echo Canyon Camelback Mountain Public Records

We asked two governments the same questions about the Echo Canyon gate. Paradise Valley's clerk answered item by item in six business days. Phoenix took six weeks, and the Town's records show what the City left out.

Paradise Valley answered our records request in 10 days with 89 emails and a site plan. Phoenix took 40 and 46 days to answer two similar requests, and produced three documents. One of them began with our own letter.

Both governments were asked about the same thing: how the Echo Canyon trailhead gate changed, and who knew about it.

Paradise Valley: Six Business Days, Item by Item

On Friday, October 16, at 8:00 a.m., GOOD|GOAT emailed Paradise Valley Town Clerk Duncan Miller a four-part request. We asked for the Town's communications with Phoenix about the trailhead, records of its meetings with Phoenix staff, anything about a proposed new gate, and records of vehicles queuing on Town streets.

Four hours later, Miller replied himself. The request was received, it would be processed, and we would be told if it ran past 15 business days. It didn't.

On Monday, October 26, Miller sent a download link to 89 emails and a site plan. His cover email answered each of our four items in turn. It said exactly what was redacted: web links and passwords. And it stated plainly that “the Town has no other responsive records” beyond the emails it produced.

That is what a records response is supposed to look like.

Phoenix: A Broken Portal, Six Weeks, Three Documents

Our requests to Phoenix were filed on GOOD|GOAT's behalf by the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, through the City's online Public Records Center. Getting them filed was the first obstacle. The gate-project request was ready on August 17, but the portal was down. It went in on August 20. A second request, ready August 24, went in on August 26 for the same reason.

The first asked for six kinds of records on the automatic gate project: when notice was posted online and at the trailhead, press releases, internal directives and communications, records of public meetings, the funding source and total cost, and the contractors.

The second asked for every Parks record since January 1, 2023, about the trailhead's long-standing 4:30 a.m. opening.

Both were reported complete on October 5, 46 and 40 days after filing.

For the gate project, Phoenix produced two documents: the contractor's $96,398 estimate and the email chain approving it.

For three and a half years of records about the 4:30 opening, Phoenix produced one email chain. It starts with GOOD|GOAT's own August 21 letter to the Council. Then come the City Manager's forward and Parks Director Martin Whitfield's reply, the same reply he had already emailed to us on August 24.

That reply says that in early June, contracted security guards noticed the custodial contractor leaving the gate open “and notified Parks staff,” and that Parks staff then told the contractor to stop. No record of either notification was produced. Either ending a decades-old 4:30 opening left no paper trail at all, or the records exist and were not produced. Neither answer is acceptable.

The Same Emails, From Both Ends

On October 14, two days before we wrote to Paradise Valley, ACLPI asked Phoenix for its communications with Paradise Valley about the automatic gates. Many of those are the same emails: one government sent them, the other received them.

Paradise Valley produced its copies in 10 days. As of October 27, thirteen days after filing, Phoenix had produced nothing.

Paradise Valley's set includes emails written by Phoenix Parks staff. Among them are meeting invitations from Deputy Director Jarod Rogers, and his note that a meeting titled “Echo Canyon Trailhead” was really about road work at the Cholla trailhead, because “Echo Canyon trailhead is the other side of the mountain.” It also includes the site plan for a second gate that the City's design team sent the Town. None of it appeared in Phoenix's response to our gate-project request, though most of it predates that request.

Why It Matters

Paradise Valley's records are how we were able to check what Phoenix told the City Council on September 10. The City's report said staff met with the Town “in March and May 2026” to “ensure alignment on operational procedures.” The Town's 89 emails never mention the trailhead's hours. And on August 24, the Town Manager wrote to his staff that he “was informed today” of the gate project. We learned that from the town next door, not from the city that made the decision.

A small town whose clerk answers his own email produced a complete, organized response in six business days. The fifth-largest city in the country, with a dedicated records system, took six weeks to return three documents, and one of them began with our own letter.

Two more requests are still open with Phoenix: its communications with Paradise Valley (filed October 14), and Windom Security's reports of the gate being found open since 2023 (filed October 22). We will report what comes back, and how long it takes.

Side by Side

Paradise Valley (request PRR26300):

Filed October 16 by email to the Town Clerk; acknowledged the same day, four hours later, by the Clerk by name.
Completed October 26: 10 days, 6 business days. 89 emails and 1 site plan.
Answered all four items one by one; explained its redactions (web links and passwords); stated it has no other responsive records.

Phoenix (three requests, filed by ACLPI):

R039633-082026, the gate project: filed August 20 after the portal was down; reported complete October 5 (46 days). 2 documents.
R039856-082626, the 4:30 opening: filed August 26 after the portal was down; reported complete October 5 (40 days). 1 email chain, beginning with our own letter.
R042055-101426, communications with Paradise Valley: filed October 14; still open on October 27 (13 days). Nothing yet.
Each acknowledged by an automated portal notice. In the records we have, no item-by-item answer, no stated basis for the redactions, and no “no other records” statement.

The Records

From Paradise Valley (request PRR26300). GOOD|GOAT redacted one mobile phone number and the names of a private neighboring property owner; nothing else was changed:

From Phoenix:

Follow the full case: Echo Canyon Trailhead hours.