Greg In The Desert

Update 02/18/09: View video and more news on this event from Channel 3 in Phoenix.

President Obama will speak at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona tomorrow. I graduated from Dobson High in 1992.

Apparently they announced it monday morning and people rushed to the school to get tickets. Obama will be speaking in the school’s gymnasium which holds about 2000 people but there were only 400 tickets released.

ronaz08 on YouTube has a video of his sons waiting in line on Monday which shows at least a 1000 people lined up.

It’s interesting that Obama chose the state of Arizona, where McCain is a senator. Obama apparently didn’t inform or invite McCain to the event. The other senator for Arizona couldn’t change his plans.

“That’s too late for me to change my plans,” Kyl said. “In any event I wouldn’t be speaking. I would be standing there while he’s announcing something that I know nothing about. The time to talk about these things is before the fact, not after the fact.”

Of course, there are protests being organized.

Although I don’t miss living in Arizona I might have planned a trip back home if I could have acquired tickets for the event.

Some people in a Rio Rancho neighborhood hit by a water main break on Sunday are saying that the city isn’t doing its part to assure that they have clean, drinkable water. “It’s just getting really old,” said Renee Popovich, a homeowner near Rockaway and Pyrite in northeast Rio Rancho. “We’re not getting any support from the city to provide at least drinking water for the residents.” Popovich said that her children had to spend the night with friends so they had water to get ready for school on Monday morning. The break carved out a mini arroyo in front of several homes leaving people unable to back their cars out of their driveways. Rio Rancho officials say that they are aware of the problem and have recently removed asphalt over the water main in preparation for repairing the faulty pipes, which have failed several times in recent months.

The city came and fixed the water main break in front of my house pretty quickly. This break seems much worse than mine which might be part of the problem. Perhaps the city should do a better job of communicating to the residents the problems in fixing this and how long it’s going to take so it doesn’t end up on the news. Just sayin’.