Polytechnic campus too important to ignore

Mesa City officials are making their case to ASU and the Regents to save Poly. Their logic is that Poly is important to the longterm growth of the Gateway area and its efforts to attract high-wage jobs and become a technology hub.

I think they are playing it right reiterating the need for a "research campus" in Mesa. However, I don't think its necessary for them to kiss Michael Crow's ring to make this happen. The City Council's focus should be on the regents and building a relationship with them. As it has been mentioned before, Poly could certainly stand on its own. In some ways, I think that the council is starting to recognize that:

"We want to be supportive of making sure that Polytechnic isn't just a collection of classrooms or an extended campus but rather its own entity," Somers said.

To this point, ASU has treated Poly as its own entity. If they intend to change that, Mesa should be proactively looking at other options to help strengthen and build that campus with or without ASU. Mesa has a significant investment out there, and they certainly should not let it go to waste.