Twenty-five years back, there were a clutch of prime mantras among the activist set: Growth could be stopped. Cattle-grazing was archaic. Mining was a goner. Developers could be battled to a standstill, and the Pusch Ridge bighorns would tough it out.Today, folks who built below Pusch Ridge adore the foothills wildlife–until it nibbles their bougainvillea. More habitat has vanished from this county than perhaps ever existed in some states. Cows are now seen as bulwarks against bulldozers. As for bighorn sheep, well, somebody figures they might have seen a footprint up beyond those pretty cul-de-sacs sometime back.

Growth has continued at freakish levels, although a crashing real estate market offers some hope. Still, even wayward water supplies haven’t truly threatened this juggernaut; the housing industry, along with local government, still huddles under the Central Arizona Project’s rippling chimera.

Yet time marches on. And some iconic battles from those days–stopping the UA telescopes on Mount Graham, for example, or blocking developer Don Diamond’s Rocking K Ranch exurb–weren’t exactly won, but they weren’t totally lost, either.

The Mount Graham mountaintop telescopes are nearly due for review by the Coronado National Forest, and UA astronomers may lack the political muscle of yesteryear. Diamond did toss a few acreage bones to Saguaro National Park East, and bankrolled the Rincon Institute to cope with what his avarice had wrought.

Meanwhile, some things have actually improved. Though our fair city has plumped beyond reason, one recent UA analysis reveals that Arizona’s population grew by a measly 1.6 percent in the last year, the lowest rate since the blistering recession in the 1990s.

And although we’ve had decades to ponder the mine tailings south of Tucson (”Manmade Mountains!” one real estate brochure enthused), citizens are tightly organized against a new mine proposed for Rosemont Valley in the Santa Rita Mountains.

So there is reason to hope. Indeed, tempered optimism is raison d’ètre among most conservationists. Among them is Carolyn Campbell, executive director of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection. Campbell’s coalition has been knee-deep in prodding Pima County’s Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (one true victory-in-progress) down the road to reality.

Since its late 1990s inception as a wildlife-protection blueprint, the project has spent roughly $120 million from a voter-approved bond to purchase or lease more than 160,000 acres.

To Campbell, that 2004 bond–when citizens earmarked nearly $175 million to buy open space–was a turning point. “In Pima County, people have always been working on protecting open space,” she says, “and we’ve had open-space bonds for the last 20 years. But the big difference is the planning and scientific effort that went into this endangered-species project. The open space we targeted was key habitat for particular species, along with connectivity between some of the already preserved areas. So there was a little bit of method to the madness.

“It’s why there’s still a lot of support from the conservation community, and, I believe, the community at large,” Campbell says. “We’ve had the best available science behind the plan, and not politics. But what is different now is that we have the political will among citizens. Before, it was like beating our heads against the wall.”

Gayle Hartmann has also been in the trenches for eons, including a stint on the Pima County Planning and Zoning Commission. She now heads Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, a group fighting the proposed Rosemont mine. Hartmann heralds the addition of Sharon Bronson and Ray Carroll to the Pima County Board of Supervisors. Bronson was elected to the board in 1996, representing District 3; Carroll was appointed to represent District 4 a year later, and formally elected in 1998. Finally, says Hartmann, “there was a majority on the board that was really interested in conservation.”

Both supervisors championed open-space preservation, and Carroll has fought the proposed Rosemont mine with a notable vengeance. In 2007, he garnered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Outstanding Achievement award.

Equally notable is a shift among Green Valley constituents in District 4 who support him. “Twenty years ago, Green Valley was always against any type of open space,” says Hartmann, “and that’s completely changed. I don’t know if it’s because there are more people there, or if the people there are somewhat different. But his district–although they may be politically conservative in some ways–now seems very concerned about environmental issues.”

That concern has been critical in efforts to limit Santa Cruz Valley growth, including the vastly scaled-down Canoa Ranch development. Many Green Valley dwellers have also been bare-knuckle opponents of the Augusta mine.

Another positive change, says Hartmann, “is that we don’t have quite as nasty a war between the pro-growth and no-growth sides. To some degree, I guess the pro-growthers won. But at the same time, I think there’s a much better understanding of the need to do preservation and see that we have enough water.”

Roger Featherstone, a longtime anti-mining activist, has likewise been in the fray for years. Today, he relishes the heat generated against Canadian-owned Augusta Resource Corp., the mining company hoping to gut Rosemont Valley. He’s also guardedly cheered about legislation sifting through Congress to reform the despised 1872 Mining Act. This antiquated law gives mining companies such as Augusta near carte blanche in laying claim to public lands.

“Tucson has become a lot more conservation-minded in the last 20 years,” Featherstone says, “and I think that really shows in the Rosemont fight. You now have to look long and hard to find anybody who’s in favor of that mine.

“People understand,” he says, “that Tucson has different values now when it comes to raping and pillaging the land than they did 20 years ago.”

Despite that positive shift, says Featherstone, conservationists now face an unexpected foe: themselves. “Twenty-five years ago, when we were all here fighting, we worked really hard, and we had some successes and some real disappointments. But the pace wasn’t nearly so frenetic. We had time to sit on a porch at night with buddies and drink beer.

“But now we’ve really gotten into this ‘Alice in Wonderland’ syndrome, where we’re running twice as fast, and we’re still falling behind. I think the conservation community has to take a serious look at the fact that they’re working twice as hard and getting a lot less done–with a lot more stress and a lot more unhappiness.

“If I could start a new environmental trend,” he half-chuckles, “it would be modeled on the slow-food movement.”

So does long and languid dining offer any tantalizing hints for Tucson’s environmental future? We’ll pop a beer, gnaw a few pretzels and get back to you on that in about 25 years.

When revenues aren’t coming in you have to cut expenses. Sound pretty basic right? Well according to a recent editorial in the Tucson Citizen  “City leaders should contemplate other creative alternatives as well to save money without eliminating jobs.”  In other words, instead of cutting expenses let’s look at raising income - click HERE for tax increases you should start planning for.

A look at lay offs around the state:

Oro Valley Cutting Jobs To Balance Budget - HERE

Phoenixis expected to lay off 1,200 people next month, Fischbach said. And Tempe, Chandler, Mesa, Bullhead City and Flagstaff have already been through series of layoffs. 

February 25, 2009, 4:28 p.m.

Tucson Citizen
letters@tucsoncitizen.com

Normally we would not applaud Tucson City Council members for delaying decisive action, but their hesitancy to lay off workers in this economy is commendable.

Yes, the financial forecast is grim and the city budget situation is dire.

Yes, difficult decisions must be made.

And yes, perhaps City Manager Mike Hein’s recommended 30 or so layoffs would result in more city “efficiency,” as he says.

But as we at the Tucson Citizen know all too well, losing a job in this economy is an especially terrible fate.

Every layoff sends ripple effects through the local economy - and those effects hit city government, too.

So the council members are wise to continue their work on other options, such as 12-day furloughs.

City leaders should contemplate other creative alternatives as well to save money without eliminating jobs.

Employees should be offered unpaid, voluntary sabbaticals, with their jobs reserved for them until they return.

Also, most workers undoubtedly would prefer to accept a sizable pay cut on a temporary basis rather than lose their jobs permanently.

Or, some portion of employee salaries could be deferred for a year while the economy recovers (let’s hope).

And if some employees’ jobs in the development arena no longer are needed, as Hein reports, then the city should try to devise a way to transfer those workers to other vacant positions.

In that way, when the construction industry picks up again - and it will - the city will not have to hire and train new employees to perform permitting and other development-related functions.

Councilwoman Karin Uhlich recently told the Citizen, “Obviously I’m concerned about the high-quality staff we have throughout the Planning Department and making sure we don’t lose the benefit of their guidance in any way.”

The federal stimulus bill also “could fill in some of these blanks,” Councilwoman Nina Trasoff recently noted. “It’d be fabulous if it does. The city has done a good job of poising itself with shovel-ready projects if it does.

“I hate to see anybody lose a job.”

So do we. Director Fred Gray’s ideas to reduce services in the Parks & Recreation Department would preserve full-time jobs but eliminate part-time ones.

He would cut the summer swimming season by three weeks, close three pools, reduce adult sports leagues by half and eliminate up to 40 leisure classes.

We urge the council to continue carefully calculating its strategies. If the federal infusion of funds can eliminate the need for layoffs, we hope the money will be used in that regard.

We hit 1 million population and that puts us on the radar of a number of national retailers, home builders and other enterprises. That should be good thing, right?

I’ve had over a half dozen conversations with business owners or representatives of large chains that  swear to never do another deal in Tucson or Pima County again.  These are conversations over lunch and usually don’t take much prodding to get the business to open up. Most of these stories will never make the newspaper because now that the issues are over most owners chose to not dwell on the past or are afraid of some sort of repurcushion for becoming a whistle blower. Either way it’s typically easier to keep quite than to run to the media. A few have contacted the local media as a last result, click HERE for a detailed account of one small businesses nightmare when he took on city hall. 

Without permission to divulge names and details here are a few of the stories;

- First a conversation I had last night with a high volume national food chain that opened locations in Tucson. They took over another restaurant and had the pleasure to go through the development services process at the City of Tucson.  This chain has 1500 locations nation wide. The owner I spoke with has opened over 40 locations in the west.

 He stated, unequivacably that Tucson was by far the most difficult building experience of any other market.  To illustrate his point, two weeks before the grand opening they were required to add a floor sink, change out framing from wood to metal and remove all the sink fixtures and have them replaced. All the last minute changes were in the plans that were approved by the city, all had been inspected all along the process by other officials. In each case a new field inspector changed his mind or interpreted the code on the fly.

- Second is another national food chain that specializes in the happy hour ‘in the neighborhood’ concept. Their lead architect swore to never come back after the process with Pima County development services. It started with incompetent dev services reviews and escalated to way over designed sewer and plumbing plans that cost $10s of thousands more. 

- Don’t you think it’s odd that a number of the super large home builders arent’ doing business here? Maybe the environmental hurdles are more than they choose to tackle.

- Read this B.S. Alert HERE for another group, the Dallas Police and Firefighters’ Pension System that probably is regretting the day they set foot in our market.

- Westcor chief Mitch Stallard was quoted after completing the La Encantada shopping mall at Campbell and Skyline that he will ‘never do another project in Pima County’ again. Their night mare experience in building the upscale scale mall centered around neighborhood opposition to Nordstroms and the malls hours of operation. 

Unfortunately this will be an ongoing series. Stay tuned for more stories. If you have any, send them over.

Poll Results

Under which government is it easiest to open and run a small business?

Tucson		10 %
I don’t know		32 %
Pima County		7 %
Oro Valley		3 %
Marana		11 %
Sahuarita		3 %
None of the above		33 %

Total number of votes: 176

Poll results aren’t scientific. Percentages may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.

Jim Heath Fought City Hall

Goldwater Institute Wins Victory on Behalf of Property Owners
County lifts moratorium that stripped property rights around Luke Air Force Base
 
Phoenix–In a clear victory for property owners in Arizona, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors today lifted a moratorium on building permits in neighborhoods surrounding Luke Air Force Base. The moratorium was the target of $20 million in legal claims filed by the Goldwater Institute on February 17 under protections provided by Prop 207, the Private Property Rights Protection Act. 

“We applaud Maricopa County’s action,” said Carrie Ann Sitren, the Goldwater Institute attorney representing the affected property owners. “By repealing the moratorium, the county has returned valuable property rights not only to the owners who rightfully demanded compensation in the past week, but to all landowners surrounding Luke.”

In 2004 the Arizona Legislature passed a law requiring Maricopa County to implement a series of building and development restrictions on land surrounding Luke Air Force Base. The county believed the law was illegal and in 2008 took the state to court to have it thrown out. Pending an outcome in that lawsuit, the county issued a moratorium on building permits in the “Clear Zone” and other areas adjacent to the base. On Feb 9, 2009, Superior Court Judge Edward Burke ruled the 2004 state statute was legal, leaving questions about whether the county would continue to enforce the moratorium. 

The moratorium caused severe reductions in property values–95 percent for vacant lots that were already zoned for housing and 50 percent for lots with single-family homes already built–and has prevented homeowners from doing simple renovations. As a result the Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation filed claims on behalf of more than 175 property owners under protections provided by Prop 207, which requires government to compensate property owners when it passes laws or rules that reduce property values.

Maricopa County issued a statement today stating, “Effective immediately, building permits can be granted if they meet all County requirements and are for uses permitted by state statute.”
The Goldwater Institute is a nonprofit public policy research and litigation organization whose work is made possible by the generosity of its supporters.