HERE Are we Taking Tucson Back?????

Sometimes it takes a small thing to bring larger issues into focus. For me, it was the announcement last week that the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch had issued its annual ranking of “Best Cities for Business.” Tucson’s ranking? No. 95 out of 101.

What really brought it into focus for me was that Detroit was ranked higher than Tucson, but then so was New Orleans, and Albuquerque and El Paso and, of course, Phoenix.

But, Detroit? Better for business than Tucson? How could that be? And then, I looked at how they determined their ratings. Parts of the rankings were based on job growth versus population growth and the ability to prevent job loss in this economic downturn (from September 2008 to September 2009) and even long-term unemployment (jobless rate in September of 2001, 2005 and 2009).

When you look at all of the factors, the real reason that we came in 95th out of 101 is that we earned it. Not just this year, but over the long term. We earned it. And “we” means we the voters, we the business community and we the citizens of Tucson.

We earned it by electing political leaders who were nice enough, but who didn’t have the experience or the guts to make tough political decisions. We earned it by letting small groups with narrow points of view, out-shout and outmuscle those of us who should have been protecting the community’s general welfare.

We accepted policies and decisions that ignored or actively worked against the concept that the foundation for Tucson’s economic prosperity comes from a vibrant, successful business community.

We elected policymakers who talked about quality of life, but voted to choke the life out of the very businesses who provide jobs and salaries and tax revenues for our citizens. They discouraged new businesses with impact fees and the creation of bureaucratic mazes that may have provided public sector jobs but did nothing to help get private business functioning and productive.

When Detroit is ranked better than Tucson for business, we really are in trouble, and, we had better not take it any more. It is time to elect smart policymakers who have real-world business experience and who care more about the entire community’s long-term success than about getting re-elected.

It is not about being a partisan. There are Republicans and Democrats and “no preference” people with the experience and perspective willing to pull us up from that ranking of 95th and the time to recruit them is right now.

It starts with replacing those nice people on the Tucson City Council with smarter, more focused, more effective policymakers. Can we wait until the next regularly scheduled election? Go talk to your fellow citizens who used to have jobs and don’t any more. Go ask the volunteers at the Community Food Banks about whether we can wait to fix the problem.

How did we get in this position? We earned it. We may have complained about the bureaucracy or about the impact fees or about the time it took things to get through city government, but if we didn’t go out and actually do something about it, all we did was help to earn our ranking of 95th.

It’s time to act. Let’s take our city back.

E-mail Humberto S. Lopez at info@takebacktucson.com

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