Education

Ethnic studies case: District’s funds ordered cut

45 comments by Emily Gersema – Jan. 6, 2012 11:21 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com

The Arizona Department of Education imposed severe financial penalties on Tucson Unified School District on Friday for violating a new state law by refusing to revamp or end its controversial Mexican-American studies curriculum.

In a move aimed at forcing one of the state’s largest school districts to comply with the law banning racially divisive ethnic-studies classes, Arizona schools chief John Huppenthal said he is cutting state funding by 10 percent and making it retroactive to August, leaving the district facing an immediate funding loss of $4.9million.

The Tucson district and the state have been at odds for years over the ethnic-studies courses. The district says that they address segregation complaints filed in the 1970s, but state officials contend that they promote reverse racism.

Last year, the state put into effect the ethnic-studies law, which bans classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, encourage resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed solely for students of a certain ethnic background and advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of students as individuals.

Last week, state Administrative Law Judge Lewis Kowal upheld Huppenthal’s declaration, made last summer, that the Tucson district had violated the statute.

Huppenthal said he had given the district plenty of time to improve the program and address the state’s concerns and had no other choice but to impose penalties.

“The district hasn’t dealt with the issue,” Huppenthal said. “The problems are so deep and so wide, it would be almost impossible to cure the program.”

Under his decision, the Tucson school district, which was to receive $340million in state funds for this school year, will lose 10 percent, or slightly more than $1million, from its state checks each month, unless it complies with his demands.

If it fails to comply, it could lose more than $14million by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

The bulk of state money for schools is used for staff and operations.

The implications of the funding cuts were not immediately clear.

The Tucson school board will discuss the future of the ethnic-studies program at its scheduled meeting Tuesday, board President Mark Stegeman said. He didn’t have any immediate comment on Friday’s decision, and other board members didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Huppenthal said the penalty is retroactive because he initially had declared the program illegal in the summer, and the funding cuts would have begun in August if Tucson hadn’t filed a complaint with the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings asking an administrative-law judge to hear its challenge to his decision.

The program’s fate is unclear, though. A group of Mexican-American studies advocates and families suing Huppenthal in federal court asked a federal judge last month to stop the penalties from taking effect through a request for a preliminary injunction.

“We’re waiting for a decision,” said Richard Martinez, an attorney for the advocates.

“If there were ever circumstances that warranted a preliminary injunction, this is it.”

Martinez had filed the lawsuit in fall 2010 on behalf of families and supporters of the Mexican-American studies program. The case is pending.

Huppenthal said the state will not settle it outside court.

The ethnic-studies law that took effect one year ago was crafted by Huppenthal and his predecessor, Tom Horne, who is now the state attorney general. At the time, Huppenthal was in charge of the Senate Education Committee.

Horne began investigating the ethnic-studies programs in Tucson in 2006 while he was state superintendent of public instruction. He looked into it after students in Tucson booed and jeered one of his assistant superintendents speaking at the district and after residents and a former Tucson teacher, John Ward, complained that the program was creating racial tension.

Two years later, Horne began asking legislators to craft a law that would force the school district to revise the classroom lessons and teachers’ approach or end the program.

Before leaving for the Attorney General’s Office last January, the same month the law took effect, Horne said the Tucson schools’ program was illegal.

He left the task of enforcing it to Huppenthal, who succeeded him as state schools chief that month.

Huppenthal then commissioned a study of the program. In the summer, analysts involved with the study published a report saying the Mexican-American studies program was legal. Huppenthal disagreed.

After collecting various texts and materials that were associated with the Mexican-American studies program, Huppenthal said some of the texts, such as “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” written by Brazilian writer Paulo Freire and first published in 1968, were inflammatory and promoted racial hatred.

Education experts consider Freire’s book as the founding text of “critical race theory,” an approach commonly used today in higher education to analyze literature and history through the lens of people who have been oppressed.

“To create a sense of victimhood and inflame racial passions like that … I think it was completely appropriate for these issues to come to the surface and for us to deal with these issues,” Huppenthal said.

“Otherwise, these issues may never have seen the light of day. I think this public discussion is healthy.”

The Tuscon district’s ethnic-studies program has been a lightning rod for controversy for years. It was in large part borne of the district’s effort to fulfill court settlements of two segregation cases that were filed against it in the 1970s.

A judge then required the district to begin several years of improvements to end segregation and mistreatment of minority students.

The district, where more than 60 percent of the students are Latino, was released in 2010 from court monitoring in that case after a judge approved its final plan to end segregation. Ethnic-studies courses were included in that plan.

Teachers and Tucson-area professors who founded the Mexican-American studies program say that students in those courses perform better in schools.

However, Huppenthal and his staff believe there is no valid data available to substantiate that particular claim.

In fact, Huppenthal notes that the Tucson district, which has more than 50,600 students, has been a poorly performing district for many years, with students in several grades scoring below proficient levels in math, science, reading and writing.

When asked if his department will take control of the district to improve teacher and student performance to fulfill state and federal education standards, Huppenthal responded, “We’re a local-control state. We have high hopes for folks like (Tucson Superintendent) John Pedicone.

“I consider this (ethnic studies) a distraction.”

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2012/01/06/20120106arizona-ethnic-studies-case-funds-cut.html#ixzz1imaMxaKr

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.

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.

On Wednesday, we laid out a vision for a business-friendly Tucson region. It was part of a forum put on by radio station KVOI 1030-AM and the “Tucson Needs Business” campaign spearheaded by the station’s president, Doug Martin.

While some progress has been made, there are plenty of ways to improve the environment for business in Tucson and Pima County.

Here is what we are proposing:

1. Pima County should act like a county. The Pima County Board of Supervisors needs to realize that having healthy vibrant municipalities is good for the economy because it creates competition. Blocking annexations and fighting with other jurisdictions is holding back the entire Tucson region. A strong Marana or Sahuarita or Oro Valley is good for the region. Pima County is providing municipal-type services, such as law enforcment and road pothole repairs, to heavily populated unincorporated areas and that contributes to property tax rates that are almost five times higher than what Maricopa County is charging. It’s estimated that because 36 percent of the population is in unincorporated areas, the Tucson region is losing up to $80 million per year in state shared revenues. Pima County needs to get out of the way. That may require a change in a majority on the Board of Supervisors next year.
2. Remove politics from Tucson Development Services. Between an entrenched bureaucracy and meddling city council members, business owners aren’t just getting squeezed, they’re getting crushed.
3. Support tourism promotion. Marketing of this region’s tourism assets must be fully-funded to one or more organizations. The organization, or organizations, must be accountable, transparent and effective. The Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau has an opportunity when it hires its new chief early next year. Once an effective new strategy is crafted, all hands in the region should get behind it to make it happen.
4. Set governmental priorities. The basics of local government are police, fire and fixing potholes. Those are the priorities that must be in order before trying to win platinum status as a bicycle community.
5. Get back to education. For businesses to have a reliable workforce source, students must first get a solid educational foundation in reading, writing and math skills. As the state’s second largest school district, Tucson Unified School District bascially defines education in this region. The district of nearly 53,000 students has been sidetracked by such things as ethnic studies, a program in which 365 students are enrolled. Nine schools have been closed in the past two years and with 1,500 students per year opting out under open enrollment or to charter schools, it appears that families are doing what they can to take educational matters into their own hands.
6. Activate business leaders. Business leaders need to do their part. Claiming to be a pro-business candidate during a campaign isn’t enough. Once elected, business leaders must hold politicians accountable while in office.

Positive changes have occurred over the last 2½ years. New leadership has invigorated the Tucson Metro Chamber. A backroom political deal for an ill-conceived city-owned downtown hotel was stopped, saving taxpayers a $200 million burden. Voters elected Steve Kozachik to replace Nina Trasoff, allowing a new city councilman to shine a light on some of the backroom deals, and the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau is about to undergo a management change with the retirement of long-time leader Jonathan Walker.

But there’s more to do. In this economy, Tucson can no longer be content to talk about the weather and wait on the sidelines for opportunity to come knocking.

When opportunity does arrive, city officials shouldn’t be rubbing their hands and seeing it as an opportunity to charge $316,000 in permit fees to build a $900,000 Texas Roadhouse restaurant.

Doug Martin’s campaign is spreading the word that a good business climate is the engine that will create a thriving economy and produce jobs.

Tucson Needs Business.

Contact Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone at wakeuptucson@gmail.com. They host “Wake Up Tucson,” 6-8 a.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 1030-AM. Their blog is at www.TucsonChoices.com.

Hey Tucson and Pima County how about you come up with one of these – HERE.

The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board ousted Mark Stegeman from the president’s role on Tuesday night and installed Miguel Cuevas as a replacement. The move was met as a victory in some quarters, because Stegeman has not been unilaterally supportive of the district’s Mexican American Studies program as it exists today.

But ousting Stegeman as president is only a victory over free speech and freedom of thought – the very things the MAS program prides itself for instilling in its students. Getting rid of Stegeman as president doesn’t protect the MAS program, it doesn’t keep the state Department of Education from investigating the MAS classes for allegedly violating a state law and – most importantly – it does nothing to educate the roughly 53,500 students in TUSD schools.

All it proved is that an elected official can be targeted and demonized by his fellow Democrats because he formed and stuck to a different opinion than the one they wanted him to have.

This should give pause to everyone with a stake in TUSD. That’s because if Cuevas runs afoul of a line that’s been drawn, or if the board takes actions that anger MAS supporters, there is nothing to stop this from happening again. And again.

Now, there is no doubt Stegeman did not always do a good job managing Governing Board meetings where supporters and opponents of MAS spoke out during the call to the audience, interrupted each other or board members and prevented elected officials from doing their jobs.

Stegeman has not been adroit at reading fluid situations and responding on the fly, and has said as much. TUSD is no stranger to protests, and we’ve seen board meetings over the years where speakers got out of hand – although nothing close to the degree of what has happened since the spring, when the MAS situation flared up.

We wonder how other board members would have handled the angry, emotional and vocal crowds that have packed Governing Board meetings since the spring, when Stegeman raised his proposal to keep MAS classes but make them electives rather than classes that fill graduation requirements. That notion is on hold while TUSD appeals a decision by state Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal that its MAS program violates a state law that prohibits courses that promote overthrowing the U.S. government; promote resentment toward a race or class of people; are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of students as individuals.

Stegeman said he put forward the proposal to try to keep Huppenthal from acting to eliminate MAS outright. His plan was seen as an attack on MAS – even though the most serious threat comes from elected officials in Phoenix – and supporters mobilized to protect their program.

Here again, the focus should be on Phoenix. For example, Huppenthal sought bids to conduct an outside audit of MAS, and only one company, Cambium Learning, responded. The resulting audit report – which contains multiple incomplete sentences and refers to Tucson as “the City of Tracy” and “the Yaki” (instead of Yaqui) – includes results from classroom visits and came to the conclusion that MAS is a solid program that should be replicated, and that it does not violate state law.

Yet Huppenthal is now saying he is not using that audit in the state’s case against TUSD because the work was biased and flawed – a claim that rings hollow at this point because, according to his spokesman, there were only a few minor wording changes made between the draft and the final report.

Also, the state education department paid the $110,000 invoice for the audit. If the quality of the work was so shoddy as to render it worthless, Huppenthal should not have paid the bill without demanding the problems he now cites be fixed. The main problem, however, may just be that the audit did not come to the conclusion he wanted.

But again, TUSD is in the middle of a bigger mess. If TUSD is ultimately found to be in violation of the law, HB 2281 – a law we still maintain is unnecessary, a violation of local control and anti-Latino – then it could lose millions of dollars for the entire district. The price is high, and this is the environment board members must operate in – for the benefit of all students, not only one program.

So it’s a safe bet the raucous meetings will continue, because supporters and opponents of MAS have disrupted the Governing Board proceedings and made hostile statements about each other. Once distortions and emotions reach this pitch, it’s hard to pull them back.

In this environment, Cuevas will have to decide if he is his own man, and if he is willing to pay the price for that. He has been denigrated publicly for being a Latino who has not pledged to support the MAS program without question and at any cost – and he has also been labeled a puppet of MAS supporters and board members Judy Burns and Adelita Grijalva.

Cuevas, the board’s youngest member, is going into the president’s seat with his eyes open.

Cuevas cannot do the job in isolation, and neither could Stegeman. As long as the primary mission on all sides is to punish people who think differently, then everyone loses. The MAS program has some fine qualities, as we have noted myriad times before, but teaching students that it’s acceptable to demote people who disagree with you is not responsible education.

If board members, MAS supporters and opponents actually care about the students, they will remember that this is all supposed to be about the 53,500 kids who call TUSD schools their own.

Arizona Daily Star

Read more: http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_1021b4b8-66c6-5a89-8bb7-065ecfb28c4f.html#ixzz1WExhUL7Y

PCC would quit offering the lowest tier of remedial classes – Math 82, Reading 71 and Writing 70.

The chancellor and faculty advisory groups have said few students are successful in these classes.

Flores spoke of Math 82 as an example.

Students who place into Math 82 tested at grade levels one through five, Flores said. About 1,160 students placed into that class last fall semester, he said. That’s 18 percent of PCC students entering college for the first time.

Simone Gers, a writing faculty member, talked about Writing 70.

PCC taught 50 sections of the class last year, and only 5 percent of students succeeded, she said.

Many of the students would be better served by taking English as a second language classes or adult basic education classes before attempting college-level classes, she said.

The chancellor has said the classes are not a good use of student tuition money or tax money.

It costs about $6,600 to educate a full-time student at PCC. Local property-tax payers pay a large part of the cost.

The state subsidy is $325 per student.

Posted: Thursday, July 14, 2011 10:00 am | Updated: 10:13 am, Thu Jul 14, 2011.

Tale of the tape: tracking the numbers that make a difference in Tucson By Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone – Inside Tucson Business

The tale of the tape, here are numbers we’re watching and so should you:

200,000 – the number of residents in Pima County, or one out of five, who try to get by on incomes below the federal poverty rate, according to a report in the June 23 Tucson Weekly that starts out: “If poverty were a disease, Pima County officials would have declared an epidemic by now.” It amounts to less than $10,890 annually for an individual or $22,350 for a family of four.

$4.68 per $100 of assessed valuation – Pima County’s combined primary and secondary property tax rate for this year, which was up an average 2 percent despite declining property values. Your neighbors in Maricopa County paid $1.05 per $100 of assessed valuation. What do we in Pima County get for the four times more we pay?

95 out of 101 – Tucson’s ranking as a place to business by the Dow Jones news service MarketWatch. Detroit surpassed Tucson.

165 out of 200 – Forbes ranking of Tucson as a market for business and careers.

2 – Tucson’s ranking on the list of cities with declining average home values, down 18.2 percent, since the second quarter of 2010. Only Columbus, Ohio, dropped more, 19.2 percent. Detroit was down 12.6 percent.

$4,000 per day – the estimated cost to subsidize a planned four-mile trolley from University Medical Center through downtown to some dirt lots on the west side of Interstate 10, according to Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik.

$13 million – the amount of money moved from the city’s pothole fund to build a bridge over the Santa Cruz River for the new trolley’s rail. The cost to resurface a road is about $500,000 per mile and more than 60 percent of city roads are in poor condition.

$87.50 – the cost of a case of duct tape to patch railing at the Tucson Convention Center. Despite collecting facilities fees on every event at the center, the fund those monies went into was swept by city officials to be spent on operations, including $187,000 salary and a car for the previous director. And to think some were pushing to spend $200 million on a hotel to support the decrepit convention center.

$475,000 – the base salary for Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. Under Crow’s leadership, ASU has not only eclipsed the University of Arizona in size but its ability to raise money by convincing donors it is a top tier university and valuable resource to the state.

0 – the number of Republican candidates names on the ballot for Tucson mayor this year.

$29.1 billion – the total gross domestic product for the Tucson region. It’s $187 billion in Phoenix.

40 percent – the expected increase in Pima County wastewater fees over the next four years to bring processing fees into compliance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards county officials have known about for more than a decade.

$8 million – the increase to the Sun Tran budget from the City of Tucson, raising the total subsidy to $39 million. Meanwhile, police, fire and street maintenance were cut by a combined $25 million.

21.8 percent – the increase in tourism revenues in the Tucson region since 2000. Statewide, tourism revenues are up 41.4 percent and the Phoenix area was up 49.7 percent. Tucson can’t keep up with its place in the sun.

Top 25 – A list in the March issue of Travel + Leisure magazine that includes Tucson as one of the “World’s Most Underrated Travel Destinations.”

5 years – the length of time Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities has been promoting economic development for our region.

62 – the number of dignitaries who showed up last month at ribbon cutting ceremonies at Raytheon Missile Systems’ new production facility at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Ala. The list included U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who could wield some influence in Raytheon’s way as a member of the defense subcommittee of the Senate’s powerful Appropriations Committee.

300 – the number of jobs Raytheon Missile Systems is adding in Alabama at the new $70 million, 70,000-square-foot missile intergration facility. Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems, was quoted at the ribbon cutting, saying the plant there “was the best business decision for us because of all the incentives and the integrated approach that the state brought to supporting this facility.” He also said, “We see it being part of our integration facilities for many, many, many years in the future, and to support next generations” of missiles

7 months – the time it took Joe Higgins (one of the two writers of this column) to lease a 1,200 square foot retail space to Goodwill in a building inside the Tucson city limits. The use required a neighborhood meeting, zoning commission approval and a vote by mayor and council. (Aside from Joe: Guess how many more retail developments I want to do in Tucson in the future?)

$600,000 – the original contract for the Scott Avenue improvements near downtown. Costs jumped to more than $9 million as a result of change orders that included lighted sidewalks and an orange phoenix or griffin piece of art. One of the original four Rio Nuevo board members was the owner of a bed and breakfast on Scott Avenue.

$1 – the amount of rent paid to the city for the old downtown fire station by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), which is in the Rio Nuevo redevelopment district. One of the original four Rio Nuevo board members is MOCA’s executive director.

$5 billion – the investment Intel is making in Chandler to build a new chip manufacturing plant, adding 1,000 new jobs. The same week that announcment was made, Tucson’s announced was the arrival of 400 new call center jobs.

300 and 500 – the number of new jobs Sargent Controls is bringing to Marana and Roche is adding at Ventana Medical Systems in Oro Valley. Between Roche and Sanofi Aventis, Oro Valley now has the No. 3 and No. 6 ranked largest biotech firms in the world.

390 – The combined number of employees earning $100,000 or more working for the City of Tucson (200) and Pima County (190). There are 122 staffers in the White House who make more than $100,000.

$340,000 – the per-unit cost to rebuild the $23 million Martin Luther King low income housing project in downtown Tucson. Upon completion the building appraised at $10.5 million. Studio and one-bedroom apartments will rent for $167. A three-bedroom apartment in Oro Valley rents for $1,500 a month.

$820,000 – the price paid by Rio Nuevo to make a 15-minute video that was to be played at the Heritage Museum which never got built.

2.4 – the number of police officers per 1,000 population in Oro Valley. In Marana the figure is 2.05, Tucson is 2.0 and unincorporated Pima County is 1.28.

$17.53 – the bed tax paid on an average hotel room in Tucson. It’s the highest in Arizona and higher such cities as Austin, Texas, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Honolulu.

4.1 percent – the increase from 2000 to 2010 in passengers served at Tucson International Airport. The region’s population grew by 20.1 percent over the same period. In the two previous decades, 1990-2000 and 1980-1990, Tucson airport passenger traffic grew by 74.4 percent and 66.3 percent, respectively.

60 percent – the number of students in Tucson Unified School District who identify themselves as Hispanic. Those identifying themselves as Anglo represent 25 percent.

93,699 – average daily circulation of the Arizona Daily Star, down from 113,296 in 2005.

21.8 percent – the percentage of Tucson’s workforce in the government sector. It ranks No. 5 among the highest percentage of government workers in a non-state capital city and 11th among all cities.

$4.8 million – the price land speculator Yoram Levy paid by buy 2,760 acres in the Santa Rita Mountains in 2004. A year later he offered to sell it to Pima County for $11.5 million, which turned it down, and by June 2005 it was sold to Rosemont Copper for $20.8 million. As a copper mine it is projected to produce annual revenues of $3.8 billion.

Contact Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone at wakeuptucson@gmail.com. They host “Wake Up Tucson,” 6-8 a.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 1030-AM. Their blog is at www.TucsonChoices.com.

Robert N. Selton’s decision last month to leave the presidency of the University of Arizona to run the Fiesta Bowl stems from the Board of Regents but, contrary to the suggestion it was the regents’ meddling that prompted him to leave, it was probably the other way around – the regents wanted him to leave.

It is worth noting the regents last month gave Michael Crow a contract extension through June 30, 2017, to remain as president of Arizona State University and there were no plans to do the same for Shelton.

Under Crow’s leadership, ASU is not only eclipsing UA in size and its ability to raise money, regents and state leaders are being told the UA has been squandering its ability to capitalize on its status as a research university with technology transfers.

Posted: Friday, July 1, 2011 9:00 am | Updated: 10:38 am, Thu Jun 30, 2011.

A ‘Dear John’ letter from a former Tucson business owner now in Texas By Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone, Inside Tucson Business Inside Tucson Business | 3 comments

This is a parting letter from a friend who is young, engaged and for a year was part of the fight to fix broken processes and get the community back on track. Read it and weep:

Tucson for me is like a girl I love who has a heroin problem. I love her. I can’t forget her, but I know I can’t live with drugs.

I just moved to ________ County. Texas is about 80 percent Republican. The ______County Democratic Party is a PO box. The attitude here is so refreshing. Saw a gal at the barbeque joint wearing a T-shirt: “Guns kill people, and spoons made Rosie O’Donnell fat.”

The things that drove me out of Tucson, in addition to the taxes and the left-driven real estate conditions, were the suffocating liberal atmosphere and the utter lack of leadership.

When I moved back to Tucson two years ago, there were two things I cared about: Seeing downtown revived and seeing a business-Republican leadership take the mayoralty and run with the city, making it wonderful. If you notice, the two things are really one thing, or at least they merge into one thing: community leadership.

In Tucson I joined the Republican Party, I convened a “meeting” with (Republican operative) who was the operating head of the Pima County Republican Party when _______ was chair and I sought out (Republican staffer) and (District chair), (CEO number and Southern Arizona Leadership Council member), (commercial developer), (commercial developer), (CEO of the biggest company HQ’d in Tucson), (real estate family guy), (business Republican leader), (small business guy), (economic development guy) and another dozen local business and political leaders.

But the day came when I had to recognize that I was just a crow, sitting on the barbed wire fence, squawking and pooping. I was utterly ineffective, partly because of my limitations as a communicator, and partly because my message was being delivered to people who couldn’t accept the premises or the goals.

It would exaggerate only slightly to say that it broke my heart to see what the business community did with the opportunity to elect a real forceful, effective person as mayor. What they did was absolutely nothing. If it didn’t break my heart, it sure was the straw that convinced me I had to leave. For me, it was like I was living in a neighborhood where nobody mowed the lawn, and there was trash and broken cars everywhere, and all my neighbors just sat on their porches and drank beer and tossed the cans into the yard.

I can understand a poorly educated, low intelligence person being that way, but there is no way I can accept that kind of dereliction of duty on the part of the so-called business leaders of Tucson, people whose entire lives and families and futures are tied to the prosperity and stability of your community.

Tucson has three big constituencies all with the motto: “Tucson – Just Like It Is.”

The big three voter groups are the fixed-income retirees, the psychologically downtrodden poor and the quasi-Marxist university crowd. I drive down Speedway, or Broadway or Grant or 22nd and I want to call in the dozers. They revel in it.

“Breakfast: 89 cents”

As I’ve said before, I understand and accept the attitude of Tucson’s three constituencies. What I can’t understand and certainly can’t accept is the passivity of the business community. If Tucson were a car dealership, the owner would fire the general manager, get a new sales manager and keep going until the dealership was making good money. Yet in Tucson, that car dealer shells out big bucks year after year and sees no change.

Austin made the change that Tucson spurns. Back in the 50s and 60s and before, the “no growthers” were in the driver’s seat. But the high energy/high purpose guys knocked them out of power and the city started to change. Now it’s gangbusters.

Hope your health and your spirit and your businesses and your family continue to thrive mightily in 2011.

Signed,

(Ex-Tucsonan – New Texan)

Tucson, you are running out of options.

Business community, you are running out of customers.

Republican Party, you are running into each other.

Wake up, Tucson.

Contact Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone at wakeuptucson@gmail.com. They host “Wake Up Tucson,” 6-8 a.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 1030-AM. Their blog is at www.TucsonChoices.com.

Some Comments from AZBiz.com

Dale Bruder:

Having built a cutting edge digital network for the one Republican Mayoral candidate who could make a difference – Ron Asta, and see his chance destroyed by a shyster petition gatherer named Steve Cole I feel your pain.

What you need to do is name names. If Joe and Chris edited your letter shame on them – they are perpetuating the protect the annoited/do nothing approach to stay in power just like Jack Camper did in his decades running TMCC. Yeah, he’s gone but the effect of his self-serving was years in making and will be years in fading – get that Bill Holmes; you can’t cover up the smell of manure by burying it.

Joe and Chris – are we to see that, now that you’re on top, you have no leadership ability to create the epithany Tucson needs? More of the same. Lead, follow or get out of the way! I read that declaration in 1976 sitting in a prison cell and it made the difference for me. Your air conditioned nightmare is no comparison.

Alan Rosen:

Far too often the response to anything negative written about Tucson is the all too familiar ‘goodbye and good riddance’.

Unfortunately, criticism is not allowed in this town, particularly from those thant have left or those that were not ‘born and bred’. That is really too bad because a lot of the sentiments expressed by those compelled to write are intended to be thought provoking and are heartfelt.

I have been here 11 years and still have not adjusted to how impossible it is to change anything in this community.

As a professional I was ignored by my local peers (not a U of A guy) my ideas and experience from another part of the country was of no interest. Fortunately for me it was the best thing that could happened. I found better and bigger projects out of town where I could apply my knowledge and help the communities that hired me. That’s almost impossible to do here for someone relocating from other parts of the US, the ‘club’ is usually closed.

I feel this town has suffered significant deterioration during the time I have maintained a home here and I think that the future prospects for the community are bleak. If Tucson can improve it must do so by opening itself up to new and fresh ideas (not the stale ideas of too many generations of isolation and UofA educations). Tucson most find BETTER LEADERS, Tucson must fight the entrenced interests of the past and Tucson must address its failed public education system.

Until those things happen it will be more of the same…stagnation, ineffective government, no new businesses and low wages.

Kevin:

glad you’re gone. Stay in Texas.