City of Tucson

Az Republic: The judge, who found grounds to withhold 10 percent of the district’s monthly state aid until it comes into compliance, said the law permits the objective instruction about the oppression of people that may result in racial resentment or ethnic solidarity.

“However, teaching oppression objectively is quite different than actively presenting material in a biased, political and emotionally charged manner, which is what occurred in (Mexican-American Studies) classes,” Kowal wrote.

The judge said such teaching promotes activism against white people, promotes racial resentment and advocates ethnic solidarity.

Huppenthal has 30 days to accept, reject or modify the ruling. If he accepts the judge’s decision, the district has about 30 days to appeal the ruling in Superior Court.

“In the end, I made a decision based on the totality of the information and facts gathered during my investigation — a decision that I felt was best for all students in the Tucson Unified School District.” Huppenthal said in a written statement.

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Tucson is fairing much worse than it’s western neighboring cities because of the lack of leadership, lack of economic diversification and no growth mentality.  What we’ve succeeded to do is fight growth at ever stage yet continue to grow.  The transportation infrastructure, the economic infrastructure and the leadership infrastructure has been ignored for a generation.  It may be too late for the Old Pueblo. Over the next decade the suburbs will flourish and the city core will continue to decay.  It takes leadership folks. Something sorely missing from the political and business rulers in Tucson.

AZ Star - The West is recovering faster than the nation as a whole, but employment across the region remained far below pre-recession levels in the third quarter, and the housing market showed few signs of improvement.
Those are the findings of a report Thursday by Brookings Mountain West researchers at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. It focused on economic growth in 10 metropolitan areas in the states of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Idaho.
Tucson is struggling more than most, ranking in the bottom 20 in overall recovery among the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, the researchers said.
Among the reasons for Tucson’s woes: “Its economy is heavily dependent on ‘eds and meds’ (education and health-care sectors) and now-stagnant federal spending in industries like defense – bulwarks in the early years of recession, now insufficient catalysts for recovery,” the report said.
Overall, the Mountain West region saw a modest 0.3 percent growth in employment in the quarter ending in September, compared to the national rate of 0.1 percent, the study found. Utah, Colorado and New Mexico – states that have built broad economic bases – struggled the least, researchers said.
In Arizona and Nevada, the housing collapse continued to limit job growth.

Must be a change in the water at the Star. Brodesky explains the ‘RULES’ of the game. Could Chicago learn a thing or two from Tucson? You decide. In the Dec 15, 2011 edition of the Star he tells a little story about how you get things done in Tucson.

Josh Brodesky: We do things differently around here (wink, wink) – AZ Star
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Jerry Dixon. Threatened with default on his west-side project, his partner accusing him of improperly tapping an escrow account and missing a key construction deadline, Dixon squirmed his way to an explanation.
You see, his business partners at Senior Housing Group are “very strict Chicago attorneys who are very legalistic about everything,” he explained.
“Here, we do things a little bit differently, and that is not their way,” he said. “We’ve been in a battle with them about the way things are done here.”
Dixon certainly is an expert on how things are done here. He and his partner at Gadsden Co., son-in-law Adam Weinstein, have a reputation for berating city staffers and working the City Council to get their way.
After all, we sold Gadsden a prime piece of real estate on West Congress Street for $250,000 so he could flip it for $1.43 million that same day. We let Gadsden use that money – our money, since it was city land – to pay for infrastructure improvements the company was always supposed to make itself.
And still he was late to pay the bill, forcing contractor KE&G to threaten a lien of $195,000 for work it did installing a reclaimed-water line in April. Now we have Gadsden improperly tapping an escrow account that was set up with the proceeds from the land flip to pay for infrastructure like … the waterline.
Both Senior Housing and Gadsden were supposed to approve any draws on that escrow account, but somehow that did not happen.
The draws on the escrow account surprised those Chicago attorneys.
All of this raises the question: If Dixon didn’t tap the escrow account to pay KE&G, what did he do with that money? Dixon has said he paid for change orders and the bill for another contractor, Ashton.
“We didn’t take the money and go to China,” he told me. “We kept the money and paid the contractors, or are in the process of paying the contractors, for the work that they have done.”
In the process?
The whole point of the flip was to help Gadsden pay for these improvements.
Many readers are familiar with Gadsden’s saga, but here’s a quick refresher: In 2008, Gadsden entered into a complex development agreement with the city for 14 acres on Congress Street just west of I-10. The development agreement was split over four phases. If Gadsden hit performance requirements by putting in infrastructure and development on the site, it could stake claim to the next phase. By putting in infrastructure, Gadsden received a discounted purchase price.
Gadsden had big plans: a boutique hotel, more than 400 homes, retail and so on. But the dust bowl at the site tells you what happened.
The failure to develop isn’t all on Gadsden. The city promised things it didn’t deliver. The economy tanked.
But instead of scrapping the agreement, the city gave Gadsden new life – a cash transfusion – through the land flip with Chicago-based Senior Housing. Through tax credits, Senior Housing is building a six-story affordable-housing project.
About $611,000 from the land flip went into that escrow account to pay for the infrastructure improvements – the one Gadsden accessed improperly.
This is all troubling because Gadsden is supposed to pay roughly $3 million toward the modern streetcar.
Given these recent developments as well as past financial issues – it’s fair to wonder if that $3 million is funny money. Dixon says he can pay it but, as we all know, he has said a lot of things.
“I’m not clear where the hell that is,” Gary Hayes, executive director of the Regional Transportation Authority, told me. “Is the Gadsden money real? Is it on the table?”
What we do know is that at one point Gadsden was delinquent on taxes earlier this year, owing $53,000. Another Dixon company, Rio Development, which built the neighboring Mercado District of Menlo Park on the west side, owed $37,000. We know the Mercado is also facing foreclosure after Rio Development defaulted on a $1 million loan.
Even City Councilwoman Regina Romero, Gadsden’s biggest supporter, is hedging publicly.
She said she doesn’t know the details of the dispute between Senior Housing and Gadsden, but she expects the development to be finished.
“I don’t know what he is talking about,” she said of Dixon’s comment about Chicago attorneys and those pesky legal details. “What I do know is that there is legal language that Senior Housing and Gadsden got themselves into. They signed on the dotted line. They agreed to it. And whatever the legal language says they have to do, they have to do.”
Jerry Dixon says we do business differently here. The city has yet another chance to show him otherwise.
Contact columnist Josh Brodesky at 573-4242 or jbrodesky@azstarnet.com
Copyright 2011 Arizona Daily Star. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Tucson has a new Mayor with a similar platform….being business friendly. Let’s remember this statement…..

KOLD News Asked what his top priority is he says “jobs and making sure small business can do business and help entrepreneurs get going.”

Have we killed the entrepreneurial spirit?

Posted: Friday, December 2, 2011 7:00 am
by   Joe Higgins

It’s hard to pick up a newspaper or watch TV news and not see what America is going through right now. People are frustrated and political solutions seem hollow. The uncertainty coming from government has the entire U.S. economy on hold.

Despite what economic experts say, the Great Recession continues. We are in for a long-haul; a new normal.

We see this malaise in shuttered business, home foreclosures and employee layoffs. Like downturns in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we thought “here we go again.” Before long business will come back to normal.

But as we turn the corner into our fourth year of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, it’s settling in that this one is different.

We can break down the causes of the Great Recession from multiple angles but they are topics that will be debated for years and ultimately determined by historians decades after the chips have fallen.

This opinion is about the fallout and the future of Tucson, Arizona and America.

Being an entrepreneur is the most gratifying, hardest thing I’ve ever done. As a serial business start-up person, I’ve rolled the dice more than a dozen times. Each time I start a new business, I research, study, plan and ultimately go all-in on an idea I think is better than anyone else in my market.

As others like me know, sometimes you get it right, others times you miss the mark.

Having mortgaged my home, maxed out credit cards and risked my family’s future on ideas more than once, I’m here to tell you that it has been worth it.

Up until now.

Early on, this Great Recession cleaned out those who who were over-leveraged and bought investments such as houses on interest-only deals that made no sense. Restaurants that went out of business already were teetering on the brink. Businesses that closed in 2008 and 2009 were too leveraged, too concentrated in crowded industries or were run by poor managers. That’s what the capitalist system does.

But now we are seeing a different kind of business failures. Entrepreneurs who played it safe are now watching their lifetime idea slowly slip away.

I’ve lived this journey myself and I’ve talked with my small business friends who are in the same rudderless boat. Many of us have had to close stores. We’ve laid off long-time employees who helped us from the very beginning. These people are more than employees, they’re family.

Most small business owners are wondering two things: How am I going to make payroll next Friday? And will this ever end? Start-ups have notoriously high failure rates but now we are starting to see established businesses buckling under financial pressures. Second-generation businesses handed down from father to son or daughter may not be left to hand down to a third generation.

Last week, I had two high school kids from different schools search me out as part of their career research. They wanted to be entrepreneurs. When I asked why, they responded that they each had a great idea, believed in their abilities, dreamed of potential riches and fame and they loved the variety of skills and duties that come with launching and running a business.

It was difficult for me to be upbeat and positive. It was hard not to tell them what it’s really like. I wanted to explain the dozens of agencies that will be regulating their every move. I wanted to explain how fierce competition can be when you’re up against a Fortune 500 company that has a fleet of lobbyists that can get waivers from federal healthcare mandates or build in a new regulation that is going to wipe out any margin you’ve been able to build.

I didn’t want to tell them the process of going through a local zoning review or the joy of having conflicting opinions come from two different city inspectors and that your only recourse it to say “thank you sir, may I have another.”

I held back on telling these future entrepreneurs about the headaches that come to your life when you hire an employee – from workers compensation claims, to equal employment complaints, to unemployment insurance, to layers of laws to protect employee rights but nothing about who pays the bills.

What I decided to share with the future capitalists was about the days when I didn’t know better and just got up every morning and worked through it.

My formative years came while Ronald Reagan was president, coming in to lead the nation out of the Jimmy Carter mailaise. Reagan won his election in 1980 and reinstated hope in the future with his “It’s Morning Again In America” and tapped into the American ideal of hard work, personal responsibility, patriotism and limited government.

Reagan knew the importance of the small business owner and he understood the power of the free market in getting this country back on track.

I can only imagine most people were wondering in 1979 – as they are today – are America’s best days behind us?

As a serial entrepreneur, I’ve come to the point where my local and federal governments don’t appreciate me and couldn’t care less if I practice my skill at all. As an entrepreneur, I don’t want to be stimulated or bailed out. Until my governments’ attitudes change, I’m going to sit on the sidelines and watch.

Joe Higgins, who is a regular contributor, wrote this column to express his personal feelings. His Tucson business start-ups include Talking Trash Waste Removal, Sports Buzz Haircuts and Gotta Go Wireless. Contact Higgins at wakeuptucson@gmail.com. He and Chris DeSimone host “Wake Up Tucson,” 6 to 8 a.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 1030-AM.

Now this is funny…and sad. Sort of sums it up for ya Tucson.

Walkup would’ve made a terrible weatherman. He only has one forecast: Sunny days ahead. It could be hailing and his forecast would be: Sunny days ahead. Tornados and flooding expected: Sunny days ahead.

The man described as the “the mayor straight out of central casting” is straight out of plain-speaking Iowa, where the state tree is nonexistent and the state word is “earnest.” You’d think the man was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around an “I heart Tucson” pennant. After the Jan. 8 shootings the voice of civility asserted Tucson is not the Wild West loud and clear. Our Tucson is a unified compassionate community.

Walkup was head coach when Rio Nuevo stumbled onto the field and the ball was fumbled. His natural disdain for micromanaging got the better of him here.

And now he’s the Moses of downtown. Beyond the legal and financial carnage he can see the Promised Land. He won’t be the one, rod and staff alight, crossing over into it.

With the ASU making the top list of largest Universities in the US it’s time to step back and ask is that a good thing? We see the impacts big bloated State university budgets on the Arizona economy but what’s the point?

How many of these students that we subsidies to educate actually stay and return their investment to the taxpayers of Arizona?

What about the quality of an ASU degree? How many students start at ASU and the UofA only to fail out of classes filled with 600 students and little or no one on one support?

What types of degrees are we pushing out of these State Universities?
Here’s a list of the most popular degrees at the UofA?

For Bachelor’s Degrees
Business/Marketing: 16%
Social Sciences: 10%
Biology: 9%
Psychology: 7%
Communications/Journalism: 6%
Education: 6%
Health Professions: 5%
Visual and Performing Arts: 5%

The list of largest University’s and their enrollment numbers:
1. Arizona State University–Tempe, Arizona: 58,371 students
2. University of Central Florida–Orlando, Florida: 56,235 students
3. Ohio State University–Columbus, Ohio: 56,064
4. University of Minnesota–Minneapolis, Minnesota: 51,721 students
5. University of Texas at Austin–Austin, Texas: 51,195 students

By: Taylor Davidson

The Importance Of Our Thinkers

I will start by saying I do not know Phil Lopes. 

However, he made a series of statements this last week (unusual in their clarity as examples)  that I would like to address due to their implications regarding the level of discourse and understanding in our fair Pueblo.

In case you are not familiar, Mr. Lopes is a long time Arizona activist, a founding staff member of Pima Community College, a former senior manager at the AZ Dept. of Health, a state legislator and the current coordinator of the Tucson Chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America a “group of left-leaning Democrats, Independents, and Greens who work… for progressive change.” (PDA Tucson website, pdatucson.blogspot.com). 

Those roles have placed Mr. Lopes in the group of what, in our city, passes for “Public Intellectuals”.  This group primarily includes other political party leaders as well as any number of media personalities, but also has some members of the university and a few participants from the business, religious, non-profit communities and others.

“Public Intellectuals”, as a vocation, can be defined as the entrepreneurial class within any community’s market of ideas.  And as with all entrepreneurs they are constantly competing for customers.  However, unlike those in the business world aiming for dollars or other measures of growth, entrepreneurs in the political and thought arenas are competing for ears and minds.  They count their success not in financial terms but in how many people they can get parroting their beliefs and the level of influence of those who echo their thinking.

So in this vein,  on or around Monday an email came out to some compatriots from Mr. Lopes detailing a new idea.  Let’s call it “Bank Local!”  The basic idea was that he was encouraging friends and neighbors to move their money from their current financial institutions into local credit unions and community banks.

Then lo and behold, what do I hear Wednesday morning?  Well it was Tucson City Council member Regina Romero on the radio stating that not only does she want to change the rules of our city parks to allow Occupiers to make campgrounds out of community property but oh, by the way, she’s also proposing the city government, as well as people in general, withdraw their bank accounts from Bank of America and Chase and move to credit unions.

Mr. Lopes, as an entrepreneurial Thinker, had just picked up a client.  He had earned his way in the market by moving his opinion into the mouth of an elected representative, a person with political influence and regular public audiences.

We can argue this, but I believe it is axiomatic that this is how the political process works.  Thinkers want to be leaders of electorate opinion and politicians can generally be nothing but followers of electorate opinion.  This is due to the simple fact that, at election time, they need 50% plus one vote to keep their jobs.  They can’t stray too far from the center and make that happen. Thus you are dealing with two separate but symbiotic entities: One with ideas but a need for some political power, the other with some political power but a need for ideas.

This revelation leads to an interesting conclusion.  That the public intellectuals in our city, state, nation and world are actually surprisingly more important than we would normally wish to admit. 

When we decide on an opinion we generally say to ourselves and others that is well considered and based in the facts, but if we were honest this is really a vain conceit.  Most people (particularly our elected officials) just don’t have the time or inclination to formulate fully realized philosophical positions on the extremely wide spectrum of topics we are presented with throughout the weeks and years of our lives.  Thus we all operate utilizing a vast number of assumptions and many times we base those assumptions on the position of someone we have chosen as trustworthy.  Those Thinkers in our lives about whom we say, “Well I trust Dave.  He’s very well read.”

The point of this is not an exhortation for us all to run out and get PhD’s in economics, sociology, ecology, etc. etc. so we are the perfect experts on everything that might confront us.  Personally I don’t have time for that and I don’t think anyone really does.  I certainly don’t want the people at TEP to take time off from keeping my lights on to finish term papers or the guys at Nimbus to have to slow down production of their Oatmeal Stout while the brewmeister is in class.

Instead we should recognize the futility of that idea and thus the critical importance of those in our lives who serve to fill in where our personal experience and understanding fails us.  And thus if these Thinkers are this influential in our personal choices and particularly to the political decision making process (a la Mr. Lopes and Councilwoman Romero), then we should make it a top priority that Tucson has the highest quality of public intellectuals that we can achieve.

So where does Mr. Lopes fall out for our community when we measure his suggestions against this level of importance? 

On this example, not well at all.

Our local bank branches (whether a credit union or multi-national)  employ local people, our local branches spend money with local vendors who employ other local people, our local branches lend money for other businesses to start and expand, our local branches help bring capital and other resources from around the country and the world to our city to be used in our city.

Instigating a strategy of targeting larger banks for financial damage, if successful, can only shrink the pool of money available for investment in our community and put thousands of local jobs in jeopardy.  It is simply foolish and ill-conceived.

But this idea came from the same person who, while on The Buckmaster Show last week describing the panel he had assembled to discuss job creation at a Progressive Democrats membership meeting, touted that they had made sure there was one panelist out of five who had “actually created jobs.”  How about 5 out of 5 next time Phil?

Who also in the same segment stated his main push for resurrecting Tucson’s job market revolved around making sure we keep our dollars and spending local.  Phil, are you aware that the level of trade with groups outside of a community is a primary determinant of economic prosperity?  If keeping everything local is so good, why don’t you do business within ONLY the Lopes household (grow your own food, make your own clothes, generate your own power, etc.)?  That would certainly be the pinnacle of the economic strategy you are espousing.

And to come full circle, isn’t it a little ironic to hold a Job Creation Panel one week only to come out the next week supporting a plan to purposefully harm a set of large local employers?

I don’t mean to pick on Representative Lopes, he is just the example at hand and I certainly ask his understanding for anything he may feel I am mistaken about.  He is only one of many local talking heads I could have pulled out to start making this point. 

The important issue is not in the positional details of one or another pundit.  The important issue is when we, as a community, are going to start holding these public Talkers and Idea Peddlers to a higher level, a higher standard, of intellectual integrity and understanding? 

When the professional Thinkers of Tucson know that they will be held to account for the objective results and consequences of their ideas we will finally be started on the path to getting Truth in the places where we now just find Ideology.