Grand Canyon Times

Fountain Hills Town Councilman Allen Skillicorn was the latest guest on The Grand Canyon Times Podcast.

Skillicorn was elected to the Fountain Hills, Ariz. Town Council in November 2022.

Skillicorn and his wife, Heather, attend Cornerstone Family Church of Fountain Hills, and Allen is a serial entrepreneur, owning multiple small businesses, with expertise in advertising and marketing.

He is the executive director of the non-profit, Grassroots Revolution, and two-time auto racing National Champion with the National Autosports Association.

Skillicorn is a precinct committeeman for the Arizona Republican Party Legislative District 3 and an Arizona Republican State Committeeman.

This full podcast episode also is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Full, unedited transcript of podcast episode -- Fountain Hills Town Councilman Allen Skillicorn on the Grand Canyon Times Podcast (September 13, 2023):

00:00:00] Leyla Gulen: Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I'm your host, Leyla Gulen. In this episode, we welcome our guest, Allen Skillicorn. Alan is a longtime lawmaker and entrepreneur, currently serving the town of Fountain Hills, Arizona, as town councilman. His political roots run deep, having served as a Republican member of the Illinois House of Representatives.

[00:00:23] From 2017 to 2021, he owns multiple small businesses with expertise in advertising and marketing, and is a devoted member of various organizations. Councilman, welcome.

[00:00:34] Allen Skillicorn: Absolutely, Leyla. Thank you for having me. It's so great to be with you today.

[00:00:38] Leyla Gulen: Yes. And as a former member of the Illinois General Assembly, representing constituents about an hour outside of Chicago to serving your current community of Fountain Hills, Arizona, there is no city too big or too small for you to serve.

[00:00:51] So why do conservative policies matter in a small town? Well,

[00:00:56] Allen Skillicorn: they definitely matter in a small town, just like they do in a bigger [00:01:00] town or a bigger state, because we can see where things work and things don't work. So I left the state of dysfunction, and it wasn't just the state that was dysfunctional.

[00:01:11] It's the policy that each and every town and county and school district and organization also had to do because of the dysfunctional nature of the policies that came from the top in Illinois. And we see that across the country, especially with the lockdowns we saw. Everything is kind of at the forefront now.

[00:01:31] You know, we saw things going on in our schools that we don't like, we're seeing a rise in crime. We're seeing inflation. We're seeing policies that are causing gas to be more expensive. Yes, that is part of inflation, but there's still individual components there. And it's having an effect on families.

[00:01:49] It's having an effect on our economy and it's having an effect on the people, right? So we definitely see that. And here in a small town, well, of course, you know, [00:02:00] the state of Arizona has laws. that tell us how we have to operate, that tell us that budgets have to be a certain way, that we have spending caps, we have laws due to the counting of money, but we also have laws on how you do your employee relations, how you hire and fire, how you do bid projects, and the same thing goes to the crime.

[00:02:20] You know, we live in a great community, but, you know, we have some issues where the homelessness is starting to come from Phoenix and California to our Town here, we also have a situation where we have like homes literally in the middle of neighborhoods that there's special provisions that we know about short term rentals, right, that are coming in into our neighborhoods.

[00:02:39] But did people know that there's kind of the same thing for like drug and rehab, alcohol rehab, that are coming into our neighborhoods and homes? So we have that here too. Especially being Fountain Hills is a high end luxury, kind of like the Beverly Hills of like the Scottsdale area. We have that, that is, that is our town, basically.

[00:02:59] So there's an [00:03:00] attractive quality here that also brings the things that are less attractive. So the policies that we have on a town council do matter. So we have to be at the forefront of that. We have to have policies that actually have reasonable restrictions and regulations on stuff like the, the homes that are being used for drug and alcohol treatment, but also how we deal with homelessness, how we deal with our economy here.

[00:03:26] How we encourage business. Uh, and even the culture things that matter to our towns and families and kids, that matters too. And we have to make sure that we are actually pushing forward and doing the right thing, because if we don't, the other side, the left, the people that are kind of cultural Marxists, will come in and try to change things and make us more like Berkeley, California, not like, uh, Beverly Hills of the Phoenix Valley here.

[00:03:52] And it could change things very fast and affect our property values, affect our way of life, affect our schools. And once you make some [00:04:00] changes in the bad direction, we see what's happening in Illinois and California and Oregon and Washington, people leave. And Arizona has been a destination, and we want to continue to be that destination, but we are that destination because of the conservative policies that don't just flow through Phoenix and the legislature, but actually flow up through the towns.

[00:04:21] And the local taxing bodies and the local bureaucracies, we have to make sure that that is still conservative. And really when it comes down to the fundamental nature of it, the conservative policies and conservative values work. Every single time they're trying. So if we have, you know, if we're conservative fiscally and how we spend money, that's going to work, we're going to save money, we're gonna be able to tax less while we tax less, it makes the burden of living here easier.

[00:04:49] It makes a burden of bringing a business here easier. Same thing, but business regulations and allowing businesses to advertise and things like that. It's going to allow businesses to come here and those businesses [00:05:00] come in. And not only are they productive members of our community and our. Take part of the community, but they also have fun, great infrastructure, great parks, great streets, great roads.

[00:05:10] And let us have all of those nice things that we want. So I just, I do like to point out that these conservative policies work, and that they work for a reason, because they're common sense, and they're good ideas. Well, let me ask

[00:05:22] Leyla Gulen: you this, because you've had a lot of experience in having been from Illinois, and understanding your constituency very well.

[00:05:29] You alluded to this a moment ago, when you say that a lot of people are fleeing places like Illinois, like California, etc. How would you compare the constituencies between those whom you served in Illinois versus those who you serve currently.

[00:05:43] Allen Skillicorn: So in some ways they're very similar. In some ways they're different.

[00:05:46] So Arizona is much more of a melting pot. Illinois was an attractive destination a hundred years ago, 75 years ago. And that's because there were a lot of jobs in the Chicago area, Southern Illinois, more rural areas. There was great [00:06:00] farming. I mean, some of the best soil in the country is in the Midwest.

[00:06:04] And when you have that great soil, it means you can grow crops. And, but if you grow crops, you can also have. You know, cattle and all that, they eat those crops. So that's how that builds up. But when, when I see here is a much younger society, frankly, Arizona boomed after the air conditioning became very popular after World War II.

[00:06:25] And there are not third and fourth generation Arizonans, or at least they're very few. And if they are, they're like ranchers or gold miners or there's lawmen, something else. You know, I was a recent, the last. Say 40 years, there's been a huge boom, and even in the last 10 years, I find it so ironic. That I walk around town, like I might be like working in the yard and I'll put on an old t shirt, like an old t shirt from doing the hustle up the John Hancock building, which was a charity event where we would walk up the hundred flights of stairs every year and people would go, I remember John [00:07:00] Hancock building or I did the hustle up the Hancock or you do something like I might have a A shirt for the, uh, the old fire department, right?

[00:07:08] I used to live and people go, Hey, I used to live in the next town over like, wow, well, that's I live next door to you. Basically, you see a lot of that and this is such a melting pot. Everybody is from somewhere else. And I, it's like a third of the people are from the suburbs of Chicago, my town here in Fountain Hills.

[00:07:28] Like another third of the people are from the West coast, California, Oregon, Washington. And then like another third, I think are from Minnesota. It's like, it's so rare that you bump into a native Arizonan. And I did choke with tourists that I meet. And they ask me about, Oh, how are you a native Arizonan?

[00:07:44] And I tell them there's no such thing as a native Arizona because we're all, we're all transplants, right? Uh, or at least the vast majority. So there, there's a big difference there. Whereas Illinois, I would think about it here. So my, my mother was born in Chicago. Her [00:08:00] father was born in Chicago. And his grandfather moved the family to Chicago because there were jobs.

[00:08:06] And everybody talked to him. They've been around a long time. Yeah, they might have moved the suburb over, but, you know, they all have roots, uh, in that area. Whereas here, our roots are very different. There's very, very few people that have long lasting roots here. And I think that also builds on people that really appreciate it.

[00:08:22] You talk about people who are immigrants to the United States, and they always say, oh, it's much better here than where we were. We love America. It's a great place to be. There's a very similar love for Arizona air because of that, because so, I mean, I'm, I'm now middle aged. But when I was young, I, I bought a house in Illinois, I lost a lot of money on that house there.

[00:08:43] I saw property taxes were hurting the value of my home, hurting the value of my neighbor's homes. And you come here and we have very low property taxes. We do a lot of things right. The business is kind of booming. I mean, it's, this is like, Narcopa County is the fastest growing county in the country right now because so many people are [00:09:00] relocating here.

[00:09:00] A lot of these people, they are, they love it here because there's so many great things to do outside. Uh, the weather, at least in the wintertime, not the summertime, is spectacular. The scenery is beautiful, but there's opportunity here. And people think of Arizona as a retirement state, but we actually have a very young population here.

[00:09:18] Yeah,

[00:09:18] Leyla Gulen: that's definitely the impression I think a lot of people have. It's a misnomer that it's a retirement community. The

[00:09:24] Allen Skillicorn: entire state of Arizona. We have one of the youngest populations in the United States. No one knows that. But that's because we have so many transplants here. And it's just, it's a great place to be.

[00:09:33] Leyla Gulen: Very interesting. Well, since you had mentioned Maricopa County, what is Maricopa Association of Governments and why does their WOCA agenda matter?

[00:09:43] Allen Skillicorn: Yes, that is really important. And I think that might be the most important thing we talk about today. So there is the Association of Governments. It's basically a group of bureaucrats that try to guide the policies and principles.

[00:09:55] But you can see the tone of my voice has changed, and they're not talking about one of the [00:10:00] wonderful things we talked about, how we're a melting pot, and how conservative policies really matter and make things better. They're really trying to push an agenda, an agenda that's Berkeley, California, or Washington, D.

[00:10:12] C. Upon the municipalities and the people of Maricopa County, and we see that big cities. Of course, Phoenix is a big city. Maricopa County. It's 4 million people. It'd be perspective in size. It's 3rd largest county in the United States, and there is a group of bureaucrats and also mayors. Of the towns that are encompass Maricopa County, that they may not be as conservative as myself, or my constituents, or the listeners of the podcast.

[00:10:42] They're really pushing ideas like road diets, where we get rid of vehicle lane miles and turn them into either bike lanes, or turn them into trolley lanes, or worse yet, like light rail. So we have that agenda they're pushing, they're actually trying to really push a Green New Deal here in [00:11:00] Maricopa, where they're trying to cut down on emissions from vehicles, and even in a testimony at the State Senate, one of these bureaucrats from the Maricopa Association of Governments admitted that their goal was to take our cars off the streets and take our cars away from us and basically force us to ride light rail.

[00:11:20] And that is something that the American principles of individualism doesn't kind of work with, but also Don't forget that Phoenix, Maricopa County, even the town of Fountain Hills that I live, our towns were all built and designed after World War II. So we're built around the car. So light rail, like you think of like New York City, right?

[00:11:40] And they've got the subway. Well, New York City is very densely populated and it was designed actually, ironically, by Alan Sandler Hamilton. Over 200 years ago, they didn't have cars back then, they didn't have, it is built on the grid, but they didn't have streets wide enough for vehicle miles and things like that.

[00:11:57] Whereas Phoenix, Scottsdale, [00:12:00] Glendale, Mesa, Fountain Hills, are built around the car. Uh, we have excellent highways for transportation, and all the roadways and streets are wide for cars. So the idea of having to have... Trolleys, buses, and subway or light rail, basically, it's not something that we need or want.

[00:12:21] But unfortunately, uh, this is a great boondoggle where there's billions, if not trillions of dollars flowing from Washington, DC from taxpayers, of course, to fund this. And what do you know, bureaucrats, they know there's jobs in it. So there's people that they literally go to college and they learn about how do we.

[00:12:40] Make these policies work and I would push them down on the people and they, they graduate with these, these planning degrees and these bureaucracy degrees and they come and they work for an organization like the Maricopa Association of Government. So it, the more people know about this, the better, but also the more people know about this, the more they dislike these ideas that are being [00:13:00] pushed down on us.

[00:13:01] And I truly believe that just a few people can really make a difference here. And right now, I think there's 13 active mayors. Part of this Maricopa Associ of governments. Unfortunately, fountain Hills does have someone that is on that D government board that is our mayor, and she is a former lobbyist, a former staffer for the Arizona Senate.

[00:13:24] Democrats kind, tied settle that has some left wing ideas. That is the mayor of Fountain Hills and she is our representative on there. And of course, they just did a unanimous. Proclamation to accept a very renewed deal type things part of their agenda for 2030, and they're pushing these ideas, not only on our town Fountain Hills, but on the rest of the county, and it's a, it is a county that's a mixture of urban and suburban and even some rural, and they're pushing these ideas out there and enforcing there's a lot of taxpayer money that goes to fund.

[00:13:57] The light rail. A lot of taxpayer money that's literally ripping [00:14:00] up our roads and taking away lane miles, which makes traffic worse. And then they put in the trolleys and bike lanes and things like that. But that's actually a little bit of their goal. They want to make traffic bad enough so that people go, Oh, the traffic's so bad, I have to ride the light rail.

[00:14:13] And once you start riding the light rail, I mean, obviously a place like New York or even the east coast of the United States, very densely populated area. Light rail works just fine there. Light rail does not work in suburban and exurban areas that are spread out. They're not be able to control when the train stops, not be able to control schedules.

[00:14:30] So people want the freedom of their cars. People want also the privacy of their cars. And don't forget it's very hot here. We want to have the air conditioner cars too. So people don't like that, but unfortunately you have to have some bureaucrats that think they're smarter than everyone else and are pushing this agenda and that's something that the more people hear about this, the more people that hear about this podcast and frankly.

[00:14:51] I'm going to share this podcast so other people can hear about it. They

[00:14:54] Leyla Gulen: did that in California as well, installing the light rail system, which there was a lot of fury [00:15:00] over that, but you take a light rail and you push it through Pasadena, Sierra Madre area. I mean, I would go into those areas frequently, and I did not see a whole lot of people riding those trains, but it

[00:15:14] Allen Skillicorn: cost a fortune.

[00:15:15] Yeah, so I think it's something like that. There was one of the Phoenix councilman mentioned that it's so many millions of dollars per mile of light rail. I mean, I think it's like 15 times more expensive to build a light rail versus a road lot. And then there's maintenance to take care of them. And then lots of what you're doing is that.

[00:15:33] They've become a haven for criminal elements, for drug activity, the homeless will ride them. And now you've got light rail going out to the suburbs with crime, with drugs, things like that, and elements that we just don't want. And there is also, there's a town to the south of us, Mesa, which they call the biggest suburb in the country, or the largest suburb in the country, because it's something like 700, 000 people.

[00:15:56] It's huge. It's a huge town. They talk about this main [00:16:00] street area where the light rail came through there and just ruined the academy there because he had little shops and stuff and people would drive their car and park there. And unfortunately that it's all gone and now we have this lighted section that, what are you gonna do with it?

[00:16:13] Now it's like maybe you could turn to industrial. What they're trying to do right now is actually put some more high density housing in there and, but then people do, lot of times they don't wanna live around high density because they want elbow room. And that's something that we have a lot of here at Arizona's elbow room.

[00:16:26] So a lot just drives ideas that don't work and people don't want. And it is like these California news now. I have, uh, usually you fly into a town, and I've used the light rail before. I've, I have flown into San Jose airport in California. And I've used the, the BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit or something.

[00:16:42] And same thing. Would I want family to ride that? Maybe not. Not these days. Yeah, there's drug use and crime on that. And it's not good. Now, was it convenient for what I was doing? Yes, it was. But, you know, how do you balance that? And that's the real thing that again, high [00:17:00] density areas, it works around the airport.

[00:17:02] Probably fine. But we already have that here in, in Phoenix area. I don't think we need to expand it. And frankly, if we're going to keep it, we've got to figure out a way to police it. Because I saw my business, I do go to the airport and fly out quite a bit. And it is more convenient to park five miles away from the airport.

[00:17:20] And then just take a light rail in. I get it. You know, last time I did, I mean, there was a gentleman that was high on something sleeping in front of me. And this is not a respectful life for him. He's not living his best life, but we're just making it easier. Unfortunately, it's very sad and that doesn't work for him.

[00:17:37] It doesn't work for the users of it. So we have to find a way to police it, but we should certainly should not be basically sending it out into the suburbs. And that would be a travesty to bring that crime out to neighborhoods that are safe and don't have those problems, unfortunately. Well, just

[00:17:52] Leyla Gulen: a couple more questions for you.

[00:17:53] Yeah, I think a lot of purple showing up on recent math. How can local issues make a difference in a state that is [00:18:00] slowly sliding into California

[00:18:01] Allen Skillicorn: territory? Absolutely. And this is another one that I'm passionate about. I still think if we do things right here, those right ideas travel not just upward, but outward.

[00:18:13] So what am I talking about? How do you explain that? So if we are doing the right things here in our town here, we're passing conservative budgets. We're not spending to the maximum. The spending limit that the state allows if we're pushing low tax or lowering the tax ideas, we build that, uh, you know, the conservative momentum you need and what happens?

[00:18:35] Well, all of a sudden you see that our neighboring meetings are like, Hey, something's really working there in Fountain Hills. They're spending less money, they're taxed, left less. They actually have a growing business base. People are happy. Uh, you they see that right. And they want to emulate that for Mesa and Scottsdale and the surrounding communities.

[00:18:56] So you have that expanding outward on a horizontal level, but [00:19:00] also on the vertical level. If we're doing things right here, it encourages our legislators to go, Hey, these policies are working. They're popular. People are happy about it. Well, we're going to do the same thing in the state legislature and they're, we're going to have their back do it.

[00:19:14] But also When you are talking about successes, you have more success, and that's something, that's what we need more on. Uh, when we talk about some of the things that we've done here, so, we were, we were paying for our lobbies here in town. Well, we fired that lobbyist. We were doing some silly things that, that shouldn't be going on, uh, from a town government perspective, and we ended that.

[00:19:36] Well, other people hear about that. They want to emulate that. That just goes outward and also upward. And we really do need to have that. We've got some great legislatures, fabulous legislatures locally, across the state, but there is definitely a purple element here. But there, we have competitive legislative districts.

[00:19:54] Well, if we have some of these good ideas that are talked about and people are inspired and they get involved, well, we [00:20:00] could continue winning the legislature and it'd be bigger than that. And frankly, it is a little bit more than that. We do need to take over our governor's mansion. Unfortunately, we have someone that You know, basically kind of hid from the press and kind of snuck into the governor's mansion.

[00:20:13] Well, that day is going to have to end. We're going to have to have someone that's responsive to the people, doesn't hide from the people and advances the policies that Arizonans want. And I still think it's going to be conservative ones. And, and by talking about it and by being vocal about it, those ideas are advanced.

[00:20:29] But also the people that are helping us that are in our neighboring towns, but also the legislature, they know that we support them and they're encouraged. And sometimes those legislators, and even, even local issues, there are special interests that want to push through those things that will benefit a few, but hurt the masses.

[00:20:48] And we see that in our local town, we have special interests here, but they also have special interests, maybe more so, in Phoenix, at the State House and the State Senate. Those special interests are very powerful. And we have to [00:21:00] embolden our representatives to stand up for us little people here in the grassroots and stand up to those special interests and do the right thing.

[00:21:08] And will we have more of that? Again, people are happier, we have more successful policies, and we'll continue striving on and people will be attracted to, Arizona's done a great job, we've lowered our income tax, we have a booming economy, we continue doing that, uh, we've got school choice, we've got these empowerment scholarships for children, I mean parents and families are doing wonderful here.

[00:21:30] And we need to continue that because we've got some good things going on, and success will bring us more success.

[00:21:36] Leyla Gulen: Yeah, well, as a member of town council, you help to secure a conservative majority in Fountain Hills. Can you just talk a bit about the culture war issues, banning of TikTok, et

[00:21:45] Allen Skillicorn: cetera? Yeah, well, I mean, and that's more teamwork than anything else.

[00:21:49] We have a group, a majority in town that was very concerned about what was happening in our town. And I think that they let a few things slide for a few years. They got complacent [00:22:00] and you had people that had political ambition, like our current mayor has political ambition. And again, this is a person that is a former lobbyist, was a former staffer for the Arizona Senate Democrats and has an agenda to push out a town.

[00:22:14] That's very different than the people that live here. So they came in and one of the things that, you know, she did with this, she actually banned the invocation prayer. So literally the first meeting we came to, we pushed to get that on the agenda. And our conserved majority said, no, we're going to bring back a vocation because that matters.

[00:22:33] We have a town that no town is full of one specific religion or faith. We have many here, but we have people that want to express that faith. And we also want to invite that faith into our government and into our lives. So we brought that back. Uh, very, very shortly after there's, there's a few other issues.

[00:22:52] Like we fired our lobbyist, uh, you know, I brought up, Hey, we should, we should ban TikTok from the devices here in town, from the town owned [00:23:00] devices. One, it's a waste of time, but this is spyware. I mean, town employees, I mean, they could deal with your personal information. If you're filing out a permit application or you're doing some kind of interaction with the town and they have your personal information.

[00:23:13] Do you really want Chinese spyware on their computer? So we had to get that off. You know, and that was something that staff was like, Hey, that's a really good idea. Let's go ahead and do that. There's other towns and cities across the country are doing that. And I'd be at peace. Think about it. I was like, Hey, this is a good thing we're doing.

[00:23:28] Why does it, the state of Arizona? And there was nothing from our current inhabitant of the governor's office. And, but after a little bit of pressure and keep on talking about it. Keep on bringing it up that the state needs a ban tick tock from state owned devices. Actually, our governor here actually went along after a couple of months to cut up pressure, and that's a good thing.

[00:23:48] And that's something that we're going to celebrate that victory because it is a time to waste there to have basically people that are servants that are working for us, servants of the public, I should say. that are working for the people. We don't want to waste their [00:24:00] time on that. But again, spyware there.

[00:24:01] I mean, the state has to deal with social security numbers and Medicaid information. Do we really want that information out of the cloud so the Chinese Communist Party can steal that information? No way do we want that. That was a good idea. That this load, because, and frankly, the people here in town knew that there's a conservative majority, and it's just like, hey, there's a new sheriff now.

[00:24:21] And we got to push these events, these great ideas through and get some stuff done to benefit people.

[00:24:26] Leyla Gulen: Now, anybody who wants to have a conversation with you, what's the best way for them to contact

[00:24:31] Allen Skillicorn: you? Yeah, so I'm on social media. So I'm on Twitter here, I call it xDal, but you know what, I'm uh, I'm kind of old school, and I don't like change.

[00:24:38] So I call it Twitter, yeah, so just simple, at AlexGillacourt, my name's Brent, it's spelled out, and I like social media, I've got a personal profile, which is just about full, and I think you only have 5, 000 friends, that's about full, but I do have a page, they're popular. Alan still, well, you get to know a lot of people.

[00:24:55] It's, you do, you absolutely do. You do podcast like this, right? And you get to know a lot of people. [00:25:00] 100. So yeah, I've got a page that's literally, it's, I think actually be, if you type it in, into your browser on, that's what that one's on Facebook, the, the Zuckerberg application. But that one is I think like facebook.com/taxpayers.

[00:25:13] The number four still accord. Or if you just, you search my name out still Accord, you'll find that I am on Instagram. Maybe a little bit more personal, I put car stuff on there and a little bit of political stuff, but you know, whatever, we could do that. Hey, you have a

[00:25:27] Leyla Gulen: number of types of conversations. It doesn't always have to be all business.

[00:25:31] Well,

[00:25:31] Allen Skillicorn: you know what? I love to put the business stuff aside. I don't actually like to take my work home with me. There's so many other things I'd like to talk about. And that's something that we're missing out right now in the current culture.

[00:25:42] Leyla Gulen: Yes, it is absolutely true. Well, Alan Skillicorn, Executive Director for Good Government Group Grassroots Revolution, and fun fact, you heard him say it, two time auto racing national champion with the National Auto Sports Association.

[00:25:56] Alan, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:25:58] Allen Skillicorn: Yeah. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so [00:26:00] much. And I will spread this podcast out there. Great to connect. Thank you so much.