Great Recession flashbacks

$28 million in problems … Green energy vibes … And cutting your boss’ budget.

Mayor Regina Romero is spending a lot of time thinking about how the City of Tucson handled the Great Recession of 2008.

It was still her first term on the Tucson City Council representing Ward 1, but the sudden loss of state-shared revenues flowing into city coffers was painful — leading to furloughs, some layoffs and deferring maintenance wherever possible.

Now, 17 years later, Romero and the rest of the Council are facing another revenue shortfall, setting up some hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead.

We recently sat down with Romero to discuss the city budget deficit.

The current budget shortfall is estimated at $28 million, compared to a $51 million shortfall during the peak of the Great Recession.

“At that time, our employees really took a lot of the brunt, as well as the lack of investment in maintenance in our roads, in our parks. We were doing the basic priorities, the basic needs that residents needed from us as a city,” Romero said.

The city weathered the storm, so to speak, but Romero said there were three things that took a hit from the funding shortfall.

“Maintenance of our roads, our equipment, our parks” took the biggest hit, she said. “So what we're trying to do, as we enter very difficult times, it took us, I'd say, my first six years as mayor to really try and catch up to the damage that was done on our roads.”

With their hands largely tied on how they can raise revenues, city council members turned to voters to approve a variety of short-term sales tax increases, as well as a bond dedicated to fixing city parks.

Roads are always a popular point of contention when it comes to budget discussions.

However, Romero said it’s important to put road conditions into context when comparing them to other suburban communities surrounding Tucson.

While Tucson started with dirt roads when the city was founded in 1877, it’s easier to maintain the roads in, say, Oro Valley, which was incorporated in 1974. While the lifespan of a road varies from about 15 to 30 years¹ if not properly maintained, the city has more and older roads than its suburban neighbors.

“Let me just say that our roads didn't start crumbling when I got elected (as Mayor). Lack of maintenance in our roads had been a problem 40 years back,” she said.

Results from the city’s recent budget survey came in after the defeat of Proposition 414 in March.

So how will the past inform the future for Romero?

In part, the mayor wants to hear from those who voted against Proposition 414 in March.

Here is what Romero says she is considering:

• Restructuring city debt

• Internal audits to find savings

• Instituting an advertising tax

• Increasing parking fees

• Tapping into lottery revenues

And while it is likely to garner criticism, there are parts of the budget that Romero won’t cut.

“My guiding principles have always been and will remain when it comes to budgeting, that we not dismantle the resources and services that the city of Tucson has had for decades – like Kidco,” Romero said.

Taxing groceries is a hard no, too, since she views it as a regressive tax that hurts families.

Romero backed a decision to review bus fares — with the possibility of increasing them — although Romero still hopes to find a solution to avoid reinstating them.

And it’s important to note that while the city wrestles with a massive budget shortfall, it is still increasing some departmental budgets, including police and fire.

With voters rejecting Prop 414, City Manager Tim Thomure added $18 million in increased spending that will mostly go to public safety programs as part of his recommended $2.4 billion fiscal year 2026 budget.

His recommendations include increasing property taxes, increasing city fees, asking employees to contribute more for their health insurance, eliminating its contributions to the county’s early childhood education program and amending how the city puts money into its rainy day fund.

Thomure’s budget — which was released after we sat down with the mayor — makes room for some of Romero’s suggestions, including an advertising tax and restructuring city debt.

Today’s Council meeting will likely reshape at least some of Thomure’s recommendations.

While the city has closed its budget survey for feedback, you can review what your neighbors told the Council to do with the budget here.

Voters will get another chance to break up with Tucson Electric Power this fall.

The Council will take a closer look at a new franchise agreement with TEP tonight, and the discussion is generally considered a precursor to putting a renewal of the 25-year agreement on the ballot.

It’s a good guess that the new agreement has some support on the Council, which has spent hours behind closed doors with its attorneys discussing renewing a possible deal with the Canadian-owned private utility.

But voters will still have to approve the plan. If voters reject the extension again, the agreement could revert to a temporary deal with TEP to continue day-to-day operations, although it would hamper long-term planning for both sides.

Voters narrowly rejected Proposition 412 in 2023, forcing the city and TEP to hammer out a new extension and put it before the voters as the current agreement expires in April 2026.

The new proposal offers some substantial changes from what voters rejected in Proposition 412, including:

• A dedicated source of “green energy” supplied from renewable energy produced by TEP for the city

• And a massive solar array and battery bank to provide dedicated power to the city-owned Donna Liggins Recreation Center in the Sugar Hill neighborhood, which operates as a cooling center in the summer.

This proposal likely spells an end to the city’s flirtation with taking over energy production and making its own public energy utility.

On another note, the Council will also have to decide on the process to replace Councilman Richard Fimbres, who is stepping down next month.

A temporary appointee would represent the southside ward for approximately six months, with voters picking Fimbres’ successor in the November general election.

While there are several Democrats vying to replace Fimbres, the four-term Democrat has endorsed Jesse Lugo to replace him on the Council.

Mo’ Goldman, fewer problems: Mo Goldman launched his campaign for the Democratic nomination in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District to challenge Republican Juan Ciscomani next year. The well-known local immigration attorney has already secured some political muscle in the race, with Pima County Supervisor Jen Allen and business owner Nan Walden co-chairing his campaign. While the election is more than a year away, two other Democrats have already put their names in to run for CD6: retired veteran JoAnna Mendoza and Chris Donat, an engineer who works for Raytheon.

“I’m running because we need leaders who aren’t bought and paid for by corporations or the ultra-wealthy, but who understand the real struggles of families in Arizona and across this country,” Goldman said in a statement announcing his candidacy.

Bowing out: Hip-hop artist Fabian Danobeytia is no longer running for the Tucson City Council seat in Ward 5, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel reports. Danobeytia gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot, but just barely. When a lawyer from the law firm Barton Mendez Soto called him up and said they would challenge some of his signatures, which likely would put him below the threshold, Danobeytia decided to withdraw from the race.

Camping ban incoming: The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors are considering whether to ban camping in public spaces, the Arizona Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports. They’re now part of a growing number of local officials in Arizona, including the Tucson City Council, who are considering harsher rules as they deal with a rise in homelessness, along with more liability after Arizona voters approved Prop 312 last year and put local governments on the hook for not enforcing public nuisance laws.

Close call: Elsewhere in southern Arizona, the border and immigration dominated the news lately. In one case that’s making waves, an Albuquerque man who was visiting Tucson may have narrowly avoided being put on a plane to El Salvador. Jose Hermosillo, 19, says he was lost and walking near a Border Patrol station in Nogales when an agent arrested him for crossing the border illegally, Arizona Public Media’s Danyelle Khamara reported. But Hermosillo is a U.S. citizen. Federal officials allege Hermosillo said he crossed the border illegally, but his family says Border Patrol agents simply didn’t believe he was a citizen. They frantically looked for him and eventually found him at a detention center in Florence, where he was detained for 10 days. A federal judge dismissed his case on Thursday.

That’s a new one: Federal prosecutors charged a Phoenix resident with failing to register as an “alien” with the federal government, a charge the judge said she had never seen before, the Republic’s Richard Ruelas reports. Usually, these cases would lead to charges related to crossing the border illegally, but U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in February she planned to enforce the little-used Alien Registration Act from the 1940s.

Creeping further: The 60-foot-wide strip of land along the U.S.-Mexico border that the Trump administration is turning into a military base could end up being a lot bigger, the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel reports. A federal map showed an “emergency withdrawal area” in New Mexico that extends several miles north of the border. Officials didn’t say whether the military footprint would extend that far along Arizona’s border with Mexico.

Reporters are needed now more than ever. If you want somebody to keep track of all the new policies affecting southern Arizona, then click that button.

Echoes of the past: The protesters who called for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia outside El Salvador’s consulate last weekend conjured some poignant historical parallels for Star columnist Tim Steller. They were objecting to the Salvadoran government aiding a U.S. president’s right-wing policies, which sounds a lot like what protesters said 40 years ago, but with a different twist. Back in the 1980s, Salvadoran officials were abusing human rights at a grotesque scale, with the backing of U.S. officials who refused to recognize the asylum claims from people fleeing the violence.

A big deadline is approaching for Arizona school officials who want to keep DEI policies, but are scared of Trump administration officials. And Arizona schools have a whole new batch of state laws to deal with this year. All that and more in tomorrow’s edition of the Education Agenda.

If you want to stay on top of the education world, subscribe today!

Well, this could be an awkward Council meeting.

Deep inside the 54-page budget memo detailing recommended changes for the next fiscal year budget, Tucson City Manager Tim Thomure is asking his bosses to cut their budgets.

As we outlined above, the city is facing a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall and Thomure has been tasked with finding creative solutions for the next fiscal year.

So, he is asking the Council — who he reports to exclusively — to cut their budgets collectively by $300,000.

Officials said the cuts will not lead to layoffs in any of the offices.

Councilman Paul Cunningham told the Tucson Agenda that it is only natural that the elected officials take a haircut as the city is asking departments to make cuts in their budgets next year.

1. No, the road doesn’t vanish in 15 - 30 years, but we’ve all seen what a road looks like when it goes from a 100% rating to a 50% rating.