News Nuggets: Jail costs rise, bridge project on deck, gardener gets his day

Tucson officials have a light agenda tomorrow ... Ciscomani's family raises questions.

The Tucson City Council doesn’t have many big-ticket items on their agenda this week.

While light agendas might not make for juicy news (and also make us wonder why they didn’t pick any of the city’s pressing issues to tackle this week), they’re also an opportunity to look at all the smaller items that don’t get much attention, even if they cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

The bulk of the council’s regular meeting tomorrow is the consent agenda,¹ along with a rezoning request, the usual appointments to local boards, and approvals of liquor licenses and special events.

Their study session isn’t much busier. They’ll get legal advice on a lawsuit filed against the city during an executive session, an update on election security measures, and they’ll talk about any upcoming legislation that could affect the city.

The highest-profile item on the agenda is the county jail’s rising costs, and whether the city will pay more to house people arrested or convicted in municipal court.

The City of Tucson doesn’t operate a jail, so they have an agreement with Pima County to do it. The booking fee for the city is going up from $396 to $496 and the daily housing rate is rising from $108 to $125, City Manager Tim Thomure wrote in a memo.

The increase is due to higher costs for substance addiction and related health care costs in the jail, a pay raise for county employees, including those who run the jail, and a rise in overhead costs. The city spent $4.7 million in fiscal 2023 and budgeted $5.6 million for fiscal 2024.

A local man could get recognition for the years of work he’s put into a neighborhood garden when the council decides whether to name a new park on North Bell Avenue after Kha Dang.

The city bought the parcel of land in the Garden District Neighborhood with the goal of turning it into a park, Assistant City Manager Liz Morales wrote in a memo. Even before then, when it was privately owned, neighborhood residents used it as a community garden for many years.

Now that the city owns the land and officials are looking for a name, residents wrote a ton of letters asking the council to name the park after Kha Dang, pointing to his daily work in the garden, developing a computer lab for kids, keeping the little free library stocked, and generally working to improve the neighborhood.

“At 84 years old, he can still be found in the gardens most mornings chatting with guests and photographing plant and wildlife,” neighborhood officials wrote.

In an example of how much it costs to get things done, and how long it takes sometimes, the council is considering an agreement with the Regional Transportation Authority to spend $14 million for a bridge over Pantano Wash. The bridge project was listed as Project 38 under the 2006 RTA plan, Assistant City Manager Kristina Swallow wrote in a memo.

In the not-too-distant future, Tucson voters will decide whether they want to pay a half-cent sales tax for the next two decades to fund transportation projects. One of the concerns local officials have raised as they develop their pitch to voters for the RTA Next plan is whether voters will approve a new sales tax when projects included long ago in the previous RTA agreement still aren’t completed.

Along those lines, the council also is going to decide whether to spend $992,000 on the design for a road project on Valencia Road. That one was listed as Project 23 in the 2006 RTA plan.

The city and the Industrial Development Authority are changing gears as they put together an “empowerment center” for small, minority-owned businesses that need financing. The council approved spending $925,000 last year to renovate a building at 257 N. Stone Avenue. But that building ended up being “unsuitable for renovation without substantial additional investment,” Thomure wrote in a memo. Now they’re planning to repair a building at 600 S. Meyer and the council has to give the green light.

Rounding out the agenda, the council is going to formally vote on a resolution to support the Santa Cruz River Urban National Wildlife Refuge, which they asked staff to draw up at their September 25 meeting … They’re going to decide whether to approve a $45,000 impact fee subsidy for the Emery Park Place Duplexes, a low-income housing community for families … The council is planning to revamp the leadership structure of the Metropolitan Education Commission, following in the footsteps of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, who approved the change in August … And they’re going to rezone 80 acres near the Tucson International Airport, where airport officials are hoping to attract more businesses.

You can watch tomorrow’s meeting on the City of Tucson’s YouTube channel.

Family matters: U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani has taken a tough stance on border security during his re-election campaign, but that stance would have made life very difficult for his wife’s family, the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel reports. The parents of his wife and brother-in-law, Alexander Aviña, came to the United States as undocumented immigrants in the 1970s. As for Ciscomani’s own parents, who Ciscomani says immigrated legally, he hasn’t provided a clear account, and his spokesman bristled at the Star when they asked for details.

“When he attacks refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants, he’s attacking people like my parents, who had a daughter that became his wife, and they have six beautiful kids now,” Aviña said. “He has his family in large part due to the sacrifices and the efforts of my parents, who are quote-unquote, ‘the bad immigrants,’ in his political imagining.”

Just not how it works: Democrats are not getting non-citizens to vote, Star columnist Tim Steller writes. He profiles a Tucson man who immigrated from Mexico and has been waiting 24 years to vote. He won’t be eligible until his naturalization ceremony on Friday, four days after today’s deadline to register for the November 5 election. As for people claiming asylum today, they wouldn’t be eligible for citizenship until 2035.

District deep dive: The Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel breaks down the race for the Pima County supervisor seat in District 4, including profiles of the lone Republican Supervisor Steve Christy, who is fending off a challenge from Democratic newcomer Vanessa Bechtol.

Mapping snafu: After Pima County elections officials were alerted to a mapping error, they’re sending new voter registration cards to about 500 voters in the Continental School District, KVOA’s Zachary Jackson reports. A constituent reported the error last week and officials found sections of school districts around Sahuarita didn’t line up exactly with the county assessor’s data.

Cracking that nut: Officials say Tucsonans, and Arizonans as a whole, need more tree shade. But trees require water, and that’s a precious commodity in the desert. Researchers at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University are seeing some success as they try to come up with ways to keep trees healthy with less water, KJZZ’s Bridget Dowd reports. They’re looking at rainwater harvesting, organic mulch and hydrogels that absorb large amounts of water and keep roots hydrated.

Call to the public: Decisions about groundwater management in the Douglas area could shape regulations for years to come, as we reported last week. On November 1, the public will get their chance to weigh in on the 10-year plan for the Douglas basin at a hearing hosted by Arizona Department of Water Resources, the Herald/Review’s Shar Porier reports.

105: The number of days this year the Tucson area has broken 100-degree high temperatures. Just a few more and it will break the all-time record.

1. The consent agenda is where officials usually put items they all agree on. It’s a way to approve a batch of items all at once to save time during the meeting.