OK, the practice/religion in dojo and ibm-dojo is actually to declare where used, as implied by our .jshintrc, and as documented in https://github.com/csnover/dojo2-core#linting, specifically the line:

> funcscope: When authoring code, declaring variables as close to the point where they are first used is preferred as it helps to cluster groups of code together instead of spreading them throughout a function.