Standing room only
It’ll be electric … Deadline day … And Shakespeare for Congress.
Our advice if you want to attend one of the two Tucson City Council meetings today is to come early.
The agendas are chock-full of big-time issues and we expect a full house, especially for the night meeting where free transit proponents are expected to lobby the Council to find the money to keep the program alive.
Locals who are curious about the Council’s plans for a city-run electric utility should get some answers today, although those answers won’t come until after the Council meets with its attorneys behind closed doors.
During that executive session, they’ll also discuss a proposed franchise agreement with Tucson Electric Power. The city hasn’t released a draft of the agreement yet, but we expect they’ll release a copy soon.
Depending on what the Council decides, that agreement could be added to the ballot this fall.
The executive session will also address an exemption request filed by TEP to avoid the city's rules to put new utility lines related to TEP’s Midtown Reliability Project underground.
TEP, a Canadian-owned private utility, has threatened legal action if the city forces it to put new power lines underground at three major intersections.
While not specifically spelled out in city agenda documents, the emergence of a draft franchise agreement is likely a sign that the Council is unable or unwilling to move forward on a billion-dollar proposal to launch its own municipal-run utility.
The idea of breaking away from TEP’s monopoly on the local energy market isn’t a brief flirtation – thousands of local residents have signed a petition supporting a city-run electric utility and the city spent $300,000 studying its options.
Update on free transit
One of the most hotly debated issues in city politics over the past few years has been fare-free transit, and the Council is dipping back into that debate today.
Tucsonans have enjoyed the ability to ride the city’s mass transit system for free since the pandemic. But now the city is facing a financial cliff.
The city got a financial boost last year, when Tucson Medical Center and Visit Tucson gave the city $800,000 to keep transit free, but that’s not nearly enough to cover a roughly $10 million shortfall every year to keep the program running.
The Council will discuss making changes to the routes tonight, but with an eye on long-term sustainability of its mass transit system.
The Transit for All Coalition is expected to protest at the Council meeting tonight. They’ve gathered more than 12,000 signatures supporting keeping the fares free.
Breaking a 20-year-old promise
When city voters approved the RTA in 2006, they envisioned a new era for transportation – expanding city roads and putting money into mass transit.
But it didn’t quite work out that way. Few could have predicted the myriad complications that would stem from collecting a half-cent sales tax for two decades and using those funds to pay for transportation projects.
An economic recession and a global pandemic both scrambled the financial projections the architects of the RTA used back then. Sales tax revenues went down, while prices shot up for raw materials and the land needed to expand some of Tucson’s most heavily traveled areas.
The problem the Council will face this evening is what to do about five city projects that were supposed to be part of the RTA, but haven’t been completed due in part to a $196 million revenue shortfall.
The Council has a few options to consider. They could reduce the scope of the projects. They could delay the projects to RTA Next (an extension of the RTA that would have to go before voters). Or they could use the city’s checkbook to pay for the projects.
Insiders at City Hall say the latter is a nonstarter. The city simply doesn’t have the funds to go it alone on the five projects.
Reducing the scope of the projects could disappoint some of their constituents, while adding them to RTA Next could be a tall order, given how contentious those negotiations have been.
For example, widening Grant Road to six lanes in both directions has a $116 million revenue shortfall for phases 5 and 6 – which would widen the east-west corridor between Park Avenue and Palo Verde Road.
The figure above does not include the millions of dollars spent on property acquisition for the road widening project along Grant.
Sleeping in washes, redux
One of the most controversial issues the Council faces, which they left hanging last month, won’t be on the meeting agenda at all this week.
Criminalizing people sleeping in washes was expected to be discussed today, but it did not make it on the final Council agenda.
Three weeks ago, the Council was deadlocked on a new ordinance designed to lessen the city's legal liability under Prop 312, the statewide, voter-approved measure that puts local governments on the hook if they fail to enforce public nuisance laws.
City officials – including Mayor Regina Romero – are increasingly concerned the city will be sued, so they’re passing new measures to limit legal liabilities.
While the impasse is artificial – Councilmember Richard Fimbres was unable to be heard three weeks ago when the Council initially voted on the measure due to a tech issue – the issue has not been brought back for re-consideration.
For now. At the moment, the three “No” votes on criminalizing sleeping in washes hold all the cards to bring it back for reconsideration.
The city charter allows only those on the prevailing side of a vote – in this case, Vice Mayor Santa Cruz and Councilmen Kevin Dahl and Paul Cunningham – to bring it back for another vote.
Knowing that Fimbres was going to vote in favor of it, they may have temporarily found a loophole to stall a vote on the measure.
But Cunningham told the Tucson Agenda he will bring the controversial item back so Fimbres can cast his vote.
There are officially a dozen people running for three open seats on the Tucson City Council.
Ten Democrats and two Republicans turned in their qualifying signatures by the Monday deadline, putting them on the August 5, 2025, primary ballot, absent any lawsuits.
In Ward 3, incumbent Kevin Dahl will face Tucson Unified School District Boardmember Sadie Shaw in the Democratic primary. The winner will go on to face Republican Janet Wittenbraker in the November general election.
In Ward 5, four Democrats are vying to take the seat left open by Richard Fimbres, who isn’t running for re-election. Selina Barajas, Christopher Elsner, Fabian Danobeytia, and Jesse Lugo will face each other in the August primary.
In Ward 6, four Democrats will appear on the ballot to fill the seat vacated when former Councilman Steve Kozachik resigned last year. Karin Uhlich filled the seat as an appointment, but she is not seeking another term on the Council.
Instead, Democrats Theresa Riel, Leighton Rockafellow, Miranda Schubert and James Sinex will square off in the August primary, and will face Republican Jay Tolkoff in the general election.
The clock is ticking, however, to file a legal challenge to the candidates’ signatures. Opponents have five days to challenge the validity of those nominating signatures in court.
While these legal challenges are hard to predict, it’s worth remembering that several local would-be candidates succumbed to formal challenges last year.
The other Grijalva appointment
It’s official – there are six people vying to be the next Pima County Supervisor.
On Monday night, former state Rep. Andrés Cano, Pima Community College Boardmember Karla Bernal Morales, Lewis David Araiza Sr., Richard Hernandez, Kimberly Baeza, and Cynthia Abril Sosa Ontiveros formally jumped into the race to fill the District 5 seat vacated by Adelita Grijalva.
Cano has history with the office, working for several years in the District 5 office before running for the state Legislature in 2018.
A forum with all six candidates, hosted by the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson, is scheduled for Wednesday night at 5:30 p.m.
We’ll be writing a lot about CD7 in the coming weeks, and there will be a lot of dense conversations ahead about who can fill Raúl Grijalva’s seat in the House.
There will also be a lot of colorful characters taking a turn on the public stage.
Samantha Severson, who works in higher ed, recently filed to run as a Democrat.
We kind of think a woman who is obviously well-versed in Shakespeare might have a place in DC.
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I know you're talking about the Tucson city council in your section about RTA, but you ignore the bigger picture: That everyone in Pima County pays the sales tax and that projects throughout the county were completed. The story makes it sound like the RTA funding problem is the city's alone when it's possible that non-city voters might be willing to help by extending the sales tax and putting Tucson in front of the line.
This and the section about TEP continue to ignore the concerns that non-Tucson residents have about Tucson activities. Please take a regional perspective to meet the needs of your other readers.
I lived in two Ohio cities that had city power-- my hometown of Amherst, Ohio and the Capitol City of Columbus. City power in Columbus served the old central core of the city and was significantly cheaper than privatized electricity in the suburbs and the rest of Franklin County. There was a large battle in Cleveland in the 1970s when Mayor Dennis Kucinich battled the corporations that wanted to privatize city power in Cleveland. Calling him the "Boy Mayor" of the "Mistake on the Lake," they savaged Kucinich over this issue in the newspapers. They tried to privatize the city power in Amherst when my Mom was still alive. She told me about it and said, "I don't think this is a good idea." I told her she was spot on.