Archive for January 13th, 2009

According to this yesterday’s Inside Tucson Business:

Huckelberry keeps county’s top job for 4 more years

Chuck Huckelberry, who has been Pima County Administrator for 15 years, has a new contract that will keep him in the county’s top job for another four years.

The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Jan. 6 to extend the contract. The lone dissenting vote was cast by Republican Ray Carroll, who has been a frequent critic of Huckelberry.

“I find that I can’t trust his reporting, and I have also had a very difficult time accessing information over the years, whether it’s just about budgets or any other department information I require in order to make good decisions; and I think he’s made a naked attempt to support those three (Democrat) votes,” Carroll said after the vote in an interview with the Green Valley News.

Under the terms of his new contract, which runs to Jan. 8, 2013, Huckelberry’s annual salary of $230,000 remains unchanged. Additionally, he receives $22,000 per year in deferred compensation toward retirement, use of a county car and other some other benefits.

Mr. Huckelberry who is truly the Emperor of Tucson/Pima County is a very lucky overpaid person.  He has the most power and influence of anyone in Tucson and he is a non-elected emperor.  As long as automatons Elias, Valadez and Bronson keep their seats he will be here until he wants to leave.  Let’s look at some career highlights:

1) Built a baseball stadium in the middle of nowhere.  A baseball field that was so poorly kept, that the Diamondbacks stopped sending players for rehab stints in fear of re-injuring on potholes in outfield.  This is a field that had game postponed this last August due to unplayable outfields because there was no grass, just dirt that turned into mud.  And when the Sidewinders left for greener pastures, his response was ” We can make more money if we book more music concerts”.  The Sidewinders leaving just started the ball rolling on the total exit of baseball from this community.  The Sports and Tourism authority has a long road ahead of them and I wish them well.  Too bad every deal they dig up has to be approved by the Emperor.

2) The plan he is so heralded for: the Sonoran Conservation Plan.  As you see in other posts in this blog, this has been a waste of taxpayers dollars.  With a majority of the land in the state owned by one government or the other, having the Pima County taxpayers buy more land is very silly.  The emperor is very smart, he has his bond elections for open space buys in May.  You usually have about a 18% voter turn out, so he needs very little people to vote to tax us for more millions of dollars.  I know he makes the environmentalists and the news agencies happy with these buys, but for the small business owner and average family out there, higher taxes just make life a little harder.  Now you know why the Emperor came out of his tower a couple of weeks ago to give Larry Hecker his Man of the Year award.  Hecker is the chair of his bond committee that recommends all these bonds!

3)  As Mr. Carroll pointed out, the Lord Emperor does not share information easily.  During last year’s budget process, he actually order is employees not to cooperate with Mr. Carroll’s office when asking for specific budget information.  This is not a friend of the taxpayers of Pima County.

4) Pima County Animal Control(PCAC) is one the worst run organizations in Arizona. Talk to any of the rescue leagues in the area about PCAC and they will regal you with various horror stories.  They speak of PCAC like they are speaking about Mordor(from the Lord of the Rings).  This year, a friend of mine rescued a dog from there.  They told him to fatten the dog up and bring it back to be spayed.  After doing so, they cut the dog open to discover that she had already been spayed.  This is just one of many bad stories.

5)  Refer to my previous post ” First things first”

http://tucsongrowup.com/category/economic-development/page/5/

to see what a crime-infested county we are living in.  When you compare our crime stats to Maricopa(at 4 times the population of Pima)  you will be scared!

6)  Rillito Race Track/Shooting Range.  Chuck doesn’t really like it.  Last January, the Board has to vote to compel him to do improvements that were contractually stipulated.  He really felt like he did not need to follow the contract.  He has purposely let that place go to crap, so he can blow it up and put insome soccer fields.  Talk to the Pima County Horseman’s Association, they’ll have some stories for you. 

He has also dragged his feet in completing a already-bonded project, the shooting range on the southeast side of town.   The people involved on the committee for that project have had to hammer on Chuck plus supervisors to finish a project that should have been done a couple of years ago.  The bond was passed years ago. Seeing that horse racing and shooting are very non-PC in this town, the papers have given him a free pass.

7)  Just some numbers to sum it up:

                                                     Pima County                         Maricopa County

Population                                      1,003,235                           3,901,492

Percentage Unincorporated                36%                                      6%

Poperty Tax Rate per $100           $4.66                                 $1.29

Employees Per 10k Population             8.3                                     3.1

The numbers show me an overtaxed population encumbered by an overbloated bureaucracy.  The Emperor has to be forced to things he should be doing and he is very close with public information, In any sane business model, the Emperor should be let go.  No, we give him another 4 years.  This kind of non-accounability is the poster child for all the other things we complain about:  TREO, Visitor’s Bureau, Downtown Partnership, etc.   The Emperor’s reign is something that effects everyone in this town, and not for the better.