The problem with Mayor Bob…is he up to the job?

By Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, July 16th, 2010

Bob Walkup was elected mayor of Tucson in November 1999. As a Republican, it was reasonable to expect he would have been a pro-business leader and fiscally responsible with tax dollars. Sadly, looking back on more than a decade in the rear-view mirror, this hasn’t been the case.

Walkup has resigned himself to taking a passive role as Tucson’s head cheerleader-in-chief. The mayor’s boast at a ceremony last December that he voted nearly 95 percent of the time in lock-step with former Democratic City Councilman Steve Leal was a sad indicator of what he had become.

Tucson may be politically liberal, but liberal or not, someone needs to create an environment where entrepreneurs can create jobs and collect the sales taxes that will go to fund low-income housing programs and subsidize Sun Tran. We can’t all work for the local governments and make $100,000 per year.

There’s the big elephant in the small business living room: the city’s Development Services Department. This crew of bureaucrats has been frustrating the dreams of small business owners for decades. Petty decision-making processes combined with inconsistent applications of regulations and interference from council members has made this department legendary in this region as something to avoid. We heard the epitome of that from the unfortunate owner of the recently burned Takamatsu who told the news media his biggest fear about rebuilding his restaurant was being at the mercy of Development Services.

During Walkup’s tenure, it has become so difficult to build houses within the city limits that little Sahurita issued three more building permits than Tucson did last year.

We know the mayor is desperate to have a downtown convention center hotel and a magic streetcar for his legacy, but Tucson’s inability to help small business owners thrive has created his real legacy: a stagnant city economy.

On his watch, the city blew most of $220 million it spent trying to revitalize downtown. Meanwhile, even out-of-state developers from beloved Portland, Ore., with major downtown revitalization experience, left vowing never to return.

The results of the upcoming audit of the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District should be fascinating.

The city did get an underpass at Fourth Avenue built. But the cost was $46 million when the budget was $31 million. When questioned by Bill Buckmaster on KUAT-TV 6’s “Arizona Illustrated” about the 48 percent cost overrun, Walkup replied, without batting an eye, “I’m pleased, we got a lot of bang for the buck.” Really? In the private sector a CEO would be out on his ear with these dismal results.

As for the downtown hotel Walkup wants to push down taxpayers’ throats, never mind the fact the cost from the bids now total $225 million, 17 percent more than the $192 million the city had expected. Or the one-sided due diligence process.

We had Heywood Sanders, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, come to Tucson to give an independent report on the risk of a publicly funded hotel. But the usual affable mayor got a little grumpy, imploring Sanders to cut his allotted one-hour presentation to 20 minutes.

We were asked recently by reporter Bud Foster of KOLD News 13, “What do you want him to do? It’s a weak mayor form of government.”

Our answer was when something goes down at a meeting that is bad for small business or the taxpayer and Walkup knows it’s wrong, he should say something! He should walk over to Bud and his TV camera and say “What you saw tonight at the council meeting was a bad thing to for Tucson.”

Excuses aren’t cutting it. We can’t blame the weak mayor system. Mayor Lew Murphy and City Manager Joel Valdez got it done. We can’t blame the Republican minority. Walkup once had Republicans Fred Ronstadt and Kathleen Dunbar and Democrat-turned-independent moderate Carol West as council members but still didn’t get it done. We can’t blame the economy because the city created an environment that scares away entrepreneurs and risk takers. Tucson is in tough shape and needs a tough mayor to fix it.

Are you up to the job, Bob?