🏜️ When Brothers in Power Bulldoze the Borderlands: The Marana Development Scandal
How a mayor's family stands to make millions while residents fight to save the Sonoran Desert
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
In Marana, Arizona, a scandal is shaking things up! 😲🏜️ Mayor Jon Post's brother owns land slated for a massive development—right in a desert conservation area. Despite stepping back during votes, the Mayor's family could profit big time from council decisions.
💰😮 Meanwhile, 85% of residents vent online, feeling unheard and angry over traffic woes, water shortages, and the loss of their beloved desert views. 🚗🚱🌵 Town officials dismiss these worries as "lies" and "misinformation". This battle highlights the struggle between community voices and the power of political connections and developer cash. 🏘️⚖️🙌
🗝️ Takeaways
🎭 Political Theater: Mayor Jon Post "recuses" himself while his brother Dan stands to make millions from municipal annexation decisions
📊 Community Opposition: 85% negative sentiment in resident discussions, with overwhelming concerns about ethics and overdevelopment
🏜️ Environmental Racism: Sonoran Desert conservation land being converted to high-density development serving capital over community
💰 Family Enrichment: Planning Center admits Post family could make "5 to 10 times more, millions of dollars" from the development
🗳️ Democratic Deficit: Residents report inadequate notification and dismissal of concerns as "misinformation" by officials
🌊 Water Crisis Denial: Officials claim water concerns are "false" despite Arizona's ongoing drought and infrastructure challenges
⚖️ Legal Resistance: Community organizing legal challenges under Arizona Private Property Rights Protection Act
🔍 Systemic Pattern: Marana development scandal reflects broader Arizona growth politics serving developers over residents
When Brothers in Power Bulldoze the Borderlands: The Marana Development Scandal
¿Cuándo será suficiente? When will enough be enough?
In the sun-scorched heart of the Sonoran Desert, where ancient saguaros have stood sentinel for centuries and indigenous peoples have called these lands home for millennia, a familiar story of greed and political corruption is unfolding in the Town of Marana.
This isn't just another tale of overdevelopment—it's a masterclass in how nepotism, capitalism, and settler colonial governance converge to steamroll communities while enriching the politically connected few.
The scandal brewing in this desert community north of Tucson exposes the ugly reality of how "business-friendly" politics work in practice: when the mayor's family stands to make millions from municipal decisions, and residents' voices are dismissed as "lies" and "misinformation" by the very officials sworn to serve them.
The Family Business of Municipal Power
Let's start with the protagonist of our desert drama: Mayor Jon Post, a man who never actually wanted to be mayor—or so he claims. After longtime Mayor Ed Honea's death in November 2024, Post was appointed to fill the vacancy, inheriting a role he insists he never aspired to hold. According to KGUN 9, Post said, "I didn't ever truly have aspirations to be mayor because Ed did such a great job."
How convenient that this reluctant leader suddenly found his ambition when his brother Dan Post stood to profit from a massive land deal.
The proposed Linda Vista 52 annexation—a scheme to transform 52 acres of Suburban Ranch-zoned desert into high-density development—reads like a textbook case of conflict of interest.
Dan Post, the mayor's brother, owns property that would be annexed from Pima County into Marana and then rezoned for intensive development, featuring 15 three-story apartment buildings and 150 homes. As Randy Karrer noted in the Arizona Daily Star, the plan would convert suburban ranch property "right next to long-established suburban ranch homes on multi-acre lots with horses."
The Planning Center openly admitted during public meetings that the Post family could make "5 to 10 times more, millions of dollars" from this development. Nothing says "public service" quite like using municipal power to multiply your family's wealth by millions.
The Theater of Recusal: When Stepping Aside Means Nothing
Mayor Post performed the requisite political theater, recusing himself from votes and stepping down from the dais during discussions. But anyone who's ever been married knows that stepping out of the room doesn't mean you're not having conversations at home about what's happening on the dais.
As resident Jeff Roberts astutely observed in the community discussions, "When our daughter was young she needed to be scolded about something. I 'recused' myself & let my wife give her a talking to. That night she filled me in with all the details of how it went & what was said. Just sayin'. Recused is a cute word politicians use."
The recusal becomes even more meaningless when you consider that Post spent years as vice mayor and council member, helping craft the very policies and relationships that make such developments possible.
This isn't a sudden conflict of interest—it's the predictable result of a system designed to benefit the connected few.
The Desert Under Siege: Environmental Racism in Action
This controversy isn't happening in a vacuum. It's part of a broader pattern of environmental degradation and displacement that disproportionately impacts communities of color and working-class residents throughout the Borderlands. The Sonoran Desert ecosystem, which The Wilderness Society describes as "under threat from increasing urbanization because of its proximity to fast-growing Phoenix," faces unprecedented development pressure.
The desert doesn't vote, but it tells the truth about our priorities. When we pave paradise for profit, we're not just destroying habitat—we're continuing the colonial project of treating land as a commodity rather than a community.
According to University of Arizona research, urbanization in the Sonoran Desert region produces three especially pronounced impacts: "The loss of native plant and animal species, the disruption of the natural wash drainage system, and the decline of visual quality."
These aren't abstract environmental concerns—they're the material conditions that make desert communities livable.
The Linda Vista area already struggles with infrastructure inadequacy. As residents have repeatedly pointed out, the road system can't handle the current traffic, let alone the additional burden of over 700 new households.
However, infrastructure investment often follows capital, not community needs, which is why developer-funded road improvements typically only extend as far as their property boundaries.
Community Voices vs. Capital's Agenda: What the People Actually Think
The Nextdoor thread analyzing this controversy reads like a masterclass in community organizing versus municipal gaslighting. Let's break down what the actual residents—not the spin doctors—are saying about this power grab.
Sentiment Analysis: The Numbers Don't Lie
The overwhelming opposition isn't just noise—it's a community crying out against a system designed to ignore them. When 85% of participants express negative sentiment, that's not nimbyism—that's democracy in action.
Timeline of Outrage: How Resistance Evolved
Notice the pattern: residents start with emotional responses to betrayal, officials counter with bureaucratic deflection, and the community hardens into organized resistance. This is exactly how grassroots movements are born.
Key Players in the Desert Drama
Note: Roxanne Ziegler, the appointed Vice Mayor, has dominated the conversation with 8 posts, attempting to control the narrative. Meanwhile, residents are organizing.
Geographic Opposition: Every Neighborhood Speaks
The closer you live to the proposed destruction, the stronger your opposition. That's not coincidence—that's people defending their homes and communities from capital's bulldozers.
What Really Matters: Community Priorities vs. Political Spin
The data reveals a stark disconnect: residents prioritize ethics and community character, while officials prioritize protecting the development process and their own reputations.
The Rhetoric of Rights vs. Reality of Power
Town officials have deployed the familiar playbook of dismissing community concerns as "misinformation" while wrapping their pro-development stance in the language of "property rights."
But whose property rights matter?
Vice Mayor Roxanne Ziegler's defensive responses throughout the thread reveal the authoritarian mindset underlying liberal democracy: We know what's best for you, and your opposition proves you're misinformed. Her statement that residents' concerns are "speculative, misleading, highly emotional, and in some cases just lies" is a masterclass in gaslighting—turning legitimate community grievances into personal character flaws.
When Ziegler lectures residents about being "respectful" while dismissing their lived experiences, she's performing the classic move of tone policing the oppressed while protecting the oppressor.
The real message is clear: Shut up and let us develop.
Environmental Justice in the Sonoran Desert
This isn't just about one development—it's about the systematic destruction of one of North America's most diverse ecosystems for private profit. The Sonoran Desert, which The Wilderness Society notes has "the most diverse vegetation of all North American deserts," faces unprecedented development pressure as the Phoenix metropolitan area sprawls southward.
The environmental racism here is subtle but devastating. While wealthy white communities in north Scottsdale can preserve their "desert character" through restrictive zoning and conservation easements, working-class communities in places like Marana face relentless pressure to accommodate growth that serves regional capital accumulation rather than local community needs.
The proposed development is situated in what Pima County has designated as a conservation area—land deemed too environmentally sensitive for intensive development. But conservation designations, like democratic processes, only matter when they don't conflict with profit potential.
The Water Mirage: Promising What Doesn't Exist
Arizona's water crisis isn't theoretical—it's an existential threat that developers consistently ignore in their profit calculations. University of Arizona research documents how desert urbanization disrupts natural drainage systems, creating flash flood risks and destroying the watershed relationships that make desert communities viable.
When officials promise that water concerns are "false," they're essentially betting community survival on the continued availability of an increasingly scarce resource.
This is environmental colonialism in action—extracting resources from the land to serve external capital while leaving communities to deal with the long-term consequences.
The Colorado River crisis, ongoing megadrought, and declining groundwater supplies suggest that every new development in the Sonoran Desert is a gamble with extremely poor odds. But when your family doesn't live downstream from your decisions, why worry about sustainability?
The Planning Center: Where Democracy Goes to Die
The involvement of The Planning Center—the same firm behind numerous controversial developments throughout Arizona—reveals how the development industrial complex operates. These consulting firms sell municipal officials pre-packaged "community engagement" processes designed to create the appearance of democratic input while ensuring predetermined outcomes.
The Planning Center's admission that the Post family could make "millions" from this development isn't a bug in the system—it's the feature. The entire municipal planning apparatus exists to facilitate capital accumulation while providing legal cover through the bureaucratic process.
The notification controversy reveals competing narratives about the democratic process. While resident Gary Nash claimed that "neighbors weren't notified," Vice Mayor Ziegler countered that "neighbors were notified in two ways. There were three signs posted along Linda Vista Blvd near the property by the Town of Marana. Additionally, anyone living within 300 feet of the property was notified by mail."
However, this exchange highlights the disparity between legal compliance and genuine community engagement. Meeting minimum legal notification requirements—a few signs and notices to immediate neighbors—is very different from ensuring broader community awareness of decisions that affect entire neighborhoods.
The fact that residents felt blindsided suggests that technical compliance with notification rules doesn't equal genuine democratic participation.
Indigenous Lands, Settler Development: The Archaeological Truth They Don't Want You to Know
Let's speak the truth that municipal officials won't: this is stolen land. But it's not just stolen—it's scientifically documented as one of the oldest continuously inhabited landscapes in North America.
The area around Marana contains archaeological evidence of human habitation dating back 4,000-8,000 years, with some sites potentially reaching back 12,000 years to pre-Clovis cultures!
The Santa Cruz River Valley, where this development controversy unfolds, represents one of North America's longest inhabited regions. University of Arizona research documents that "the earliest evidence of human occupation dates back 12,000 years, prior to the existence of the Clovis peoples," with ancient agricultural sites containing "the earliest recorded instances of irrigation in the Southwest."
But here's where the settler colonial violence gets particularly obscene: just down the street from the proposed Linda Vista development sits the Tucson Premium Outlets at Twin Peaks—a mall literally built on top of 265 human burials from the Hohokam era. The archaeological excavation revealed "remains of a village where neighboring residents gathered periodically to exchange goods for economic and ritualistic reasons" dating from 650 to 900 A.D.
Think about that for a moment: people are shopping for discounted designer clothes on top of a thousand-year-old cemetery. The 145 archaeological features, including six burials, discovered during mall construction included "pit houses, the likely remnants of an irrigation canal, and human burials possibly dating back 4,000 years."
But hey, at least you can get 30% off at Nike while standing on ancestral graves!
The mall developers followed all the proper legal procedures—they excavated "a certain percentage" of remains, repatriated human remains to the Tohono O'odham Nation for reburial, and put tribal monitors on site during construction. But legal compliance with colonial law doesn't make the desecration any less profound. As Tohono O'odham tribal official Peter Steere noted, they expected to find "hundreds" more burials during construction.
The Linda Vista 52 project continues this pattern of archaeological capitalism—treating indigenous heritage sites as speed bumps on the road to profit rather than sacred spaces deserving protection. Every development project in southern Arizona continues the colonial project of transforming indigenous landscapes into private property for settler wealth accumulation.
The saguaro cacti that developers destroy to make way for apartments aren't just plants—they're relatives, ancestors, witnesses to a way of life that thrived here long before property lines and zoning codes. When the Planning Center admits the Post family could make "millions" from this development, they're literally putting a price tag on land that has supported indigenous communities for millennia.
¿No les da vergüenza? Don't they feel ashamed?
The environmental destruction wrought by suburban sprawl isn't separate from settler colonialism—it's the logical result of treating land as a commodity rather than a community. When we pave the desert, we're not just destroying habitat—we're continuing the violence of colonization.
Resistance Strategies: How Communities Fight Back
Despite the overwhelming structural advantages enjoyed by developers and their municipal allies, the Linda Vista community is demonstrating sophisticated resistance strategies that other communities can learn from:
Legal Challenges
Residents are preparing challenges under the Arizona Private Property Rights Protection Act, which could create significant financial liability for Marana if property values decline due to the development. This strategy turns the property rights rhetoric typically used to defend developers against the development itself.
Coalition Building
The thread reveals residents from multiple neighborhoods—Oasis, Linda Vista Ridge, Twin Peaks—coming together around shared concerns. This geographic coalition building strengthens their political voice beyond any single affected area.
Information Warfare
Residents are fact-checking official claims in real-time, using social media to share information and coordinate responses. When Vice Mayor Ziegler makes misleading statements about notification or process, residents immediately counter with evidence.
Electoral Accountability
Multiple residents explicitly connected this controversy to future electoral choices, threatening to hold officials accountable at the ballot box. While Post was appointed rather than elected, other council members face voters in upcoming elections.
The Broader Pattern: Arizona's Development Industrial Complex
The Linda Vista controversy reflects broader patterns of development politics throughout Arizona's rapidly growing metropolitan areas. From Phoenix to Tucson, the same playbook gets deployed: municipal officials partner with politically connected developers to transform agricultural or conservation land into high-density residential developments, then dismiss community opposition as uninformed nimbyism.
Arizona's "business-friendly" development policies consistently prioritize growth over sustainability, profit over community, and developer rights over resident rights. The result is a built environment designed to serve capital accumulation rather than human flourishing.
Marana's own promotional materials celebrate being "the fastest-growing community in Southern Arizona and the third-fastest-growing community in the state." But growth for whom? And at what cost?
A Tale of Two Maranas
The contradiction at the heart of this controversy is stark: while officials promote Marana's rural character and natural beauty to attract residents and businesses, they simultaneously approve developments that destroy exactly those qualities.
Marana's official community profile celebrates the town's "scenic attractions" including "beautiful Tortolita Mountains" and "expansive cactus forests." Meanwhile, the same officials who write these promotional materials vote to destroy similar landscapes for private profit.
This isn't cognitive dissonance—it's capitalism. Natural beauty becomes a marketing tool to attract residents and investors, then gets commodified and destroyed to generate return on investment. The desert exists to be consumed, not preserved.
The wealthy enclaves like Dove Mountain and The Highlands, where homes cost millions and conservation easements protect views, demonstrate that preservation is possible when communities have sufficient political and economic power to demand it. But working-class areas get bulldozed for affordable housing and strip malls.
The Special Election: Democracy's Last Stand?
Jon Post will face voters in a special mayoral election in 2026, creating an opportunity for electoral accountability. But given Arizona's notoriously low municipal election turnout—one resident noted that "Marana votes by mail & has <20% participation"—the organized opposition community could have outsized influence if they maintain their momentum.
The question is whether two years of municipal damage control can overcome the documented pattern of putting family financial interests ahead of community welfare. In a political era where corruption has been normalized, will local voters still demand basic ethical standards from their elected officials?
¿Cuándo Será Suficiente? When Will Enough Be Enough?
The Linda Vista 52 controversy crystallizes fundamental questions about democracy, development, and community survival in the climate change era. How many times can municipal officials claim to serve community interests while enriching their families and friends? How much desert can we pave before we acknowledge that endless growth is incompatible with ecological survival?
The residents organizing against this development aren't just fighting one annexation—they're fighting for a different vision of how communities should make decisions about their shared future. They're insisting that democracy means more than letting officials decide what's best for people, then dismissing opposition as misinformation.
This is exactly the kind of local organizing that builds broader movements for environmental and social justice. When communities successfully resist individual development projects, they create models and capacity for larger challenges to the growth-dependent economic system destroying our planet.
Hope in the Desert: How to Get Involved
The Linda Vista resistance offers several lessons for communities facing similar development pressures:
Document Everything: Residents have meticulously documented the timeline, statements, and procedural irregularities throughout this process. This documentation becomes crucial for legal challenges and electoral accountability.
Build Broad Coalitions: The most effective opposition has come from residents across multiple neighborhoods finding common ground. Single-issue neighborhood groups can be dismissed, but broad-based coalitions demand attention.
Challenge the Narrative: When officials claim community concerns are "lies," residents have responded with specific evidence and counter-narratives. Letting official spin go unchallenged allows it to become accepted truth.
Use Multiple Tactics: Legal challenges, electoral organizing, public pressure, and media attention all play important roles. Single-tactic approaches rarely succeed against well-funded development projects.
Connect to Bigger Issues: The most powerful opposition statements have connected this local controversy to broader patterns of corruption, environmental destruction, and democratic deficit. Local issues gain power when connected to universal principles.
The Sonoran Desert has survived ice ages, volcanic eruptions, and centuries of ecological change. Whether it survives late-stage capitalism remains an open question—one that communities like Linda Vista are helping answer through their resistance.
Supporting Independent Media in the Borderlands
Stories like the Marana development scandal don't get covered by mainstream media until communities organize to make them visible. Corporate media outlets depend on advertising revenue from developers and maintain cozy relationships with municipal officials, creating systematic bias toward development interests.
Independent media outlets like Three Sonorans provide crucial platforms for community voices and investigative reporting that challenges power rather than serving it. Our work documenting environmental racism, development corruption, and community resistance across the borderlands depends on reader support rather than corporate advertising.
Support Three Sonorans on Substack to help us continue exposing how capital and power operate in our communities, and to stay informed about development controversies across southern Arizona. Independent media is community self-defense against information warfare by developers and their municipal allies.
¿Qué más necesitamos saber sobre este escándalo? What else do you need to know about this scandal? And how is similar corruption affecting your community? Leave your questions and experiences in the comments below.
Have a scoop or a story you want us to follow up on? Send us a message!
I also meant to compliment the folks at Three Sonorans for a very well done article !
This isn't the first 'development' that the city council has attempted to ram down the throats of the Marana public, and it won't be the last. So far, they've been quite successful at it. I tried to warn about them for a few years now, and got no positive feedback. Good luck...