Archive for April, 2009

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I guess the City council got their man in Mike Letcher. From Carli Brosseau’s article in the Citizen yesterday.

Job Path is the darling of the Pima County Interfaith Council. Their results are great but the number of people they actually impact is pretty small. We’ll have to dig into the details a bit but the figures we’ve heard were that it’s a couple million dollar program and ‘retrains’ only 80 or so people a year. PCIC has been buying radio ads touting their importance to the community. I guess that’s what you call a full court press during difficult budgetary times. Looks like it worked.

Looks like TREO and the MTCVB are still safe. In fact our tourism agency got a $900,000 raise. Looks like MTCV can finally bring on the assistant to the vice presidents’s executive assistance who is in charge of special projects, sustainability (great buzz word that looks important) and good governance.

The $3 million difference, to be paid for by proposed new taxes, would be divided primarily among Job Path, the Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau, School Plus Jobs and the Tucson Pima Arts Council.

Under the previous plan, Job Path, School Plus Jobs and the arts council would have received nothing.

Letcher wants to give the visitors bureau $4.2 million with about $900,000 of that added in by Letcher, the largest allocation set for any organization.

Why is the brain trust we’ve elected to steer our city proposing a 2% rental tax (which will cost the average renter $144 per year) and simultaneously adding $2 million to the low income housing trust fund?

While we’re on the subject, why on earth would the city want to administer, staff and support the low income housing trust fund department.  Especially when things are being cut and departments merged?  Wouldn’t it be more efficient to provide the funding source to any of the multitude of non profits already in the low income housing business. Listen to me, efficient and government in the same paragraph.

You could make the round about argument that by controlling the fund the council can ‘buy votes’ and ensure re-election…..but that’s just too devious.

Me thinks a new bureaucracy layer is being hatched right before our eyes……who could be set to run the new director of low income housing? Any guesses? I think I know….

Rep. Patterson in on Wake Up Tucson tomorrow morning at 6:30am. Daniel is a freshman Democrat law maker representing downtown and parts of south Tucson. Daniel has a back ground as the president of a downtown neighborhood and as an ecologist working to protect the desert.

Daniel has gained bipartisan support for a bill he’s introduced to toughen Arizona’s whistle blower laws for things like Medicare fraud. Read more HERE and HERE.

Daniel had some strong words for fellow Southern Arizona legislators Antenori and Paton for their criticism of Rio Nuevo and TIF funding. Read the post HERE. It seems like Patterson has some history to back up this comments;

I actually represent downtown and have lived there with my family for a long time. I served many years on the Tucson Planning Commission, where we dealt in detail with trying to help improve and streamline conditions for business and downtown revitalization. I also served many years as an active President of a historic downtown neighborhood. Not once has my friend Antenori asked me about about anything having to do with downtown.

Rio Nuevo and the ineffective leadership in Tucson will most definitely be part of our discussions. Tune in!

Details about Patterson below from Cronkite News:

Name: Daniel Patterson
_ Chamber: House of Representatives
_ Party: Democrat
_ Profession: Ecologist
_ Hometown: Tucson
_ Legislative District: No. 29, which includes southern portions of Tucson, South Tucson and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
_ Committee Assignments: Military Affairs and Public Safety; Water and Energy.
_ Previous or Current Elected Offices: President of Santa Rita Park Neighborhood.
_ Highlights of Community Involvement: Arizona Democratic Party; active in quality-of-life issues including sustainability, transportation and crime reduction.
_ Why He Ran: “I want to be a part of helping people and solving problems, which is what I think is our No. 1 responsibility at the Legislature.”
_ His Focus: “Issues in my committees. I will also be looking at issues of economic justice by looking at how the state raises revenue.”
_ A Bill: HB 2601 would provide homeowners facing foreclosure sales 60 days to negotiate revised payments with lenders.

We had a friend of the show, GLORIA, call in about such poor road conditions in her neighborhood that fire trucks where falling in! Of course they aren’t that big but I thought I’d stop by and see for myself.

They are huge and plentiful. I heard plenty of vehicles rattle their way through, I saw a few lipstick smudges and coffee spills.

It boils down to police and potholes. If either one gets out of wack and you have angry citizens. Let’s get our priorities straight and lets fix Gloria’s pot holes.  In case anyone is listening, this intersection is on Drachman and Park near the UofA.

Got a pot hole you want to report? Leave a comment, maybe we can help.

PUBLISHED ON OCTOBER 13, 2005:

Command Performance

Republican Councilwoman Kathleen Dunbar says she gets the job done; Democratic opponent Karin Uhlich says it’s all an act

By JIM NINTZEL

City Councilwoman Kathleen Dunbar’s first town hall was an utter disaster. Set up as a forum on a 2002 transportation proposition that would later be rejected by roughly three out of every four voters in Dunbar’s northside Ward 3, the meeting quickly degenerated into an ugly yelling match as an angry crowd ranging from neighborhood activists to small-business owners blasted the plan, the tax and Dunbar herself for supporting it.

From all appearances, it was going to be a rocky four years for the former Republican lawmaker who was representing a heavily Democratic ward.

But as she seeks a second term next month, Dunbar has won over many of her early critics. Neighborhood leaders who were initially skeptical of Dunbar are now supporting her re-election bid.

“Kathleen and her staff have really come through for Ward 3,” says Balboa Heights Neighborhood President Jane Baker. “They’ve brought more money to Ward 3 than in the past. I’m seeing so many more projects come to fruition over here.”

Baker has watched Dunbar and her staff build close relationships with the local police precinct, get kids into youth programs and clean up the area by busting johns and hookers, as well as by demolishing the Tropicana Hotel, which had become a local prostitution and drug den.

Dunbar has built similar relationships with Ward 3 businesses. For example, she’s helped Campbell Avenue merchants form a business association and develop marketing strategies to create a shopping district. Along the Campbell corridor, she’s put in crosswalks to improve pedestrian safety and scored a half-million dollars in federal transportation funds for future improvements.

Dunbar boasts that she’s improved Ward 3 in many other ways. She got rid of the Grant Road rush-hour reversible “suicide lane” and has pushed city staff to install more sidewalks and resurface roads. At Jacobs Park on Fairview Avenue north of Miracle Mile, she got the Arizona Diamondbacks to pitch in to build a Little League field and worked with a local Rotary Club to install a playground that’s accessible to handicapped kids. On Sixth Avenue south of Grant Road, Dunbar–a former community outreach director for the Humane Society of Southern Arizona–used public and private dollars to put in a dog park.

Even Karin Uhlich, the Democrat who wants to unseat Dunbar next month, concedes that the Republican’s staff has been working hard on constituent service. But she says Dunbar has to go, because she has sold out to special interests on major policy issues.

Uhlich, 42, who is making her first run for public office, has a solid background in social services. Between 1993 and 2002, she worked for the Primavera Foundation, a nonprofit that helps homeless people find housing, job training and employment.

She left the organization to found the Southwest Center for Economic Integrity, which strives to help low-income residents avoid being targeted by payday-lending businesses, day-labor employers and other exploitative industries.

In her rookie run for office, Uhlich has gathered a wide range of supporters, from co-chair George Miller, the former Tucson mayor, to Katie Bolger, the former Green Party activist who is organizing volunteers.

Like Dunbar, Uhlich has landed support from neighborhood activists. Tom Rhodes, president of the Richland Heights East Neighborhood Association, says he’s supporting Uhlich because he’s found Dunbar to be combative and unpleasant since she was elected.

Uhlich says her work with the community’s less fortunate has given her insights into how government policy affects the underclass–and she sees the City Council as fumbling the ball.

“There are substantial differences between the way she and I would handle city policy,” Uhlich says. “It’s not negativity; it’s accountability.”

For starters, Uhlich criticizes Dunbar for the way she enacted the trash-collection fee (although Uhlich herself supports a trash fee of some kind) and for creating tuition fees for KIDCO, the city’s after-school program. (For details, see “Numbers Racket,” page 22.) Uhlich also accuses Dunbar of undermining efforts to stem methamphetamine abuse, while Dunbar says she’s worked closely with police to find strategies to fight meth. (See “Speed Limits,” page 11.)

Uhlich says Dunbar opposed a legislative effort by the Arizona League of Cities and Towns to push for regulation of payday-lender and predatory-mortgage companies and has opposed development impact fees to pay for new roads and parks.

She also complains that Dunbar has consistently voted to soften city regulation of the billboard industry. Last year, for example, Dunbar voted against appealing a ruling to the Arizona Supreme Court. The council majority supported the appeal and won the case, securing the city’s power to enforce strict billboard regulation.

Dunbar says the city is wasting too much money on the legal fight with Clear Channel Outdoor Advertising and should reach a settlement with the billboard company. She doesn’t see billboards as an important issue.

“I haven’t gotten one phone call yet from a constituent who says, ‘That damn billboard is really bothering me.’ I get phone calls about, ‘Can you get me sidewalks? Can you fix the pothole? Can you can get a crosswalk?’”

Uhlich says Dunbar’s real loyalties are revealed by the fact that the incumbent declined to participate in the city’s matching-funds program. Under the program, candidates who agree to limit their spending to roughly $85,000 can get a dollar-for-dollar match from taxpayers.

Uhlich, who had raised $40,924 in private money and received $35,114 from the city as of Sept. 19, predicts Dunbar will exceed the program’s spending limits trying to sell herself as a moderate Republican when she really represents the party’s far-right wing.

As of Aug. 24, Dunbar had raised $50,047. (New reports are due this week.) Dunbar declined last week to say how much more she had raised, but said she still remained under the $85,000 spending limit for candidates participating in the city’s program, which she says she didn’t use because of abuses she’s witnessed in previous years.

Dunbar says all of Uhlich’s talk about policy makes her suspect that the Democrat “wants to talk issues to death, and she’s not going to do anything for constituent service. And for far too long, this ward has been neglected by people who were part-time council members.”

But Uhlich says Dunbar’s recent concern about issues such as payday-loan businesses and meth abuse is all an act designed to fool voters.

“She is behaving a certain way, because she’s up for re-election,” Uhlich says. “There’s no doubt about it. And on Nov. 9, it’s going to be business as usual if she’s re-elected.”

I look forward to Inside Tucson Business each Sunday. If you do business in this community you should be reading it.

I especially miss Steve Emerine’s column.  Steve wasn’t afraid to shake up the local powers. He had a straight forward yet polite way to praise and poke our elected officals. With Emerine’s passing Tucson and Inside Tucson Business lost a strong voice.  Dave, who I know personally, tends to take a safer road in his editorials. I suppose he has to given his position and balancing advertisers.  Well looks like Hatfield is getting fed up too.

ITB would be remiss if they didn’t take a few jabs at the Tucson City Council and the insanity that’s going on over there.  As the voice of business ITB should be out front, offering solutions and educating their readers.

As the Tucson  business community circles the drain, don’t expect the Star to give any constructive solutions. The Star’s ad revenue dives and yet their editorial board continues to ignore the sad climate created by our local government.  Great job on this one Dave, keep em coming. 

Reaction to
Tucson being pathetic

By Dave Hatfield – Click HERE for full story.
Published on Friday, April 17, 2009

OK, OK, OK. Talk about getting reaction. Last week’s column headlined “What a pathetic city Tucson is becoming” got plenty of it. 

I heard from natives and other long-time residents, high-ranking executives including CEOs of businesses employing hundreds of people as well as people who run small businesses, representatives of biotech and other industries targeted in Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities’ economic development blueprint, representatives of the financial sector, real estate, tourism and the arts. I even heard from a couple of politicians. Some were frustrated and others ashamed but all agreed with the sentiment.

Tucson is losing population in relation to what’s happening elsewhere in Arizona and that means it’s losing political clout. The lack of direction being shown by the current Tucson City Council members will come back to haunt their successors. This will start to manifest itself after the next census numbers come out when the region loses one, possibly two, legislative districts. And when those district boundaries are drawn, no amount of gerrymandering will keep much of a voice in the Legislature Within the region, Oro Valley, Sahuarita, Marana and unincorporated metro areas are literally running circles around Tucson…….MORE

It’s time to move Tucson forward

Inside Tucson Business – Click HERE for full story.
Published on Friday, April 17, 2009

Tucson needs business leadership and I can’t think of a better time for us to stand up and be counted. Yes, it’s hard to be a business owner and even harder to find time under this economic stress. But this is exactly the time for us to stand up and take a real leadership role. If we don’t do it, who will?

Growing up here, the business community was a big part of Tucson. We encouraged growing the financial and economic base; we hoped our next generations of young people stay and build on what we were to leave behind. We shared our success with the community. The business community was involved in recruiting new opportunities for business. Growth was not a bad four-letter word.

It wasn’t all rosy by any means, but there was a better attitude about business and the atmosphere for business was better back then.

What happened? The NIMBY — Not-In-My-Backyard — and No-Growth mentality began and today it has cultivated such a strong voice of negativism, politicians are afraid. Meanwhile, the business community became complacent. We quit on ourselves and our futures. We contributed money to career politicians and yet they turn their backs on the business community. And we let them do it. 

On Wednesday (April 22), Smart United Business Strategies (SUBS), with Inside Tucson Business, will sponsor a business gathering that will focus the issues that need to be addressed and the process to carry it out. It will be from 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. at the Sillwell House, 134 S. Fifth Ave.

It’s time the business community took some responsibility to help lead this city in the right direction – a balanced community that appreciates the fact that good business is the best foundation for Tucson.

Please join with us to discuss common-sense ideas for economic development and prosperity building, public safety issues, local elections, budget issues and an up-to-the-minute update on what’s happening in the Legislature.

Let’s take the leadership role necessary to make Tucson a great place to do business so we can all benefit.This is only the beginning of our success. Be a part of it and get involved. To RSVP, send an e-mail to rick@substucson.com or call (520) 624-0231. We’ll have some appetizers.

Arizona 8th broke the story of a potential new city manager.  Thoughts?

The Star’s O’Dell put this out today – HERE