City of Tucson

East Valley Tribune
By Mark Scarp, contributing columnist | 4 comments

Snooty? Not Mesa. Well, hardly ever, anyway.

Snooty communities’ residents are often seen insisting that their local governments enforce zoning laws as weapons against People Who Don’t Do As We Do or Say What We Say. And snooty city councils, composed of people who cater to snooty people as an assurance of their re-election, often go along.

And when they complain, they often turn to euphemisms such as “incompatible use” when they really mean “a place I’m afraid of (or disagree with).” Some even point to these places as serious threats to property values, even when no property values could have suffered anywhere near as much from a tattoo shop down the street as from dozens of bad loans to buyers of nearby parcels that should never have been made.

I’m talking about Scottsdale, right? Not today.

In one zoning case, six Mesa City Council members chose the easy path to support snootiness rather than make the tougher choice to uphold the Constitution.

On Wednesday the Arizona Court of Appeals, in a unanimous decision, found in favor of Angel Tattoo, which sought to open in Dobson Ranch after the Mesa City Council rejected that location in 2009.

It was a slam-dunk decision, as the court found for shop owners Ryan and Laetitia Coleman on all three of their constitutional causes of action: their rights of free speech, of equal protection under law and of due process.

The court’s ruling doesn’t mean to say that cities can’t properly apply what are known as “time, place and manner” restrictions on speech. It’s that courts can’t dismiss complaints from people like the Colemans without facts justifying such restrictions.

According to the decision, the Mesa zoning board had voted 3-2 to recommend the Council deny their application for a use permit as not “appropriate” for the neighborhood.

About a month later, the Council agreed. Members voted 6-1 to deny their application (only Mayor Scott Smith voted in favor) after hearing from opponents, who, according to the ruling, “presented no evidence but articulated concerns that a tattoo parlor in the suggested location might draw crime to the area and reduce property values.”

Of course, the thing about tattoo places is that these complaints are about 20 years too late. For whatever reason, tattoos have gone mainstream, just as backwards baseball caps, once the exclusive province of those who play catcher, today top the heads of millions of young men.

But because enough people don’t get out much and thus have a greater-than-even chance of fearing the unknown, again, as the court pointed out, without evidence, old fears move into the present. And so there will always be sympathetic politicians eager to be Defenders of the Neighborhood.

I don’t have a tattoo, don’t plan on getting one, and think that, depending on their location and design, they can hinder someone’s chances in a job interview far more than they are worth as personal adornment. But my view on tattoos stops at the other person’s epidermis.

And, as the state Court of Appeals — and a federal appellate court last year — affirmed, tattoos are forms of expression protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. And part of that protection means that telling tattoo shops they can’t open is tantamount to telling a publication it can’t publish. Or can hand out copies only in the middle of the unoccupied desert, away from decent people.

Mesa didn’t ban tattoo shops entirely, as Hermosa Beach, Calif., did, only to have the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals strike that ban down in 2010 as an abridgement of the right of free speech. It has approved other tattoo businesses.

In fact, the court also found that the city zoning board staff, “in recommending issuance of the permit, found that the proposed tattoo parlor conformed with Mesa’s general plan and policies, would be compatible with and not detrimental to the neighborhood, and would not damage property values.

“Staff additionally related that the police department had reported no increase in crimes attributable to a similarly situated tattoo parlor.”

As the Tribune’s coverage of the Mesa decision stated, Council members at that 2009 meeting were concerned about an aggregation of uses they questioned, that is, whether there is such a thing as “too many” tattoo shops, or too much of one tattoo shop, one massage business and one payday loan store.

But the Arizona Court of Appeals ruling is a warning to city officials about too much reliance on the aggregation theory. As the court wrote: “(I)f Mesa is able to deny a permit application based solely on negative perceptions about tattoo parlors, or Mesa’s discretion in determining neighborhood compatibility is unguided, the Colemans cannot practically determine where to properly locate within Mesa.”

And if you are given no clue as to where you can legally speak, then you’re not speaking. That isn’t freedom.

• Read Tribune contributing columnist Mark J. Scarp’s (mscarp1@cox.net) opinions here on Sundays. Watch his video commentaries on evtnow.com/scarp

This little tidbit popped on my radar from San Francisco.  Just wait until Tucson gets their 4 mile light rail project rolling.

Visitors to San Francisco’s main shopping district, Union Square, can’t help but see, smell and hear the massive construction project that could end with a visionary subway, or, as some critics are calling it, “a train to nowhere.”

Known as the Central Subway, it’s a rail extension less than two miles long, connecting outlying neighborhoods to Union Square and Chinatown.

Voters approved the project in 2003, to replace a freeway damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Back then, the cost was $647 million. Today, the price tag is $1.6 billion, with the lion’s share of the funding still to come from the federal government.

In July, San Francisco’s Civil Grand Jury concluded the project was poorly designed, won’t meet projected ridership levels, and, as the scathing title of its report says, costs “too much money for too little benefit.”

At about $1 billion per mile, the Central Subway has become a driving force in Tuesday’s mayoral election. Leading contenders like San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi have withdrawn their initial support, calling it “a political hot potato. In these difficult times, the question is, can we afford it?”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/07/city-feds-dispute-spiraling-cost-san-francisco-subway-project/?test=latestnews#ixzz1d4lf98YW

Green candidate for mayor based in Occupy Tucson tent

By Brad Poole

TUCSON, Ariz | Sat Nov 5, 2011 9:53am EDT

(Reuters) – There is no bank of telephones at Mary DeCamp’s campaign headquarters, no volunteers eager to bring her message to the masses.

The Green Party candidate for mayor of Tucson, who is days away from losing her home to foreclosure, is flanked by fellow Occupy Tucson activists as she directs her long shot bid for public office from a borrowed tent in a local park.

“November 10th is my eviction date,” the aptly named candidate said cheerfully on Friday, while unpacking signs after police had pushed Occupy Tucson campers from one park to another a night earlier.

DeCamp could have saved her house, she said, and could have taken handouts from friends and family to keep her mortgage current. But she said she gave up after months of phone calls from the bank hounding her about late payments as she fell further behind.

“I just shut down,” she said.

Instead, she chose to go it alone and walk away from the home she bought for $172,000 at the height of the real estate boom, a home now worth far less than the amount she borrowed.

Although she acknowledges she has little real chance of winning election, DeCamp prides herself as a politician who can give voice to a constituency that lacks one. She ran for City Council two years ago and lost.

While local Republicans and Democrats bicker over downtown redevelopment and budget woes in the southeastern Arizona city, she said she focuses on broader issues.

“I’m advancing a much-needed message that isn’t being advanced by the two major parties,” she said. “I think globally and act locally.”

A friend has given DeCamp a new handmade placard for each of the 21 days she stayed with Occupy Tucson. Her campsite facing a busy downtown street is adorned with banners — one in foot-tall letters asking passers-by to vote. Glittery, colorful signs lean nearby on a borrowed table.

“Democracy is Green,” proclaims one sign decorated with a symbolic marijuana leaf.

RUNNING FROM A TENT

DeCamp kept her distance from Occupy Tucson at first, thinking that her presence might politicize an anti-Wall Street movement aligned with groups around the country protesting economic inequality, high unemployment and corporate greed.

Ultimately she decided politics needed to play a part, and that Green Party ideals aimed at protecting the little guy dove-tailed with Occupy Wall Street goals of speaking out for the so-called “99 percent.”

DeCamp now counts herself among a couple of dozen hard core Occupiers who have remained camped night after night, amassing citations for staying in the park past its 10:30 p.m. closing time. “Oh, it’s about 14 by now, I think,” she said of the citations. “I slept through a few of them.”

Her campaign office consists of two stackable, plastic storage bins outside a borrowed Coleman tent. She takes calls from a cell phone and answers her email at a public library.

The Democratic candidate, attorney Jonathan Rothschild, appears to be running away with the race in the liberal-leaning city. He led his nearest competitor, Republican mining company lobbyist Rick Grinnell, by 17 percentage points in a recent poll of likely voters.

DeCamp, a former adjunct college instructor in communications and math who grew up poor in Nebraska, said she was quickly taken with Occupy Wall Street movement.

“I immediately said, ‘That’s where I need to be. That’s what we need to be doing,’” she said.

A 17-year resident of Tucson, DeCamp said she is in the Occupy movement for the duration and will decide later where to go when it ends, whenever that might be.

“I’ve had offers from six people to come live with them. I always give more than I take, so everyone knows they’ll get a good deal if I come live with them.”

(Editing by Steve Gorman, Peter Bohan and Greg McCune)

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“Breaking: California High-Speed Rail Boondoggle Now Officially Texas-Sized”

Bullet trains to nowhere. Unless your destination is, say, staggering waste and then, ultimately, bankruptcy.

In which case, all aboard! Nick Gillespie, Reason:

Three years ago, voters were sold a project that was gonna cost $43 billion, which now costs $66 billion in 2010 dollars, but the actual cost is gonna be $98.5 billion, if everything goes faster than Carl Douglas doing some kung-fu fighting and the whole system is up and running by 2033? Not to worry, though, because the very best people in the California government and heavily subsidized business community and at the Obama White House are all over it.Where’s the line in the “business plan” that says all numbers are placeholders until a new form of scientific measurement is developed to calculate the amount of bullshit included in these estimates?

And you wonder where all that money the City of Tucson has to spend goes every year???? In the Oct 24, 2011 issue of the Star you get a small clue.
Businesses to get help on efficiency practices plus garner recognition
City begins green-certification effort
Read more: http://azstarnet.com/business/local/city-begins-green-certification-effort/article_dd6cb98d-3ec7-5b3f-8ca9-34fa2a3617dd.html#ixzz1bkpR8Shf
Going green just got a little bit easier for Tucson businesses.
Tucson’s Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development is encouraging businesses to apply for its Green Business Certification Program.
More than a dozen businesses have applied so far, said director Leslie Ethen.
Among them is BWS Architects, a downtown business that made changes to become more environmentally friendly, said associate Arthur Stables.
BWS Architects, at 261 N. Court Ave., has installed a cistern to capture water, has given up using bottled water, uses low-water-use toilets and recycles paper supplies, plastic and glass.
Prasad Kakarala, owner and founder of Curry Leaf Indian restaurant, 2510 E. Grant Road, has also applied to the program and made some changes to become more sustainable.
He’s had a more efficient A/C unit installed, now recycles paper products and uses energy-saving light bulbs in the restaurant, Kakarala said.
Sustainability is the way of the future, he said. “We all need to protect the environment.”
Businesses must be within Tucson city limits to apply. Then, Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development staff will meet with business representatives, and businesses must complete evaluation forms and an action checklist.
The office can assist with evaluations and provides free audits of water use, energy use and waste. The energy audit, in particular, gives specific actions businesses can take to reduce their energy use, as well as estimated costs of more efficient systems, the anticipated energy savings and how long it will take to pay off the initial costs, Ethen said.
The certification program had pilot projects with Goodmans Interior Structures and United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona in late 2009.
There is a lot of flexibility in what businesses can do to become more environmentally friendly. The program is mainly intended to provide businesses with resources and get them thinking about how to operate in more sustainable ways, Ethen said.
“It’s really up to the businesses to decide what they want to do,” Ethen said. “We’re more about shifting people’s mentality to do anything rather than setting a high bar.”
The effort includes recognition for taking such steps.
As the program evolves, Ethen would like to include a second tier that is more competitive and that evaluates businesses based on the strength of the steps they take to increase their sustainability.
“We would love to see 100-plus businesses in the program in the next couple years,” Ethen said.
TO APPLY
For application materials and additional information: www.tucsonaz.gov/ocsd/GreenBusinessCert_Home.php
DOWNTOWN FOCUS
With construction for the modern streetcar starting up, there will be road closures and disruptions to traffic downtown, said Leslie Ethen, director of Tucson’s Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development.
She wants to use the Green Business Certification Program to provide incentives for Tucsonans to venture downtown despite the construction.
Hope Miller is a University of Arizona student who is an apprentice at the Star. Contact her at starapprentice@azstarnet.com or 573-4663.
Read more: http://azstarnet.com/business/local/city-begins-green-certification-effort/article_dd6cb98d-3ec7-5b3f-8ca9-34fa2a3617dd.html#ixzz1bkpBlE00
Just one simple question. Each time you drive over those potholes, call 911, park downtown, visit those Rio Nuevo attractions and hotels, lose valuable minutes waiting for police/fire are you happy knowing that your city is GREEN???

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America’s Emptiest Cities, 2011
By Paul Toscano, CNBC.com
October 12, 2011

HERE

The problem is multi faceted.  Here’s a few culprits:

1. Pima County has been too reliant on growth related industries and hasn’t done a very good job at divesting into different job creating industries.

2.  There seems to be no ryme or reason as to what gets built where in Southern Arizona.  We fight sprawl at the same time block infill projects.

3.  Financing – Here’s a great peice from O’Dell and the AZ Star:

Financing hard to get

Housing prices have crashed to levels not seen in 10 years, and interest rates are at historic lows. But many vacant properties aren’t drawing buyers and aren’t being filled.

Even if they can afford the payments, fewer people can get financing for a home, Strobeck said.

“You need gold-plated financing in order to get yourself a mortgage,” no matter how large, Strobeck said. “There’s so much supply because people can’t qualify.”

Despite a report last week calling Tucson the emptiest city in America because it had the highest home-vacancy rate of large cities for the first two quarters of 2011, Strobeck and University of Arizona economist Marshall Vest said Tucson’s plight isn’t worse than other places.

And some Tucson real estate professionals said vacancies are not a big issue. Greg Hollman, regional vice president of Coldwell Banker, said the market is working through the inventory of vacant homes quickly and some investors are putting multiple cash offers on properties, an idea contradicted by the Star’s analysis.

“It hasn’t been a big problem in my opinion,” Hollman said.

But Elías said the only people benefiting from the current market are cash buyers who can sweep up properties at rock-bottom prices.

He said the only way to clear the number of vacant houses is for financial institutions to loosen up lending standards, which were too loose during the housing boom and became very strict after the bust.

Housing is the key to getting the economy moving, Vest said, and vacant homes need to be filled before the housing market can stop falling.

“We’re going to need to get people in the vacancies to get people building again,” Vest said. “Homebuilding has to come back before we see the kinds of growth rates we’ve grown accustomed to.”

ring of vacant houses

The areas with the most vacant homes run from Sahuarita north and west, skirting the O’odham Reservation and extending to Marana. These boom areas went bust with the housing market.

Star valley

The housing development west of Casino del Sol was an emblem of the housing boom and now is filled with vacant homes after the bust.

Center city rentals

Many of the areas in central Tucson with the most vacant units feature entire apartment complexes that have been boarded up and vacated.

Green Valley

Green Valley had many more vacant houses in 2000 than in 2010, but that’s because of how the census counted vacancies. More seasonal housing was counted as vacant in 2000 than in 2010.

By the numbers

34,387

vacancies in 2000

52,249

vacancies in 2010

52 percent

more vacancies in 2010 versus 2000

Nearly one in eight

units vacant in 2010

How we got the story

The Star analyzed U.S. census tract data from 2000 and 2010.

To determine the increase in vacant rentals, the Star added all census-tract data together for vacant, occupied and total units in Pima County.

To map the data, the Star took the total number of vacant properties for each census tract and stripped out the vacant units that were seasonal rentals, second homes, housing for migrant workers and vacant homes that had just been rented or sold. This left mostly vacant rentals, vacant homes for sale, foreclosures and investor-owned homes.

The Star then projected that data using mapping software and coded the census tracts based on the number of vacant properties.

Report problem vacant properties

If a vacant house is causing problems in your neighborhood, report it. Visit cms3.tucsonaz.gov/hcd/code-enforcement and click on “code enforcement.” Fill out the online form, or print a form to fax, mail or hand-deliver to the city.

Contact reporter Rob O’Dell at 573-4346 or rodell@azstarnet.com

Read more: http://azstarnet.com/news/our-home-vacancy-problem/article_606bfe27-3646-5d4b-a3d6-53f090583625.html#ixzz1cHfQdHOi

So tell me Tucson Democratic Party leaders, ‘How Bad Does It Have To Be To Lose The Arizona Daily Star Endorsement As A Democratic Incumbent?”

The short answer is pretty darn bad.  Maybe the Rio Nuevo boondoggle, the FBI and Attorney General investigations, the Park Wise scandals, the condition of the roads, medians and general decay of our market, the total lack of economic activity anywhere in the City limits, catching the old tired democratic elected officials and party playing the same old tricks, the total lack of faith of anything coming out of City hall as the truth, the revolving door at the City Managers office and all major department heads. Stop me before I lose you…..it seems like the ADS and the voters already have lost jumped ship.

Rio Nuevo’s failures taint everything at City Hall. It’s such a symbol of waste that there’s no chance voters will trust city government until Rio Nuevo is turned around.

That refocus must be based on a specific plan for downtown redevelopment, created in cooperation with the state-apppointed Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District Board.

We do not believe that Councilwoman Shirley Scott, a Democrat campaigning for a fifth term, can help envision or lead the turnaround.

She is one of two elected officials who have overseen Rio Nuevo from its voter-approved creation in 1999. The other, Mayor Bob Walkup, isn’t seeking re-election.

Scott does not demonstrate that she understands her role or responsibility regarding Rio Nuevo. She has said that council members are not CPAs and make decisions based on advice from the city’s staff. She has blamed the failures on former managers and senior staff members.

After the city spent $230 million with little to show for it over 12 years, Scott’s perspective is unacceptable.

We believe voters should elect Scott’s challenger, Republican Tyler Vogt, a political newcomer, as the representative of east-side Ward 4.

In written responses to the Star (Vogt declined two invitations to meet with the editorial board), Vogt said he would push to get both the city and the Rio Nuevo district board to negotiate and “to focus on the common goals of completing what remains of Rio Nuevo.”

His email added: “The city is culpable for the current Rio Nuevo situation and will be required to provide remedy for same. This is another instance where the city is not engaging in a cooperative business environment.”

We don’t entirely agree with that assessment. In recent months the district board is as much to blame for failing to meet with the council to settle differences over spending and the ownership of particular properties.

Asked to describe his working style, Vogt wrote, “Compromise is essential in any collaborative effort and I am willing to make tough decisions when the data indicates a change of plan is necessary.”

Vogt, who has been a Tucsonan since 2000, has not been involved in city government. He wrote that he’s concentrated on his family, church and career. He’s a deputy chief engineer of production at Raytheon.

Star readers asked us to question candidates about several issues, including the poor condition of streets. Vogt said road maintenance would be his second budget priority behind public safety.

To pay for street repair, he wrote, “There will be cuts to secondary services, including Sun Tran.”

Vogt also favors abolishing red-light cameras and radar vans, which he described as “not cost effective.”

“Safety needs to be addressed by engineering controls rather than by punitive observation,” he wrote.

Vogt added that “vast portions of the sign code and land-use code contain restrictions” that do not meet the city charter’s mandates. Government is required, he said, “to make and enforce all such local, police, sanitary and other regulations as are deemed expedient to maintain the public peace, protect property, promote the public morals and welfare, and preserve the health of inhabitants of the city.”

On paper, Vogt’s use of phrases such as “focus on the common goals” and “a cooperative environment” between business and government indicate that he has the right perspective to solve the many challenges facing the city.

The Star endorses Tyler Vogt for the City Council in Ward 4.

Arizona Daily Star

Read more: http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_661f44d0-2f0b-5b17-9d17-65065e8ae80a.html?mode=story#ixzz1bFAzXLfT