Freeway access opens community to danger of sex offenders
Ahwatukee Foothills News
11-23-05

Dear Editor:
My name is Kim Ahern and my family and I live in Ahwatukee Foothills. As I am sure you know, the Ahwatukee community has a very high percentage of families with kids. Do the politicians who are making the decisions know that if this highway goes through on Pecos Road that they would be connecting this community ­ with one of the highest populations of kids ­ to the other side of South Mountain Park ­ with one of the highest populations of sex offenders and child molesters in all of Phoenix? Do the politicians even care?

If you pull this information up on Maricopa County's sex offenders' Web site, there is only one sex offender registered in this neighborhood and hundreds in the neighborhoods on the other side. These monsters would be within a five-minute drive of our children and schools, where now they are a 55-minute drive. My brother, who is an Ahwatukee resident and also a Phoenix police officer, works in this area. He works on and off in the sex crimes area of the vice squad, he has made a lot of us aware of what the situation could look like if this thing goes through.

There are a few of us in these Kyrene schools (Akimel A-al, Estrella, Lagos, and Sierra) who want to know and make it known which politicians are for connecting our kids to these monsters with this freeway. At least if the freeway went on the GRIC (Gila River Indian Community) land, we would have a mile of reservation as a buffer, but still not comforting as a parent.

Another thought the traffic in this area before Pecos Road was connected to Interstate 10 was a nightmare, it would take 20 minutes to get a quarter of a mile from 44th Street to across the freeway. When Pecos Road is no longer an inter-Ahwatukee street while under construction or eventually a freeway we go back to a parking lot on Chandler, Ray, Warner and Elliot. ADOT has to be aware of this, however, we fear these people don't really care about making matters worse on surface streets as much as they enjoy spending great deals of the state's money.

This 1988 freeway design is so antiquated, and this entire community is 100 percent against it. Thanks for hearing us out.

Kim Ahern